Texico and the ISS Are Ready for Hire in MERCS
August 28, 2012 by brennon
The MERCS world is welcoming two new factions, the Texico and the ISS. Check out the Starter Sets below and get ready to start your MERCS experience...
Both of these factions are great additions to the line-up, with some fantastic miniatures that we've been seeing over the past few months. The next step is to see how they play!
Will you be starting your MERCS campaign with these factions?
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Both these Factions are looking pretty good for the Mercs range; the art for the Texaco Marshal however… 🙂
Now why is it Texico only has one hat? I think they should all have them.
They also have a doggie. Texico seems to have flavor the other factions don’t. On the one hand, that’s great that they can generate such attention. On the other… MERCS might start to feel like a Texico Civil War. 😛
Sefadu are pretty flavorful, and the upcoming House 4 looks AWESOME! I’d say the USCR has their own flavor as well, even if it is kind of the stereotypical “Big Slow Russian” flavor that’s in a lot of other games. It’s not like putting a cowboy hat on a Texan is any more inventive though. FCC House 9 stands out too, being more rough around the edges and less high tech in appearance.
They do kind of put the other factions to shame though, the overriding theme of most being “guy in power armor”. Luckily, “guy in power armor” is something the MERCS sculptors do really well. Even the factions that look kind of miscellaneous when compared to other MERCS factions look far and away better than what you see in a lot of other games. I just hope they get the seventh member sculpts for the existing factions done quickly so they can release the House 4 stuff and other new factions soon.
Yes, I perhaps didn’t express myself completely well. I meant a flavor in a more appealing sense. Sadly, I don’t know anyone who finds the USCR minis all that appealing – usually they seem to be described as awkward looking. Not much love for the not-quite-quasi Zulu look, either. For some reason, though, a silly cowboy hat makes people say “that dude is slick.”
Taste varies, of course. I’m not suggesting everyone gets a funny hat and I like all the sculpts (except the USCR, I’m in agreement with others I know that they don’t appeal). I like the Yellowjackets’ look most, myself.
Tastes always vary. I try to remind myself of that every time I see people drooling over WFB stuff. Personally, I’ll be picking up Sefadu and Texaco as my next factions probably (currently have CCC and KemVar). Don’t know if I’ll ever get around to House 9 now if I don’t get to it before House 4 is released.
For the record, USCR doesn’t appeal to me either.
When are we going to see some gameplay videos for MERCS on BoW? Seems like that was teased some time ago. We know you guys got some MERCS minis painted up because you showed them to us. When are you going to grab your D10s and let slip the polygons of war?
All in good time @mpopke 😉
BoW Ben
MERCS Week, MERCS Week, MERCS Week.
Videos make an excellent tool to selling folks I know on games.
I have only played one game of MERCS and have to say the models look really nice indeed and enjoyed the fact that each model has multiple wounds, so you don’t feel to bad about exposing your troops. The only down side that I came across is the need to use the card in order to move. Why not just have cm/inches? The fact your model could not move slower than the distance of the card made it really clunky to play, at times my models were having to run in weird directions just to turn a corner. Other than this, I thought the rules worked exceptionally well and I liked the different turn sequence, which added a bit more random strategy to you turn, would be nice to be able to allocate each model which ever dice from the pool though. On the random turn though, if you have a bad roll for your turn, it can really cripple you. Having a set number of re-rolls per game might overcome this though?
Will be getting a few figures for proxies in other games, but the using the card to move is a real turn off for me to keep on playing. Sorry, I am sure the rules will develop with time, but there is just so much choice in the market today, that games really have to tick all the boxes these days. As it is, I am totally overwhelmed these days with myriad of gaming systems.
Thumbs up for the models though 😀 Yellow jackets look awesome up close!! They could be used for Imp guard/Ariadna etc and the Keizai waza maybe on my list to 😀 whoop whoop
The snap-to-cover system should take care of any short moves you want to make since you can snap to any piece of cover within 30mm of your model (which is roughly half distance anyone can travel with a template). If you’re having trouble getting around corners or making more precise moves with the template then I would suggest that you just haven’t made the best use of the snap-to-cover system. That or you’re moving out of cover a lot while playing which in MERCS is a really bad idea.
can you only snap to cover once? as I say,it was an intro game so we could have made some/lots mistakes.
You can snap to cover once during any movement (I think it’s per movement action, not per turn. Should double check that). The thing people forget is that everything is cover, including other models. So moving around a corner simply requires you to move past the corner (or not totally past it, you can snap around cover) and then snap 30mm in the direction you want.
Or you can move in front arc of an enemy model within 20-30mm of them and then snap to the side of their base behind their forward arc as long as you don’t move more than 30mm in the process, effectively outflanking them before your melee attack.
Or you can snap to the other side of a low obstruction which feels a lot like cheating.
Basically, the snap-to-cover rule opens up a whole lot of movement strategies that other games don’t have, which makes up for a lot of the limitations of the template. The idea behind the movement system is to encourage players to stick to cover as much as possible and play a really tactical game. Remember, the game’s designer served a couple tours in Iraq and he’s trying to make his game reflect real-world squad & fireteam tactics as much as he can. It takes a while to get your head into that space and figure out the nuances of the game’s movement system, but there is plenty of fun to be had once you get into it.
I will try it out again if I get chance. 🙂
I to have served over 15 years in the military, but I am still unsure why a card is utilised for moving a set distance. Surely deciding how far you want to move (up to a max limit) is sufficient enough. I like the card in the sense that it allows easy access to the stats of the mini. Over and above this, I feel it is needless complexity that doesn’t offer any extra quality for me. I am not saying it should be changed, as then a few people that like the card movement will say they want it back, hehe. Perhaps it’s just not a game for me, but as I say, I like a few of the mini’s 😀 Besides, you can’t like every game out at the moment, I wish I could though. I am happy you have found a game you like and I will keep an eye out for another chance I guess.
Fun Times,
Broadside
I think the point of the card is that it limits the players’ options. You NEED snap to cover to make the game work at all. Which means you need cover for the game to work at all. It forces players to think tactically not just about where they want to go but how they want to get there. Most games (most non-historic games) just let you march out in the open with very little penalty for exposing yourself to enemy fire. So long as you’re trying to flank, you’re maneuvering in most wargames.
MERCS forces you to be more careful. It’s not that the card models real movement. It’s that it forces players to use tactics that more closely resemble what you would see in real combat (well, real combat since we stopped marching straight at each other with muskets in firing lines). It also forces you to set up a game table that more closely resembles an urban battleground which I think was part of the goal.
I’m not trying to convince anybody. Play whatever you like. Goodness knows there are plenty enough games to go around. I was just trying to address the open question regarding the movement cards. It’s supposed to be a limitation, and snap-to-cover is the affordance that counters the limitation with the express goal (which may or may not be achieved) of forcing players to be more tactical in their movement.
Cheers for the clarification mpopke really appreciated. looking forward to the new mini’s when we get to see a closer look 😀
P.s. the game I played was an intro game with a friend. Bigger pictures would be awesome to 🙂