Soooo. Mat Hart likes to challenge us in the Dev Team. As do, apparently, those of you who took part in the Free Cities Draft campaign last year. Giving the Butchers a star striker was always going to be an interesting one, since the Butchers, generally, shouldn’t be particularly good at handling the ball. They tend to focus strongly on damage over footballing ability, so when Mat said that Layne could be a better striker than Shark...well that gave us a bit of a challenge.

But to be honest? It’s really cool when you get a challenge like that. One of the reasons we’re developers is that we like making things, and working on things. And sometimes one of the most fun things you can do in this job is to put constrictions and restraints on yourself and see how well you can work within those restraints. And we’re pretty damn happy with how we did this time!

The first trait on the back of Layne’s card is called Bleed the Cleats. This trait gives Layne +1/+0” KICK for the remainder of the turn. This rule is a super cool way of representing Layne both being a Butcher, and potentially letting him being a better striker than Shark! This rule triggers every time throughout a turn Layne inflicts damage. So while this obviously works during his activation, it also triggers if he damages a model with a parting blow or a counter attack. This rule can get Layne’s kick dice up to truly ridiculous number, letting him roll as many as six or seven dice on a shot, letting him guarantee that he hits that Shot when he takes it! (Please note: The Dev Team do not guarantee that Layne will hit every Shot. Dice are often fickle cubes of sadness and may result in shouting, table flipping, and wild disappointment. If these symptoms persist for more than four games, please consult your local game store or the Steamforged web store for new fickle sadness cubes.)

Now that we’ve seen he can get up to a whole tonne of kick dice, how is he at getting and holding the ball? Also pretty good, as it turns out! His next rule is Close Control, a staple of the game, which allows him to ignore the first Tackle result he suffers each turn. This is useful if he tackles the ball from an enemy model, and has to take a counter attack, or it can be used defensively, to use him as a place to hold the ball if you’re trying to keep it away from enemy models.

The next trait is Get On With It, Boy!. Ox is, as we’ve mentioned, Layne’s sponsor. This rule represents Ox encouraging Layne to get his head in the game! It allows Layne, at the start of his activation, to either use Acrobatic without spending Influence, or to immediately remove any conditions he’s suffering. This is super useful just to save an influence, or to clear a knocked down condition or a burning condition, or really anything that’s going to slow Layne down from getting his shots on goal!

Layne’s final rule, Magic Touch, explains the lack of Tackle results on the first two columns of his playbook. It turns out he gets to add a Tackle to EVERY successful attack! That’s pretty incredible, his column 1 momentous 1 damage, dodge, tackle that gives him +1 kick die for the rest of the turn is probably the best single playbook result in the entire game! He’s good with the ball, is our Layne. He does have some Tackle results on his playbook, because, well, sometimes the opponent will be rude enough to put the ball on a model with Close Control too! And really that’s not on, so Layne also has the option to do two Tackles on a single result.

Well, there we have it, Layne! What do you think about him? Excited to roll 10 dice for a kick for the first time in GB history? Excited to use The Best Playbook Result Ever? You’ll have to wait till Friday!