Welcome to part 2 of our dev diary following our development of the Adepticon Competitive Pack for Trench Crusade. If you haven’t read the first part, you can check it out here. Today we’re taking a look at the initial responses to the packet and how we’ve taken steps to integrate the feedback we got.

Initial Response

Norman: Wow you guys had a lot to say about the pack. Some of it more… passionate than others, but all in all we got some really great feedback. What was immediately obvious is we needed to work on the layout. We got some feedback on missions, and honestly some comments showing we needed to contextualize what our scope is, but the overwhelming majority of feedback was from folks who made a lot of tables letting us know of some shortcomings of our layout.

Ryan: The overwhelming amount of ideas and directions that you folks sent to us continue to be extremely helpful. We understand that there was surely a lack of information up front in our initial display of the layout, such as the lack of obstacles and ladders we had on our map while playtesting, that is going to be further shown in later depictions of the layout. The presentation of the pack was in a way that looked like a final product, rather than a work in progress.

Norman: We wanna reiterate, this is a work in progress. Nothing we’re doing will be set in stone and we’re looking to react quickly to player feedback. That said, this stuff’s a lot of work. Prototyping terrain, playtesting missions, getting feedback from all of you and the Factory Fortress Inc team, it all takes time and Ryan and I both have full time jobs. And also, you know, Goonhammer articles to write.

All of that said, here’s the highlights of the feedback we got (that wasn’t “you suck and should be ashamed of yourselves”)

Moving through the map is too restrictive and led to too many opportunities to set up for peekaboo tactics.
People sorely missed Obstacles, Bridges, and Dangerous terrain being on the layout
Missions that were Action focused felt too swingy and it was too easy to fumble them.
Not enough big cover
Folks really wanted games to be 800/6

I also do want to take a second to say, we're not trying to tell you how to play your games of Trench Crusade. This is fun format we're creating for Adepticon with the goal of some longevity after the event and a more competitive focus than your average campaign game. If you have your own way of doing Trench Crusade tournaments, that's great! Feel free to take any parts of the pack you feel like would be neat additions and ignore the rest. Just know we're trying to create the best format we can and provide a space for players who want the competitive aspects of these kinds of games.

Also I want to thank the Feel No Paint Podcast for having Ryan and I on to talk about the pack. If you want more insight into how we designed it and how we're working to improve it, you can find that ">here

Iterating

Ryan: After collating and dissecting the tremendous amount of feedback, we very quickly established a couple of easy tweaks to better streamline the experience we are going for, as well as keep things better in line with the Trench Crusade everyone has come to know and love. We are extremely fortunate to be able to work with the amazing Trench Crusade team, including the wonderful Brook Close and tabletop legend Jervis Johnson.

Norman: Some things are easy changes. We’ve made actions that are necessary for scoring easier (but not too easy for Blasphemous Staff Priests), added some alternatives to scoring on mission 2, added a fumble mechanic to mission 4 so tough models can’t just endure forever, and a few more changes here and there. The terrain however, was a big challenge. Making a full new set of terrain for the table was a tough ask for us to do and get tested before Adepticon. Because of that we had to work with the pieces we had (plus or minus some repeats of pieces we were already using).

That said, we really knuckled down on the layout. Below is the layout image we’ve been using for playtesting, we’ve cut down on sightlines significantly, provided more places to hide big models, and most importantly, added some much needed verticality to facilitate some fun moments (we’re predicting a lot of diving charges onto objectives). We talked to a lot of folks, some who were experts on Trench Crusade, others experts in other skirmish games like Infinity, to really nail down what we could do with the pieces we had and balancing letting certain mechanics shine while not letting them be too abusable.

Ryan: A common note talked about frequently was the ability for melee armies to be able to move around the field without getting completely shot off the board, blast abuse from deployment to deployment, and the aforementioned peekaboo tactics being strong. Blast and shooting is not something that can be completely omitted from Trench Crusade, but now there should be more opportunities for a ‘push and shove’ during a mission. This means that the potential for huge blowout scores in these games will most likely happen less, but whatever strategies in list building and playing (IE passively, aggressively, castling up and throwing lead and demonflame from far, tricky movement, etc. etc.) can still be potentially viable.

Norman: In addition to the layout, we’re going to be introducing some more obstacles and dangerous terrain to the table. Players will have 2 obstacles (that won’t obstruct movement) and a piece of dangerous terrain to place on the table as they see fit. Want to cover your approach up the flanks? You can do that! Want to provide some more cover in your backline? Go for it. Want to set up some nasty plays with Puppet Master and some Dangerous Terrain? Please do. It's not a perfect solution, and these pieces can’t really hide a model, but it does give a bit more customization to the table.

Adepticon Prep

Norman: The bad news with all of this is our layout for Adepticon is now locked down to these pieces. We can move some stuff around but this is it. We need to give folks time to prepare the tables for the event and this is the best we’re gonna get. With that in mind we have a ton of work to do getting ready! Ryan and I have to print all the player placed terrain and some objective markers since those are obstacles now in order to provide some more cover. Massive shout out to our buddy Callum, who’s been invaluable in our prototyping process by making our prototype set for our playtests. Below is a picture of our testing table.

PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD NOTE THAT IT'S NOT GOING TO STAY UNPAINTED, WE HAVE A LOT OF STUFF TO DO AND WE DIDN’T HAVE TIME TO PAINT THE TERRAIN UP AND ADD THE TRENCH SIDING. IT WAS IMPERATIVE WE HAD A WORKABLE SET OF TERRAIN THAT WE COULD TEST WITH AND MAKING IT LOOK NICE WAS NOT A PRIORITY.

Ryan: I second the above, especially the calmly worded note on the bottom. We are working within the time constraints to be able to both design an awesome and competitive experience while also being able to produce some really awesome tables. After getting the layout in a place where we felt more happy with it, we presented it to Sammie and Zack at FF to brainstorm ways to make the elements on the map look exciting and have some more narrative pull. This would mean the taller squares would look like watch towers, big blocks could be bunkers, etc etc. As much as I would feel at home with the boards looking like a paintball field, Trench Crusade is definitely not the place for it. We want passers by at Adepticon and any event to be enamored and interested in the game at a first glance by a table being played on.

What’s Next

Norman: Pack V2.0 is coming soon! We’re in the final stages of development on it and are just ironing out some small stuff before we get it to you. Everything here is subject to change, but it'll likely look familiar to this. We’re really proud of the improvements we’ve made, even if they aren’t perfect, and we think Adepticon is going to be a blast. We sold out the event in less than 5 minutes and we’re super appreciative of folks who are willing to try our wacky game mode. We’re not done yet though, we’ll be taking a bottom up look at the layout (as well as making more alternatives for it) after Adepticon and want to add something like 4 more missions. For those folks looking to make big swings at the types of pieces of terrain we’re using, that’ll be the time we can implement those changes. That said, note that while the armchair design suggestions are welcome and helpful we are much more likely to listen to people who have played with these rules instead of just thinking about them. Does this mean we’ll ignore the discord and reddit threads and emails? No, but battle reports are much much much more valuable to us.

Ryan: We are so amped for Adepticon! I’m looking forward to seeing everyone’s dissection of the games and missions played, and to continue to curate a really awesome foundation for those looking to sweat out their Trench Crusade skills on the table. Our experience designing in this space, as well as the quality of what we can do with the format will only continue to improve.

Lastly, thank you to those that signed up for the event – I expect our area to be the loudest and to be having the most fun in the hall out of anyone else.

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Tags: competitive | Adepticon | trench crusade | Comp Crusade