Maelstrom's Edge V2: Shooting Modes
Posted on Tuesday May 24, 2022 at 05:00pm in General
On the battlefields of the Edge, troops fight with a wide array of different weapons. In Maelstrom's Edge V2, we've changed the way shooting works to streamline the process, and to give your units some more tactical choices during your games. Read on for details!
Shooting in Maelstrom's Edge is, rather unsurprisingly, intended primarily to destroy enemy units, but there are now some other useful tricks available to you.
During their activation, a unit can choose a 'Fire' action, which lets them make a regular attack with their ranged weapons. After selecting a target and checking line of sight and range (see the previous article on Line of Sight here!), each model rolls a number of dice equal to the SHO (Shots) characteristic of their weapon, aiming to equal or exceed the EVS (Evasion) characteristic of the target. Dice rolling a 6 are 'Critical Hits' and can confer some additional bonuses on the shot.
Models can then use their SKL (Skill) characteristic to modify these rolls, with each point of SKL allowing a die score to be increased by 1.
Here's an example:
Danielle’s unit of Spider Drones is performing a Fire action and she has nominated Matt’s unit of Karist Troopers as their target. Danielle first checks that the Troopers are within line of sight of her squad leader (the Apprentice Handler) and that they are only 15” away, well within the standard 18” range of her Drone Class Machine Guns and the 24” range of her Apprentice Handler’s Maglock Dominator Pistol.
Drone Class Machine Guns are SHO 2, and therefore she will roll 2 dice to hit for each model in her unit, 8 (white) dice in total. Whereas the Maglock Dominator Pistol is only SHO 1, and therefore only adds 1 more (red) die. The targeted Troopers have EVS 4, which means she must roll 4+ to score hits. For the 8 Machine Gun shots she rolls: ‘1’, ‘1’, ‘2’, ‘3’, ‘3’, ‘4’, ‘5’ and ‘6’ and for the Dominator Pistol, she rolls a ‘6’. So 3 hits for the Machine Guns and 1 for the Dominator Pistol. However, Spider Drones have SKL 2, which means Danielle has 2 dice flips available to her. She decides the best way to utilize them in this situation is to flip the two rolls of ‘3’ up to ‘4’s, thereby giving her a new total of 5 Machine Gun hits.
The target unit will then roll to defend against the incoming fire, rolling the successful hits and attempting to equal or exceed the PEN (Penetration) value of the shot. In a similar fashion to the attack rolls, the defender can use their unit's AV (Armor Value) to modify these rolls.
Any hits that are not successfully blocked result in a casualty. The unit will also gain suppression, going up one level due to being hit by enemy fire, and another if they suffered any casualties. (For more detail on suppression, check out the article here.)
Suppressive Fire
In Maelstrom's Edge V2, suppression has a major effect on how units function, as it impacts their ability to attack enemies, and also how well they can utilise cover. Players can capitalise on this by weakening strong or heavily fortified units by chipping away at them with multiple attacks and slowly adding suppression levels, but we wanted to give players a way to use this more effectively.
As a result, instead of making a regular shooting attack, a player can elect to have their unit make a 'Suppressive Fire' action. This works differently to a regular attack. Instead of using the weapon's SHO value and the unit's SKL, each model in the firing unit rolls a die in an attempt to equal or beat the SUP (Suppression) characteristic of their weapon. For each successful roll, the target must make a WP (Willpower) test. They will gain a suppression level automatically for being the target of suppressive fire, and another level for each failed WP test.
In this way, a shrewd attacker can potentially force a large amount of suppression onto a unit in a single action.
A note on weapon ranges on Maelstrom's Edge: Weapons have a listed RNG (Range) characteristic, which defines the maximum effective range of that weapon. Projectiles don't tend to just stop at an arbitrary range, however, and in general actual maximum weapon ranges would in most cases fall way outside the dimensions of a gaming table. As such, most weapons can be fire past their listed RNG, with this being considered a long range shot. Models making long range shots are Wild Firing, which means they count the target as having EVS 6.
Check out the Beta version of the V2 rules, which you can download from the Trial Rules section of the Maelstrom's Edge website here. The Beta rules documents contain all of the rules for playing V2 games, but keep in mind that these are just 'preview' documents - some rules may be revised based on feedback, and the final layout including background material for the factions and the Maelstrom's Edge universe, artwork and other 'flavor' material is missing.
If you have any thoughts on the new rules, pop on over to the Comm Guild Facebook group, or start up a thread in the Maelstrom's Edge section on the Dakka Dakka forums. We welcome any feedback, and would love to hear how everyone's forces stack up in the new rules!
Shooting in Maelstrom's Edge is, rather unsurprisingly, intended primarily to destroy enemy units, but there are now some other useful tricks available to you.
During their activation, a unit can choose a 'Fire' action, which lets them make a regular attack with their ranged weapons. After selecting a target and checking line of sight and range (see the previous article on Line of Sight here!), each model rolls a number of dice equal to the SHO (Shots) characteristic of their weapon, aiming to equal or exceed the EVS (Evasion) characteristic of the target. Dice rolling a 6 are 'Critical Hits' and can confer some additional bonuses on the shot.
Models can then use their SKL (Skill) characteristic to modify these rolls, with each point of SKL allowing a die score to be increased by 1.
Here's an example:
Danielle’s unit of Spider Drones is performing a Fire action and she has nominated Matt’s unit of Karist Troopers as their target. Danielle first checks that the Troopers are within line of sight of her squad leader (the Apprentice Handler) and that they are only 15” away, well within the standard 18” range of her Drone Class Machine Guns and the 24” range of her Apprentice Handler’s Maglock Dominator Pistol.
Drone Class Machine Guns are SHO 2, and therefore she will roll 2 dice to hit for each model in her unit, 8 (white) dice in total. Whereas the Maglock Dominator Pistol is only SHO 1, and therefore only adds 1 more (red) die. The targeted Troopers have EVS 4, which means she must roll 4+ to score hits. For the 8 Machine Gun shots she rolls: ‘1’, ‘1’, ‘2’, ‘3’, ‘3’, ‘4’, ‘5’ and ‘6’ and for the Dominator Pistol, she rolls a ‘6’. So 3 hits for the Machine Guns and 1 for the Dominator Pistol. However, Spider Drones have SKL 2, which means Danielle has 2 dice flips available to her. She decides the best way to utilize them in this situation is to flip the two rolls of ‘3’ up to ‘4’s, thereby giving her a new total of 5 Machine Gun hits.
The target unit will then roll to defend against the incoming fire, rolling the successful hits and attempting to equal or exceed the PEN (Penetration) value of the shot. In a similar fashion to the attack rolls, the defender can use their unit's AV (Armor Value) to modify these rolls.
Any hits that are not successfully blocked result in a casualty. The unit will also gain suppression, going up one level due to being hit by enemy fire, and another if they suffered any casualties. (For more detail on suppression, check out the article here.)
Suppressive Fire
In Maelstrom's Edge V2, suppression has a major effect on how units function, as it impacts their ability to attack enemies, and also how well they can utilise cover. Players can capitalise on this by weakening strong or heavily fortified units by chipping away at them with multiple attacks and slowly adding suppression levels, but we wanted to give players a way to use this more effectively.
As a result, instead of making a regular shooting attack, a player can elect to have their unit make a 'Suppressive Fire' action. This works differently to a regular attack. Instead of using the weapon's SHO value and the unit's SKL, each model in the firing unit rolls a die in an attempt to equal or beat the SUP (Suppression) characteristic of their weapon. For each successful roll, the target must make a WP (Willpower) test. They will gain a suppression level automatically for being the target of suppressive fire, and another level for each failed WP test.
In this way, a shrewd attacker can potentially force a large amount of suppression onto a unit in a single action.
A note on weapon ranges on Maelstrom's Edge: Weapons have a listed RNG (Range) characteristic, which defines the maximum effective range of that weapon. Projectiles don't tend to just stop at an arbitrary range, however, and in general actual maximum weapon ranges would in most cases fall way outside the dimensions of a gaming table. As such, most weapons can be fire past their listed RNG, with this being considered a long range shot. Models making long range shots are Wild Firing, which means they count the target as having EVS 6.
Check out the Beta version of the V2 rules, which you can download from the Trial Rules section of the Maelstrom's Edge website here. The Beta rules documents contain all of the rules for playing V2 games, but keep in mind that these are just 'preview' documents - some rules may be revised based on feedback, and the final layout including background material for the factions and the Maelstrom's Edge universe, artwork and other 'flavor' material is missing.
If you have any thoughts on the new rules, pop on over to the Comm Guild Facebook group, or start up a thread in the Maelstrom's Edge section on the Dakka Dakka forums. We welcome any feedback, and would love to hear how everyone's forces stack up in the new rules!
Tags: v2
Like this? Like us on facebook to see more...
