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 What is Godtear? Godtear is a two-player tabletop game with boardgame elements. Each player chooses three champions to play with, with every champion fulfilling one of four roles. You can double (or triple!) down on a role, or go for a more balanced approach. Each champion brings his own unit of followers. The amount of followers you get per champion varies largely - Grimgut brings 5 little Retchlings, while Shayle has a single powerful elemental. Each champion also brings a banner to claim objectives. You can mix and match champions to your unique liking and playstyle. There are no factions to adhere to. Your three chosen champions, their followers and their banners form your warband. The game from Steamforged Games launched in December 2019 after a successful kickstarter campaign. It has two different starter sets, including two champions (plus followers and Banners), a hexboard, tokens and three player boards. More champions can be bought in single boxes. For the suggested game size of 3 champions, a single player needs a Starterset and a championbox of their choice. The entry cost for this is about 75$. Buying more champions doesn’t give you a benefit except for having more variety in your choices. Miniatures come in pretty detailed, single-piece plastic colour-coded to their role on the battlefield. Boardgamers will appreciate the coloured miniatures, while players with a tabletop background can have lots of fun painting them up.  How does it play? Each player tries to win a round by maximizing the strengths of their champions. Each champion gets more points when he does something according to his role – for example, damage-dealing slayers can also kill followers, but they get more points for downing a champion. Miniatures are never truly dead – When champions get taken out, they are pushed away a bit and have to spend one of their two next actions to rally, effectively maybe losing a turn, while followers can be respawned, even if the whole unit is wiped out. Losing a champion isn’t a frustrating, game-swinging experience, but merely a temporary setback. This keeps the game fresh and varied, and allows for many different warband combinations to be viable, not just ones focused on killing and attrition. The game is a bit more streamlined and faster than most tabletop games. It takes about an hour if both players know what they’re doing. The bulk of the game takes place during the plot phase and the clash phase. In each phase, every champion and unit can take two different actions - so no moving twice, for example. Every champion and unit has a double-sided card, with different actions they can take in the two phases. Standard actions include walking, recruiting followers and rallying champions (a downed champion gets up and heals all his wounds). Other actions are printed on the cards and can include attacks, buffs and debuffs, board manipulation and all that fun stuff. In the plot phase, one player fully activates all of his champions and units, then the second player does the same. This phase is mostly about positioning and applying buffs and debuffs. .When a champion or unit is done activating, its card gets flipped to its clash side. In the clash phase, the players take turn activating one champion or one unit each. This is where the killing happens. Once again, after completely activating a unit or champion, you flip its card back to its plot side, indicating that you activated that unit already. During a round, a tracker is moved up and down a ladder, depending on the actions of the players. In short - doing stuff (like killing followers/champions or placing banners) during a round nets you “steps” on the ladder. At the end of the round, whoever has the tracker closest to him on the ladder wins the round. The first player to five victory points wins, and the game takes a maximum of five rounds. The rounds award different amounts of points - the first round only gets you a single victory point, while the third round gets you three. With “I go, you go” mechanics in the plot phase and alternating activations in the clash phase, Godtears brings something for fans of both game mechanics to complain about! The classes There are four classes in the game: Slayers focus on downing enemy champions. They and their units excel at causing damage to single targets. Downing a champion gets you four steps on the points ladder, but when a Slayer champion does the slaying you earn one more step. Maelstroms excel at killing followers. They usually have attacks that target everything in a single hex field, so clumping up your units against Maelstroms can lead to your opponent making some easy points. Killing a Follower awards a single step (two for large units), with Maelstroms getting a bonus step for each kill. Shapers manipulate the battlefield. They can spawn or destroy godtears, move units around and exert control. They get a bonus step when they place their banner (usually one point). Guardians try to control the battlefield and protect their allies and banners. Some bring tough, immovable Followers; other Guardians exert control with fast Followers that take up key positions on the board. Having a banner still standing at the end of the round nets you four steps, a Guardian gets five steps. Godtears The titular godtears serve as both terrain and the stuff you fight over. They look like tears in the ground. Or maybe they’re tears from the gods that splashed on the earth? I skipped the fluff blurb in the rulebook, so who knows! Champions can move over godtears freely. Followers can’t step on that stuff (unless they have a special rule). Banners can only be placed on godtears (and by champions). Dice! Stats! Mechanics! Champions and followers have four stats: move, dodge, defense and hitpoints. Attacks have an accuracy and damage value. When you make an attack, you first roll an amount of custom dice equal to your accuracy rating, marked with 0-2 hits. You need to hit the opponent’s dodge value. If you do, you next roll a set of damage dice. Each hit over the enemies defense value is a wound. Followers usually have one wound only, while champions have somewhere between 6 and 9. There are five boons and blights you can have: move, dodge, defense, hit and damage. They all buff (or debuff) the next attack or defense of the champion or unit, either raising/lowering their stat by one, or giving/taking a die. The same boons and blights cancel each other out, and you can’t have more than one boon or blight of each kind on a champion or unit. There are no other kinds of tokens in the game, meaning you won’t have to remember what the hell that effect on that model really does. It’s all very straightforward. Scenarios The rulebook has a couple of scenarios, mostly influencing your starting zones and godtear placement. Some gently caress around with the points ladder, others move godtears around. The Setting So far, the rulebook has a single page of fluff, and the miniatures are mostly riffs on generic fantasy tropes. There might be more coming, but for now I don’t worry too much about it. I’m fine with ogling the cool minis and playing with a tight ruleset. Links The official site: https://steamforged.com/godtear The rules: https://steamforged.com/s/GT-1-NM-Rulebook-Web.pdf Official Videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GtiEej8wD4 (more in the channel) Luebbi fucked around with this message at 23:18 on Dec 23, 2019 |
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Dec 23, 2019 19:31
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| # ? May 8, 2024 07:08 |
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Example Champions Rhodri is rather large for a dwarf. He is accompanied by four dwarf-sized dwarfs. His followers are quite sturdy and can’t be pushed or moved in any way. They can buff their already hefty Defense. Rhodri and the gang like to move up as one. They both can deal respectable damage, while Rhodri also has a push effect up his sleeve.  Rotgut is weird. And fun! He’s definitely not a nurgle demon. Rotgut himself is pretty slow, while his five Retchlings are even slower. They also have piss-poor stats. But they don’t award steps when you kill them. Nice! Even better, Rotgut can remove all Retchlings from the board and belch up five new ones every turn. He can place them in a row to block off board space, or clump them together as they have a pretty nasty 5/5 attack that targets all Followers in a hex. He’s a little less killy than other Maelstroms, but makes up for it with his unique brand of board control. Most importantly, he has an bility called Om Nom Nom.  An elf with a bow, feels like I’ve seen that somewhere before. She brings three more elves, also with bows. As you might guess, they can bring the hurt from afar, but they die when you look at them funny. If you buff her up and roll dice like me, you can sometimes one-shot other Champions with her. You should maybe use her blazing fast 3 Move to get the gently caress out of dodge afterwards, though.  Shayle is an interesting one - so far he’s the only champion with a large follower (and the only one with hitpoints). His elemental can’t move on it’s own, instead it moves whenever Shayle takes an action near him. Meanwhile Shayle has no direct way of dealing damage, letting his elemental do his dirty work.  BONUS: I haven’t played this guy yet, but he looks cool as gently caress.
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Dec 23, 2019 19:43
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I got in a couple of games after christmas. Played with or against 12 of the 15 champions available so far. I love how the game manages to swing back and forth; winning two rounds in a row is quite hard, and even if you're loosing one, you can try to set up your next round. In four games I tried four different combinations of champions, and they all felt pretty viable - there is much less cross-champion synergies as in other games. The buffs and debuffs only last until the next attack, so you're not setting up big synergy combos with your different models. That said, I did find some cool combos - for example, Sneaky Peet and his sneaky stabbers can both attack in the plot phase, and Lorsann and her followers can hand out two armor blights in the same phase. So you can activate Lorsann, blight a Champion, active Peet's followers and attack him, activate Lorsanns followers and blight again, then follow up by sneaky peet. Nice! Here's some more youtube videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPWy0GKHtwo&t=1468s - Beardminis explains the complete ruleset. He's a pretty cool guy from the Guild Ball community. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0eM9rWf6Zo Guerilla Games play a full 3v3 game with painted minis. These are the "Early Access" pewter minis, so look different from the plastic sets. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDDH1IuwGEw&t=146s Starter set unboxing by the company that makes the game. If you're into unboxing videos.
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Dec 30, 2019 07:10
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It seems like a really cool game, the victory track is a neat idea that seems to curtail one side dominating. Dope minis too, be nice to have the cash to buy into it, but I don't know any locals that're playing it.
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Dec 30, 2019 07:35
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I've got a few games in. So far, it seems like you really want a Maelstrom champion, since they can score their bonus several times in one action. Blackjaw can set a stack of 3 followers on fire and score 6vp, and still have a second action. The equivalent of a Shaper or Guardian placing a banner and having it survive the turn. Also it's a thing in the lore that absorbing Godtears makes you grow bigger, which is why there are giant dwarves.
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Jan 8, 2020 12:38
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Elfface posted:I've got a few games in. So far, it seems like you really want a Maelstrom champion, since they can score their bonus several times in one action. Blackjaw can set a stack of 3 followers on fire and score 6vp, and still have a second action. The equivalent of a Shaper or Guardian placing a banner and having it survive the turn. I agree, especially about Blackjaw. His Ultimate can get you ten steps if you roll like a god. One Maelstrom should probably be in most lineups. Then again, shapers and guardians can potentially score 6 points off a banner without rolling dice. Dice are a sucker's game! What champions did you like the most so far? I love Shayle, his follower Landslide just seems useful all the time. His push ability can target all followers in a unit, not just the ones in range, which is huge. Also love Sneaky Peet for his and his follower's ability to do damage in the plot phase, potentially clearing some in-the-way followers so your shapers and guardians can place their banners. I'll be playing again tomorrow, and my stuff should finally arrive on friday so I can get to painting!
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Jan 8, 2020 18:06
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I've not played with many setups, got the Borderlands starter and Blackjaw. Planning on proxying Mournblade and Grimgut next time, not sure about a third. Morrigan seems a ittle underpowered compared to Lorsann, though I did manage to pull off a Snowball's Chance in my last match.
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Jan 9, 2020 13:47
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Painted up two champions over the weekend. Nothing fancy, just want to get a painted warband on the table ASAP. The plastic minis paint up nice. They aren't as detail-filled as other mini lines (including SFG's Guild Ball), but I can do without painting 100 pouches for a change. I still suck at taking pictures, though. 
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Jan 12, 2020 22:18
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And my first Warband (3 Champions) is done! Sorry for the badly focused photo. I really like that synergies aren't as central to this game as in others. I didn't pick these three champions because of how well they play together, but because I felt like painting them first. And I'm confident they will still do well on the table.
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Jan 20, 2020 09:51
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Had my first game of this the other week and I'm really excited for more.  The way the ladder on the left moves back and forth is a really interesting mechanic that allows you to pickup some points in the next round if you know you're going down this one. Also your heroes never fully dying is a great 'catchup' mechanic. Working my way through my first heroes now -   
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Jan 20, 2020 17:24
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It's a giant Slimer!
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Jan 20, 2020 18:07
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Got a demo in on Saturday, it was a little "off" because we were only playing one champion apiece so things got a little thrown off, but it was pretty snappy and fun. It seems like it behooves to have a set of ranged/repositioning minions with how the objective squares can start boxing off minions?
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Jan 26, 2020 18:40
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Finished Grimgut and his Retchlings! This is my favourite champion so far. Love the models and the rules. Really quite weird. His minions die when you look at them funny, but he can belch out 5 new ones during his activation, and they don't give any victory points for killing them. As he is capable of belching them out in a row instead of right next to him, he can use his throwaway minions to block in models and make them waste attacks. Really cool. 
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Feb 1, 2020 22:16
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| # ? May 8, 2024 07:08 |
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Relevant for these times, the Steamforged guys released an official Tabletopia Version of Godtear. It looks and plays pretty good, and they're working on adding improvements. Tabletopia is a webbased Tabletop-simulator that you can play on for free (if you use a Bronze account, which works just fine for Godtear). It can be played over the website ( https://www.tabletopia.com ), Steam, IOS or Android. You can watch a how-to video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LohRm1-l1E And here's a screenshot of my last game, so you can see it in action:  The full manual is included with the game.
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Apr 11, 2020 14:50
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