A Story of Character Development
Over the last few weeks, we've seen lots of spoilers for the upcoming Shades faction. Unlike our normal rules reveals and previews though, these spoilers are far from the final product and are still undergoing rigorous playtesting.
In fact, most of the playtest version numbers have already progressed from those that have been shared. Changes include small tweaks to numbers for balance and numerous wording tweaks for clarity of reading. To give you an idea of what’s involved I thought it would be fun to look at two Shades that have already gone through the playtest process!
Version 0.1 (Never Gets Past Me and Tom)
The first thing to notice about Moot is... there isn't a Moonstone character called Moot! This is in fact the earliest version of Snag. During playtesting, Moot and Ruwt kept getting mixed up, so in order to help ease of play their name was tweaked to help prevent confusion. Meanwhile Jobie’s first version is so old that even the software used to create the initial card is different!
‘Snag’ was originally ‘Moot’ with a different signature move.
The Identities Remain
Despite both going through a huge number of updates and version revisions (with Snag ending on V0.22 before evolving to V1), the core identity and playstyle of the characters always stayed the same. Snag was always a big tough tree with curses and some passive abilities that trigger off deaths and resist hands. Meanwhile, Jobie was always repeatedly faking his death and coming back with abilities to also manipulate moonstones.
But There Are Differences
As for differences, Jobie’s final version has fewer abilities than his first incarnation. However, the majority of the abilities in his first version weren't lost, they were simply combined. This was done to simplify and streamline his card without sacrificing any of his abilities or identity.
“These smoke bombs aren’t mine, I’m just holding them fooooor… That guy!”
One ability was lost, however, which was the Smoke Bomb. During playtesting, it was found to never be used and hence was replaced with his far more useful second hand pistol.
As for Snag, you'll notice their keywords are slightly different. Originally ‘Treefolk’ was just a passive ability to jog over wooded patches, but as their boxes developed it became a keyword with a couple of abilities referring to it. In terms of more mechanical tweaks from v0.1, Snag’s resist hand ability got a rework as Provoke was an overly complex effect for minimal impact.
The signature on the other hand was tweaked for a slightly different reason. A lot of play testers thoroughly enjoyed cursing enemies with Snag’s Arcane, so their signature was tweaked to lean more into this aspect of their character. It’s slightly more Shades-y too, which felt appropriate for this dual faction character.
Jobie started out with Smoke Bombs, but always looked on The Bright Side of Death.
Power Levels and Balance
“I’m still horrifyingly efficient.”
One thing these characters also had tweaked was power levels. Snag’s arcane ability for example went through a LOT of changes before landing on its final version. Despite this, it still maintains its original essence, just far more balanced. In practice, the 4" range was horrifyingly efficient against certain troupes like gnomes and the inability to remove it caused some negative play experiences. Hence the final version had its range dialled down and can be removed by killing Snag.
Meanwhile, the main change for balance with Jobie was how the Bright Side of Death ability worked. Originally Jobie activated immediately after being brought back; this led to several negative play experiences where he'd come back, grab a stone, and then die again without the opponent ever having an opportunity to interact with him. Naturally, this changed quite quickly so players could actually interact with Jobie. After this we also found in some early Shades playtesting that you could take 3 reanimators plus Jobie and have 7 activations with only 4 models, hence he could only enter play once a turn.
Final Tweaks
Of course, these aren't the only changes Jobie and Snag had. Stats such as melee and wounds were tweaked a little up or down as the testing progressed, ensuring that they were performing at just the right level. Some abilities also had energy or effects tweaks, but more commonly wording was adjusted for clarity. With lots of playtesting the ability descriptions were streamlined in order to simplify resolution and reading of the abilities, whilst keeping the original essence.
At the end of the process, the characters we are left with are streamlined and clear, whilst remaining as fun and true to their original concept! It takes many playtests of each individual character to get them to this point though, which is why it’ll take a few months before the new Shades minis are completed.
