Sunday, March 22, 2015

A few words on Swimmers


One of the better things to have come out of the TRINITY WAR set is the Atlantean subset. I am especially happy about Ocean Master's and Sea King's map flooding powers and the Trench's SUICIDE SQUAD TAish trait. They all suddenly incentivise Swimmer figs despite the general lack of water terrain in maps.

I've always wondered about the purpose of Swimmer figs in a game where practically all the maps lack any significant water terrain for them to take advantage of - of the nearly a hundred maps I've played in, I only know of seven that have significant water terrain, and that includes the Atlantis/House of Mystery map from the TRINITY WAR OP kit. Swimmers come across as second class citizens most of the time - could be as maneuverable as Fliers, but most of the time actually more useless than Walkers.

Which is why I'm excited about running these evil Atlantean figs with their map flooding powers - finally, a setup that gives Swimmers a mobility advantage that isn't dependent on you getting the map dice roll!

One more thing I want Swimmers to have is a Submerge action. Right now, the only water terrain advantage Swimmers have over Walkers is on mobility (Swimmers don't treat water terrain as hindering for movement purposes), but it's still clear for line of fire purposes, despite the logic of Swimmers generally being able to dive and either hold their breath for a while or be able to breathe underwater. Which means, it's only logical that Swimmers can avoid line of fire being drawn to them if they Submerge.

I offer to design a Submerge Feat card for Swimmers, a variant of Stealth but only for Swimmers. Or maybe Walkers can use Submerge, too, but they get two action tokens to activate it? And give it a slight penalty, say, figs that have Submerged cannot draw lines of fire to anyone unless the fig has Improved Targeting through hindering? Figs that have Submerged cannot make a close combat attack on anyone outside of the water terrain unless the attacker has Charge?

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