"Humble review of Warfare in Age of Madness" Topic

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Here is my humble review of this system, alhought largerly unknown this system has huge potential

Thanks for the review. The game sounds interesting. Doesn't seem like it would be hard to use individual based figures which I'd prefer

I've played it 3 times so far and along with Necromunda and Flying Lead belongs among my favourite rulesets

I've played a tiny bit (using one force inspired by Star Wars imperials-- micro machines-- and one small but powerful force of special forces models) and it definitely works fine on individually based figures.

I like it a lot. Very clean, well-designed set. Probably what I'll use for anything bigger than a platoon in the future.

EDIT:
One thing I'd like to play with (or possibly see someone else work on) is making the game a little bit less tournament-ish. But at the end of the day it doesn't matter that much to me… I enjoy a good tourney game, and this is the best I've played.

I'd like to try making a force that is "Walking Dead" inspired, with a few fairly weak survivors and tons of zombies-- with the survivors designed to be able to survive zombies well, so that they basically try to win by having the enemy be busy fighting the common enemy while they sneak around grabbing supplies.

@Hayden…an excellent and accurate review! And thank you for the campaign recommendation. We had considered that but wasn't sure if folks would be interested. You're not alone in your request so it's definitely something we need to get done as free DLC! Please let us know if you have any suggestions for how that might be structured. We've played informal "campaigns" with repeated games but nothing formal yet.

@Sigwald…the winner of our Fall army design contest used individually-based figures. You just group them together into little "clumps" and treat them as an element. Between work, kids stuff, sports, etc. we often have little time left for gaming. So when we designed WAM we started with the premise the people shouldn't have to re-base or buy tons of lead to play.

@RTJEBADIA…tournament play scares me too! :-) The point system and mission structure, while "tourney friendly", are really intended for friendly pick up games between friends.

The points/mission evolved as my sons and I and our friends would scrounge through our collections to field new and interesting forces. It all started a bit like "Hordes of the Things" in a way. So they were actually intended to allow my boys and I to put our favorite force types on the table and still have a balanced playing experience.

For example, my elder son really enjoys CQB troops. His Mad Max army looks like this…

My other son favors "shooty" armies and he built the UN-style peace-keeping force by mining odd bits from my 15mm left-overs. If you look closely you'll see figures from WWII/Battlefront, Vietnam, Peter Pig/AK-47 Republic, Iraq/Afghanistan, and even a Matchbox vehicle!

Finally, to all our players, as I've noted in various emails to the community, we have a firm "No Fan Boys" rule at Visceral! :-) The vast majority of the content of "A Clear and Present Madness" came from suggestions, complaints, and requests by players. The best way for us to make games that people enjoy andwant to play is to…design games they enjoy and want to play by listening to them!

I know that sounds obvious but, having spent my career in product development/management, you'd be shocked at how often companies don't listen to their customers.

Sometimes that means taking suggestions literally (eg one player recommended we tweak the point values and carrying capacities of our transport rule…he was right and so we did). And other times that means thinking about how they might want or need to use a product so we configure a solution to fit those needs (eg reasonable table size and small army sizes that still provide interesting tactical problems).

So please, please, please, do let us know what you think might improve WAM or would like to see in future products or expansions. We also strongly believe in supporting anything we release so your input will NOT be wasted!

Currently in the pipeline we have:

- a far future SF game using the WAM system. It will have to be a separate game due to its scope and will include grav vehicles, shields, aliens, robots, exotic weaponry, and other sci-fi staples. But it will use the same basing approach and general structure so it will be fully compatible with WAM. The goal for this is by the end of Q1 2015 if not sooner.

- looks like we need to do a campaign system for WAM! We'll add that to the hopper as free DLC. In the same expansion we'll add some details for using WAM on a square/hex grid. We've had a number of players write to tell us how they're using the game on grids so we'll provide some of their suggestions as free DLC.

- the game actually started with our 15mm WWII collection. So we'll be releasing a full WWII game in 2015 based on the WAM system (I guess technically WAM is based on the WWII system but got released first).

- we have some other big news which we'll be able to discuss in detail later. For now we can say that the attention that WAM has garnered will allow us to build more games on a continuous basis. Stay tuned and please keep the suggestions, requests, criticisms, and ideas coming! Whether a missing feature, an error, or a change we want and NEED your comments. We can't always implement them but we will definitely consider them.

- Here's a question we've been thinking about: is there interest in scenario books? We've been thinking about providing scenarios with maps and fully custom victory conditions but which allow custom designed armies. The idea would be to provide "tactical problems" that would allow players to bring their personal, custom armies to the table, play the scenario, and then switch sides to see if you could win with the same force playing the other side. A non-starter? Other idea for scenario play?

Yes, I for one would be interested in scenario books featuring tactical problems. With limited time to invest in painting, planning games, and actual playing, it can be nice to have something just to pick-up and play. Perhaps it could tie into a campaign system?

Logain, EXCELLENT idea! Each tactical problem could be placed in the context of an on-going campaign. Scenario selection and/or conditions could be determined by the outcome of previous games.

I think we'd still want to allow players to field whatever they have in their collection. But we could also include suggested TO&Es for those just getting started.

THANKS!

I also think a campaign system would be cool. But, as I already stated before im a huge Necromunda fan, so Im thinking of something akin to its campaign system for WAM.

.As featuring experience for units within WAM is a bit over the top, I'd stick to focusing strongly on keeping your company of scavengers in good shape, avoiding its degradation due to hunger, illness and general death. This means,

1.Knowing what actually happens to destroyed units during the game
2.Knowing the exact content of the scavenged units during the game. (Its not the same thing getting fuel for your vehicles than canned food, you might be in need for the first and actually get the second!)
3.Knowing how to get new units to replace destroyed units
4.Maybe the possibilty of uprading your units (getting your infantry armor to make them hardened, etc).

4.Some cool way to differenciate subtly different battles with different scenarios or a unique prebattle phase that simulates getting the intel that drove you to the battle zone in the first time. I dont think its the same thing getting to the battle zone because you heard a rumour on a tavern than getting the same info from a map. This coul give the prebattle some interesting actions to be performed by the company leader (Getting Info-Going to the Supply Store-Etc)

anyway, hope this brainstorm makes sense…Im Catalonian so I dont usually write that much in English but hope the post is useful anyway.

here is also little idea picked from taken from Spellcross game i think WAM is ideal for this link