Rising Dragon Gameplay & Impressions | Future/Modern Wargame Board Game | Flying Pig Games

0:00 Hi everybody, I'm Solo Blitz and welcome. The year is 2034 and China has invaded Taiwan. We're going to take a look at Rising Dragon, which is a tactical tabletop wargame that explores this topic set in the near future with a decided sci-fi edge to it. This game from Flying Pig Games is a sister game to the very popular Armageddon War. In this video, we're going to show how core gameplay works, talk about some of the other units in the game, and then I'm going to offer up some impressions. Now, this game is also available for pre-order on the Flying Pig Games website. I'll put a link to that page down below. So, I've got a scenario set up here with Rising Dragon, and the goal for the next 20 minutes or so is going to be to take a look at the core gameplay. Now, this is a deep and complex game. It's also a very unique combat system. So, showing everything would be beyond the scope of one video, but I do want to show the core gameplay.

0:54 So, I've set up one of the earlier introductory scenarios here. We'll talk about this in more detail in a moment. But, this will give us a look at how combat works, at how all the dice system works, and at the main features of gameplay. Then, once we've taken a look at about 20 minutes of gameplay with the scenario, I'm going to show some of the other units because there's a lot There's a great variety of units in this game, things like drones and bots. And so, showing everything in one video would be impossible, but I do want to highlight some of the other types of units that are here. So, after we take a look at gameplay here, we'll take a look at that. And then, I'm going to wrap up and offer up some impressions of gameplay. Now, one quick caveat as we're looking at this, this is a prototype of the game. So, the final version of the game, both counter art, map art, some of the rules, different things might change a fair bit between now and the time the game gets published. Also, a second caveat, I'm still very much learning this system.

1:55 This has got a lot of pieces, a lot of moving elements to it. And while I think I've got the main elements of gameplay down, I wouldn't be surprised if there are some mistakes from a gameplay element in this video. So, I wouldn't trust this so much as a tutorial as a video that's giving you a flavor of gameplay to see if this game and this gameplay would be something that you would like. Now, what are we looking at? Well, Rising Dragon comes with two maps. So, we're looking at one of these two maps. The This is a very urban map. As we see here, we can see a lot of buildings, and we'll talk about how that's impacting the scenario in a little bit. It's also the one that's got the the coastal area on it, too, for the the landing invasion scenarios that are in the game. The second map is quite a bit more rural.

2:41 There's a lot more open spaces. You've got elevation like hills, and line of sight plays a bigger role because in here, line of sight is very restricted by the urban environment. And this introductory scenario takes place in this limited area. A number of the scenarios use only a portion of the maps. So, I've blocked them off with the borders here. We've got a relatively small number of units, but we're going to play through a turn or two here until basically we see everything that thing everything that I want to show you in the game in terms of the core gameplay. So, with that being said, let's zoom in on our tactical situation right here. Let's talk about it, and let's get started. So, here is our Here's a close-up look at our scenario. Chinese forces are in yellow, and they have just landed on the shore here. Their goal is to push inland and take these objectives. Taiwanese forces are in gray. They have only these units here.

3:34 There's an infantry unit, and then an Humvee unit with the special anti-armor weapon here that starts the map on the on the starts on the map. They have another one up here, but they have a vast array of reinforcements we can see off the map. These come in on their second activation. We'll talk more about how that works in a little bit. So, the onus of attack [snorts] is on the Chinese forces. They have to push in and they into win the scenario, the scenarios don't have turns. They have activations. After the 10th activation, the Chinese, in order to win, have to have units in two of these three objectives. Now, if they lose, they have two hovercraft down here, one here and one here that currently are holding units. If they lose a one of their hovercrafts, they in then turn have to take all three objectives. If the Chinese forces lose both of their hovercraft, they automatically lose the scenario. These hovercraft, as a special rule, they cannot move. They they are restricted to their landing places here. They're going to unload some forces and then they're going to stay here. So, the Taiwanese theoretically could try to take the advantage and push down here and try to wipe these out, but that's a pretty tall order for the Taiwanese at this point in time. So, as we look at this, the goal is for the Chinese forces to move inland, grab these objectives, and there is going to be basically a slugfest cuz this is all heavy urban terrain here.

4:58 We've got heavy woods here and we've got light urban terrain here. All of these terrain features block line of sight. So, for the most part, without any altitude in here, you know, we've got some open spaces up here, but for the most part, it's going to be moving units and then having them, you know, fight adjacent to each other, perhaps some close combat in this situation to try to slug it out. So, this is a bloody slugfest of a scenario with heavy casualties expected on both sides. And casualties do not play except for the Chinese Zubrs, their hovercraft here. They do not play a role in the outcome of the scenario. So, you can lose as many forces as you want as long as you hold those objectives at the end of the scenario. So, there is a rough outline of our scenario. Now, let's dig in and talk a little bit Let's dig in and get started and let's talk a little bit about how we do do Rising Dragon works on somewhat of a chit pull system in a formation activation system. Now, this scenario only has one formation for each side.

5:55 So, all of the Taiwanese forces are part of this 333rd mechanized unit, and all of the Chinese forces are part of this first amphibious unit uh formation. So, anytime the Chinese pull this chit out of the draw pile, all of their forces are going to get activated. Likewise, this would the same would happen for the Taiwanese forces. In larger scenarios where there are multiple formations, each side might have chits for these tokens for a number of different formations. So, you would be only activating a portion of your forces. But, in this smaller scenario, everything goes for each side because everything is in one formation. Now, by rule, the first amphibious gets the first activation. So, we're putting this chit here, and I'll show where it goes in a moment, over on the number one activation space.

6:46 Then, once all of the Chinese forces have moved and attacked and done their thing, we're going to then randomly pull one of these three chits, and that formation will get activated. Once we've pulled and activated all four of these chits, we leave the most recently pulled chit on the the board on the turn track, and then recycle the three that are left. So, there's could be an imbalance here, too. Like, if you have the if the Taiwanese were the fourth one to be activated, we're going to have two Chinese chits and one Taiwanese chit in the next cycle of turns. So, you could get a disadvantage of activations depending on how this works out. Now, in the shorter scenario, it's you know, it it has a bigger impact. In a larger scenario, it's not that big of an impact, comparatively speaking. But, that's roughly how the activation system works. So, let's take the first Chinese activation for the first amphibious, and I've put it on spot one on the turn activation track, and this goes all the way up to 10. So, once we pull the next one, it'll go on spot two, and then so on until we complete all 10 activations in the scenario where we're playing the whole thing. So, we've activated the Chinese forces. Let's now come in and start to move them around and do things.

8:00 So, let's jump in now and do the Chinese activation. In this game, you activate a single unit and do all its stuff with it, and then you go to another unit and activate that unit and do all the stuff with it there. You can move units, fire units, you can fire and move, you can move and fire. A lot of different combinations of actions, but you you you exhaust one unit's options, and then you move on to the next unit. So, with that in mind, let's take a look at what we have for Chinese forces and think about what we want to do and then get them moving. So, if we look at the Chinese forces here, we have these tracked vehicles. There's a T down by the movement factor, which is the middle number on these units. These are tracked ZTD05s, which have a fairly strong punch and a range of seven. The attack values and combat values are on the left here. Their defense numbers of the units are on the right-hand side. They are only ones. So, these are thin-skinned vehicles that can deal a somewhat effective offensive punch.

8:54 Now, to We also have two of these Zubrs, which are extraordinarily large hovercraft. And again, as we mentioned, they are stationary. They can't move. So, they really can't hit anything either because nothing's in line of sight. This is all blocking their line of sight. But, inside of these Zubrs, we have some APCs that are have a fairly strong punch of their own. And then, inside of each of these APZs, we have some Chinese infantry platoons that have these machine guns. Now, the scenario rules listed a different type of machine gun that wasn't in the counter set. That often happens with prototypes, so I'm just using a machine gun support weapon that I could find that I think would probably be the same value. So, we have infantry platoons with these support weapons inside APCs, and these APCs are inside the Zubr. So, the first goal we're going to have is to get them out.

9:41 Now, there there's a a little bit of a contrad- a little bit of an odd scenario rule that I think is another thing that has to do with the prototype factor that said, "As the Chinese forces, you can start one vehicle from each Zubr." These are supposed to be inside the Zubrs at the start, but the rule said you can start one vehicle inside the Zubr in the scenario. However, it also says that these APCs have the infantry loaded at the beginning, and you can't unload the infantry until the activation after they leave the Zubrs. So, if you actually start them outside of the Zubrs, they can get all the way to their objective on their first activation, which I feel like is what that rule is trying to prevent. So, for the sake of gameplay, I'm keeping the APCs and the infantry platoon units inside of the Zubrs, and these ZTDs are outside. Okay, so all of that being said, what are we trying to do as the Chinese? Well, we want to move inland. However, there's a couple of problems here. Problem number one for the armed for the tracked vehicles are these Humvees with these I-Tow vehicular anti-tank weapons. These are pretty nasty. They have an attack strength of 10 on the left, and there is opportunity fire in this game. So, if we were to move this ZTD by itself up here and go one, two, then this would perform opportunity fire, and very potentially knock this out. It's got a fairly strong attack against this. Now, we're probably going to have to attack these as the Chinese anyway, but what I'd like to do is to rush them with many targets so that they can only take one of them out, and we can get it with the other two or three that make it through. So, we're

11:12 not going to do that on the first turn. Instead, on the first turn, let's think about what we want to do. We're going to Basically, I just want to try to get our units inland, get them unloaded, get them in positions where they can start to move forward. So, it's going to be a fairly conservative turn. Let us move this ZTD up one, and movement factors for let's talk a little bit about movement. The movement could be of a variety of types. We have a T here on this unit on the bottom middle which means it's a tracked unit. So we look on the terrain chart and tracked for urban terrain is a cost of one movement point per hex. So for dense urban actually for dense urban tracked is two. So it costs two movement points for this ZTD to move here. But again it has seven so I'm in pretty good shape. I'm not going to move forward another one cuz then the uh Humvees could could really lay into us. Now the So that unit now is done.

12:08 And when a unit is done we take these really neat These are one of my favorite little cool things here. We take these really neat tags on them which means it's taken an action. A green token means that this has taken an action and its activation status is at minus one. So that unit has completed its turn. Now next up we want to get these things out of the Zubrs and by that scenario rule we can't unload these APCs until the activation after they leave. So let's push them to be safe let's unload them from the Zubr which costs them half of their movement points which is fine. But we'll move them right here. I don't want this we'll have the the tanks here protect them. We're The Zubrs can't move but they use half of their movement points to unload them. So both of these units are activated now. We'll put activation markers on them. Likewise we're going to do the same thing over here. Let's move this ZTD up. Now light terrain tracked vehicles in light urban terrain are only a movement cost of one so this would only take one of its seven movement points. And likewise let's unload the Zubr right here in the space here. So now all of the Chinese forces have activated and their their turn their activation is done. So now we're going to pick one of the three activation chips here. Either 2/3 of a chance it could be Taiwanese forces 1/3 it could be Chinese again going. So off camera I'm just going to pull out one of these three randomly, see which one it is, and we get the Oh. Chinese forces get to go again. That's pretty helpful for them. So, I'm taking this activation

13:40 token and putting it on the number two slot on the turn. This is the second activation of 10 in this scenario. And at the beginning of every turn, what we do is a reset of the units. So, they get to basically regain some of their activation loss. Now, how it works, roughly speaking, is you run it through a a just a quick checklist for each unit. Every unit at the beginning of a new activation loses one step of degradation. So, all of these Chinese units are going to lose this one step, and they're all going to be fully active. However, we'll notice that we have some units that could be pinned, some units that could be shaken. For pinned and shaken units, there's also a chance here. Uh if you are in a type of terrain that gives you cover against all enemy fire, you get an additional step of activation. So, these units here are in urban terrain. Uh and so, if these were at minus two pinned, they would get one automatically, and because they're in terrain that offers protection, they would get a second level of activation, which would remove their pinned status. Likewise, if there's nothing that can shoot at you at that moment in time from the enemy, you also get an extra point of activation.

14:54 So, a unit here, for example, that were shaken would get one for normal activation, one because it's in good defensive terrain, and a third one for being and no enemy could fire at it cuz this terrain blocks the line of sight. So, this would actually, if it were shaken, it would come back all the way up to full status. But, for the moment, uh we don't have to worry about those details. We're just going to remove all of the activations on the Chinese units because they're all at step one minus one from their previous activations on the previous turn. So, they all get at least one, so we know they're all going to be able to activate in this next activation. So, there can be some other elements that could influence this activation morale regaining step, but there aren't any in this particular scenario. And those three are the core ones that you're looking for in most every turn. So, now the question is the Chinese are really getting a fast offensive here. So, what do we want to do? Well, I think we want to show combat too. So, this might not be the brightest thing, but it's time for us to do, I think, let's do a Zerg rush on this unit here because we want to try to take out this Humvee if we can and get rid of them and see if we can push up to this objective very which is the objective that's just off the top of the screen here.

16:08 This one right here. Let's see if we can do some damage here to these Taiwanese units. So, with that in mind, we are going to push this ZTD forward. It costs two movement points for a tracked vehicle in heavy urban terrain and we have we're going to move and then try to fire on this unit. But, now this it's we can't let the Chinese as the Taiwanese forces we can't let the Chinese get a clean shot off and we know they're going to shoot at the Humvee for sure cuz this this towed weapon here is a threat. The Humvee has got no activation tokens on it, which means that it can fire opportunity fire. So, let's have the Humvee fire with this I-Tow anti-tank weapon at the ZTD and see if we can do some damage. So, there is a lot to unpack here. We're going to go through the whole combat process and it's actually going to show us a lot about the subtleties of combat in Rising Dragon.

17:01 What we're trying to do at the end of this process is to determine how many hits go on this ZTD. And each hit reduces it by an action step. So, if it takes one hit, it's going to get one. If it takes two, it's pinned. If it it three, it's shaken. If it takes four, we're going to flip it over and that's reduced. And if it takes five, it's wiped out and it becomes a wreck. So, the whole point of all this attack is to determine how many hits happen on this ZTD. Now, we've got a Humvee and an I-tow and an infantry unit. We're going to fire with the Humvee is going to fire its opportunity fire. Vehicular support weapons act independently, so we have to pick which one. We're going to fire the I-tow because it's got an attack strength here of eight. The attack factors and combat factors are on the left and it's yellow, which means it's good against armored targets. We can see the defense type here is only a defense of one, but it's also yellow, which means it's a yellow armored attack against an armored target. That's what we're looking for. You'll notice that the infantry up here has a red three.

18:04 That's an infantry attack value, which means that that won't do very much damage when the colors don't match up. So, when you're attacking, essentially, you want the colors to match. Armored weapons firing against armored targets, and that's what we've got here. So, we want to fire the I-tow rather than the Humvee's red three, which is an infantry and a machine guns and things like that firing against this armored vehicle aren't going to do any good. So, we're firing the I-tow vehicle. And so, the first thing we need to do is to compare the attack factor here of eight to the defensive factor of one, which gives us a seven. That means, technically speaking, we would be rolling seven black dice to determine how many hits we get on this defensive vehicle. However, however, the defensive number in yellow is is a one and the defensive shield is a one. This means when both the shield and the number are the same, it means they have special reactive armor against armor-piercing weapons. So, that means you add two to its defense factor. This one here is a shaped charge. It's got a yellow both yellow. That means it's one of these shaped charges, which is the type of weapon that this defense is aimed to stop. So, instead of it being eight against one, we're going to add two to it, making eight against three, which means that we are down to five attack dice. And that's our first calculation. Now, the next thing we're going to walk through a number of modifiers. Modifiers can do one of two things. They can reduce the number of

19:34 the dice you're throwing. They can also reduce the quality of the dice. Green dice is a minus die quality. There aren't as many hits on the green dice. Red dice makes it even more likely damage is going to happen. So, red dice are stronger than black and green are weaker than black. So, now we're going to walk through this attack through a series of steps using the terrain chart, using some of the various factors with combat, to determine how many of these five dice are of what quality. The first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to look at the terrain combat reference and we're going to take a look at what happens for a tracked unit, which is what this ZTD is, in heavy terrain. And if we look at the tracked unit in heavy terrain, we get a and dense urban terrain, we get a minus one. Now, this is a die roll quality modifier, so it's going to be down to four black dice and instead of five black dice, we're going to have four black dice and one green die because the quality has been reduced because this ZTD is got some armor, got some heavy urban terrain for cover.

20:41 Now, the next thing we look at is tech difference and this highlights another factor of combat. This lightning bolt here could be black or it could be red, as we see over here, or it could be green. Green is the weakest, red is the strongest. This is a level of the technology, kind of the elan and the experience of the unit. Uh if there's a difference in these, then there's going to be a plus or minus die roll quality. But, we'll notice that both of these are black, so the Humvee and the ZTD are both black, so there's no change because of that die roll modifier. If there were a wreck in the hex, we would use minus one for the die roll quality, but there isn't a wreck yet. There might be after this attack. Now, moving fire has some dice roll qualities to it, too. We'll take a look at those momentarily, but this opportunity fire from the Humvee, it's not moving, so there's no dice roll quality penalties for this opportunity fire because the Humvee isn't moving. Is the If it's a partial line of sight block, it's minus one, but there's nothing here. Now, if the unit is retreating, it's minus two on the die roll quality.

21:47 And let's talk about that. So, one of the things that you decide when a unit is attacked is one of three things that the defender picks. The defender can either say, "I'm doing nothing at all. I'm just going to take the fire." The defender can counter fire, which means that as you're firing at the defender, the defender is doing everything it can to fire back. Or the defender can retreat. Now, in this case where the offensive player is moving, offensive players cannot use counter fire. So, that choice is not available to the Chinese ZTD. However, offensive units that are moved can opt to retreat if they want to as part of this movement. And actually, I think in this case, we want to burn up the Humvee's opportunity fire. So, we are going to opt to retreat. In order to do so, you have to be able to move to someplace that's going to be out of the line of sight and you have enough movement points to do it. Both of those things count. So, the Chinese unit's actually going to opt to retreat here. It's moving forward, it's taking this fire by this I-TOW, and it's like, "Okay, we've drawn fire from the enemy. We're getting out of here." So, retreating as an option reduces the die roll quality by two. So, we are down two another two lighter dice. So, we've got two black dice and three green dice.

23:04 Now, the next thing that we look at is close range. If there there's a a calculation to determine whether a weapon or a unit is at close range. However, this red circle as part of the range for this I-TOW means that close range is not a factor. If it were a factor, it would add two to the dice roll quality pushing them back to black. Long range likewise would be minus two, but this I-TOW it's a basically a missile that doesn't matter what range it's at, so it doesn't have any modifiers there. If we were counter firing as the Chinese, which we can't do, it'd be plus one die roll qualifier. And then there's some other elements of flanking fire or combined fire that don't apply in these cases. So, we now have walked through all of the combat modifiers for this attack. It sounds like a lot and it is the first couple times you do it, but after a while you know which ones don't count and you get pretty fast at it. So, now it is time finally for the I-TOW to fire at this ZTD.

23:59 Now, what we're going to look for it, we're going to get on these dice here if we look at them. We can see that we either get these little explosions or we get these little shields. The shields are the hits if the shields are the strikes if the unit were counter firing. So, we're going to ignore these on this attack because the Chinese unit cannot counter fire. What we're looking for are these explosion marks which tell how many strikes this I-TOW got on this ZTD. So, we are rolling five dice for the I-TOW missile. We got ooh, that's a pretty good one here. Let's take a look at these. So, the ZTD has taken three strikes. There's one calculation that we have to do that determines how many of these strikes actually convert to hits. If the attack color yellow is the same as the defensive color yellow, then the hits translate at a one-to-one ratio.

24:50 So, this is actually going to take three hits. If the if that were not the case, you would look at the explosion mark behind the attack factor and see if that is the same as the defense factor. If that's the case, two strikes convert to one hit rounded down. If there were no color matches, for example, if it didn't match up at all, then it would be a three to one ratio of strikes to hits. But in this case, this is an armor-piercing weapon firing at an armored target, it gets three strikes and it's going to convert it at a one-to-one ratio. So, it's three hits on the the ZTD. Now, the first hit is an action marker, the second hit is going to pin it, and the third one is going to shake it, but it does get to pull off that retreat. So, we're going to move it back one hex. So, the end result of this opportunity fire is the ZTD falls back and it's going to end up shaken. But, this unit has accomplished its mission, right? We drew out the the fire of the Humvee because opportunity fire is an action, and now this Humvee can no longer fire opportunity fire because it's used up its opportunity fire. So, the ZTD has accomplished its mission. It took a beating a little bit, but it's drawn the fire out of the the Humvee, and now we can do as the Chinese what we want to do with the next units here, which is really have some fun.

26:09 We're going to move this tracked vehicle, the ZTD, in light urban terrain is one, and then two, it's going to be up here, three, and it's going to move next to this tracked vehicle. We know the infantry is here, too, but I don't We're not going to have the infantry fire opportunity fire. It's not going to be very good at this unit. Um it's only attack strength of three and it's one, and it's going to need to translate hits at a very poor ratio. So, we're not going to do that. So, the ZTD moves up here. This can no longer opportunity fire, but the ZTD now can fire on the ITO vehicle. So, let's do that. So, now let's walk through the ZTD's attack on the ITO on the Humvee vehicle here. We can see We're going to do this a lot quicker than the last one. We can see it's got five an attack power of five against a defense of zero. So, we're going to start out with five black dice.

26:55 Now, one of the decisions that the Humvee will have to do is to whether it's going to counter fire, and I think it probably will cuz it has potential to do some pretty good damage both ways here. So, but let's walk through the attack factors here first. So, the defensive value of the Humvee, this is dense urban terrain underneath it. That's minus one die quality, so it's going to be down to four black dice and one green die. The tech difference is black and black. zero. There's no wrecks in the hex, so that doesn't come into play. We come now to moving fire. Now, this ZTD moved one to move into this light urban terrain and then two to move here, which has moved it's moved three of its seven movement points. If you move less than half your movement points, it's a minus one die roll qualifier. If you move more than half your movement points, it's minus two it providing you have some movement points left. If you move all your movement points, it's a minus three die roll qualifier. So, this is three out of seven, which is less than half, so that's going to be another minus one die roll qualifier. So, it's down to two black and two green. Now, the choice that the Humvee has to make is to whether it wants to retreat or whether it wants to try to hold and fire counter fire. Now, counter fire works but basically we're going to get the same number of strikes with these shields, and it's quite effective.

28:11 But, it does add one die roll quality to the attack because you're you're exposing yourself more to shoot at the enemy. Now, the there are also limits to the qualifier here. It's the attack difference, which would be eight cuz we're going to fire the support weapon here minus three again cuz it's the right type of defense. So, it would be five minus one if the defender is in positive defensive terrain. So, it'd be a maximum of four hits we can do, and then it's also minus one for each step there. So, the most we could do is three steps of damage on the ZTD, which would shake it quite badly, but not do any damage. So, the question is, do we want to try to retreat with this? And I think the answer is going to be yes. The reason also we want to retreat, I think, in this situation is we know that this unit's going We're going to get two activations in a row as the the Taiwanese forces here. So, we can And we're getting reinforcements, so I think it makes sense to bail out of here. So, we're going to retreat instead of counter-firing. Because we're retreating, the die roll quality goes down two more. So, now it's down to one black and four green. Now, we come to the close-range, long-range calculation for the ZTD. The range here is seven, and it's only one hex away. So, this most definitely is close range. So, we're going to add back in two die roll qualities to it, which means we're three blacks and two greens. And then there is no counter-fire, and we've already looked at there's no specialized defense, combined fire, or flanking

29:42 fire. So, this is our final attack value on the Humvee here. So, the ZTD opens fire. Oof. Because the Humvee wasn't returning fire, there is We ignore the shields, but we do get three strikes. And again, this is a yellow target firing on a yellow defense. So, it's a straight one-to-one transfer of of hits. So, the I the Humvee here is going to take three hits. However, it's already at minus one. So, its first hit pins it. Second hit is going to shake it, and the third hit is going to flip it over and reduce it to its reduced state. So, the Humvee has lost a couple of vehicles from their platoon, and it's shaken instead of at this action status. So, it's a pretty big mess here now, and it's going to retreat. So, it pulls out of that square. We're going to push it straight back. It does still, however, have its ITO capacity, which is the most important thing. And that ends that activation and that fire for the Chinese ZTD because it's taken an action we put a minus one underneath it and as that action ends the Chinese forces now have done their first damage as they have reduced the Humvee by a full step and shaken the unit badly. Let's keep up the pressure on this Humvee which is in disrepair right now. We are going to go down to the ZBDs here which have the infantry squads in them. For the first action we are going to have the ZBD unload this infantry squad. Now unloading a squad costs half of the

31:13 movement factor rounded up. So this is seven. It's going to use four of its movement points to unload the infantry. Then it's going to move one five six and through these light terrain each one costs one so it can move seven and just make it here. Now the infantry we are going we'll we'll come back and finish this attack momentarily. Infantry will move out here. That is actually unloading is half of its movement points which would be rounded up which would be two and then it's going to cost one to go into this light terrain. So the infantry has moved three and they So the infantry has moved three and they are done. But we're going to come up here now and finish this ZBD which can fire at the Humvee. It's moved all of its movement points so it's not going to be the greatest attack but still we want to try to see if we can finish this off as the Chinese and we've got a lot of damage done on it already. So let's figure out this attack. It has a base of four dice and we know that the Humvee's defense here is a base zero. So we're going to start with four black dice. Now this is not heavy terrain here. This this one here is light urban terrain. So there is no defensive modifier for light urban terrain for wheeled vehicles. So that doesn't change anything. The tech difference is the same. There's not a wreck in the hex. Moving fire however the ZBD moved all of its movement points so it's a minus three modifier on the ZBD which means one black die and three green dice.

32:40 No Now the the question here is do we want to retreat? However, the unit is shaken. It cannot do that. When the unit is shaken or pinned, it cannot retreat. We also have the unit at close range, which is going to add two dice roll factors back in, which means that we are now up to three black and one green. So, now we have to decide whether the Humvee here is going to counterfire and risk sticking its neck out. Again, counterfire damage is limited by the attack difference and some other factors. The attack difference is 8 - 1 + 2 is 3, so 5. Then it's - 1 if you've got any defensive terrain here. It doesn't have any defensive terrain cuz a tracked vehicle in light urban terrain does not give you a defensive bonus. So, the maximum is still five. However, it's

33:27 1 for each step, so 5 6 7. So, it'd be

33:31 3 gives a maximum of two damage that the unit can do. Hmm. Yeah, - 2 really doing two damage on this really isn't going to do much. At the most it's going to be a shaken. Um I think we might want to just take a gamble here and Now, it's only going to change the defense by one, so let's add in the uh counterfire. We'll just do it to see how it works out. Then all the other factors do not apply. So, it's a straight-up four dice roll black dice here, and only one hit will wipe out the Humvee. So, Humvee's looking in dire straits, but we do have counterfire. Yeah, that's a pretty uh dire situation here for the Humvee. It gets hit four times, so the ITO is knocked out, the Humvee is wiped out, and we're going to replace it with a wreck. So, that's gone. First casualties as the Chinese forces push forward. Now, the counterfire does count. It is 1 2 3 hits on the counterfire, which actually uh because the most we could do is two damage, it is going to actually pin the unit and the unit moved, so it falls degrades to shaken status. Now, in this kind of a case, should the unit be shaken and it's movement uh you can never lose you can never flip and lose take casualties because of the action phase. So, if it were at minus three and then we had to pay one for the action it took to move forward, it would still stay at minus three. Um but so, the ZBD gets shaken, but the uh

35:02 Taiwanese forces, the brave defenders here, have suffered some casualties. Thinking a little retrospectively here, in hindsight, we it might have been a good idea to try to fire this infantry on the ZBD to see if it could have opportunity fired and taken it down a little bit here, but um yeah, a little bit too late for that at the moment. So, the last Chinese unit to act is this ZBD down here, and I think what we'll do is we're going to have it move one forward and then unload the infantry, and the infantry we can actually

35:28 [clears throat]

35:28 unload into this square right here because terrain uh infantry moving into dense urban costs one movement point, and it costs half its movement points to unload, so that would be two of its three movement points in the middle to unload and one to move up into this square, and now it's right up next to this infantry. And with that, we can have this infantry opportunity fire on this Chinese infantry. So, infantry fire basically works the same as does with other types all the fire works the same. The these red on red are a little bit tough to see in the prototypes, but this is an attack factor of three, and it's firing against a defensive factor of one, so that is two dice. Let's walk through the modifiers here. This is uh black on black, so there is no tech difference.

36:19 There's uh no wreck in the hex. The opportunity fire it hasn't moved, so that doesn't matter. Uh the attacking unit could retreat if it wants to, but let's not do that. So, it's going to stay there. Now, this is at close range. The infantry has a range of two, but half or less rounded down is close fire. So, that means the two black dice actually going to shift out to two red dice. Oh, I forgot the defensive modifier. We are in dense urban terrain for infantry, which is minus two die roll qualifier. So, that actually brings it back down to black. Now, the question is do we want the removing unit? We cannot counter fire cuz we were moving up in here and none of the other modifiers apply. So, we are rolling straight up two black dice for the opportunity fire of the Taiwanese infantry on the Chinese unit. Ah, they get three shields. No hits whatsoever.

37:07 That is not what we were hoping for the infantry here. Now, they get tagged with an action for doing the opportunity fire and we will have the infantry now fire at the the Chinese infantry fire at the Taiwanese infantry. Same thing, we get three, but they get to add in because these are the same color. They get to add in their support weapon, which is four on one, which gives it a defense a change a dice roll attack of three. This light infantry is in urban terrain, so it's minus two die roll number here for the terrain that it's in and we'll walk through the numbers again. The tech difference is the same. There's no wreck in the hex. This was moving fire. It completely moved their whole movement factor, so it's minus three. So, that would move it down one and plus two that we have to keep in our head here, right?

37:53 So, it's minus five. And then it's at close range, which is plus two, but that's going to wash out because we already moved in those three. So, it's at minus three. So, three green dice and that's the only factors that are there. The question is do we want to have the defensive unit here fire opportunity fire at the fire um counter fire at the infantry unit. The most it could do is 3 minus 1 is 2. It's infantry must It couldn't do any damage because of all the other factors that are there. So, we will actually just stay where we are. We're not going to try to retreat here. So, three shots from the infantry, the Chinese infantry, on the Taiwanese infantry. Oh, they get two hits. This is red on red, so the infantry goes to pinned and then shaken.

38:41 So, we add the pinned and shaken We add the shaken marker to the infantry in this Chinese infantry took an action, so it's minus one. We also moved and unloaded the Z PD, so that's done. Everything is moved. We know the Zubers cannot activate anymore cuz they they have to stay there and they have nothing to shoot at. So, that ends the Chinese activation. And with that, we've gone on more than a half an hour. We've walked through counter-fire, opportunity fire, infantry versus infantry, armor versus armor. We've destroyed a unit. We've talked about retreating and all different elements of combat. We've seen all of the core actions of the game. So, with that in mind, I want to show to a little bit here. Now, this is obviously very early. The Taiwanese are going to get two activations, and they have, as we saw, a ton of reinforcements coming in to try to push back these Chinese units.

39:28 And even though they lost their Humvee with their strongest anti-tank weapon, you know, this unit up here is shaken. So, as these Taiwanese forces come in, they can probably put some pretty significant damage on some of these worn-down Chinese units. And we have another one of those strong Humvee units over here, too. So, lots left to be decided in this one. Still very very early, even though Taiwan has taken casualties early on. Now, one of the things I want to do, however, is to take a look at some of the other units in the game. One thing that I wanted to be clear about with this game is that there is a lot more to this once you master the basics. So, I want to show just briefly some of the other units that are in the game. We've got helicopters for air combat here. Snipers play a role with their own special rules. Autonomous defensive turrets. So, again, this game takes place in the year 2034. There is a slight influence of sci-fi elements in this, and these autonomous defensive turrets are one of those factors. You can have scenarios with civilians in them. There's also a media counter that has its own rules that can influence victory conditions in some scenarios.

40:35 Drones are here. This is treated as a support weapon, which adds defense to the unit that has the drones attached to it, and it allows infantry to fire indirect fire at anything within range. It doesn't have to be able to see it. So, we could imagine having drones in this scenario to enhance the firepower of our infantry units. Swarms are Chinese robotic units that get sent after you as enemy, and then Arabis here are American units. So, the American forces this in this future world, the US is playing a less influential role in the defense of Taiwan. So, this the larger force pools are Taiwanese and Chinese, but there can be some US forces here. These are semi-autonomous robots that can fire opportunity fire if they're left alone, but if you have them in the same area with a human-powered unit, they can fire together with them.

41:24 So, we've got some robotic elements in here as well. And then this smite button is a Chinese attack drone that if it survives the fire as it's coming in to drop at its target, it can launch an attack with a pretty significant force 10 attack pool. There are other things in here as well that we haven't seen. That's just a sampling of the variety of units we have in this game, which really has a wide range of technology, nations, and different offensive and defensive tools to bring to bear on the combat. Let's talk about some impressions of the game. So, I thought I would offer up some impressions on gameplay based on about 10 hours of action, maybe a little bit more with the game, 10 to 15 hours with the game. This is not a review. To review this game, you would have to play a lot more. All the scenarios aren't even here. This is a prototype, so the scenarios are going to be tweaked, the rules might be modified a little bit, counters and art and all this kind of stuff is going to be different. Uh and with this amount of time in this complex of a game, this is no way, shape, manner, or form a review.

42:26 This is impressions after about 10 to 15 hours of gameplay. Um I've really enjoyed this system, and I'm enjoying this system quite a bit. Uh modern combat it is complex. Tactical combat is complex. Modern tactical combat throw those throws those two things together, and it can be very complex. Uh when I first started playing, I bounced off of this hard. I said, "Wow, this is way too much with the dice rolls, all the modifiers, dice quality, dice numbers, counterfire, shields, explosions." It was like, "Wow, I I I couldn't I was about an hour in. I'm like, yeah, this one might beat me." And then I put it aside, I came back about two or three days later, I sat down, I said, "Okay, let's try it again." And then it all clicked. And after about another hour or so, I'm like, "Oh, this is actually isn't that hard at all." Um it looks like a lot as we work through all of those modifiers the first time, but as with most of these games, most of those modifiers you immediately know that they're not there. There's some modifiers that apply to almost all combat, and there's other modifiers that don't apply very often. So, now after playing for 6 7 8 hours or so, I found myself getting really fast at executing combat and understanding what I was doing. And it's a very elegant system once you get up to speed to it. Um having said that, it is definitely complex. I mean, you look at that, there's a lot going on, right? And you add in some more of the complex even more complex units, there's a lot to think about. You add in range and elements. It's definitely a complex game. I think I rated it at about a seven in the overview video, and that feels about right. So, you do need to spend some time learning the game. Now, I understand the system is similar to Armageddon War. I've not played that

43:57 one, but I do know that one has a very strong and ardent fan base that really likes that game for modern combat, and I can see why. This is a cool system for modern combat. The theme here is cool as well. I like the sci-fi edge to it. You know, it's definitely there. There's enough science fiction elements in here that it takes it from modern to a slightly futuristic type of combat, but yet it still has all the fundamentals of modern tactical combat embedded in it. You're not playing a science fiction game, you're playing a modern combat game with some science fiction elements in it. I hesitate to say too much about the rules, the counters, and the maps and everything because again, this is a prototype. Um the rules I felt the writing was clear. I do felt organizationally sometimes I was looking around for stuff and layout maybe could be tweaked, but that often gets tweaked between the prototype and the final form. I did find some little places where, you know, scenario rules were were kind of confusing me a little bit and you know, those are things that usually get refined in playtesting before the final version too. And again, the scenarios I know are still being worked on for this game. And some situations too, like in the one I showed, the counter for the Chinese support weapon wasn't in the counter set. So, those are things that usually get caught between now and the in the final version as well. So, I wouldn't put too much weight on those things.

45:14 It's just an observation at this point that I imagine would get modified and improved between the prototype version and the final version as is almost always the case with games. So, all in all for me, impressions very positive with this one. If you want to check it out, uh it's finished its crowdfunding campaign, but it is available for pre-order on the Flying Pig site. That link will take you to the Kickstarter page. I'll put both of those links down there where you can late pledge on the Kickstarter as I'm making this now. Happy to answer any questions. Thanks for watching the overview of gameplay with Rising Dragon.