Battlerune Designer's Diary - Hissing Coils: Fang Dynasty

Hello fans of Archvillain Games!

My name is Vaughn Reynolds, and I’m the developer of Battlerune, the tabletop skirmish wargame for Archvillain Games. Nice to meet you!

With the ongoing development of Battlerune, we wanted to “lift the veil” a bit and look at the game mechanics of this month’s brand new units! We hope this blog content is something that interests you, and if it does, let us know in the comments!

Battlerune Unit Basics:

To get everyone on the same page, I think it’s important to identify two core design aspects for ALL units in the game.

Unit Ranks: Every unit has at least one rank (and in some rare cases, two). This is an expression of their strategic function within their army list. The following list is in descending power order:

  • Avatar: Gods, titans, celestial aspects, and other beings of immense power.

  • Siege: Massive beasts, catapults, tanks, and other large weapons of war.

  • Brute: Giants, abominations, large beasts and other burly smashers of things

  • Cavalry: Fast units that focus on hit-and-run or flanking tactics

  • Champion: Custom stats chosen by you from our Champion Builder to find victory on the battlefield!

  • Infantry: The rank-and-file units that make up the bulk of most army lists

  • Support: Units that focus on augmenting other units to help win the day!

  • Spells: Coming soon!

Unit Sizes: All unit size categories are approximations. The following list is in descending order by the smallest base size for that category:

  • Colossal: 125mm base size

  • Gargantuan: 100mm base size

  • Huge: 75mm base size

  • Large: 50mm base size

  • Medium: 25mm base size

Now that you understand the Unit Ranks and Unit Sizes, let’s move onto the fantasy collection for this month!

Designer Diary – Hissing Coils: Fang Dynasty

Get comfy while we discuss our way through some of the units for our slithering Fang Dynasty units!

This is the same process I take when working on each new collection of models as well, as I like to work out the thematic/mechanical aspects of a new set of units with the simpler and lower-powered units before I tackle the epic Avatars!

Coilsong Siren (25mm base • 4 poses) — Medium, Infantry

For the Fantasy side of our models, I have our monthly Archvillain Adventures 5e modules to work from, which makes steering their Battlerune unit design a lot easier. It also helps inspire new and unique abilities each month!

With the Coilsong Sirens, by name, you might think they’re going to be Support units, but these fearsome beauties are trained the dance of war from birth. Because of that, I gave these units the Nimble keyword to help them dance over the bodies of their fallen foes.

Keyword - Nimble: This unit automatically succeeds on Disengage checks and ignores the effects of difficult terrain.

Their module equivalent also had an interesting trait called Spontaneous Hibernation, which makes them susceptible to being at a disadvantage after taking cold damage. The Battlerune function ended up becoming:

Ability - Spontaneous Hibernation: Ongoing—If this unit takes any Cold damage, it must make a CR: Hit Point against the amount of damage taken, or get -1 Attack until the end of the round.

In Battlerune, CR stands for Contested Roll, which is simply each player rolling their 2d6 and adding the relevant stat modifier from their unit. This adds more depth to the interactions between units beyond simply attacking and defending with weapons.

Another new ability created exclusively (thus far) for the Sirens is Shed Skin. In the module, this allows them to alter their appearance for roleplaying purposes. Battlerune is a little less… diplomatic, and so this needed to be steered to a more battlefield-oriented purposes. The resulting ability is only usable once per game, but it gives them a good way to slither out of a tight spot!

Ability - Shed Skin (1/game): Until the end of the round, this unit is considered an ally to all opposing units. A unit controlled by another player must make a CR: Magic 10 to target this unit.

Coilsong Savant (50mm base • 4 poses) — Large, Infantry

When I first saw the Coilsong Savants, I was very excited to design monk with their snake friends. And while the physical model is technically Large, their module stat block is a Medium unit. For this reason, all of the Coilsong Savants have the keyword Smaller. The Smaller and Larger keywords were created to help with this, along with creating new and interesting ways to use unit’s size strategically.

Keyword - Smaller: This unit is considered the one size category smaller for purposes of dealing and receiving damage. This does not affect line of sight, threat range, or transport. For example, a medium-sized unit with Smaller considers other medium-sized units to be one size category larger.

I grew up with snakes as pets, and being a south Floridian, I’ve had the opportunity to grow up around all kinds of interesting reptiles and amphibians. These units got even more interesting when I found out each pose was dedicated to a different breed of snake with it’s own style of abilities in the module! Here are the Battlerune versions I came up with:

Pose 01 - Rattlesnake:

Ability - Venomous: Ongoing—If this unit hits a target with a melee attack, the target must make a CR: Hit Points 10 or is Stunned. This effect can only occur once per round.

Pose 02 - Anaconda:

Ability - Constrict: Ongoing—If this unit hits a target with a melee attack, the target must make a CR: Speed or is Immobilized. At the beginning of every round, the CR is rerolled, and if the target fails, they take 2 damage. This unit is also Immobilized while it is constricting a target. This cannot target a unit with Nimble.

Pose 03 - Cobra:

Ability - Hypnotic Scale Patterns (6”, 2/game): All opposing units in range with line of sight must make a CR: Magic 10 or are Stunned. If a unit Stunned by this ability takes damage, the Stun effect ends immediately.

Pose 04 - Adder: Their module equivalent ability is “Blend with Surroundings” and instead of creating a new ability that overlapped an existing keyword, I instead gave them Veil.

Keyword - Veil: This unit cannot be targeted outside of melee unless it has been activated this round.

Interestingly, the module stat block also included the ability to Enlarge, which is similar to the fascinating size a snake can open its mouth to and stretch its body to, when it has to eat a big meal. That’s why each of the Savants can also, once per game, suppress their Smaller trait and truly live their Large life!

Baonujushe (75mm base • 4 poses) — Huge, Brute

These huge, armored snakes have an ace up their scaly sleeves! They have runes grafted onto their scales, resulting in a unique ability!

Ability - Runescale Rebuke: Ongoing—When this unit is targeted by a Magic attack or ability, the unit targeting them must make a CR: Magic 10 or take 2 (Energy) damage before resolving the attack or ability.

Drumroll please……….

And now we get to the centerpiece of this collection, Immortal Empress Xi-Qing!

Immortal Empress Xi-Qing (100mm base • 1 pose) — Gargantuan, Avatar

How do you design an IMMORTAL unit for a wargame? Well, you give them Regeneration of course!

Ability - Regeneration: Ongoing—This unit heals 2 hit points at the beginning of every round. This effect does not trigger if this unit took Magic or Energy damage on the previous round.

All jokes aside, though, these centerpiece models are the ones we often turn into Avatars. Avatars are the peak of power for units in Battlerune. They are the beings that can take on entire armies all on their own.

And while Battlerune is still fairly early in development, the intent is to open up new play formats, including One-vs-Many and Boss Fights. The Avatar units will be used in those formats moreso than as a standard unit in an army list.

Each Avatar is wholly unique with many exclusive abilities, but one very fun one to give them the “Legendary Monster” feel from D&D is Fated:

Ability - Fated (2/game): Ongoing—When this unit fails a Contested Roll, it can change it to a success.

The Empress also comes with a new kind of ability, one which has multiple versions with only one being active at any time:

Ability - Snake Stance: Ongoing—This unit has one of the following Stances active and available at all times. When this unit is activated, it may change the active Stance as a free action. The effects of the inactive Stances do not apply immediately.

Stance - Fury of the Snake God: Ongoing—This unit scores a critical hit if the dice on the attack roll shows an 11 or 12. All attacks against this unit gain +1 Attack.

Stance - Protection of the Snake God: Ongoing—This unit gains +6 Defense and +6 Magic. This unit has 0” Speed, Suppress: Haste and Multiattack.

Stance - Strength of the Snake God: Ongoing—Any unit damaged by this unit lose Regeneration, cannot heal, and cannot gain maximum hit points. Any creature damage by this unit must make a CR: Hit Points 12 or take Burn 1 (Energy). If this Defeats a unit, Summon 1 Fangblade Sentinel (any). Suppress: Regeneration and Fated.

Stance - [3] Mind Furnace of the Snake God (18”, Magic, Energy): This may be used while this unit is Charmed by the owning player. End any active Charm effects on this unit. This unit gains, Immune: Charm. All units within range, CR: Magic or take 2 damage. This unit takes 2 damage for every unit that resists. 

Which unit from Hissing Coils: Fang Dynasty interests you the most?

What other things would you like to see in these Designer Diary blogs?

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Thanks for reading the blog, and I hope it provided you with some insight!

  • Vaughn Reynolds, Battlerune Developer