3. SR 2017 and What I Think About It.

With Lock and Load fondly behind us, we’re ramping up and getting ready to tackle the latest incarnation of the Steamroller format.  2017 brings about some of the most significant changes we’ve seen since the inception of organized play in WMH.  Spoiler alert: overall the changes are very positive.

The exact changes are available in the packet itself, but let's take a look at some of the highlights:

Winning by 5 MORE Control Points than your opponent.  Excellent change here as it makes hard control casters significantly less punishing to the game and makes for an overall better play experience.  There are lots of scoring opportunities in every scenario and as long as you are taking advantage of them, you can grit through a particularly bad turn in hopes to rebound on attrition late game.

With the soft increase in CP requirements came a huge influx of scenario elements as well as a reduction in the total available scenarios.  A simple D6 and you’re good to go.  Initially I felt like these added too much complexity, but they really are easy to set up and feel good on the table.  This was alleviated by some last minute changes from the last round of CiD and the release of the official rules (a wonderful example of why CiD rules are not worth Doomsaying over).  Don’t forget the easy way of remembering which is which: robots have blockheads and people have round heads.  Although, can someone remind me where battle engines are supposed to go….?

The amount of scoring opportunities gets cranked up to 11 when you take into consideration the last minute change to allow solos to score on flags.  This may actually make the games a little bit -too- live, but we need lots more field testing to know for sure.  I do like this particular change, but we might have been better off keeping the win condition at 6+ CPs.  Something to consider for 2018.

Things I liked less were the sparse and anemic objectives.  Ret players will be thrilled to never see Bunker across the table again, but what we are left with just doesn’t feel interesting.  The abilities they are given don’t feel super useful and there isn’t very much that stops your opponent from nuking them off the table early on.  Higher armor or more hit boxes would be a good start to just keep them around.

Last, and certainly not least, is the “Turn 7 Rule”.  I can’t help but feel like this is the shadow of Jason Soles’ cock cast over an otherwise nicely wrapped competitive ruleset.  I don’t understand why it exists in a Deathclock format other than he thinks it’s a good idea and refuses to listen to anyone else’s opinion on it.  This rule is cumbersome and distracting to track and I guarantee will be the source of contention in steamrollers to come.  Arguments over exact CP score crop up from time to time, but how on earth are we going to remember what turn it is?  Privateer Press’ counterpoint has been that “most games don’t get that far anyway” but the ones that do are hard fought and tight as hell.  Now we’re going to let the most exciting games fizzle out and go to tie-breakers?  Hard pass on this one.

What does SR17 mean for Retribution?  Our faction is going to have a ball with this one.  We already excel in running combined arms lists.  In a format that seeks to punish hard skews without any variation or support, we are going to have a big advantage.  Continue to bring moderate battlegroups with lots of troops and you’re going to do fine.  I’ve personally made some minor tweaks to my Vyros2 list to include a unit of Shyeel Arcanists to give me more options to score CPs, but the rest of my lists are largely unchanged.  I do think the game overall will see a huge value spike in tricky to remove solos like Voidtracers and Machine Wraiths to camp flags until the end of time while the rest of the armies fight.  I would strongly look at turning 4 point options such as Mage Hunter Assassins and Heavy Rifle Teams into double Soulless Voidtracers simply to have a stronger scenario presence.