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ASOIAF: Rodrik Cassel 40Pt Army

Let's get down to business.

Winter has come.  While there are some people out there that prefer to go maneuver-heavy with Robb or face-smashy with Greatjon Umber, I like going Rodrik Cassel.  The reason why is because his tactics cards are absolutely bonkers and making units Vulnerable just makes a smashy faction even smashier.

First, let's take a look at Rodrik Cassel and see what he offers to our army:

A true soldier.

As you can see, Rodrik is a soldier who has an Order to make the opponent's unit Vulnerable after Attack dice are rolled.  The timing for this is exceptionally important because it's what Sworn Sword Captains have as well and it's considered one of the best 1-point attachments in the game.  Vulnerable is huge for someone like Rodrik because it unlocks his Tactics cards and skyrockets the damage potential of all your units.  Having Vulnerable on something after you charge it would mean you re-roll all hits and your opponent has to essentially re-roll all their successful saves.  It pretty much means the Stark army will obliterate units that have low saves or punch through tougher targets that can normally deflect their blows.  Peeling ranks off enemy units will also keep your units around longer as the enemies' damage potential will decrease.

Let's take a look at Rodrik's tactics cards:

All that martial goodness!

Martial Superiority is one of the best defensive tactics cards in the game.  It triggers off when the enemy unit attacks and that dice rolls less dice AND loses all abilities until the end of the turn.  Now, it isn't as powerful as some of the silences we've been before where it lasts until the end of the round, but this card doesn't need any conditionals like expending condition tokens or anything else.  You cast it, boom, and most of the opponent's plans are foiled.  This card is amazing at stopping something like Gregor + Flayed Men from rolling a unit while you set up for a counter-attack.  To make things even more interesting, if you're going after Rodrik's unit, good luck.  Having Weakened on top of this card pretty much means Rodrik's units going to stay around.  Combat Prowess is a great follow-up card when used with Rodrik's unit or with any unit under the influence of Vulnerable.  What if your opponent rolls poorly and you don't need to spend the Vulnerable token?  Guess like he's being silenced and unable to respond with any defensive tactics cards.  It's really fierce when used on the charge as there are fewer things in the game that interacts with that timing window than when a friendly unit attacks.  Lastly, we have Press the Advantage.  This is another one of those cards that trigger off the attack so you can't use a Sworn Sword Captain's Orders and then play this card because it escapes the window.  What this card does is kick your opponents when they're already down because of the Critical Blows on an already Vulnerable target.  That's why I have taken a unit of Tully Sworn Shields with Rodrik because it makes them one of the tankiest units in the game while giving them the opportunity to do bigger damage than their stats suggest.

Here's the list:

Faction: House Stark
Commander: Rodrik Cassel – Master–at–Arms
Points: 40 (4 Neutral)

Combat Units:
• Stark Sworn Swords (5)
  with Sworn Sword Captain (1)
• House Umber Greataxes (7)
  with Robb Stark – The Young Wolf (3)
• Grey Wind (0)
• House Tully Sworn Shields (7)
  with Rodrik Cassel – Master–at–Arms (0)
• Stark Outriders (7)
  with Brynden Tully – Vanguard Infiltrator (3)

Non-Combat Units:
• Sansa Stark – Little Bird (3)
• Petyr Baelish – Littlefinger (4)

Made with ASOIAFBuilder.com

Let me try and explain some of these choices super quick.  The Stark Sword Swords are simply one of the best offensive units in the game for the cost.  With Stark Fury and 8 dice on a 5-point unit and the ability to make someone Vulnerable, the damage potential for this unit is huge.  Great Axes deal a huge amount of damage and can definitely wreck heavy cavalry if they're already engaged with them.  Robb Stark as an attachment makes them regular infantry speed and gives you the ability to launch yourself out there on a Maneuver trigger on the tactics board.  This makes two units that can do it in the army and that will surprise your opponents a lot!  The fact that Robb (and Bran) come with their Dire Wolves is one of the best things about Starks.  These free wolves not only come with great abilities, but they're a free activation and deploy to be used in battle.  Grey Wind is especially good because he is able to apply Vulnerable onto a unit if already used, or apply it beforehand so it can be consumed using Rodrik's own ability or tactics cards.

I already explained a little bit about the Tully Sworn Shields above, but with Rodrik's tactics cards, this unit becomes a very jack-of-all-trades unit.  It's already super defensive with Shield Wall and 3+ save, but cards like Martial Superiority just takes it over the edge.  While the defensive stats normally lower damage expectations, Press the Advantage and Vulnerable tokens in general greatly increases its damage potential.  As for Stark Outriders, I think they're a great, solid unit at 7 points.  With Brynden Tully however, they can be one of the most annoying units in the game thanks for their great flanking ability and healing on retreat.  A lot of the Stark tactics cards play incredibly well with Outriders as well thanks to their unpredictable damage potential.  Just remember that with 7-point units, you can also decide to trade out the Sworn Shields for a unit of Berserkers if you want some more face-smash.

"And yet you betrayed me.."

As for NCUs, I really like Sansa Stark with Rodrik because of her ability to recycle or tutor for exactly what is needed right then and there.  While we all try and anticipate everything that is going to happen in a game, Sansa offers us extra insurance that if an opponent rolls a 6 for a long ass charge you didn't anticipate and is rolling in with crazy Tactics cards in support, you always have a way to Martial Superiority him into the ground.  For my next NCU, believe it or not, I think Littlefinger is a solid choice for the Starks.  It's just comical that I'm taking both Sansa and Littlefinger in the same list, but his ability to claim Combat/Maneuver that unlocks the secondary capabilities for your Stark tactics cards while still reaping the benefit of other unclaimed zones is amazing.

Try out the list and let me know how you fair!

WHERE TO GO FROM HERE - PART 2

As I eluded to in the last post, I am working through the numbers trying to decide if an episodic production and release through Kickstarter is a viable option.

So, we now have a course and a destination… Which honestly is a very welcome and refreshing change.

Why use Kickstarter?

As a marketing platform it allows to reach a wider audience, not just my current customers but those new to the hobby and those who never knew DreamForge was even a 'thing'. I think we all know that the train has stalled, and its going to take a lot of effort and lots of attention to get it rolling again. Perhaps there will be a time that I can move off the Kickstarter platform, but for now… The broader exposure is required. This exposure comes at a price, Between the Kickstarter fees, the currency transaction fees and the backer support fees in the form of a post Kickstarter service to collect shipping and allow backers to add items or options, we are looking at near 10% in fees alone.

Expectations:

Not every Kickstarter campaign will succeed, that's OK. If the demand for a particular kit is not there, then its not… No harm no foul, we move on to the next product offering. I completely expect for there to be unfunded projects that never make it to plastic and possibly (if there was enough interest) may see a resin release instead. There will be changes to how DreamForge approaches on hand inventory and even they type of products offered, not all offerings need to be Iron Core specific, it provides far more flexibility in product development than making sure each product fits neatly into the project I have already started. If I get an itch to do…well anything, it gives a platform to see if all of you are also interested.

How will that work? And what does that look like from the customers side?

The plan is to have a very focused Kickstarter for a single product, its actual production costs and any profits expected will need to be folded into the funding goal. This is a strong departure from the retail model, where revenues are gained over time and the investment/debt is front loaded.

Product availability outside the initial Kickstarter will be limited, 10% to 20% beyond the total needed to fulfill the Kickstarter will be run, some of that will be soaked up by the inevitable issues, damaged kits, mispacked or missing items from a kit and kits that never make it to the backer and get lost in transit. 

There may be re-runs offered on popular kits in future Kickstarter's, but there will be minimums that need to be met, typically a 500 unit run will be needed. If I feel that the kit will sell, I may assist with purchasing some of that re-run myself, to provide stock on hand. The best way for a customer to approach this is to buy what you want and what you think you will need at the time of the offering, I cannot make a promise that there will be a second run if the overall interest is not there.

Customers will need to pay for the actual shipping costs for the products they back.

Shipping, as we all know is stuuupid expensive from the US to anywhere outside its borders. Each Kickstarter will be shipped directly from China to mitigate the expense to the customer as much as possible, this means most of the world will likely see a drastic cost reduction, but the US will see an increase. Why don't I just ship the US from the US? Well, because it's a hidden cost, one that would need to be calculated into the Kickstarter… Someone has to pay to get it to the US before it could be sent out from our warehouse, add to this the staffing costs, the shipping package costs and overhead, and it becomes a real issue that has not been factored into the per kit price… We are running as lean as possible, to provide a per kit price that is as low as possible, there will be no room for uncalculated expenses.

How are the Kickstarter's structured?

This is open for revision, but the plan is to absorb the costs and required profits into a 1000 minimum unit run. If it costs $40,000 for the molds, production, boxes and services, then the cost of each unit would be $40.00. 

What happens if a Kickstarter goes nuts and the total funding far outstrips the required funding goal? Do you get a discount? Discounts will be offered when you pick up multiple kits, not by the overall success of a product. Those are profits that get re-invested to make DreamForge healthy, to pay for game development, to pay for additional stock, to help pay for re-release of the current line of kits, as those tools will need to be re-cut at some point. I am not pulling the discount off the table, but for the foreseeable future, I have a lot of catching up to do and core development that needs to happen for DreamForge to grow and thrive.

I want to be clear, this is not going to be a song and dance Kickstarter model, there 'may' be extras offered if there is room on the sprues, ( I will try to pack them the best that I can) but anything extra in the form of products adds to the costs and I am not bulking the costs to deal with that. I am trying to keep the price per kit to you as low as I possibly can.

Longer term with the releases and stock on hand.

Obviously, this model does is not ideal for some aspects of brand development, limited supply concerns may not be ideal but it's not unusual when we look around the industry and other companies that made their way on Kickstarter. I am not GW, I do not have their sales volume or the resources available to behave like GW. Please understand that expecting a small manufacture in plastic to be able to behave and function as one of the top two or three in the industry, may not really be a reasonable expectation. I will strive to get there, but until the financial aspect of that shift make sense, I will be doing what is best for the growth of the company with the resources available. 

I think we can all agree, that Iron Core needs at least two to three full factions, terrain and a rules set, so as we move through these requirements, I will try to weight when it becomes viable as its own free standing IP. The goal is to grow the brand, expand the product offering, make available some of the older kits and even start to offer some options for those not interested in Iron Core. Fantasy, Cyberpunk and a myriad of other avenues are available and the wider the base of offerings, the more stable the base.

All of this is dependent on me, making what you want, delivered at a reasonable price within a reasonable time.

I am very excited about the prospect and the future. I am really looking forward to exploring your 'needful things' and if they can be created and successfully funded in an episodic, backer driven environment. I hope that you join be on this new course and help guide my had in future releases.

Soooo many itches to scratch, so little time :P

I will be reaching out in a few locations looking for honest feedback and direction from all of you.

• Through surveys sent to my mailing list… So please sign up on the DreamForge-Games website if you have not.

• Through my Facebook group DreamForge-GamesArtist Retreat  (please do not try to message me here) For whatever reason FB and I do not sync well…. I must be an old fart, not a huge fan of FB or twitter :P

• On Dakka Dakka (I could start my own forum but it's a waste of energy, at least at this stage)

• And, well...here but its not very good for two way conversations.

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Exploring Monster Taming Mechanics In Final Fantasy XIII-2

Let's just get this out of the way. I'm a huge Final Fantasy fan. I adore the original game even today, Final Fantasy VI is definitely the best of the franchise, and I've found things to enjoy in every one that I've played, which is nearly all of the main-line games. (I still haven't managed to crack open FFIII, but I plan to soon.) Even each of the games in the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy had something that drew me in and kept me going through the game, wanting to learn more. These games get a lot of flack for being sub-par installments in the Final Fantasy franchise, and some of the criticism is warranted. The story is convoluted, and the plot is as confusing as quantum mechanics.

That debate, however, is not why we're here now. We're here to look at one of the great aspects of FFXIII-2: the monster taming and infusion system.

This system is deep and complex, but not in the off-putting way that the plot is. The amount of variety and configurability in the monsters that you can recruit to fight alongside Serah and Noel is astonishing, which is nice because those two are somewhat lacking in that department. Their development paths are fairly linear. There are a few choices about what strengths to give them as they level up in the "crystarium," but it's mostly a matter of ordering the abilities they learn and doesn't make much difference in the end. The monsters, on the other hand, allow for huge variations in development that results in a system with fascinating choices for optimization and prioritization. Figuring out how to capture and develop powerful monsters early in the game is great fun, and its this characteristic of Final Fantasy games—of finding ways to build a strong party early in the game without tedious grinding—that I really enjoy.

On a totally different note, I've been considering different ways to practice using databases and building simple websites, and the monster taming system is complex enough and interesting enough that it would make for a good collection of content to use for that practice while having some fun in the process. So, the other goal of this series, other than exploring the monster taming system in FFXIII-2, is to explore how to get a data set into a database, put it up on a website with Ruby on Rails, and experiment with that data set in some novel ways. Before we get into all of that, however, we need to understand what the heck we're putting in the database in the first place, and to do that we need to understand this monster taming system in detail.

Monster Taming

Okay, what is this monster taming, and why is it so complicated? We'll have to start at the beginning and work our way through the system. At the start of the game there's just Serah, trying to stay alive. (Actually, the very start of the game is a flashy battle sequence and confusing plot points with Lightning, but let's ignore that.) Pretty soon Noel shows up and decides to help Serah out, so now it's a party of two. This setup goes on for a couple levels, but it's pretty weird for a Final Fantasy game. Normally there's three or four characters in a party. Then we come to a pitched battle with a Cait Sith and a Zwerg Scandroid. There will be a lot of weird monster names throughout this series. You're just going to have to roll with it. Anyway, after creaming the cat and the droid, they turn into monster crystals, which are basically the essence of monsters. These crystals are stored in your monster inventory, and you can assign three of them to coveted spots in your "Paradigm Pack" (not the name I would have picked). These three monster spirits will fight with you in battle, and so begins your long and precarious journey as the monster whisperer.

Monsters come in six basic varieties, conveniently matching the six roles that Serah and Noel can assume. These six role are briefly explained as follows:

• Commando - The Arnold Schwarzenegger role, plenty of strength, short on finesse.
• Ravager - The mage role, uses attack magic.
• Sentinel - This is a tank role, not many attacking options, but it absorbs damage like it's nothing.
• Saboteur - Weakens the enemy by removing protections and inflicting ailments like poison and slow.
• Synergist - Strengthens the party with offensive and defensive enhancements. Also moonlights as a business executive.
• Medic - Heals the party, and possibly the only obvious role name of the bunch.

While Serah and Noel can switch between these roles, the tamed monsters have fixed roles. Switching the monster's role switches the monster, and there are three role possibilities for any given battle corresponding to the three monsters that are on deck. The monster's type is only the beginning of what a monster is, though. There is so much more.

Monster Training

Monsters can gain experience just like Serah and Noel. Both the humans and the monsters have crystariums where they advance along a path to gain abilities and increase their stats. While the humans have a crystarium for each of their six roles, the monsters each have one crystarium, possibly with multiple levels, where they gain their abilities and stats. Because the crystariums of the monsters are more unique to the monster itself, each monster type will learn a unique set of abilities and end up with different stats. Additionally, while the humans can move through their crystariums by spending crystarium points gained from winning battles, monsters can only advance on their crystariums by using various types of monster materials that are dropped by defeating monsters in battle. This seems to be some form of cannibalism, but it's pretty mild because the materials are bolts and orbs and other things like that. Monsters require different materials for their crystariums depending on what level they're on their crystarium, and if they're biological or mechanical monsters. Different materials will also give different bonuses to the monster's health, strength, magic, or all three stats.

Following so far? Because we're just getting started. This monster whispering is intricate stuff. On top of the unique upgrade paths, abilities, and materials, each monster spirit has a set of characteristics that relate to how they will develop as they level up. A monster can be a "late bloomer," meaning it may be weak to start with, but it can reach the upper levels 70-99 of its crystarium. Maybe the monster is "brainy," meaning that it will learn lots of abilities, or it's "flameproof," which is pretty self-explanatory. There are 29 characteristics in all, and any given monster can have up to four of them. Monsters will also come with some initial abilities, whether that be actions like casting certain spells and attacking or passive abilities like "armor breaker" that allows it to penetrate an enemy's physical defense. Taming and training monsters are not the only ways to get monsters with certain abilities, however. This is where things get real, as in real complicated.

Monster Infusion

The third way to give a particular monster new and wonderful abilities is to take another monster that has the desired ability(ies) and fuse them into the desired monster through a magical monster infusion process. How does this work exactly? Who knows! How did materia work in FFVII, or guardian force cards in FFVIII? It's a Final Fantasy game; some things you just have to accept without question and move on. The source monster spirit is lost in this process of infusing the target monster with new abilities. It's a destructive process.

Losing the source monster is not the only cost, though. There are restrictions as well. The first restriction is that a monster can only have 10 passive abilities. If a monster accumulates more than 10 passive abilities, some of them are going to have to go. These abilities all have a rank, and higher ranked abilities will stick to a monster better than lower ranked abilities. Also, newer abilities are stickier than older abilities, according to when the monster learned them. The lowest ranked abilities will get the boot first, with order of acquisition being the tie-breaker—first in, first out.

The next restriction is red-locked abilities. These are abilities that cannot be transferred to or removed from a monster, ever. This restriction is pretty simple, unlike the next one.

Monsters can also have yellow-locked abilities, although these locks never exist by default. Yellow locks can be created, propagated, and destroyed by infusing abilities of the same type in various ways. Two abilities are the same type if they modify the same attribute. For example, HP +10% and HP +25% would be of the same type. Also, HP +10% is a lower rank than HP +25%. That's important for yellow locks because if you infuse a monster that already has a lower rank ability with an equal or higher rank ability of the same type, the infused ability comes with a yellow lock and will stay put when the monster's abilities overflow. Generally, if an ability of higher rank is added to a yellow-locked ability of lower rank, the yellow lock is kept. If an ability of equal or lower rank is added to a yellow-locked ability, the yellow lock is destroyed. It's a bit more complicated than that because there are about a dozen different combinations, but this summary should be sufficient for the purpose of setting the requirements of the database. Basically, we want to make sure we know the rank of each ability so that we can figure out the best way to develop monsters' abilities.

All of the red lock and yellow lock stuff has to do with passive abilities, but there are two other types of abilities that come into play with monster infusion: role abilities and hidden abilities. Role abilities are the actions that the monster will take in battle, and there is no limit to the number of these abilities that a monster can have. When a source monster is infused, you can choose from its role abilities up to the number that its crystarium stage is at, which will be 1-5 depending on how much you can level up the monster and how much you actually leveled it up. The disadvantage of infusing too many role abilities on a monster is that you don't have control over what it does in battle, and if it has too many options, it probably won't be doing what you want it to do when you need it most. Decide what you're going to use a monster for, and then don't give it choices. You can't remove role abilities once they're infused.

Lastly, hidden abilities are learned by a monster when it is infused with 99 levels worth of monsters of the opposite role. Commando and Ravager are opposites (makes sense), Saboteur and Synergist are opposites (makes even more sense), and Sentinel and Medic are opposites (the leftovers, I guess). For example, you could infuse nine level 17 Zwerg Scandroids onto your Red Chocobo, and it'll learn Jeopardize, which boosts the bonus the chocobo gets when attacking a staggered enemy. Each role has it's own hidden ability that it gets when those 99 levels of monsters of the opposite role are infused into it.

Acquiring the Data for the Database

Okay, that was a bunch of intricate, complicated stuff, but it gives us a good idea of what kind of data we want to put in our database so we can link it up and ask interesting questions about monster infusion. 

First, we want to know all about monsters:

• What's its name?
• Is it tamable? We might have a separate tamable monster table since most of the following properties wouldn't apply to non-tamable monsters.
• What materials does it drop in battle?
• What's its role?
• Where in the game can we find it?
• What are its characteristics?
• What's its max level?
• What are its starting and ending stats (HP, strength, and magic)?
• What are its starting abilities?
• What abilities does it learn and at which crystarium levels?
• How many crystarium stages does it have?
• What is its feral link? (We didn't talk about this. It's a special action that can be triggered when the monster gets hit too much.)
• What does the feral link do?
• We could also include pictures if we want to get fancy.

We also want to know about abilities. This will be a separate table:

• What's its name?
• What's its rank?
• What does it do?
• Is it passive, role, or hidden? These may be separate tables, since they're different enough to warrant it.
• Which role is it associated with?

We'll be interested in at least one aspect of the areas in the game:

• What's its name?
• How early can we reach this area? I.e. which area unlocks this area?

Since there's a fair number of monster materials, we'll want to keep track of those:

• What's its name?
• Is it biological or mechanical?
• What stage of the crystarium is it for?
• Does it boost HP, strength, magic, or all three? (The name does give this away, but let's be thorough.)

We'll also want to know a little about the monster characteristics because the names are not self-explanatory:

• What's its name?
• What does it mean?

This is shaping up to be a reasonably complex database with 5-8 tables interlinked by these different items' names. The relations in the database will happen through IDs, but everything does have a name as well. The names will be what appears in the tables presented as views of the database, likely with hyperlinks to their information in their own tables. So how should we get all of this data into a database? I certainly don't want to enter it by hand. There's over 150 monsters, dozens of abilities, and dozens of properties for each monster. 

Luckily, some ambitious people have already done the hard work of writing out all of these things in an FAQ, and it's available on gamefaqs.com. The Monster Infusion FAQ by sakurayule, BMSirius, and Taly932 contains almost everything we want to put in the database. It also contains example builds for post-game super monsters, but we're going to look at something a bit different with this series. We want to figure out the best monster builds we can do during the game in order to have monsters that can help us through the game without the need to do any grinding. All of the necessary information is in that FAQ. We just have to write a script to parse it and put it in a form that's easy to import into the database. That parsing script is what we'll figure out how to write in the next episode.