Subscribe to the feedFollowing intense speculation on other fora, you will be able to recognise how happy a player is for their character to get into a fight by their current headgear. Tricorns will indicate a desire only for ranged combat, Coifs and Helmets will indicate full battle status, and a bandanna will indicate the player is happy to have a fight with Delvy.
The IS Rules team have announced a new form of Sympathetic Magic, whereby every time a mage shouts a damage call that’s ignored by its target, the other mages all go “Aww” and pat the failed magic user on the back until they feel better about it.
Some of this may seem harsh, but I am only trying to help and make the game better.
The costuming and set decoration was indescribably awful. For people who’ve had years to prepare after the delay, the usage of canvas to represent the patently signposted fur-and-liquorice makeup of the Kayendyland camp was just not good enough, and half the players’ attempts to represent the confection armour with tacky toffee-based breast plates just looked awful.
I appreciate that the team has had to work hard to get out of the long shadow that Maelstrom cast, but the self-referencing Mil’flur clan and their life-long enmity with the revolutionary Fried-Breaden factions felt forced and was throwing people OC quite often. I appreciate that player-led factions will increase and spread as the game beds in, and that familar constructs help players get used to new systems quicker, but originality would have been far more useful.
The combat wasn’t as epic as I expected. I mean, sure there was the full-scale battlefield cannon-fire and the purpose-built castle that the red-caps spent so much time creating, and the crowning moment of saturday morning, when two armies of over three hundred characters each faced each other and watched as all attempts at diplomacy crumbled into dust before them forcing them all into a massive fight that was still raging a hour later when the unannounced third faction – nice work on the alien costuming, I note – literally flew into the field and forced the remaining empirical forces to unite against them or die trying, resulting in an even bigger fight that will set an incredibly high bar for any future event to reach, let alone beat. But I personally didn’t feel it was *epic* as such.
The crown mechanic was quite interesting, but I cannot help but feel that the Sansarza faction let their side down by not echeloning the high matrix until early Sunday morning, not having been in the faction or having anything to do with the crown mechanic at all, I can’t say exactly what brain-dead decisions brought them to that decisions, but from outside it seemed obvious to play the low matrix quite early on Saturday so as to be able to ready the south-stanzas before the battle. Plus, you should have won that battle, Sansarza, sending in your double-armour troops in a battle where Callenate played their surprise malapplicant ability was obviously the wrong decision.
In conclusion, a grand start to a campaign which, with a few improvements, could be a viable alternative to something else. I hope to attend the next event, and regret I couldn’t go to this one.
‘faith,