I'll be blunt; Skirmish is the first thing in quite a while to make me genuinely excited about HeroClix. I know WK's has been testing it out themselves, but I've seen a lot of people saying they've been testing it locally as well. As such, it's probably in everyone's best interest to have a single, cohesive point of reference for questions and concerns. I'll keep this post updated as more points of discussion arise.

Please only post actual rules/mechanics issues here. This isn't the place for strategy discussions, or complaining about how ugly the maps look with the big numbers printed on them. We're just focusing on making the format technically functional.

Link to the article- https://wizkids.com/heroclix/2019/08...e-to-skirmish/

So far, here are a couple issues that I've seen pop up:

1) Bystanders-
Bystanders are problematic, because they do not "click" damage. In Skirmish, points are only awarded per damage "clicked", not taken, primarily to prevent "overkilling" to rack up points. The rules could be twisted to specifically allow for Bystanders to give points upon KO, and may need to be for generated Bystanders, at least.

On a Starting Force, however, I feel they should be banned, simply because of how running a swarm of them could easily be abused to manipulate the game setup. On the other hand, we also have plenty of cheap characters to do that with anyways (Henchmen, etc.), so that may have to be addressed in a different way, or just be something the format has to live with.

2) Multibased Characters-
Placing Multibased Characters during setup can definitely cause issues in a few different ways.

First, there's the issue of terrain. The Starting Markers make the square they're in clear, but there can still be issues if the squares are surrounded by other terrain plat would make placement illegal.

Second, there's the issue of overlapping another Starting Marker, the ramifications of which should be fairly obvious.

I think these can mostly be addressed fairly simply. One, Multibased Characters should be allowed to treat all terrain as clear during setup. Honestly, During setup, there's no real reason to not have everything considered clear during initial placements, just for the sake of simplicity. Basically, just default to the old ruling that the terrain is treated as clear until the character no longer occupies it. From my understanding, this is essentially how they handled it during the test runs at Worlds.

Two, placing Multibased Characters should probably be required before placing others, and they can't be placed so that they cover more than a single Starting Marker. Much like the current Modern rules, this forces players to accommodate the bigger stuff first, which mostly prevents "blocking" further placements.

This also will allow players to catch any problems with the starting setup relatively quickly. It's possible that weird groupings of starting squares can prevent legal placements. In such a situation, my advice would be to scrap all the rolls and start over fresh.

3) Some wording in the Game Setup rules should be cleaned up. Instead of having players each roll separately, make it clear that the rolls for Starting Markers are a collective pool. As it's worded now, the rules say that each player tracks their results individually, and thus won't reroll if they roll a number the opponent already has. Obviously, that's not working as intended.

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Keep in mind, this format is essentially in beta testing. If you're running local events to try it out, don't be afraid to step in to curb abusive situations/mechanics. I'm glad they started off with the bans that they did, but those only took into account characters that specifically don't click damage. There's going to be a ton of stuff they've missed, which is fine. But in the mean time, there's no reason to let stuff ruin the format before it gets off the ground.

To extend on the starting area being clear item, you could end up with a starting area in the middle of blocking, and get stuck placing a standard character in the midst of all that blocking with no way to get them out. And, though it's not directly relevant to the rules, the idea of Skirmish is to make is more 'realistic' with timing and placement, and nothing really explains how a character randomly walked into a war zone in the middle of a giant rock.

You could argue that the only way for that character to become useful is to slowly destroy blocking one action at a time until they are free, assuming the character has enough damage output and the blocking does not have special rules preventing its destruction.

However, I would propose 3 possible resolutions, in order of what I think would be most appropriate.

1. Randomly rolled starting areas occupying Blocking terrain are rerolled.
2. Randomly rolled starting areas with all 4 edges of the square adjacent to either Blocking, Higher or Lower Elevation, or Edge of the map are rerolled.
3. A direct, non-diagonal line of squares of the shortest path, roll for ties, all become temporarily clear terrain until the character in the given starting area moves out of the square.

For options 2 and 3, I also think instead of the terrain becoming temporarily clear, it would be less confusing, and more thematic, if those squares are all just filled with debris markers for the duration of the game.

Also, regarding the same topic, I agree that Multibase figures would be placed first, and would state that they must be placed in starting squares where they could legally be placed if possible, and if non, then they must be placed in starting squares offering the least possible amount of otherwise illegal terrain.

Also, as each player is placing one figure at a time, and different players may have a different number of multibase figures, I think it should still be 1 character per player being placed, with the multibase restriction applying individually per player, so no one gets an advantage for having multiple multibase characters.

For Bystanders, as well as certain characters like Lockjaw, I would just add to 'each damage clicked' a clause that specifies, 'if a character wouldn't normally click when taking damage other than pushing or unavoidable, points are scored if Damage Taken is greater than 0'.

I don't think bystanders should be restricted, as you said, there are plenty of low point options anyway, but a further rule could be, secondary to base size, that you must place characters in cost descending order.

Regarding autonomous and the like, I'm proposing for consideration a possible alternative that you can have one 1 costed action per round that doesn't use your action pool, in addition to your normal 1 costed and 1 free, instead of just revoking the autonomous privilege. This prevents gaining extra free actions from having extra rounds, and preserves the functionality/cost of some figures. Though, I agree, there is a limited number of figures affected by this, so it may just not be worth it.

Also, just a typo in the rules document:
Edit:
Trying to reduce so many posts, but just adding as things come to mind.

It might be good to consider restricting 'after resolutions' triggers to 1 per effect per round, or maybe 1 per 100(or 200) points in the build per effect per round. The 'First Round Limitations' are easy enough to endure, and characters like Vulture or Murder Machine will really have an advantage.

That is something that sounds a lot worse than it actually is. First and foremost, if that happens, it's something both players are fully aware of before placement starts. As such, I see it more as a quirk that can be utilized by players to gain a strategic advantage, rather than something that's going to screw you over.

More importantly, it shouldn't ever be an actual issue. Skirmish maps shouldn't be designed with large chunks of blocking to begin with, so it's unlikely to ever actually occur. Especially right now, people should ideally only be playing the format on maps designed for Battle Royals (the 6 Regenesis maps, 4 Civil War maps, a few other con exclusive maps that have been floating around for a few years. As such, it's something that the actual format rules shouldn't even need to address. Hopefully.

With Bystanders, especially given the number of generated Bystanders prevalent in the game right now, I'd be fine with bending the rules a bit to just make them award 1 point on KO. Not only is it intuitive, but it also is a bit of a disincentive to all the Bystander generators, which, imo, feel to be a bit against the spirit of the format. I don't think anyone's ever going to accuse Bystanders of making the game go faster

With "after resolution" triggers, while of course there are going to be a few abusive corner cases, limiting them to one per turn is potentially game breaking. That actually opens the door for some very serious abuse of allowing you to both circumvent negatives, and deny your opponent effects. It's much simpler to just ban problematic elements, and both Vulture and Murder Machine are high up on that list. If WK's genuinely wants this to be a successful competitive format (and I believe it can be), stuff like that just has to go.

Dont the rules cover the whole overlapping starting markers?

Ah, yeah, it is addressed in a sidebar that I guess I glossed over.

Have playtested with 2 and 4 players a few times.
Biggest issues:
keeping track of who did what free action to whom of note pad not used.
Different interpretations of how probability control should work
Unless you are playing with players ready to take their turn expediently then playing over 200 point games doesn’t work unless the 30 minute time limit increased (which can lead to merely a longer slow moving game.)

My first reading of this was "no Running Shot or Charge during first round/first turn"... but isn't the at no cost attack nested and before the entire POWER action resolves?

Correct, this would prevent things like free Quake after LC, or limit Vulture and Murder Machine, but not nearly enough as they can easily wait till round 2 of turn 1.

I haven't had the time yet to sit down and put my thoughts down.

But I got to actually play test this with Kennie on Sunday, so I have a lot to add.

But this is really fun, and bystanders aren't as ridiculous yet (we did play them as scoring 1 point).

Yeah, there's definitely stuff like this in the rules that is gonna trip people up at first. Some of it could be worded better, but I think it's at least clear enough that there shouldn't be too many significant problems.

I think Skirmish is going to be one of those things where the rules are gonna look kinda convoluted and/or confusing, but will actually play out fairly intuitively.

This is definitely a concern, however, it's also a concern in the normal game. The turn structure of Skirmish just highlights the issue even more.

What specifically was coming up?

I do think that PC does probably need to be addressed directly in the rules. I think we have to assume that the intention is that you can use it once per turn on one of your rounds, and once per turn on one of your opponents rounds. That's probably how people should be playing it for the time being.

Just a note, I'm going to go through and address points already raised. This is based on my reading of the Skirmish rules as well as actually getting to play and talk to the people designing the format. I don't have a direct line to anyone, but will be happy to come back in and spit ball more.

And as Lantern already said, this is still early testing stages. So we're operating on a "this will change before full launch" attitude.

Re: Bystanders

I am always for clarification, but I don't see an issue (yet). The wording technically allows for the scoring of Bystanders and we played that they are scored at 1 point (they don't click but they take damage, so that's just the old Heroclix double edged wording). So, a Walking Wood could net you 6 points or get poisoned and give up an easy 1. I'm okay with that, for now.

I also don't think they (and other cheap filler characters) will be too much of a problem for game set up. Most figures like that have a hard time dealing damage, so they're not going to rack up a lot of points. And they also are reigned in by the "1 Costed, 1 Free" limitation. Right now, if anything, they're more of a liability (more on that later).

Re: Multibased Characters
I think the thread has handled most of this fine. There is some discussion of possibly limiting forces to only having 1 Multibase figure, but I think XDP is going to give us a lot of testing to see if that's necessary. I prefer to keep formats as wide open as possible, with scenarios to follow. And with random placement, I think different scenarios are going to be super fun.

Re: General
We rolled game placement as a general pool. That's how I read the document as well and I think that works better. So, I think we're all on board with that.

Lockjaw has already been banned. Characters that do not take damage normally have a ban hammer over their head. Since this is still not going to be "standard main" Heroclix, a ban list is a much more open idea. And the sentence I love was uttered, "I would rather ban a problematic figure than just ban all multibase figures."

Okay, now for my notes.

Pulse Wave is potentially unbalanced. If every player brings 5 characters and I have enough of a pulse wave range, I can conceivably score 15 points on my first turn (or end the game on my first turn if I crit). And this was closer to happening Sunday than you think. My suggestion, maybe cap the number of points that can be scored per action (I'm thinking 5, so at the very least, everyone would get to take a full turn before the game ends). This would also actually curb Vulture's potential influence on the game. Skirmish is meant to be a fast played format, but I don't think anyone wants to lose before acting.

Score keeping is going to become an issue if played at larger tournaments. If playing more competitively, we may have to track starting and ending click #s of figures (since KOs are less important, though not unimportant, it can keep clicks scored honest).

Onto suggestions made that others may want to try while play testing:

-Snake Play order: switches things up and makes Leadership strong but not over powered (if the first player has Leadership and no one else does, they act first as well as last). So, theoretically it would be 1-2-3-4-4-3-2-1-1-2...etc. It has its own issues, but I think it's worth a try.

-Reroll for initiative each turn: It addresses the above problem with a different solution and is much more RPG in nature. If done, I would suggest using a theme bonus based on surviving characters.

-Pass initiative each turn: again, similar problems being solved different ways. I think the easiest and most balanced (since everyone would get to go "first" once, conceivably).

-Use a turn limit instead of a time limit: This is how old scenarios ran and it was interesting. Might be the way to go.