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Post by saltmaster5000 on Aug 7, 2023 22:08:52 GMT -5
Hey, I'm pretty new to the Terminator CCG. One of the flaws with it is the infiltration mechanic. If your terminator is so damaged that it has no infiltration, you've already lost pretty much. And having your health dip to zero infiltration and then back up again with health regeneration cards completely nullifies the mechanic's downsides too.
So here are my fixes:
1.) Each Infiltrator has 20 infiltration. Or at least most of them should, maybe the Advanced Stealth Infiltrator has 25 or 30.
2.) When a terminator is hit by an attack, it always loses an amount of infiltration equal to the amount of damage it would receive even if it has enough resistance to not take any damage. So when someone hits an 8 resistance terminator with the 12 gauge autoloader from long range, it loses 5 infiltration no matter what.
In the movie as the terminator is hit by weapons and eventually a truck his disguise degrades even if he's not actually substantially damaged.
3.) This is just an idea, not exactly sure how you would implement this but supporting characters should roll a D20 whenever an infiltrator encounters them. If they roll the infiltration value or less, then the terminator has successfully deceived them. If not, then they're uncontrolled. What I'm unsure of is how often the terminator player should have to roll for infiltration, either just once the first time a supporting character joins his gang or every upkeep.
4.) This would require adjusting how cards that modify infiltration work. You'd have to tweak their numbers to correspond with the increase to the infiltration number. You could just multiply all of the infiltration modification effects by a blanket 7. This also preserves the ability to put the Arm-Mounted Gatling Gun implant on the Advanced Stealth Infiltrator and still have him capable of time travel if the negative modifier is -28 infiltration and the ASI starts with 30.
Potentially you could also modify health regeneration effects in a similar manner. If Regenerative Nanites would heal 2 actual damage, it would also recover 14 infiltration. The problem with doing this is that it makes cards like Sunglasses completely irrelevant again. So maybe R. Nanites shouldn't be subject to the x7 infiltration multiplier and only heal 2 infiltration.
Overall I believe that this would make infiltration matter more and consequentially would also make infiltration pumping effects more reasonable, along with making an anti-infiltration strategy viable. The terminator player may want to go for a more balanced build that tries to completely dodge attacks as opposed to simply building an invincible tank.
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Post by Axlotl on Aug 9, 2023 2:54:41 GMT -5
Yeah Infiltration is definitely half-baked. Its not as bad as Missions or Production, though. I tried to patch Infil up a bit with Judgement Day, but I didn't want a mechanical change since I felt it was relatively unwarranted, especially with changes to Production and Missions.
Your idea could be a really interesting focus for a new past scenario, something with a greater influence on Infiltration. It is more thematic. However, I think it would become a bit awkward if it was fully applied to the game since Future scenarios can have a lot more terminators and it would be a lot to track. But, well, Future War is kind of rubbish anyways... (unfortunately).
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Post by saltmaster5000 on Aug 9, 2023 8:48:41 GMT -5
Yeah Infiltration is definitely half-baked. Its not as bad as Missions or Production, though. I tried to patch Infil up a bit with Judgement Day, but I didn't want a mechanical change since I felt it was relatively unwarranted, especially with changes to Production and Missions. Your idea could be a really interesting focus for a new past scenario, something with a greater influence on Infiltration. It is more thematic. However, I think it would become a bit awkward if it was fully applied to the game since Future scenarios can have a lot more terminators and it would be a lot to track. But, well, Future War is kind of rubbish anyways... (unfortunately). What are your custom rules for infiltration? Why is Future War rubbish? I know that missions suck. Once the rest of my cards come in the mail I was going to build 4 future decks to play with friends. There seem to be like 2, maybe 3 playable missions and I was thinking of using those in a hidden movement based resistance deck. Also time traveling gives you mission points. So I figured I would try that. Is production actually a shit mechanic, or is it only bad because the pull rates for this game are awful and it's not possible to reasonably obtain enough Construction Drones to have a functional mana base? If I just proxy the drones I'm missing am I good? Or will I be better off playing with house rules that fix production? As far as tracking stuff in this game, I use matching pairs of different colored meeples. One goes on the character card, and one goes on the location. It's not really reasonable to move a stack of 20 cards every time that you enter a location lol. I figured with infiltration you could just set Magic: The Gathering spindown D20s on your Infiltrators and then have a separate D20 for infiltration rolls. I don't believe the nonsense idea that spindowns aren't random so you could just use one of those to roll too. So I'm already use to tracking a bunch of stuff in this game, a spindown on a card isn't really adding complexity and I'm used to it because I play Magic. |
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Post by Axlotl on Aug 9, 2023 12:44:07 GMT -5
I didn't directly change Infiltration, I just made more impactful cards interacting with the attribute. Future War is a bit rubbish because Production is really bad in base game, and it becomes really cluttered, negating the main feature of Future War. Production is bad both due to pull rates AND the rules. I bought a case of Terminator boosters way back in the mid 2000s for cheap, so I've got a good dozen construction drones, but you need to dedicate an unfeasible portion of the deck to production to get enough generated, and then need to further pollute your deck with stuff to build. Its really not fun to play. Plus, HKs kind of suck too, which would otherwise be the best things to assemble since they at least have integrated weapons. You end up with a deck that's like 1/3rd production stuff, then throw in 5-6 mid-grade terminators and 5-6 weapons, leaving like 15 card slots to actually do something with. My main concern with spindowns is stability, they can easily be knocked over compared to D6s. Your table, your rules though. I'm interested to hear about how your idea works in practice. Some examples of Infiltration interactions I did:    |
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Post by saltmaster5000 on Aug 9, 2023 19:10:19 GMT -5
I didn't directly change Infiltration, I just made more impactful cards interacting with the attribute. Future War is a bit rubbish because Production is really bad in base game, and it becomes really cluttered, negating the main feature of Future War. Production is bad both due to pull rates AND the rules. I bought a case of Terminator boosters way back in the mid 2000s for cheap, so I've got a good dozen construction drones, but you need to dedicate an unfeasible portion of the deck to production to get enough generated, and then need to further pollute your deck with stuff to build. Its really not fun to play. Plus, HKs kind of suck too, which would otherwise be the best things to assemble since they at least have integrated weapons. You end up with a deck that's like 1/3rd production stuff, then throw in 5-6 mid-grade terminators and 5-6 weapons, leaving like 15 card slots to actually do something with. My main concern with spindowns is stability, they can easily be knocked over compared to D6s. Your table, your rules though. I'm interested to hear about how your idea works in practice. Some examples of Infiltration interactions I did: I was thinking the Skynet player could make Unit Construction Zone their 3rd starting location, and spend 10 of their 30 starting production on 5 of the basic Construction Drones. Then you can make up to 8 cost things without additional production. In MtG you want about 40% of your deck to be lands but since you start the game with 5 in play the math gets awkward. The pricier stuff like HKs you may just need to start off with in play and then be okay with not reaching 15 mana in order to make more of them. Unless I'm mistaken, I can make infiltrators at a standard factory. Or do I need a special infiltrator factory? You could just pump out starter deck Arnolds right off the bat. Also, yes this would be awful if you had to actually obtain these cards but assuming that you have all the cards available to you it shouldn't be an issue. Just proxy them. As far as knocking over D20's goes, yeah. But you could use some other method or just deal with it. So far I've been teaching my friends the basic rules with starter decks and we haven't yet played any games with decks I've built myself. So once I get more games in I'll try out these custom rules and tell you how it goes. As far as your custom cards go, the condition card seems rather easily abused and powerful. You'd basically be guaranteed to fully suit up and to form a large army of supporting characters every game. Maybe I'm wrong though. Like, you group 10 importance worth of people in one location and then throw the M31A Phosphorous Grenade at them and then you win. The Resistance player couldn't stop you without dedicated hate cards, if they try to kill your supporting characters then you score their importance value anyways. Wolf In Sheep's Clothing is cool. I like that one a lot. The one that grants free attacks is also cool, but it's essentially just Anticipation. |
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Post by saltmaster5000 on Aug 19, 2023 10:50:11 GMT -5
I didn't directly change Infiltration, I just made more impactful cards interacting with the attribute. Future War is a bit rubbish because Production is really bad in base game, and it becomes really cluttered, negating the main feature of Future War. Production is bad both due to pull rates AND the rules. I bought a case of Terminator boosters way back in the mid 2000s for cheap, so I've got a good dozen construction drones, but you need to dedicate an unfeasible portion of the deck to production to get enough generated, and then need to further pollute your deck with stuff to build. Its really not fun to play. Plus, HKs kind of suck too, which would otherwise be the best things to assemble since they at least have integrated weapons. You end up with a deck that's like 1/3rd production stuff, then throw in 5-6 mid-grade terminators and 5-6 weapons, leaving like 15 card slots to actually do something with. My main concern with spindowns is stability, they can easily be knocked over compared to D6s. Your table, your rules though. I'm interested to hear about how your idea works in practice. Some examples of Infiltration interactions I did: Upon further consideration the Infiltrate card isn't much different than playing the Mexican kid terminator and giving him the skills upgrade that allows him to use military arms for the grenade. So I suppose it's fine but it seems kind of annoying and game warping. Perhaps a better way to simulate infiltration would be to allow you once per game in the movement phase to secretly name a non-unique/persona/legendary/singular secondary character. Then you may reveal the name before the roll to hit step and the terminator and the supporting character swap places and redirect attacks and such. Not exactly sure how you would word that. |
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Post by Axlotl on Aug 20, 2023 12:47:01 GMT -5
Interesting concept. Would fit with Sarah Connor Chronicles having Infiltrators based on real people.
Game Warping was pretty much a design goal for Judgment Day, as I wanted to push Past scenarios away from "pick up guns and shoot at each other until someone wins" towards a more "secondary" objective focus for the Resistance. The set is largely untested and has never formally been considered "finished" due to the significant balance changes and new mechanics it put forth.
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Post by saltmaster5000 on Aug 20, 2023 22:47:51 GMT -5
Interesting concept. Would fit with Sarah Connor Chronicles having Infiltrators based on real people. Game Warping was pretty much a design goal for Judgment Day, as I wanted to push Past scenarios away from "pick up guns and shoot at each other until someone wins" towards a more "secondary" objective focus for the Resistance. The set is largely untested and has never formally been considered "finished" due to the significant balance changes and new mechanics it put forth. Maybe my version of the Infiltrate card could also allow you to control supporting characters even if they're not at the same location as your Terminator. If you ever want to test your cards out or just play the game in general we could play on Tabletop Simulator. |
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Post by Axlotl on Aug 25, 2023 12:41:10 GMT -5
I'll keep the offer in mind, but I'm pretty swamped right now.
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