I was looking at this game already but I watched almost everything I could find for it and now I want to play it so bad. With the small units and the alternating activation and straightforward rules. Plus that near future aesthetic really speaks to me.
As far as I know, the extra model is still a Handler which means it should have an official release at some point. We're still missing the Ranger handler so I expect them to come out together at some point.
I really should have put a model there for comparison, shouldn't I? The buildings are all uniform height and about two inches tall, I think. The barricades are about waist height for 32mm model humans
I very briefly looked into Infinity, but didn't have money to get into it at the time despite how much I loved the setting and vibe of the company. A lot of the guys on discord played Infinity before ending up here as well; in fact most of my opponents for these batreps have some experience with it if only in passing. The general vibe seems to be that people who end up playing BLKOUT love how much simpler to learn it is, on top of how much cheaper it is to get into, in comparison to Infinity. Both games are really good, but BLKOUT is a lot easier on the brain and the rules/mods to play it are completely free.
@@DynamicEngagementGaming113 Infinity is a very misunderstood animal. It can be played at the same scale as Blkout (5-10 dudes per side), and there's even a "Code One" version that has less extra rules. The basic rules are actually simple, it's all the equipt. and skills that make it look intimidating, but you don't have to use all that stuff. In that sense the rulebook is mostly like a dictionary, most of it isn't meant to be read through. Only the first 10 pages have the actual basic rules. I'd highly recommend giving it a go - it'll change the way you look at the rules of EVERY wargame, even RPG combat. HMU if you want me to do a demo game.
@@8triagrammer While I agree it's simpler than a lot of people seem to think, it's still a good bit more complex and that leads to heavier mental load. For instance the activation system in Infinity adds a whole other layer to planning. I'll stick to BLKOUT for now :P playing too many games at the moment to dig into a beefier one like Infinity.
@@DynamicEngagementGaming113 You're not wrong. I'd still say try it with a hard cap of 5 models per side, which will solve most beginner issues. And I'm definitely not saying replace Blkout. I don't think they're mutually exclusive. But it's all good to talk about it, it's another to actually try it, I'm telling you it's brilliant - probably the closest thing to real combat there is in a mini wargame.
I really think the rules for blast need a tweak, it would be a simple change too. Just treat each blast success as a separate individual 1 damage hit and do a full armor roll for each one. It would still shred light infantry exactly the same, but would be way less effective on heavier troops like the golems and cyka. Thematically it seems a bit redundant having anti material rifles and .50 calibre machine guns when its more effective to sit out of sight and kill an powered exo juggernaut with frag shrapnel 😆 Also if data spikes targeted an individual model rather than an entire unit and could be countered as a reaction by another DS user, I reckon it would make them way less aids to play against as well as being more of a tactical decision to make. If the UN had an extra gal with a data spike along with this rule I think the game would be a bit more balanced for them
Agreed on the Blast rules. It feels really strong until you run up against Manticor then even that extra dice on UN doesn't seem to help much. I don't know if giving each blast tick its own full set of armor saves is a good idea, but I haven't thought too hard about an alternative. Badlands just dropped a couple BLKLIST free agent types to help with data spikes, but I still think they're too much a force on their own. And even the new options present difficult choices of what to give up since you can't use force rules with the new guys. UN is basically forced to replace its Golems which feels bad, but I haven't played with them yet so take that with a grain of salt.
Of course. I've had a bunch going on between games lately but every game moves faster than the last. Once you really dial in the rules with experience you can crank out a full game in half an hour without banter
No worries brother, we all goof up and ultimately it’s how we learn. This is a good lesson on how line of sight plays into the game. I’ve had similar problems and man I now understand why they give battle drills that let you deploy smoke for concealment
Hey man, that’s BLKOUT for ya! It’s fast and deadly. I like this style of battle report. If you cut in some clips of critical moments from the game, it would be perfect.
I actually tried that, but couldn't get it to where the voiceover matched up well enough with the clips to where it didn't feel overly drawn out or awkwardly paced. Ended up just juryrigging what you watched and sending it along :P
Thanks for making this video. It’s really nice to see others playing this game. One critique: you don’t deploy models on the field during the preparation phase unless the scenario specifies. Normally, you “infiltrate” during the first activation phase.
Sorry for the delay, been busy :P but yes, we know that now. I've been struggling with the rules here and there and tend to inject from other systems to fill the gaps I don't immediately remember, but both sides agreed to the deployment so we'll call it good for now. Next time will be corrected, as I've been trying to do for all of these batreps XP But I'm glad you liked it o7 I've been dropping the ball a little bit but I really want to see this game flourish and youtube is my own little way of helping it happen, however little impact it has.
@@DynamicEngagementGaming113 I’m glad you’re making content. There’s very little out there right now. My and a buddy have been using TTS to try out this rule set and INX:Recon. So far, BLKOUT is more interesting mechanically but INX has the aesthetic we like.
I havent tried INX yet but modern military is a personal favorite genre. That said I'm a sucker for scifi so BLKOUT just hit all the right buttons for me XD
We just experienced the highs and the lows of this hobby with you. I share in your frustration, but the finished product is worth it. Our gamer friends don’t understand the sacrifices we make for them 😂
It's been very solid, dice rolls aside. The lack of "army building" makes setup super fast and once you get the rules down the games go lightning quick. Very lethal too, so good positioning feels awesome
You’re making me want to get this tabletop simulator. I don’t own any of this fake content though. Could I find people that do and play games with them?
Aaaaahh, makes sense. It's on the docket but I don't have my models painted nor my terrain set up. It'll be a bit but I am planning to. Also a problem is all of the people I play with are hours away by car XD
@@DynamicEngagementGaming113 I’ve been trying to drag my other table top friends into BLKOUT. But really just waiting on my order so I can really start tempting them and learning it properly. It’s giving me time to work on other projects though.
Didn't have any available :P and didn't want to superglue it until after I'd made the video, in case I needed to rerecord. Debatable choice in hindsight
Hey, great batrep and I got into the game thanks to you. A sidenote - I don't see you two using control points at all. Every player starts with 3 control points, and you can use them on the special actions that are on each faction's board. Which I believe using those would make the UN elite guys a *lot* more useful. Also, everybody can use a point to activate another unit in the following turn. So when you use the Dataspike unit to give another action to another model, you can actually activate *two* units, but you use one of your three control points. Control points seem pretty huge, but only got a tiny section in the rulebook. You can find it under point 8.6! Makes the entire game a lot more dynamic and the UN especially gains a lot of survivability thanks to Smoke grenades and free whole-team movement that way.
We knew about the control points :P but we're both former 40k players and you can't force rerolls with control points here. We know how they work, we just either forget in the moment or don't impliment them into our strategy much
Hi, great game! Just wanted to ask why you rolled 3 dice when saving against the explosives (blast) attack at 40:40 when he rolled an ace getting two successes? Also I wanted to confirm whether the damage profile on blast weapons is used when making such an attack too. Many thanks.
Thanks much :) for the armor, we made a mistake here in how we calculate damage for blast. It should be only one armor check per instance of damage regardless of the number of armor checks a model would have. We were treating it as a shot against them doing two where they get their full save. As for blast weapon damage; that damage profile is for direct hits, which would only occur against vehicles. When doing damage with blast only, it's a single instance of damage per success on the skill check.
@@DynamicEngagementGaming113 Ahh I see thank you! I don't blame you for doing this the rules can be rather... floaty at points haha. And that is what I thought! My friend was playing BORZ and using the RPG as if it did 4 damage each time it made a success (so it never failed to kill basically). I knew there was a specific reason why the blast stuff is separate to the shooting. I appreciate clearing that up for me :)
Not a problem o7 One big benefit of doing these videos is that a lot of people on the discord see them and offer corrections for the rules. That's helped me learn very quickly what I'm doing right and wrong XD if you're not already on the BLKOUT discord I highly recomment hopping in; great group of homies
Is the background music added in post? Or do you play is while playing? It’s the only part of your videos that I’m not a fan of. Just not my thing. Otherwise incredible videos. The recorded “real-time” learning of the game is very useful as I try to learn the game.
It's added in post, mainly because without it the video feels sort of lifeless. Was in an audio imbalance thing or are you not a fan of the music itself? Glad it helps either way. If you're not already in the discord then check it out :) the BLKOUT homies are very welcoming and always answering questions
@@DynamicEngagementGaming113 it’s just the music itself isn’t to my taste. I understand why you put it in, it definitely helps the gaps between play. But to my own personal opinion it’s kind of repetitive and disingenuous. (Hopefully not music you made because I would feel bad poopooing it lol) But different strokes, if I’m the only person who doesn’t vibe with it maybe it could be turned down a bit? Then if I just adjust the volume on my end it’d be less noticeable. Not sure if you’d be willing to change it because I know finding good free tracks is tricky and you try to set a vibe for the videos, honestly its such a minor gripe in an otherwise great series so far.
Thanka for the feedback; I'm working on expanding my music library but at the moment I'm only using teknoaxe because his music has never given me trouble before. I'm also kind of a sucker for guitar XP but yeah I'll fiddle with the sound balance a little more next time. This one in particular I forgot about the music until I'd already uploaded, then had to reedit and reupload so it was a bit rushed
I'll try to start making a point to do that with the maps and info kits, but the models come from all over. If you want just the BLKOUT stuff there's currently only a few; the cards are easy to find. Rin did the map on this one so I don't know where it camefrom or what the name is.
I'm glad my videos helped :) been thinking about a 'scenario' game where I work through each individual action to do a sort of tutorial snapshot but there's a couple good how to videos out there already