Tinkering With 'Blood, Sweat & Cheers'

I am continuing with my 'Do A Little Bit Of Paint Every Day' resolution (such as it is), and have turned my attention to a few Crusader gladiators that have been sat on my desk partially completed for the past 18 months. This prompted me to get out 'Blood, Sweat & Cheers' again, and play around with a few ideas I had.

The first is some continued testing on the the dimachaerus, as posted about HERE. That seems to be going OK; the changed stats seem to have reigned the type in a little.

The second grew out of a discussion last year about my barbarian gladiators. Whilst these are not strictly a formal, historical type, I have tried to produce a card for them. They are low on armour but carry a big shield, and I've been running them as a faster, but less well-protected murmillo. They work OK like that, but our discussion was about what kind of special ability you could give them so that they had their own personality. We liked the idea a a kind of berserk rage element, and threw a few ideas around. I've finally been trying them out. 

The proposal is to continue to run the Barbarian with stats of 3/3/3, but change the Glory abilities.

1 x Glory is now 'Charge - Move to an adjacent space and attack with Attack + 1'

2 x Glory is now 'Rage - Move to an adjacent space and attack with Attack. Receive +1 to the attack roll for every wound already sustained.'

So basically their 2 x Glory ability is the 'Adrenaline Rush' bonus on some Strike cards. It's obviously a double-edged sword, since the gladiator has to be injured to use it, and it doesn't become dangerous until the gladiator is at death's door, but I thought it was a nice reversal of some other Glory abilities which do degrade as the gladiator takes wounds (the retiarius, for examples). The simple and effective 1 x Glory ability kind of makes up for it in my view, allowing a decent mobile attack all of the time.

Finally I'm pondering a small change to the hoplomachus. In other posts I've written about how I feel that they might be a little short-changed, since their 2 x Glory ability can only be used once, and to some extent their 1 x Glory ability is designed to set up the other ability. I'd considered giving them an alternative 2 x Glory ability once they'd thrown their spear, but yesterday I had a brainwave. Why not let them recover the spear? They can use 2 x Glory to retrieve their spear, making available to throw on a subsequent turn. I know the logistics of this are weird (I wouldn't bother tracking where the spear is; the gladiator simply gets it back by playing the cards), but it would work OK I think. The hoplomachus would defend with Speed on the turn they do it, so it's a little risky, but worth it to get their main ability back I reckon. Essentially the gladiator alternates between two 2 x Glory abilities - 'Hurl Spear' and 'Retrieve Spear'. I haven't tried it out yet, though ...