Friday, February 26, 2010

Tournament Scenarios - Poll Option #3 Discussed


OK, so people (all ~20 of you so far) have been voting on the above scenario list, and I thought I should better clarify what option #3 is (which has received the most votes so far).


First off, the following "missions" are all hypothetical, and I'm not endorsing them at present. If you have ideas for missions, drop them in the comments.

Let us presume the following missions are in play in EVERY SINGLE ROUND of our 4-round tournament:

1) Victory Points
2) Recon
3) HQ Objectives
4) Loot Counters (4 of them)

So, whatever round you go into, points will be awarded in some capacity for scoring VP off your opponent, for getting units into your opponent's deployment zone (and/or keeping your zone clear), for capturing / holding your "in my deployment zone" objective (i.e. book mission #2) and for capturing standard 12" from board edge and each other loot counter objectives.

In Round 1, "Victory Points" is the primary win condition. Recon, HQ and Loot Counters are in play, but are your tiebreakers/battlepoints basically. In Round 2, "Recon" is the primary win condition, and so on and so forth.

This presents an identical "base" scenario for everyone per round, but shuffles the win condition. This is easily something you could argue takes away from competitiveness vs. having an identical mission every round, but it improves variety and "fun" without having 4 completely different missions with totally whacked and different primary win conditions and battle points.

This will be something that my co-organizer, "staff" and I will toss about a lot as we go forward with planning the tournament. Your input would be most welcome. Props to first one that gets the pic ref.

- Mike

4 comments:

  1. Can I ask a conceptual question from a non-tournament player?

    What kind of missions are you trying to set up? Are you looking for missions that feel more like a sport, or more like a simulation?

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  2. I think this can be flexible. What they *should* be, however, is competitive. So, if the mission is something like "move across the board, grab a marker, and run back across with it" ... that probably won't work.

    That said, I think there are unexplored options out there worth investigating that aren't simply "have units within 3 inches of this objective when the game ends."

    Does that make sense?

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  3. Yeah, it makes sense. I ask because my brain isn't really wired to deal with "competitive, but arbitrary." Like, giving points for ending the game with your units spelling "WAAAGH!" would be quite the challenge, and might make for a fun mission, but it doesn't make sense from a tactical standpoint.

    On a slightly less silly note, I've always been confused about the prevalence of "keep your deployment zone clear" or "end the game with X units in the enemy deployment zone." SOMETIMES that makes sense, but other times it doesn't, and rarely will it make sense for both players to be attempting either or both. It makes the game seem like a sporting event, which is a major turn-off for me both creatively and in terms of interest.

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  4. I don't necessarily disagree - in this case, as mentioned, it was purely a hypothetical for the sake of having 4 missions up there. While I will probably use some of them due to their ubiquitous nature, I'm not attached to all of them.

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