Demoing Leviathans At NeonCon
So November 2-4 I was in all day meetings for a BattleTech summit; an event that occurs every 3 to 5 years (or so) where the authors and developers track out the next several years of story line, products and so on. The universe is massive enough you need this type of face-to-face, all day meetings every few years to reconnect all your dots, make sure everyones on the page, know where we’re going and so on.
Then the very next day I was off to NeonCon in Las Vegas and am just now back home, answering emails and getting things caught back up. What that all means is that this may have been one of the longest stretches of ‘quit’ from me here since we launched the site…for that I apologize.
NeonCon was great. While small, it was excellently organized and enthusiastically attended. And I ran far more Leviathan demos than I expected…which was great!
I’d like to particularly thank the guys out of San Diego (Hal, Tom, George and the rest), who took time out of playing their Warmachine tournament to give Leviathans a thorough try. They played in 5 different demos, including one where I moved Hal and Tom beyond the quick-start rules and introduced almost all of the Commander’s Manual rules (battleships and their expanded arcs, torpedoes, screening, repair and so on). I then sat back and let them go at it, only answering questions when they needed a clarification. Was a wonderful test to see how quickly and easily players can scale up in play from the QSR of the Lieutenant’s Manual to the full Commander’s Manual rules.
Again, thanks to everyone that stopped by and for the praise you heaped on the game…it’s much appreciated…now back to finishing up the Captain’s Manual this week so it can head to edit and then layout.
See ya next duty shift!
Randall
Thanks for the update. Sounds like the game went over well.
Question: Were the Commander’s rules much different from what was demoed at GenCon this year? I remember using Battleships and Torpedoes, but I don’t recall screening, and I know we didn’t repair.
I do remember that the way we were doing torpedoes at GC felt wrong as they were pretty ineffective. I can’t remember what dice we rolled, but we had a difficult time penetrating armor on all but the weakest ships. Battleships were essentially immune.
I didn’t play with screening or repair at Gen Con as that usually goes a little bit beyond what you want to show in a ‘demo’.
Screening. You can both Offensive and Defensive Screen. In both instances you are trading movement points to ‘hug’ a ship to block Line of Sight (i.e. either you’re blocking the LOS to the ship that’s screening, or you’re blocking LOS to a ship that the screening ship is protecting)
Repair. If you’ve got an active Crew Slot in a Location, at the end of the turn you can attempt to repair any slots damaged in a previous turn. You roll 2DRed, add the Crew Dice to the roll, and if you get a 15 or better the slot is repaired; if you roll all 1s, you destroy another slot in that Location.
Finally, torpedoes are played the same way, but have been rotated from 2DBlack to 3DRed…they seem to be very effective now.
Thanks for the questions!
Hey! This is Tony (heh, ‘Tom’), and you guys from Catalyst were a blast. The San Diego community is pretty excited about things in the future. Though the emphasis by our other members was on when we could expect to see gorgeous miniatures to paint up
Thanks for being there Randall, it was fun!
Sigh…sorry Tony…I KNEW I was going to forget one of your names…
And we’re ultra excited on the minis side as well…just have to figure it all out…thanks!
Randall
Sounds interesting, Randall.
3dRed sounds good for torpedoes. More reliable damage. Will all torpedoes be 3dRed and will they all have the same range, or may some fleets have different values for their torpedoes? I did a little poking around the net after the demo, and I read that the Germans had the best torps around 1910. Greater range and more powerful.
Not that torpedoes need to be historically accurate in any way, just a thought.
Anyway, thanks for the response.
The torpedoes for the French and British are the same (all the same range, all 3DRed), though the French have far more.
But yes, future factions and even future Ship Cards for the French and British will tweak that up to provide more flavor and more tactical play fun.
Sounds exciting!
Pro-Tip: When firing a torpedo from your port side at a ship on your starboard side (may not have been legal, but whatever)… make sure you move out of the way.
Darn I wish I was around for one of these demos
The game sounds great I hope you guys can do
more demos, are any scheduled in Baltimore?
I’m not aware of any demos running in Baltimore in the near future. Hopefully in the next month or two, however, we’ll have the QSR as a freebie PDF so everyone that’s not been able to attend a convention where we’re running demos can give the game a try.
Thanks!
@Joe – sage advice! The Levs version of “Never throw into the wind”
Did the choice between pre painted and non painted miniature have been made?
No, that’s still very much up in the air at this point as we try and finalize the plastics deal.
Any more pictures of the minis? I have a hard time talking anyone in to the concept with only the art and the clear one, awesome as that is.
Demoing looks like both easy, fun and effective at interesting people. Will the Catalyst Demo Team handle this once Leviathans! a launched ?
Also, is there a schedule of the lucky Cons that will have demos run before the official release ?
Yes, I’m sure will have the CGL Demo Teams running such games, but the details of that, as well as what other conventions we might be running it at, are up in the air still.
Can’t wait to get my hands on that PDF
I’ll have to press gang some friends into
playng that with me, might bring in some new recruits.