Just want to let folks know that LANDWAR is still being worked on, we are organizing our next update. 

We recently ran a 2v2 objective-hold scenario; about 700 pts per side and 6 turns. Fantastic game, both sides were neck and neck till about turn 5, and the victors won by a small margin. One army was a mix of kaiju-sized dinosaurs backed up by some mecha. The opposite force was all battle mechs and steampunk tanks. What we discovered was that melee is in a bit of a rough state.

As I noted in an older blog post about initiative design in wargames, melee is the most influenced by such design. The ability to close with a target, to 'tarpit' a unit in melee regardless of success of a melee attack, can be incredibly swingy for many games. LANDWAR isn't much of an exception.  After the battle the playtesters and ourselves discussed lightweight fixes to give melee a bit more of a chance:

• increase threat bubble of melee units to trigger Danger Close from 1" to 2", but not Melee range.
• Blanket -1 ATK for any unit that retreats from Danger Close.
• Additional -1 ATK if retreating unit wants to target the attacker that caused Danger Close.
• Reducing cost of Melee damage in the unit's points-cost.
• Reducing cost of several melee-only tags.

We will be testing this soon.

The reasoning is Danger Close is the compromise to keep melee units from being completely shot off the board.  LANDWAR is primarily a ranged-combat game, the core rules give some space to melee, but will struggle to make a super compelling melee experience. However, the above changes should  give melee units an ability to meaningfully participate in a battle.

The other changes involve tightening up various tags, and we've created the formal list of Advanced Rules and Modules. 

• Composite Units
  
• Multi-Mode Units 
  
• Limited-use item/weapons.
  

And a few new tags have been added for further creation of more unique / niche units.

We don't have a strong timeline for rolling these changes out, but sometime in June/July 2024.