by Jason Soles

In the first part of this article, we looked at the history and the development of the Marches from its earliest days as a frontier to a settled military boundary, then to a free territory, and finally to a loose federation under the Coalition of Free States. We also explored the present state of the Marches and took an in-depth look at the Rangers, the Coalition’s professional military and security forces. Now we will move on to discussing how the ideas behind the Marcher Worlds were translated for the tabletop.

We knew from the beginning we wanted the Marcher Worlds to have the feel of a fast-moving hit-and-run force. They were not as technologically advanced as their rivals, so they had to rely more on their skill, cunning, and knowledge of the terrain. To suit a less technologically advanced force, their warjacks and vehicles would be larger, heavier, and slower but also hardier and more tenacious. In a word, they would be workhorses, built to last and endure a beating in the process.

The trick was to marry the idea of the swift-moving Rangers to the plodding industrial warjacks. On one hand, the nature of Warcaster’s void gates, which generally enable players to place their models anywhere on the tabletop they can advance to, made the balancing act a little simple. The Rangers could just move into position, drop void gates, and have warjacks delivered to exactly where they need them. On the other hand, we still needed a unifying theme that would pull the Faction together conceptually. So, we looked to the mechanika.

We came up with the idea of the Slip Displacer to get across the idea of the Rangers being this swift-moving strike force. The ubiquitous technology allows a Ranger squad to spike to move up to 3˝. The Dusk Wolf warjacks were designed at the same time, and we statted them up at SPD 5, which befitted their design. But it did feel a little strange to have the faster-moving squads tied to the slowest warjacks in the game (at that time, anyway), even if those designs were hitting the concepts. So, we came up with the idea of the Arcantrik Turbine, which would add 1 to the warjack’s SPD for each Arc on it. This had the added benefit of taking advantage of the warjack’s increased Arc threshold, allowing a fully charged warjack gain up to +3 SPD. After some additional playtesting, we added the Ranger’s Slip Displacer to the Dusk Wolf, solidifying it as a marvel of Marcher engineering. If we can’t make the actual machine faster, just bolt enough physics-warping mechanika to it that no one will notice.

It felt good on the table, and the reuse of a potent spike effect helped to reduce the cognitive load across the Faction, something we were keenly aware of as we developed the game through its many iterations.

We wanted something different out of the Strike Raptor, and so we started with the idea of a warjack with limited flight. The heavy machine would rely on a mechanically augmented thruster pack to leap into position, sometimes attaining short bursts of true flight in the process. While the likes of the Continuum’s Nemesis warjack would have default Flight as an advantage all the time, the Strike Raptor’s mechanika would only enable it to fly for an activation when the warjack spiked. (The Nemesis, however, paid a price for its Flight in the form of its lighter, bird-boned chassis stat line.)

Following suit, the Razorbat was designed to be the heaviest and slowest of the vehicles. Unlike the others, it would not be a true flying vehicle. Instead, it was to be a tank crewed by daredevils willing to push their vehicle and its anti-grav generator to the limits. Wherever possible with the Marcher Worlds, we try to show the human side, in which skill and sheer grit make the difference. The Razorbat’s maneuvers gave us a great opportunity to explore this side of the Faction. While the best surviving examples that made it into print are Hit the Jump and Fiddler & Co.’s Playing Possum, we tested a number of others along the way.

Hit the Jump is a maneuver that enables the Razorbat to literally hit a jump to take flight for an activation.

Playing Possum is basically meant to simulate the crew of the vehicle shutting down all their systems while unleashing a plume of black smoke and playing dead while within rough or obscuring terrain, which could be used to disguise the vehicle’s true condition. This maneuver grants the tanky Razorbat Stealth until the beginning of its next activation.

Among the maneuvers that did not make the cut was Ramming Speed, which was basically a slam effect. While the maneuver was clearly flavorful, it was hard to make it work satisfyingly on an 80mm-based model. It also did little to remedy the problem we were actually trying to solve with it, which was how to keep the Razorbat from being surrounded and tied down. For those reasons, we replaced it with Hit the Jump pretty early on in the playtest cycle.

The Marcher arsenal is primarily drawn from antiquated ballistic and chemical explosive technologies alongside fusion weaponry ubiquitous throughout human space. Though the Marchers have had some limited success in developing more advanced arms, their sparse resources and technological capabilities have slowed their rate of progress. Instead of developing new weapon systems, the Marchers tend to find new ways of augmenting existing ones.

While ballistic weapons have the primary drawback of requiring and storing heavy and potentially bulky ammunition, the Marchers have found some ways to turn the physicality of these projectiles into an advantage. For example, the Marcher forces have had some success in imbuing ballistic projectiles with arcane force to heighten their devastating effects. The Marchers may have drawn some inspiration for these technologies from the ancient gun mage tradition that still has adherents throughout the Hyperuranion. Such arcane enhancements turn relatively mundane firearms into delivery systems for maelstroms of arcane force. Both the Hunter’s sniper rifle and the Marchers’ warjack rail gun rely on Arc-charged ammunition to punch through the hardest armor. The vortex missile utilizes such technologies to generate its null blast while charged with Arc.

The Marcher Lords have long sought out potent allies to aid with their mission to secure human space from threats beyond the Hyperuranion. Along with the Keepers who choose to dwell on the frontier, this has also included gun mages. The tradition has taken hold from time to time across the estates and from here may have made its way into Marcher thinking on weapons development. In more recent years, Artemis Fang, possibly the most renowned gun mage of her generation, has sworn her allegiance to the Coalition’s cause and regularly fights alongside the Ranger forces.

In addition to augmenting their projectiles, the Marchers are also proven adept at developing a range of mechanika targeters and stabilizers to enhance the performance of their ballistic weapons. These include the Mechanikal Optics systems integrated into the Ranger Fire Teams’ Battle Rifles (which grant +4 RNG while the weapon is charged) to the Targeters integrated into most of the various iterations of the Talon rocket launcher (which allows the attacker to reroll their ranged attack rolls while they are charged). Even Artemis Fang herself utilizes mechanika Smart Lock tech to ignore her target’s cover while she is charged.

Many of the weapons in the Marcher arsenal are simply industrial tools repurposed as weapons of war. The saw-toothed Rippers that are equipped to some warjacks are based on industrial scrap saws. The Fusion Drill, Impaler, and Rock Buster are all based on mining implements used by laborjacks throughout the Marches.

Fire provides another potent and inexpensive weapon, though it can be difficult to control on a large scale. The Marchers have been known to set fires to burn out their enemies and put them on the run. Though such tactics are not without their environmental costs, they can be unleashed simply and cheaply enough. On a smaller scale, the Marchers utilize a number of chemical accelerants as flamethrower fuel. They have even experimented with sophisticated Blazer beam weapons that rely on particle agitation to generate heat and ignite flames.

In addition to the Blazer, the Marchers have developed a number of even more destructive particle weapons. These weapons generally rely on bombarding a target with high-energy particles that weaken its molecular structure, occasionally causing it to collapse completely with explosive repercussions. While these powerful weapons do not require ammunition, they tend to be shorter range and are prone to malfunction and shutdown due to overheating.

Alongside their particle weapons, the Marchers’ other truly noteworthy technological weapon is their Null Detonators. These weapons were developed by the Marcher estates to hinder incursions into their space. The detonators disrupt the flow of Arc in an area, discharging it at an increased rate and robbing a target of its Arc charge. The Rangers use these weapons to hinder the arcane capabilities of their enemies and to knock out their void gates before they can establish beachheads on the battlefield.

While the Marchers are not the greatest arcane power in the Hyperuranion, they do have some other secrets developed during the long history of the Marcher estates. Some of these have been borrowed from the remnants of various civilizations that have passed through the frontier; others were passed down by the Keepers who frequent the Marches. These take the form of the Marchers’ various Factional Cyphers and are as varied as the Pathfinder and Stealth-granting Penumbral Obscuration to the warjack-inhibiting Gremian Tormentor.

The Marches also benefit from ample Arc reserves across the frontier. In addition to supplying the raw material necessary to fuel their arcane industries, this resource has also been linked to the large numbers of Arc-sensitive wyrds and more powerful arcanists who are born across the Marches. While research is inconclusive, it does seem there is a correlation between the proximity of Arc mines and the likelihood of an individual to possess Arc-sensitive capabilities at birth. As a result, the Marches have always had ample warcasters and Arc-sensitive individuals serving in their military forces.

While many wyrds go on to serve the Coalition as Weavers, many more are trained to become Warders. If it is the role of the Weaver to channel and direct the destructive force of the Marcher warcasters’ furies, it is the role of the Warder to defend against the offensive Cyphers of the enemy. The Warders are typically embedded with Ranger squads, where their intuitive capabilities can be harnessed as a shield.

Those wyrds who serve as Coalition Weavers also put the Marcher instinct for salvage into practice. Equipped with mechanika Fury Reciprocators, these solos can spike to return a fury Cypher that was channeled through them to their controlling player’s hand. Thus the Marchers are able to squeeze every ounce of arcane power from their Cyphers, enabling them to make much more out of much less.

When it comes to their roster of Wild Cards, the Marchers have a solid selection of pragmatic hunters and fugitives to choose from. Corebus is a rogue Empyrean Aeon who has taken up residence in the body of a human-built robotic automaton. A protector by nature, Corebus is more comfortable in the presence of humans than he is with his own kind. While he can take a beating in place of another friendly model, Corebus is also a powerful, bare-fisted fighter capable of generating slam-causing teleforce blasts. He is a solid brawler with real sustainability on the battlefield.

Captain Jax Redblade is a fast-moving pirate. A natural to fight alongside Marcher forces, Jax gains +3 SPD and Flight while she is charged. Though her offensive capabilities are fairly modest, her real strength is her high DEF and the conniptions your opponent will go through to take her off the table.

Voitek Sudal is a bounty hunter with connections throughout the Hyperuranion. While he once served the Iron Star Alliance as a Paladin, Sudal has friends across the Marches, whom he uses to gain access to Null Detonators. With the addition of the Pathfinder and Stealth advantages, he can feel like a super Ranger when fighting alongside Marcher forces.

Thanks for checking out this overview of the design decisions that went into creating the Marcher Worlds Faction. I hope it gave you some new insight into our approach and thinking as the Marchers took shape. We started with a pretty clear idea of who our gritty freedom fighters were, and it was a lot of fun to explore their development as they took shape. I hope I was able to capture some of that magic in this discussion above. Please join us next time when we will consider the tactics and strategies behind construction a Marcher force.