this post is a little long but i figured to get an idea of how the units were played i'd give a brief overview of the scenario for the demo.
* Empire forces: 4 militia & 1 captain, Casanii scout, mounted trader & trader on foot, 2 Enuks, 1 Baruk, 5 civilians
* there was one special rule: i used the Elder model as a civilian rather than it's own normal rules, but gave it the ability to activate the other civilians instead of using the full ruleset the Elder normally has.
* Devanu forces: Aplha Outcast, Jenta Spear, Jenta Handler, 2 Grishak
* Scenario: the field used was 30" by 48" (just to make it comfortable for people to sit at the table). a simple ambush by the Devanu. the Empire player set up within 4" of the long table edge (48") and then the Devanu player set up within 4" of the opposite edge so there was about 22" between them before the first turn. the only goal was for the Empire player to get as many traders and civilians to make it to the opposite table edge while the Devanu player tried to bring down as many as possible. just a means to showcase the game mechanics and get a feel for the unique rules.
the people who watched the demo games quite enjoyed either rooting for the Devanu to catch another hapless civilian or cheering the Empire player when they did manage to get someone safely off the table.
* for this scenario the Casanii was well balanced as it's long range attack meant that players could put him off by himself to be a threat that had to be addressed. this caused the Devanu players to have to split their force and give the civilians breathing room and a little head start. inevitably though the Casanii would go down either by the Alpha or from a Grishak and then it would get tough for the Empire player as the Devanu can quickly make up the distance.
* the Devanu players experimented with activating all 5 models on one Initiative stone and directly activating only the Alpha or one of the Jenta to see how the Empire player reacted. the Empire player and his 16 models had to be much more exacting in his movements or risk losing either the Militia Captain or the Elder and getting hamstrung by the Untrained civilians.
* the Coordinated Strike was effective for one Empire player to take down the Jenta Handler and caused the Devanu player to be more cautious and try to whittle down the Militia and deny both future Coordinated Strikes and the Defender ability.
* the undisputed winner of the day was the Baruk. it was the only model that made it off the table in every game thanks in large part to it's save.
i think things were well balanced. despite the big difference in model counts between forces, the rules for each unit provided distinct advantages and drawbacks. essentially each side ended up with 3 separate combat effective designations:
- the Alpha by itself, the Jenta Spear by itself, and the Jenta handler with the 2 Grishak
- the Militia Captain by itself, the Casanii scout by itself, and the 4 Militia.
the Captain and the Casanii affected the game more passively as the threats they both posed caused the Devanu to have to really consider their own maneuvers to not play into the long bow or the coordinated strike. but those same strengths the Empire models have meant they were mostly reactive and slowed in mobility by the need to protect the civilians. the Devanu consequently were free to use their speed and low model count to line up an attack on the civilians as they chose, or even herd the civilians by cutting off a route to safety, but couldn't get carried away by the heady aggressiveness of their own abilities and carelessly find themselves within line of sight of the long bow or hemmed in by the militia.
the Alpha Outcast was actually used the most passively for the Devanu players as it had the potential to exploit any bad positioning by the Empire player. Empire players always wanted the Alpha to activate first so they wouldn't need to worry about it. if the Initiative Stones didn't cooperate though, the Empire players would sweat out their activations.
and for the Empire, the Militia was the most aggressive. it would screen the civilians and constantly move to a position that allowed it a best chance of either supporting the Captain or civilians or outright engaging a Devanu model. their combat support abilities in either offense or defense just couldn't be ignored.
