Diesel DM

When approaching Guild Ball for the first time many Warmachine and Hordes players will pick up on the similarities between the two game systems. There are important differences too.  He’s a run down of things you should Warmachine players should know as they begin Guild Ball.

• You can measure anything at any time
• 360-degree Line of Sight, there are no front/back arcs
• Players alternate activating one model at a time
• Successful die rolls based on number of individual dice that separately exceed a Target Number (TN), rather than a total of dice against a TN
  • So you might roll 4d6 looking to beat a TN of 3+, each die with a 3 or higher is a success.
• Game isn’t just about dealing damage and Taking Out models
  • Some guilds, like Butchers, specialize in damage dealing, but it’s dependent on guild/team selection.
• Influence is akin to Focus
  • Each model generates a set amount of Influence at the start of each turn (like Focus on a Warcaster) and it all goes into a combined pool.
  • You can allocate out the Influence like allocating Focus to warjacks, but the allocation limit is set per model (second number on the card under INF).
  • Just like Focus, you can buy as many mêlée attacks as you want using Influence.
  • Influence cannot be used for boosting, however you can spend [1] Momentum to increase the dice-pool by one.

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Guild Ball is a table-top skirmish game that combines combat with soccer (or football for those outside the U.S.).   Created in the U.K. by Rich Loxam and Mat Hart, Guild Ball launched as a Kickstarter in February 2014, the game miniatures shipped at the start of 2015 and the game began to gather momentum.  More often a game starts to lose momentum once the Kickstarter concludes, but Guild Ball’s initial 890 backers has grown rapidly since the game hit stores. The company, Steamforged Games, has shown a knack for engaging its audience via social media, with Periscope videos of production, Twitter and Facebook accounts and appearing on various tabletop gaming podcasts. While that accounts for part of the sustained growth, the game itself is what leads the way.  Guild Ball is composed of magnificent miniature sculpts, it’s fast to learn and so engaging to play that every demo leads to more fans.

Each release cycle of the game is broken out as a “Season”.  Season 1 was everything that came out of the Kickstarter.  Barely had Season 1 made it to the shelves when Steamforged Games announced Season 2 was beginning.  A new season means more models and an additional guild. Steamforged Games chose not to coast following Season 1, they punched the accelerator and chose to put out more models before the paint had dried on Season 1’s miniatures.

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