Deneb

Community-feedback has always been at the heart of how I’ve wanted to move Deneb forward, and I always intend that to be the case. A big piece of feedback I’ve been getting at various demo events is about being locked in with the Tower and Coven factions in the starter set.

I am super grateful for everyone who has said they want to be able to buy the starter set as demoed. But I also have to take into consideration everyone who has said they would rather have different factions available.

To that end, I’ve created a survey to help decide how to move forward. So I can only ask, please take 5 minutes and answer 3 simple questions in this survey to help us shape our starter sets.

Doing so will really be a huge help to us!

Take the survey here

Well as all too often happens other things in life are taking a lot of time away from the hobby. But I am very excited to be taking Deneb to an event in February. Specifically “Gotham To Samaria: First Skirmish 2020”.

It’s a wonderful social group of wargamers, and it’s going to be 3 days of wargaming fun with 35+ gaming systems in action.

I hope some members of the OTT community will be there, and maybe we can have a game of Deneb together.

Find out more about the event here

Well, it’s taken longer than I planned, but I’ve finally managed to create standee templates for all the models in the core book. Model proxies work just fine, but I think the standee art looks pretty nice.

I’ve grouped them into a template for each faction for easy print and play. Included them in the image gallery in this post, but they’re also with all the other print and play stuff on our website here

Well after getting back from UKGE I’ve been working away on all the great feedback we got from the experience.

To address a chunk of the game-play feedback I’ve created this scenario supplement. This is the first version of it, and no doubt it will get refined through play-testing and more excellent community feedback.

So what is the purpose of this supplement?

• Introduces rules for 3 and 4 player games of Deneb.
• 5 scenarios from the core-book re-written.
• A new scenario uniquely for 3-players.
• A new scenario uniquely for 4-players.
• Extensive guidelines for creating your own scenarios.

Hopefully, this will address some of the feedback we got about Deneb at UKGE from the various kind people who came to give the game a go.

Download the supplement here

So I will need to do a proper battle-report soon, but I need to stop getting so into the game enough to take better notes! Spent most of Saturday this weekend playing games, so going to talk about some highlights from one of those.

Russ took the Coven, specifically

• Bone Maiden
• Puppeteer Crone
• Wood Mother x2
• Axeman

I took the Ordo Draco

• Komtur
• Ironshod
• Blitz Dragon Knight
• Zweihander
• Schilten

We played Sul’s Court, a scenario where two teams are fighting to control one central objective in the city of Deneb.  We earn VP for contesting, and more for controlling the objective at the end of each turn. First to 6 VP wins.

I tried to keep my main Knights up the deployment zone and out of trouble early on. Deploying my Blitz Dragon late to grab them, fly them over the objective and combat drop them in to contest it.

Russ sets up his Wood Mothers in opposite corners, and both summon their Grimalkin and use the cats speed to get models in to contest that objective right away.

I bring in the Komtur and Ironshod, ready to buff as needed, from the bottom left. Unfortunately, I hadn’t counted on the Puppeteer Crone being able to create her Wood Effigy via one of the Grimalkins on the objective. Leaving my poor Komtur with a creepy wooden doll following her around.

Still, I am ready to fight back. My Blitz Dragon Knight lands, I buff him with an augment from the market place to up his damage, and his claw and tail attack is able to crit both Grimalkins killing the pair. I’m feeling pretty good, but I might have played right into Russ’s hands as gleefully put down Bone Piles for the two dead cats, ready for his Bone Maiden to use.

Worse his Puppeteer Crone activates and the fragile wooden puppet, now fully attuned to my Komtur works his way back towards the Coven models, who will no doubt strike down the Voodoo doll, also killing the Komtur. I try and get as much value out of her as possible in the meantime, Her Armour Expertise buff and the Schilten’s shield wall keep him more or less implacable against the attacks of the Axeman.

So far the Zweihander has been sticking in Defence to make sure the Schilten gets the best possible formation bonus, but I might need him to go more offensive shortly.

I have a plan to try and win the initiative, buy an upgrade for the Komtur and get her to use efficient tactics to grant an additional ap to my Zweihander. Russ uses his Bone Maiden to take the initiative, and despite my Komtur preparing to try and ensure a win on initiative, I missed that the Bone Maiden prepared last turn, I am due to concede on a draw and so Russ gets the initiative. The landed dragon is a tempting target for the Axeman, for a moment I think he might ignore the puppet and let me get that ap tranting boon in. However, Russ wisely checks what abilities my cards have, and figures out my plan. A blast of hex-filled curse energy obliterates the Wood Effigy and it’s Voodoo like sympathetic magic means the Komtur gets torn apart as well.

I bring up the Ironshod ready to get into the action with his iron quarterstaff. Russ responds by having his Axeman hurl a magically enhanced well-aimed axe into the landed Blitz Dragon, killing the mighty beast.

Time to get some revenge though, the Zweihander goes aggressive and puts some hurt on the Wood Mother across from him. I upgrade the Schilten with co-ordinated assault, which along with his brother-knights formation support to finally kill the Axeman.

All these bones play into Russ’s hands though, and the Bone Maiden is soon summoning an Animated Skeleton to help contest the objective.

The Ironshod manages to sweep the Crone off her feet, but he doesn’t get much of a chance to celebrate before one of the Wood Mothers (who had turned into a Raven and flown into the fray earlier) transformed back into a human behind him and blasted the life out of him with a curse.

I upgrade the Zweihanders weapon to a greatsword, and a sweeping extended cleave manages to injure one witch and kill two others. Russ was wise enough to hide his Skeleton out of reach so it could continue to contest the objective.

The Bone Maiden gets an upgrade to a Bone Mother, and is soon animating more skeletons and commanding those already animated to close in on the Zweihander. Unfortunately there isn’t much I can do now. I’ve managed to contest the objective all the way through, and one more big cleave could have made all the difference, but I’d run out of time. We both hit 6 VP, but as I had one fewer surviving non-surrogate model, I would lose the game.

It was a pretty fun game, and it showed just how strong a little formation work can be for Ordo Draco. Keeping them more or less unhittable in the early rounds before cutting through the enemy like ribbons when going on the offence. At one point Russ did manage to even summon a mighty Skeletal Abomination, only to have my Zweihander cut it down before it could do anything. Still, absorbing that attack might have saved the witch that would have let me eke out another turn, maybe I should have let the abomination live and focussed on the Wood Mother?

We played a few more games, experimenting with different forces and scenarios, as well as finding a few things to tweak in the Vassal Model to make life easier, like colour coded aurae for helping keep track of which surrogate belongs to which witch 🙂

An updated Vassal module has been uploaded recently along with v0.94 rules with a few more clarifications based on the latest round of games. No significant changes, just clarifications. Hopefully, I’ll post again soon with another battle report where I’ve managed to take more shots, and notes about what happened each turn!

In order to make it easier to work with play-testers further afield, I’ve put together a Vassal module for Deneb.

You can download the beta version here

It has the unit cards and counters for all 37 models in the core book, and handy quick-reference sheets for all the factions and scenarios.

Also some ease-of-play features (main one is a menu option to automatically create all the tokens you need for the unit tracker you have for each model).

It doesn’t do anything to enforce the games rules, so you’ll still need the rules (available to download from here).

I am sure it will have some bugs and glitches, but hopefully get those ironed out as part of using it for further play-testing!

I have to say the Vassal module editor is really quite easy to use, and there are some great youtube videos out there for helping with some of the trickier things.

As some of you will know, I’ve had various things come up that have prevented me in engaging in hobby for the past couple of months and unfortunately slowed the progress of Deneb somewhat. However, that is all sorted now and hobby is back on!

Which for me includes working on my labour of love, Deneb. I am especially excited as we will be exhibiting at UK Games Expo this year!

Our stand will be on Indie Games Avenue in Hall 2. We’ll have prototype copies of the game on hand for people to give a go. I very much look forward to getting to introduce Deneb to a much wider audience and hopefully get some great feedback on the game as it stands.

Just super exciting to see the Deneb logo here

Even if I did manage to get it listed under my name (Dave Hawes) rather than Deneb! I’m bad at filling out forms 🙂

I very much hope anyone who is planning on heading to the Expo will stop by and say hello!

Huge, huge thanks to the organisers and kind attendees of the Durham Raiders Wargaming Club for letting me bring Deneb into the club and for the various volunteers playing games and giving feedback.

Its always massively useful to hear feedback, and gratifying to see people (hopefully!) enjoying the game. Getting input from a wider circle, and getting some fresh-eyes on a project is just an invaluable part of the game development process. It’s always pleasant to be able to do so in such a warm and welcoming atmosphere as well.