Florida Frenzy 2: Oct. 18th

[NecroBlade]

As promised, here's our thread for this year's National Heroscape Day Tournament. At this point, it will most likely be held at Sci-Fi City again on October 18th. The rest of the details we have three months to work out.

Official Tournament Stuff:

Where: Sci-Fi City
6006 E Colonial Drive
Orlando, FL 32807
407-282-2292

When: Oct. 18th, 2008, 10a.m.-8p.m.
First round begins at 11a.m.

What: 495 point classic armies. 5 Swiss rounds plus top 8 finals. Special Rules: +1 to all Frenzy rolls, +1 SoS for not using A+ units, +1 SoS for not using more than 3 of any common squad.

Who: Guest list:
NecroBlade +more?
karl with a k
himsati
Mr. Migraine +2 +more?
BurnyFlame +brother
Roller+
1Mmirg
Torog
Zealot
Rennix
Sysiphus
SmoKingToad
nicktheant+
lfvjh
Novelist432
Star Wolf +dad
Sup3rS0n1c
randomskyfears
millermixture+

Why: Prizes!!!
Customized trohpy by Onacara!!!
Agent Skahen signed by bunjee!!!
16 more Agent Skahens!!!
SotM Marro signed by Craig Van Ness!!!
2 RotV & 1 SotM master sets!!!
HMG & 2 WGHQ gift certificates!!!
Vixentor NHSD '08 dice tower!!!
Zombies!!!
2x Laglor!!!
3x Gilbert!!!
Acolarh!!!
Ornak!!!
HamTaro!!!
3x Thalenk Tundra!!!
RttFF!!!
and more, don't forget to bring yours!!!

Maps:
Swiss/Top 8:
Road Rampage: http://www.heroscapers.com/community...4&postcount=12
Stroll thru the Park: http://www.heroscapers.com/downloads//sttp_sv1_Tk5.jpg
Crystallized: http://www.heroscapers.com/downloads//crystallized_vUW.jpg
Broken Skyline Remake: http://www.heroscapers.com/downloads//the%20broken%20skyline_remake_3LC.jpg

Semis/Finals:
Badru Valley: http://www.heroscapers.com/downloads//badruvalley_G3z.jpg
Overlord: http://www.heroscapers.com/downloads//overlord_663.jpg

2 random face-down glyphs per map: +1 Defense, +1 Common Attack, +1 Unique Attack, d20 +1, +2 Move, Initiative +8

Also if you can, bring $1 for us to send Onacara for the trophy he is making us! Oh yeah, and don't forget to come prepared for the

THUNDERDOME!!!

[Mr Migraine]

YAAAAAAAA!

Maybe a little less jungle terrain.
And us being allowed to sit in the Xbox chairs. Darn clerks....

[himsati]

Originally Posted by NecroBlade

As promised, here's our thread for this year's National Heroscape Day Tournament. At this point, it will most likely be held at Sci-Fi City again on October 18th. The rest of the details we have three months to work out.

Hey Necro, would you like me to work up (or put together from the downloads here) a system on my laptop to quickly register everyone, have forms for them preset. It can make tracking the tournament and matchups take about half the time and we can do any special voting on it so we don't have to pass around the paper afterwards either. Let me konw.

Originally Posted by NecroBlade

Mainly, I want to know...are there any fun themes, rules, or restrictions anyone would like to suggest for our armies this time around, other than a different point total? Speak up and we'll have a vote on the best.

I'd say vary the points, maybe find slightly smaller maps to make just a tiny bit more room on the table, and try not to have too many armies of 4 cards of the same unit. I think what made the stingers so good was the huge numbers of them in any one particular army, same thing for the 10th and their usefulness. Granted, I just rolled my usual crappy self (hence why I rarely come to "win" as it were ), but I think we've kind of lost some variety in the armies at least from last October to now.

Finally, I'd say set ahead for a prize or two for cool theme, neatest combo (using Grut Arrows to bond with Mimring or Jotun to throw people over a line of Gladiatrons so they have to come in contact with them to get back into the main fray -- basically I'm talking about unusual combinations of cards for mechanics that you don't normally see), sportsman, etc. This way we can put them on the tourney sheets and people can quickly vote as they wrap up their last games. Then you won't feel quite so rushed.

That's my thoughts at the moment, sorry spent time organizing tourneys for CCG's at GenCon quite a long time ago for one of the smaller companies in the industry so I'm just going back to a lot of what I remember then.

[BurnyFlame]

Excellent. I can't wait for October. Here are my suggestions:

-Limit the number of common squads (x2?), and/or
-Give a bonus to players bringing C or lower rated units, not just non-A+ units, and/or
-Award a prize for most unique army at the end, and/or
-Use a non-standard point value (<500 points?), and/or
-Allow Marvel (1 per army?), and/or
-Possibly use new glyphs, and/or
-Permit Mind Shackle, Stab in the Back, and similar powers to give you multiple uniques, and/or
-Give all Frenzy rolls +1 (in honor of the Tournament's name), and/or
-Use different maps than before, and/or
-Have a different tie-breaker after W/L (like head-to-head), and/or
-Get Sci-Fi City to stock HeroScape.

Otherwise, the format should be exactly the same.

[1Mmirg]

Sorry again that I missed this time. Hopefully nothing unexpected will come up this time.

Here are some thoughts on BurnyFlame's intriguing ideas:

Originally Posted by BurnyFlame

Excellent. I can't wait for October. Here are my suggestions:

-Limit the number of common squads (x2?),
I think limiting commons to 2 (or to a point total?) could have very interesting results. Whether everyone would like that, I'm not sure, but it could be interesting.
-Give a bonus to players bringing C or lower rated units, not just non-A+ units,
This could also be interesting. A bonus to SOS for C or lower units could work (though it means everyone has to know these and understand the Rankings--and have one that is updated). It is an interesting idea.
-Award a prize for most unique army at the end,
This is a great idea. We awarded a prize (albeit small) for Most Thematic and Most Creative (which I think is like "Unique"). Good idea.
-Use a non-standard point value (<500 points?),
I assume this goes without saying, knowing Necro.
-Allow Marvel (1 per army?),
I'm not a fan of Marvel mixes, but I could be convinced to allow a single Marvel character in (if enough people really like this idea).
-Possibly use new glyphs,
Again, I think this goes without saying as far as options exist. I think it helped us to have the Embattled Fen at our last tourney with the single Wound glyph. It made the maps less regular, but it also made preparing for the tourney a little less predictable. I personally like that.
-Permit Mind Shackle, Stab in the Back, and similar powers to give you multiple uniques,
I'm against breaking rules, unless there is a good reason I don't know about. I would say no to this (unless it was for some kind of special Mind Shackle game like GenCon had/has?).
-Give all Frenzy rolls +1 (in honor of the Tournament's name),
I like this one. I'm afraid we might get a glut of Aubriens, but it is interesting.
-Use different maps than before,
I assume this will be happen.
-Have a different tie-breaker after W/L (like head-to-head),
I'm not sure what you mean. Having played a tough SOS, I value that mode of secondary decision. It does make a *huge* difference to play tough opponents again and again by the luck of the draw.
-Get Sci-Fi City to stock HeroScape.
Good luck!

Otherwise, the format should be exactly the same.

Thanks for sharing all these ideas. Couple of other thoughts, of varying use: Perhaps modify the start zone (to either encourage swarms (larger) or to encourage heroes (smaller)); consider whether any team play could be used (not so sure); require a set numbers of heroes (?).

Hope this team works out better for me.

[Mr Migraine]

I like the idea of more special prize categories. I won the only special category, sportsmanship, solely because I brought 3 friends and they all voted for me. I feel sorta bad now. I only played one of them. Also, similar to what was mentioned above, having more than 2x of a common could be "restricted" like A plussers.

EDIT: I saw Heroscape at Sci-Fi City, well MarvelScape that is. They had six boxes of only Marvel, and that's it. It was pretty expensive, too: $39.99. That's about as much as a Master Set. Maybe these tourneys will show how large a fan base Heroscape has and we might actually buy something there if they actually stocked anything.

Whew....Whining and off-topic comments aside, I believe that an awkward point maximum would help encourage original armies. I liked the tourney last week especially because people didn't use generic 500 pt tournament armies that somebody could just find and use off a thread. More measures could be implemented as well in October, such as requiring at least one hero, or one two-spaced figure, or at least X amount different species, classes, personalities, etc., or (this one's my favorite) requiring a player to use at least one of every size (small, medium, large, huge) of figure in his army. That's my two cents.

[Sisyphus]

I just recovered from the last tournament and here NecroBlade goes planning another...

My thoughts on BurnyFlame's suggestions:

-Limit the number of common squads (x2?)
This a good a variant as any to try.

-Give a bonus to players bringing C or lower rated units, not just non-A+ units, and/or
I don't think there is an easy way to implement this fairly. You don't deserve a bonus, for example, for just including one Dumutef Guard in your army.

-Use a non-standard point value (<500 points?)
Of course.

-Allow Marvel (1 per army?)
I am ambivalent.

-Possibly use new glyphs
The only glyph that I think is worth adding is the wound glyph. I also think we should remove the attack glyphs from play although a limit on common squads would also be a limit on the power of the common attack glyph.

-Permit Mind Shackle, Stab in the Back, and similar powers to give you multiple uniques
I have no idea why we would want to do that. I'ld bring an army with two Ulgineshes.

-Give all Frenzy rolls +1 (in honor of the Tournament's name)
I wouldn't mind this as I love frenzy armies. It is a shame you can't get Aubriens anywhere. I noticed Buddy Lee had several squads of them and I was very jealous.

-Use different maps than before
Of course.

-Have a different tie-breaker after W/L (like head-to-head)
I am not quite sure what you mean but I think SoS should be the tie breaker.



Also I have a different idea to discourage people from playing A+ units and/or many common squads. It would be cool to have a penalty to army point values for discouraged army builds. For example, you are allowed to use Stingers(4x) but you need to fit them in a 420 point army instead of a 470 point army.

[Zealot]

That tournament was awesome, and I'm kicking myself that I didn't bring Zelrig (I was expecting to have to fight against him alot but instead I fought against mostly Stingers and Nagrubs + Hivelords)...
I was using Nagrubs + Tor-Kul-Na but I digress.

I have a few suggestions for alterations to the rules this time.

I would recommend limiting the common squads to 3 or less. Only being allowed 2 squads is good for ranged figures like stingers or microcorp but it leaves the melee squads somewhat lacking (it would make using a snake army or orc army very difficult)

I would recommend using a point value like 490, 450, or 435... since our previous point limits were 440 and 465. I figured bouncing around those two would be a good idea.

I believe that the Wound Glyph should definitely be added since it encourages the use of Heroes over squads.

I also want to toss out the idea of having pre-set Glyphs for each map that we use, for instance... a map with a lot of roads on it wont necesarily get the movement glyph placed on it because of the already useful speed boosts and a flat map would be more likely to have an attack glyph due to the lack of height advantages, ect.
This idea is exactly that, just an idea, I rather enjoy having the random glyphs since you have to gamble on whether or not going for the glyph will help you or not... if we keep in random however, I'd simply add the wound glyph to the 6 we already use (those are the most balanced ones and limiting the number of commons someone can bring will power down the common attack +1)

That is pretty much my entire speel, Thanks a ton to Necroblade for organizing the whole thing and to everyone who makes this game such an awesome hobby and experience.

[Star Wolf]

How about everyone must bring two prizes for National HeroScape Day. That way everyone walks away with more heroscape stuff on NHSD tournaments.

[himsati]

Hey,

As part of my offer concerning helping out this October, I've uploaded to my website a rough draft of a tourney sheet for players. Basically when players register they get a name-tag sticker with a number on it that matches the number on the sheet so that everyone can easily see numbers and they are put into the laptop for programming for the matchups quick and easy. I've also got a system for numbering the maps regardless of how many different maps are used so that matchups can be done to unique maps for the player-matchups as quickly and often as possible. Anyway the link to the PDF version of the form is here.

Also, I posted in Grungebob's tournament rules thread concerning the Airborne and Rechets (and a quick note about the Hive) after reviewing the full rules. I'm waiting to see what kind of feedback comes of it. I've also noticed a nice post by RobertDD on a different way of scoring the points that I feel might benefit since a decent number of people bring droppable units (and if we ever do larger tourneys [point-wise] where more people play the Hive it actually is easier than Losing Points.

Originally Posted by RobertDD

On fractional scoring:
After playing the Battle at the Border, I realized that just scoring what you have left on the board is not a fair way of scorig the event, unless every table plays the sameamount of rounds. The system heavily favors the slower players, asthey will be less far in the match, and will have more units on the table. Actually, going for an all out win (wiping Ur opponents 500 pts worth of units of the table) is probably a mistake. Your tactic should be: take a unit that is tough (Jandar's Sentinel or something). Fly in. Kill Ur opponents weakest fig, don't get killed Urself. Take 50 minutes thinking about what to do next. You win with 500 points!

I suggest that each player counts what they have on the board, then substracts what their opponent has on the board. That is their score. This goes for theloser, as well as for the winner. Note that the loser will score negative points, but the closer he is in points to his opponent, the less negative it is.

Granted, I don't see that kind of tactic amongst the group here in Florida as everyone is always such a wonderful sports(wo)man but still I thought it might not hurt to think about it.

And if you want to see what I posted click here.

[Blue Dane]

Great tourney sheet himsati! We should definitely use these in upcoming tournaments.

[Armydillo978]

Originally Posted by Mr Migraine

YAAAAAAAA!
And us being allowed to sit in the Xbox chairs. Darn clerks....

Sorry, I think that was my fault. I didn't realize you couldn't sit in the chairs and try to get feel for what they're like and see if you want to pay for it.

So, Oct 18th is a Sat. If I can get Sun off I'll be there for the whole deal.

Same idea for entry fee? Booster pack or up?