v3.5 Beta is Live!
Today we're happy to release the public beta for Grimdark Future v3.5!
This beta give you access to all of the new army rules for Grimdark Future (except for gangs), so that you can already start building lists and playing games. The plan is to start collecting feedback for the sci-fi side of things for now, and then next week add all of the Age of Fantasy armies (except for guilds).
The beta is going to run until the end of October, at which point we will release the v3.5 in its final form to the public. The current v3.4 build of the game will still be fully available for the next two months, so you can save all your lists, run tournaments, or whatever else without interruptions.
Please provide your feedback on our Discord server, where you will find a dedicated "ARMY UPDATES FEEDBACK" section with individual threads for each army, as well as a general chat where you can share your excitement about the beta with other fans.
Updates to Every Army
Before we can start talking about what is changing with v3.5, we need to understand why we're making certain changes. There are two major points of feedback that people have been giving us about OPR armies for many years now, which we're addressing with this update.
The first is that many armies all feel too samey. There are lots of armies that don't really have anything that really stands out from the rest, no cool special rules, no cool weapons, all their units are kind of bland and without anything interesting to them. This is especially apparent when you compare these samey feeling armies to the armies that do get all the cool stuff, and you can notice that the difference between the interesting armies and the bland armies is huge.
This brings us to the second point, and that's that it feels like some armies get way more love than others. Compared to the bland armies, the ones that are really interesting get lots of cool special rules on their units, they get unique weapons, they get interesting upgrades, they get cool spell lists, they have a bunch of heroes that can change how their units behave... they're just much more fun to play with.
So the core of this update is really about that, making sure that all armies in the game get some love, and that everyone is on equal footing in having cool stuff.
The way that we achieved this was first by looking at all of the armies across the game, and identifying which things the cool armies had that the bland armies were lacking, and then making sure that everyone gets access to those things.
When doing this initial analysis, we identified 7 key things which needed to be updated in every army:
- Army Rules that every unit gets to make the army feel cohesive (like Devout for Blessed Sisters)
- Rules Combos that enhance the army rule in a meaningful way (like Primal Roar for Saurian Starhost)
- Army Specialties that give a cool new abilities to the army (like Spotting Lasers for DAO Union)
- Enemy Marks that create interesting interactions with the enemy (like Survey Vehicle for Soul-Snatcher Cults)
- Weapon Rules that are unique to that specific army (like Phosphor for Machine Cult)
- Access to at least 5 Hero Auras, which give players access to a variety of playstyles
- Army-Specific Spell Lists, which feel like they're unique to that army and not generic
As you can see from the examples, these are all things that were already present in the game, but that right now only a few armies were getting. By providing every army with all of these options, we've now made sure that every army is interesting to play, and nobody is left behind.
During this process we also realized that most armies seemed to have access to always the same few hero auras (like everyone getting a Furious aura and an Advanced Tactics aura), which we have also addressed. To make sure that armies feel more unique, we have added a bunch of new types of hero auras, and generally shuffled around auras across all armies, so make sure to take a closer look at your hero auras because they most likely have changed and you have a bunch of new interesting tools to mess with.
Special Rule Names and Aliases
Another thing that we identified as an issue during this process is that the current way that special rules are named (or aliased) is making playing the game more cumbersome than it needs to be. Basically, there are too many instances where the same exact rule is found across 10 different armies with 10 different names, which only slowly gameplay down and causes more confusion. Not only that, but we also realized that due to how specific many of these rules were named, it made it hard to justify putting them on certain units, because whilst the rule itself fit a model, the theme of its name didn't (like putting Devour on a tank).
With that in mind, we've decided to heavily cut back on aliasing in official armies, so that people don't have to hunt down the same rule with 10 different names anymore. If a model has Slayer, then it's always going to have Slayer (and not Monster Hunter, or Headtaker, or Enforcer, etc.). Generally speaking, the only time we're using aliases in official armies is for some Army Rules, but otherwise we're not using aliases anymore.
To make unaliased rules work better, we've gone through all rules in the game, and re-named any rule that was too specific into something a bit more generic, but that still retains the original intent of the rule. This makes it easier for us to use the same rule with the same name across all armies, and it makes it easier for players to scan through an army and understand all the rules, because they don't have to decypher what that special rules name means.
Whilst doing that we also realized that it would be very helpful to create a sort of pattern in how certain rules are named, so that it's even easier to know what a rule does just by its name, without having to even read the rule itself. This is particularly helpful for things like auras and buffs/debuffs. We think this will be very intuitive to understand as you go through the various armies, but here's a few of the most common examples of what each type means:
- X Aura = This model and its unit get X
- X Buff = Once per activation, pick one friendly unit within 12", which gets X once (next time the effect would apply).
- X Debuff = Once per activation, pick one enemy unit within 18", which gets X once (next time the effect would apply).
- Mark for X = Once per activation, pick one enemy unit within 18", which friendly units get X against once (next time the effect would apply).
So by just knowing this pattern, you now always know what a rule means, without having to read it. Just as an example, you can use the patterns above to easily recognize what "Fearless Aura" does, what "Stealth Buff" does, what "Slow Debuff" does, and what "Mark for Rending" does.
We've found that this new system makes the game flow a lot better, and it makes it a breeze to look at an army and know what everything does in an instant.
General Army Changes & Balance
Finally, let's talk about general army changes and then balance.
Whilst there are a ton of tiny things that have been tweaked on all the various armies that we could talk about forever, here we're going to touch on just a few of the major changes that will affect most players, and explain why these are happening:
- Undead - We are removing Undead as an army-wide rule across all games, and the armies that had it will be able to access it as a hero aura instead. This rule is messing with the game too much, where it feels too punishing for casual play, and too powerful for competitive play.
- Rending/Poison - We are removing Rending/Poison as army-wide weapon rules across all games, and the armies will have a similar equivalent on their weapons instead. Having entire armies that can ignore regeneration completely invalidates taking anything with regeneration, which leads to less interesting army lists.
- Aircraft/Lock-On - We are removing the -1 to hit penalty when targeting Aircraft, because they're generally considered to be too survivable. We're also tweaking Lock-On to be more universally usable, so that players are encouraged to take those weapons not only to target Aircraft.
- Advanced Tactics - We are removing all instances of rules that allow you to flat out move another unit by 6". This rule is simply too significant where it makes every army with it much better than any army without it, and it generally messes with the flow of the game.
- Swarms - We are increasing the Quality of all swarms to 5+ and removing Ambush and Fearless from them. Swarms are currently too cheap and too durable, plus being able to Ambush them makes them far too flexible, to the point where any army with swarms is much better than any army without them.
Alright, those are general army changes, now let's talk about balance.
We know that all yearly updates bring with them concerns about game balance, which is of course why the beta is here. Whilst we are pretty confident that the current game state with v3.5 is fairly well balanced, who knows what crazy combos players might spot that we didn't notice, or which rules are currently written in a way that could be interpreted to be insanely powerful. Again, this is why the beta is here, and we will continue to monitor and update the armies over the next two months to address any issues.
The one important thing about balance that we wanted to bring up however is about the general Army Rules that are available on all units in an army.
In v3.4 there are currently some armies that have army-wide rules which just give them some great bonus, with no special conditions needed to get it, and which just flat-out makes them better than other armies in the game (point costs aside). With v3.5 adding army-wide rules to every army, we wanted to address this, so it's important to note that almost all army-wide rules are meant to have some sort of special condition that needs to be met for units to get them.
Whilst this might feel like a nerf to certain armies, in the greater context of all the armies in the game, it's just a re-adjustment to put everyone on more even footing. Additionally, having these little conditions nudges armies into different playstyles, which further helps set them apart from each other. That being said, no army-wide rule should be so powerful that it dictates how an army should be played, or that cripples players who don't decide to fully play around it. It's just a gentle nudge.
That's all for now, we hope that you enjoyed reading this article and are ready to hop on the beta!
Please provide your feedback on our Discord server, where you will find a dedicated "ARMY UPDATES FEEDBACK" section with individual threads for each army, as well as a general chat where you can share your excitement about the beta with other fans.
We highly encourage everyone to play before you judge, because the true greatness of this update can only be felt after having played a couple of games with it, and having your eyes opened to all the new possibilities. As we like to say: don't focus on the past to look for differences, but focus on the future to see what new shiny toys you got!
Happy Wargaming!
– OPR Team
Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/onepagerules
Join our Community: Discord – Facebook – Bluesky – Twitter – Reddit
v3.5 Beta is Live!
Today we're happy to release the public beta for Grimdark Future v3.5!
This beta give you access to all of the new army rules for Grimdark Future (except for gangs), so that you can already start building lists and playing games. The plan is to start collecting feedback for the sci-fi side of things for now, and then next week add all of the Age of Fantasy armies (except for guilds).
The beta is going to run until the end of October, at which point we will release the v3.5 in its final form to the public. The current v3.4 build of the game will still be fully available for the next two months, so you can save all your lists, run tournaments, or whatever else without interruptions.
Please provide your feedback on our Discord server, where you will find a dedicated "ARMY UPDATES FEEDBACK" section with individual threads for each army, as well as a general chat where you can share your excitement about the beta with other fans.
Updates to Every Army
Before we can start talking about what is changing with v3.5, we need to understand why we're making certain changes. There are two major points of feedback that people have been giving us about OPR armies for many years now, which we're addressing with this update.
The first is that many armies all feel too samey. There are lots of armies that don't really have anything that really stands out from the rest, no cool special rules, no cool weapons, all their units are kind of bland and without anything interesting to them. This is especially apparent when you compare these samey feeling armies to the armies that do get all the cool stuff, and you can notice that the difference between the interesting armies and the bland armies is huge.
This brings us to the second point, and that's that it feels like some armies get way more love than others. Compared to the bland armies, the ones that are really interesting get lots of cool special rules on their units, they get unique weapons, they get interesting upgrades, they get cool spell lists, they have a bunch of heroes that can change how their units behave... they're just much more fun to play with.
So the core of this update is really about that, making sure that all armies in the game get some love, and that everyone is on equal footing in having cool stuff.
The way that we achieved this was first by looking at all of the armies across the game, and identifying which things the cool armies had that the bland armies were lacking, and then making sure that everyone gets access to those things.
When doing this initial analysis, we identified 7 key things which needed to be updated in every army:
- Army Rules that every unit gets to make the army feel cohesive (like Devout for Blessed Sisters)
- Rules Combos that enhance the army rule in a meaningful way (like Primal Roar for Saurian Starhost)
- Army Specialties that give a cool new abilities to the army (like Spotting Lasers for DAO Union)
- Enemy Marks that create interesting interactions with the enemy (like Survey Vehicle for Soul-Snatcher Cults)
- Weapon Rules that are unique to that specific army (like Phosphor for Machine Cult)
- Access to at least 5 Hero Auras, which give players access to a variety of playstyles
- Army-Specific Spell Lists, which feel like they're unique to that army and not generic
As you can see from the examples, these are all things that were already present in the game, but that right now only a few armies were getting. By providing every army with all of these options, we've now made sure that every army is interesting to play, and nobody is left behind.
During this process we also realized that most armies seemed to have access to always the same few hero auras (like everyone getting a Furious aura and an Advanced Tactics aura), which we have also addressed. To make sure that armies feel more unique, we have added a bunch of new types of hero auras, and generally shuffled around auras across all armies, so make sure to take a closer look at your hero auras because they most likely have changed and you have a bunch of new interesting tools to mess with.
Special Rule Names and Aliases
Another thing that we identified as an issue during this process is that the current way that special rules are named (or aliased) is making playing the game more cumbersome than it needs to be. Basically, there are too many instances where the same exact rule is found across 10 different armies with 10 different names, which only slowly gameplay down and causes more confusion. Not only that, but we also realized that due to how specific many of these rules were named, it made it hard to justify putting them on certain units, because whilst the rule itself fit a model, the theme of its name didn't (like putting Devour on a tank).
With that in mind, we've decided to heavily cut back on aliasing in official armies, so that people don't have to hunt down the same rule with 10 different names anymore. If a model has Slayer, then it's always going to have Slayer (and not Monster Hunter, or Headtaker, or Enforcer, etc.). Generally speaking, the only time we're using aliases in official armies is for some Army Rules, but otherwise we're not using aliases anymore.
To make unaliased rules work better, we've gone through all rules in the game, and re-named any rule that was too specific into something a bit more generic, but that still retains the original intent of the rule. This makes it easier for us to use the same rule with the same name across all armies, and it makes it easier for players to scan through an army and understand all the rules, because they don't have to decypher what that special rules name means.
Whilst doing that we also realized that it would be very helpful to create a sort of pattern in how certain rules are named, so that it's even easier to know what a rule does just by its name, without having to even read the rule itself. This is particularly helpful for things like auras and buffs/debuffs. We think this will be very intuitive to understand as you go through the various armies, but here's a few of the most common examples of what each type means:
- X Aura = This model and its unit get X
- X Buff = Once per activation, pick one friendly unit within 12", which gets X once (next time the effect would apply).
- X Debuff = Once per activation, pick one enemy unit within 18", which gets X once (next time the effect would apply).
- Mark for X = Once per activation, pick one enemy unit within 18", which friendly units get X against once (next time the effect would apply).
So by just knowing this pattern, you now always know what a rule means, without having to read it. Just as an example, you can use the patterns above to easily recognize what "Fearless Aura" does, what "Stealth Buff" does, what "Slow Debuff" does, and what "Mark for Rending" does.
We've found that this new system makes the game flow a lot better, and it makes it a breeze to look at an army and know what everything does in an instant.
General Army Changes & Balance
Finally, let's talk about general army changes and then balance.
Whilst there are a ton of tiny things that have been tweaked on all the various armies that we could talk about forever, here we're going to touch on just a few of the major changes that will affect most players, and explain why these are happening:
- Undead - We are removing Undead as an army-wide rule across all games, and the armies that had it will be able to access it as a hero aura instead. This rule is messing with the game too much, where it feels too punishing for casual play, and too powerful for competitive play.
- Rending/Poison - We are removing Rending/Poison as army-wide weapon rules across all games, and the armies will have a similar equivalent on their weapons instead. Having entire armies that can ignore regeneration completely invalidates taking anything with regeneration, which leads to less interesting army lists.
- Aircraft/Lock-On - We are removing the -1 to hit penalty when targeting Aircraft, because they're generally considered to be too survivable. We're also tweaking Lock-On to be more universally usable, so that players are encouraged to take those weapons not only to target Aircraft.
- Advanced Tactics - We are removing all instances of rules that allow you to flat out move another unit by 6". This rule is simply too significant where it makes every army with it much better than any army without it, and it generally messes with the flow of the game.
- Swarms - We are increasing the Quality of all swarms to 5+ and removing Ambush and Fearless from them. Swarms are currently too cheap and too durable, plus being able to Ambush them makes them far too flexible, to the point where any army with swarms is much better than any army without them.
Alright, those are general army changes, now let's talk about balance.
We know that all yearly updates bring with them concerns about game balance, which is of course why the beta is here. Whilst we are pretty confident that the current game state with v3.5 is fairly well balanced, who knows what crazy combos players might spot that we didn't notice, or which rules are currently written in a way that could be interpreted to be insanely powerful. Again, this is why the beta is here, and we will continue to monitor and update the armies over the next two months to address any issues.
The one important thing about balance that we wanted to bring up however is about the general Army Rules that are available on all units in an army.
In v3.4 there are currently some armies that have army-wide rules which just give them some great bonus, with no special conditions needed to get it, and which just flat-out makes them better than other armies in the game (point costs aside). With v3.5 adding army-wide rules to every army, we wanted to address this, so it's important to note that almost all army-wide rules are meant to have some sort of special condition that needs to be met for units to get them.
Whilst this might feel like a nerf to certain armies, in the greater context of all the armies in the game, it's just a re-adjustment to put everyone on more even footing. Additionally, having these little conditions nudges armies into different playstyles, which further helps set them apart from each other. That being said, no army-wide rule should be so powerful that it dictates how an army should be played, or that cripples players who don't decide to fully play around it. It's just a gentle nudge.
That's all for now, we hope that you enjoyed reading this article and are ready to hop on the beta!
Please provide your feedback on our Discord server, where you will find a dedicated "ARMY UPDATES FEEDBACK" section with individual threads for each army, as well as a general chat where you can share your excitement about the beta with other fans.
We highly encourage everyone to play before you judge, because the true greatness of this update can only be felt after having played a couple of games with it, and having your eyes opened to all the new possibilities. As we like to say: don't focus on the past to look for differences, but focus on the future to see what new shiny toys you got!
Happy Wargaming!
– OPR Team
Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/onepagerules
Join our Community: Discord – Facebook – Bluesky – Twitter – Reddit
