I have given a lot of thought to the action figure glatorian game after I recieved a sealed ackar from a friend. The game just seemed too simple, and I think more complexity and other revisions could make the game more interactive and fun.
For one, I would want the inclusion of dice and a measuring stick.
So conceptually, the game would be similar, to how the instructions describe it. You would shoot a thornax from the launcher of your glatorian and you would place your figure where the thornax lands. I would want to add “melee” or short ranged weapons as well, so if your thornax lands within a certain distance of the opposing figure (determined by a measuring stick), you would role a dice and based on certain values, you would either give heavy damage (2 life points), light damage (1 life point) or no damage. I would want to entirely delete the canisters from the game.
Getting hit by a thornax removes 1 life point.
What would you think? Any other ideas or recommendations?
It’s a simple enough concept if you use decimal dice, or even just a normal d6, although I for one never really played with the thornax pieces. Although with the limited number of life points on the wheel it would be a pretty quick game.
It is true, but it is also very difficult to aim and hit your target… especially if you want your thornax to land NEXT to them instead of hitting them. I was thinking of using the lego games dice, and perhaps 2 life counters… like the titans and larger vehicles used. It shouldn’t be much shorter of a game than the official one.
I always thought that you could find a way to use figures other than the glatorian (even if it doesn’t make sense in the bionicle story ) maybe by adding more variables to the game .
For example each projectile type could deal different amounts of damage.
Or maybe you could try to add some of the mask powers
Maybe you could add a game mechanic like scavenging that works like this:
You can shoot once every turn using all the ammunition that is on the figure (ecept glatorians that carry 3 thornax). Once you have used all your ammo you have to use a turn to “scavenge” for your ammo. In this turn you can’t shoot but the next turn you have your ammo again and you can shoot
I would add more life since the game always seemed short to me.
I really like he idea of mask powers… but I would only want to support shielding (hau). strength (pakari) and speed (kakama), granting the user to either move twice, sustain more damage, or deal more damage.
I would probably only include thronax, zamor, and kanoka as weapons, as they are the most accurate… not squid launchers.
since they are more accurate the game would need to be balanced by making them deal less damage or something like that and the squid launcher and the cordak blaster should deal more damage since they jam or don’t work.
Also I thought that some players may want to use their MOCs so I think that a rule should be created that states that a character should be around the size of a normal inika build to prevent players from using a MOC that is so tiny that it is impossible to hit
I am afraid that if I include different launchers, mask abilities, multiple life-counters, and dice… I will over-complicate the game, I wanted to make it more fun… not necessarily come up with a new game. Many of the ideas I like, but part of what makes a game fun is the limitations… risk wouldn’t be very fun if you could construct nuclear warheads and incinerate your opponent… making weaponry unbalanced removes any actual competition.
The difficulty with that is that you’ve introduced the concept of damage tables. I’m running by the idea that we want the game to be as simple as possible so a kid could still enjoy it without running math problems every turn. Moreover, I think having “down” turns wouldn’t be fun or could twist the game into a stalemate.
My proposition: Use whatever weapons you want; play by normal turn rules. If someone’s confident that they can win with a Cordak blaster, let that be a personal challenge.
I could agree with that, making any blaster available but it is always a gamble as they have the same hit points. What do you think about mask abilities?
I think the best thing to do would be to have masks be one-use bonuses each round. I like the ideas of moving twice, dealing extra damage, or blocking attacks.
Instead of mask powers, would you think it would be better to use cards like the ninjago spinjitzu game, where each card would be used for one turn and then discarded>
That would be interesting but cards can be difficult to keep balanced (just think that every card game has a list of “banned” cards that is updated every time new cards come out)
If you want to actually make the cards I could help you make them (at least the design and layout I’m not the best with artwork but I could try to do that if you want)
I don’t know If I would want to print full sets of cards, and I want the card functions to be fairly simple. For example, you would have a card with a picture of the kanohi pakari with a brief instruction on what the card does, instead of actually having the mask on your character.
I think I would want:
-Kanohi Ignika (grants user 2 extra lives)
-Kanohi Hau (can ignore one hit point in melee combat)
-Kanohi Pakari (makes melee attacks 3 hit points instead of 2)
-Kanohi Olmak (if hit by a thornax, you can take a move shot instead of damage, 3 uses)
-Kanohi Kakama (Can take 2 move shots each turn)
If you would like to work on card designs, I don’t have a problem with that, but like I said, I won’t be printing the cards. I would just post a printable document with them on it.
I wanted to ask you some questions about the cards in-game:
-How would you implement the cards?
-Would you have only kanohi cards or other types of card?
-How would you get the cards in-game?