Caelum: the Sun and the Moon

[Zelc]

(This has no relationship to the Dominions 4 Caelum. Other possible name: Luminar. Images are from League of Legends, used for rough visualization.)

Caelum

The Power of the Sun.


The Grace of the Moon.


The Madness of the Stars.




Units and Command Cards here.

[Fingolfin]

Out of curiosity, what is the reason for the Caelum Spear Warband having 7 dice?

[Zelc]

There's a lot of them. And honestly, it's to make the points for the upgrades work out :p.

[Kevin]

Interesting.

Suggested revision:

My opponent took a Sidereal Horror. How do I deal with it?

Take a few archers and machine gun that that 517-point 2/2 unit into the afterlife.  Watch your opponent break down sobbing.   

[Zelc]

Interesting.

Suggested revision:

My opponent took a Sidereal Horror. How do I deal with it?

Take a few archers and machine gun that that 517-point 2/2 unit into the afterlife.  Watch your opponent break down sobbing.   

Units without Terrifying engaged with Sidereal Horror must make a Terror Check during every pre-Combat Courage phase. Units without Terrifying make a Terror Check in the pre-Combat Courage phase before targeting Sidereal Horror with ranged attacks or spells. Units failing a Terror check induced by Sidereal Horror take 2 damage in addition to the normal Fear effect. (Max 1 fear check per unit per turn.)

It's basically a 50/50 chance of it being a D 3/3 or a D 2/2.

[Zelc]

By the way, what this faction really needs is a use for erasing the Sun and Moon boxes. The challenge is to find something worth 20 points per box erased as a one-shot effect, ideally not healing (which is a bit overused IMO).

Right now the "faction ability" benefit comes from boosting the command cards, as well as deciding your matchups.

EDIT: Alternatively, this could be some sort of Movement & Command phase ability which doesn't have a checkbox.


I'm also trying to decide whether a) I should add a ~250->300-point monk unit or a ~300->350-point heavy infantry unit, and b) if I do, whether I should remove the Star-Warped Brute. I'm not sure about a) because the 300-400 gap and the lack of a traditional heavy infantry unit could be a weakness of this faction.

[Kevin]

Man, I need to read more carefully.  OK fair. I suppose that means that, for once, Bravery on Hawkshold archers won't be a complete waste of points!    And of course Skeleton Bowmen & Wuxing crossbowmen will be like "Whatever."  Zap! Zap! Zap!

[Zelc]

Man, I need to read more carefully.  OK fair. I suppose that means that, for once, Bravery on Hawkshold archers won't be a complete waste of points!    And of course Skeleton Bowmen & Wuxing crossbowmen will be like "Whatever."  Zap! Zap! Zap!

The best counters include Giant Catapult, Longbeards, Lords of Dusk, and the T-Rex .

EDIT: By the way, I flipped the order of that sentence to hopefully make it easier to understand .

[Fingolfin]

There's a lot of them. And honestly, it's to make the points for the upgrades work out :p.

Makes sense.

[Fingolfin]

By the way, what this faction really needs is a use for erasing the Sun and Moon boxes. The challenge is to find something worth 20 points per box erased as a one-shot effect, ideally not healing (which is a bit overused IMO).

Right now the "faction ability" benefit comes from boosting the command cards, as well as deciding your matchups.

EDIT: Alternatively, this could be some sort of Movement & Command phase ability which doesn't have a checkbox.


I'm also trying to decide whether a) I should add a ~250->300-point monk unit or a ~300->350-point heavy infantry unit, and b) if I do, whether I should remove the Star-Warped Brute. I'm not sure about a) because the 300-400 gap and the lack of a traditional heavy infantry unit could be a weakness of this faction.

If you wanted to do something kind of boring, you could have be sun and moon boxes be erased for +1/+1+1 and +1/+1 respectively. Something I think would be slightly more interesting would be to erase the sun box for +3/0/+1 and erase the moon box for +1 MC.

Also, good to see a faction with tigers. Those beasts are criminally underused!

[Zelc]

Those are potential ideas. I'm worried they still won't get used. The cost of erasing Sun boxes is giving up A(+0)+0/+1 for the rest of the game; the cost of erasing Moon boxes is giving up D+1/+0 for the rest of the game. I can see people maybe using one or the other in an rare situations (like when their unit is about to die), but it seems too situational.

It's a hard faction ability to design .

[RushAss]

Man, those command cards are super texty

[Zelc]

I changed the Command Cards a lot, with some simplifications. The question is should they get better or worse on units with marked boxes?

For the faction ability, I'm leaning more towards a simple M&C phase ability that doesn't use a box. I don't know what that is yet .

Added the Monks, don't know if I'll keep them. They might round out the faction too much. EDIT2: I think either the Celestial Monks or the Star-Warped Brutes will be cut.

Also tinkered with the Levies and the Knights. EDIT: also made the impact hit conversion ability of the Light Cavalry a default ability. This removes all of the riders on the faction ability.

EDIT3: I'm also not sure the Priests are really necessary.

[Zelc]

I've made a bunch of changes to the faction:

Additional faction ability: spend a command action to draw your choice of a bad Hardened or a bad Parry (no dice, but you have control). You can also spend 15 points for it. Many units in this faction are costed similarly, so this is designed to give the faction more flexibility in army construction.

Levies get spears so it's easier to justify giving them the Sun bonus. Their 3/4/4 boxes reflect them being a rabble of untrained draftees.

Spear Warband get a slightly better health box structure: 5/3/4 to reflect them being similar to a bad phalanx.

As mentioned before, Caelum Light Cavalry have their anti-Impact Hit ability as a base ability to remove riders on the faction ability.

I've split Celestial Monks into Monks of the Moon and Soldiers of the Sun. Monks of the Moon tilts towards defense, while Soldiers of the Sun is a glass cannon offensive unit.

As mentioned before, Knights of the Sun gets Centaur Javelins to cut down on new mechanics. It also lets me remove their rider on the faction ability.

For now, I've brought back Star-Warped Brutes. Not sure I'll keep it; that'll probably require some playtesting and feedback.


I'll probably make proxies for this for print and on VASSAL soon.