Written by Jacob Xavier Sullivan
Sully here to give you an exciting game development announcement!
Our team has been working extremely hard the last few months on the next major update, which is shaping up to be one that is bringing some big changes to the game. Special thanks to those in the community who have been live testing some of the newest changes! It has been a bumpy ride getting all of this together, but we hope that the changes will make the game much more enjoyable!
Here is what you can look forward to in 1.9.5 and beyond.
Rulebook Quality of Life Updates
When we dropped the last rulebook update, along with the New Recruit update, I was in a big rush to get the rulebook out and forgot to update a bunch of things. I spent some time this update tying up loose ends and trying to make things match. The Glossary should be fixed now as should some minor discrepancies in some of the sections. Sorry about the mistakes, as always, let us know if you find anything else!
Reworked Attack Section
This is a more minor update because it changes nothing about how people have been playing the game or will continue playing it, but we noticed that our Attack section was written with the underlying assumption that people had played other wargames. That is, we were not explicitly clear about how exactly attacks worked, leaving way too much room for interpretation. As part of this update, we have broken the Attack Action down into 6 steps that new players, regardless of previous wargame experience, should be able to follow without issue. Accessibility is a huge part of our game development philosophy, so it’s really important to us that anyone can pick up our rulebook and understand how things work. The new section also clears up some common questions about damage allocation that were not explicit before.
Terrain Destruction Rules
This one has been requested for a long time. We added rules for Units inside terrain when it is destroyed. Basically, Units inside terrain when it is destroyed stay relatively in the same position they were before the terrain was removed, then take a Bailout check as if they were in a transport, with the Bailout check difficulty depending on the Terrain’s initial Cover score. (So, terrain that was Heavy being destroyed by Bombard makes the Units inside take a dangerous Bailout check). I’m very excited about this, particularly because of the recent artillery buffs.
NFR and RUS Faction Rules
These changes are really minor. Essentially, we noticed that the National Ideas for both of these were not working the way we had been playing them, so we rewrote them to reflect how we intended them to be played. NFR can now share tokens during their activation instead of just when they attack. Also, Russia can choose to maintain their blizzard as part of the Freeze action
Upgrade Section
We added an Upgrade Section to explain how Units can buy upgrades. We did this for two reasons: First, this introduces the “Weight Class” system, which limits the amount of upgrades Units can take. We noticed that Unit upgrades could get kind of crazy if you stack a bunch of them, so we put an upper limit depending on the kind of Unit. This information is visible to the player in New Recruit now and may interact with other Unit rules in the future. The second reason we did this is that we are preparing for how they will work with… DATACARDS!!!!!!!
Datacard Progress
Datacards have been a personal passion of mine since our first Kickstarter. Those who were around at the time may remember we got close once to finishing them, only for the cruel winds of fate to rip them away once more. In all seriousness, though, Datacards are going to happen, though not this update. I would not say we are getting “close” quite yet, but we have finally made some good progress on getting the ball rolling again. Most importantly, we have settled on a design for both Datacards and Weapon cards, pictured here. 
The current plan for how they will work is: each Unit will have a Datacard with their stats, Unit composition options, and weapon options. Then we will have Weaponcards for every weapon in the game that you can tack on to your units. Similarly, upgrade cards will exist and can be added to your Units as well.
Another big step we have taken is that we have made the decision that we probably won’t be putting munitions values on any of the final cards. Our reasoning is that munitions are the one thing that changes the most in game updates, so stapling munitions to the card really limits the changes we can make in the future. We fear that datacards with munitions listed won’t have a very long shelf life, and that it isn’t a very consumer-friendly process to have to constantly republish cards with updated points costs.
To keep the datacards usable for list building without the need for New Recruit, we will have a publicly accessible master document that lists every Unit, Weapon, and Upgrade Munition cost in the game, so lists can be constructed by hand. It will definitely be less convenient than New Recruit, but with a pen, paper, and a calculator, everything should work out nicely. We have also discussed making some custom dice holder trays so you can put the total munitions cost of your unit above your datacard if you want to show up to play in style! This is all still very new and subject to change, so everything I have said here can be taken with a grain of salt. Despite this, I'm very excited about it, so I couldn’t help but share!
New Mission Pack
As a thank you to the community, Tim has been tinkering away with a new set of missions. This pack takes aim at grand-scale conflict, with scenarios meant for 3,000 munitions or higher per side, and a set of dynamic objectives across the course of the game. We'll have more to reveal when the update actually releases, of course, but we're excited to see folks get into some really big battles!
Suppression Changes
This is one of the bigger parts of this Update. Suppression has changed, as have all rules associated with it, including some of the subfaction rules. You can read about it more in our previous dev log here!
Overall, I am really happy with how the new rules turned out and think the change will be really fun to play with, especially with all the new special rules going with it.
Vehicle Weapon Changes
Difficult to Use is no more! It has been fully removed from the game with no exceptions. Instead, the Vehicle Keyword is gaining two new rules:
When this Unit performs an Attack Action, each Model must designate one of its Weapons as a Primary Weapon. All other Weapons that are not Primary Weapons gain the Inaccurate Special Rule until this Action is resolved.
Weapons equipped to this Unit may select Targets independently, but may only select Targets inside of a 90 degree firing arc.
Explanation: Keeping with the theme of modernizing old mechanics, we decided that Difficult to Use is a really dated mechanic that has outgrown its usefulness. When it was first conceived, vehicles were the strongest Units in the game, able to mow down infantry and other vehicles without any kind of penalty. This was our stopgap solution to slow vehicles down and make weapon choices more meaningful. The game, however, is in a very different state than when this rule was invented, making its purpose a little vestigial. We still wanted to have a “main gun” on the vehicle, hence the new rule, but no longer will your other guns lie completely dormant just so you can fire (and miss) with a high velocity cannon. To complement this change we have added some new special rules and upgrades to give you additional “main guns” that can fire without penalty. Similarly, the rules for vehicle mounts have been changed both as part of these new rules and to prepare for Datacards.
Here's a look at some of the new rules for those;
Coaxial: This Weapon is mounted alongside another Weapon. If that Weapon is a Primary Weapon, and this Weapon selects the same Target as it, it may ignore the Inaccurate Special Rule.
Linked: This Weapon is mounted alongside other identical Weapons, it must select the same Target as those Weapons. If one of these Weapons is a Primary Weapon, this one is considered to be one as well.
Crew Weapon: If there are no Units Embarked within this Unit, Weapons equipped on this Mount may not be designated as Primary Weapons, and may not be selected to Attack. For each Unit Embarked in this Unit, you may select up to two Weapons in this type of Mount to be a Primary Weapon.
Now, these are the fundamental changes to the system, but they aren't the complete picture. This will coincide with large-scale point changes, new attaches (Crew Chiefs for transports!), and integrations with other rules, such as Officers and Veteran.
That’s everything to announce on my end, but as always, the bug doc will be properly squished before the update comes out. Thanks again to everyone who has been diligently reporting problems and giving feedback to the game. We are very lucky to have such an incredible community and deeply appreciate your contributions to refining our game before launch.
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