Tournament of Attrition

[Elginb]

This is inspired somewhat by RoninValentina's post in another thread:

http://www.heroscapers.com/community...4&postcount=41

I like this basic idea-- carrying your wounds as your progress through a tournament. I would suggest doing it a different way, though-- everybody starts with large armies, maybe 1000 or 2000 points, and each round ends when one opponent kills 50% of the other player's army. But when you play the next round, you don't regenerate your army like in a normal tournament, the losses you took remain so that you own army has diminished.

Here's an example of how I imagine it might go:

First round
Jotun, Sonlen, Acolarh, Syvarris, 3xAubriens, 3xWoA, Theracus = 995 pts
vs.
Tor-Kul-Na, Su-Bak-Na, Wo-Sa-Ga, 4xDrones, 3xStingers, 3xNagrubs = 995 pts
Let's imagine that the Marro army wins after destroying Jotun, Syvarris, 2xWoA, 1xAubriens and Theracus. However, the Tor-Kul-Na army also took some losses-- they lost Tor-Kul-Na, 3x Drones, and 2xNagrubs; that means that in the next round, the Marro Army couldn't use those figures.

Second Round
Su-Bak-Na, Wo-Sa-Ga, 3xStingers, 1xDrones, 1xNagrubs = 555 pts
vs.
Major Q10, Major X17, 1xGladiatrons, 3xBlastatrons = 510 pts
Both armies have diminished considerably from their original 1000 point glory and have to work with what's leftover. Let's imagine that the Marro Army wins again, destroying Major Q10, 1xGladiatrons and 1xBlastatrons, but also loses Su-Bak-Na, 1xStingers and 1xNagrubs.

Third Round
Wo-Sa-Ga, 2xStingers, 1xDrones = 345 pts
Vs.
Charos, Sir Denrick, 1xKoW, 1x4th Mass = 450 pts
Because the rate of attrition would vary from army to army, there's a chance that you might face another army with the same win-loss record, but that is fielding considerably more points than you. Still, let's imagine that the Marro army beats the Valiant army by killing Charos and 1x4th Mass, but while losing only Wo-Sa-Ga (lucky Marro bastages!).

And so on. I figure the winner of the day would be the army that has the best win-loss record, then by most points remaining in the army.

Anyway, that's the idea. I'm not sure how best to handle wounds to heroes or partial losses to squad cards in-between rounds, or how to handle things like Warrior Spirit, but I think it would be an interesting variation. What's most interesting about it to me is that lesser units might get to shine, because they're the units most likely to survive toward the later rounds. It would also force you to think much, much differently about army construction.

Anybody have any thoughts on a way to improve this type of tournament set-up?

[Frylock]

The problem is, if you have a lucky game in which you lose very little relative to your opponent, chances are you will have a lot more points in the next round. So, by winning one game handily, you could potentially crush all other armies you face the rest of the day.

For example, lets say you have Cyprien and he goes crazy the first game. He kills Jotun and Sonlen and a few squaddies before going down. (It's happened before.) So in the next game, you have your entire army except for Cyprien and maybe a few other figs, while your new opponent just finished a close game and only has a ~600 pt army. It just seems like one good game could snowball easily.

[S1R_ART0R1US]

Also, what would starting hexes be? I could see somebody playing Raelin, Taelord, Marcus, Theracus, 10th x8 (37 hexes) or Q9/Q10/Raelin/Laglor/Krav/MW+Rats x8 (45). Not armies I'd want to play against.

[Elginb]

Originally Posted by Frylock

The problem is, if you have a lucky game in which you lose very little relative to your opponent, chances are you will have a lot more points in the next round. So, by winning one game handily, you could potentially crush all other armies you face the rest of the day.

For example, lets say you have Cyprien and he goes crazy the first game. He kills Jotun and Sonlen and a few squaddies before going down. (It's happened before.) So in the next game, you have your entire army except for Cyprien and maybe a few other figs, while your new opponent just finished a close game and only has a ~600 pt army. It just seems like one good game could snowball easily.

Well, I would expect that to happen a lot, actually. I think you'd just have to match folks up based not just on win-loss records, but on total army points-- that would cut down on windfall wins dominating the tournament.

[Elginb]

Originally Posted by S1R_ART0R1US

Also, what would starting hexes be? I could see somebody playing Raelin, Taelord, Marcus, Theracus, 10th x8 (37 hexes) or Q9/Q10/Raelin/Laglor/Krav/MW+Rats x8 (45). Not armies I'd want to play against.

I figure that would be decided by whoever was running the tournament. I personally like smaller start-zones so that large armies encourage lots of heroes, but that's just me...

[AMIS]

I like this thought but you would have to make the largest armies remaining face of against each other as has been noted but...
Why not decrease start zones by 20'ish% every game?
Round one a 32 hex start zone
Round two a 24 hex start zone
Round three a 18 hex start zone
Round four a 14 hex start zone
etc.

People may end up having to protect heroes as they move onward or risk losing squads without attrition. Not me, I'd be out in the second round.

[gamjuven]

I like the idea, but I see it getting messed up pretty easily. I mean even if you try to figure out starting zone restrictions and stuff like that, the winners will be the ones that get lucky in the strength of schedule. In every tournament there are new players or players that aren't good, or perhaps a bad matchup. I have played in tournaments where I haven't even lost a full squad. 99% you will crush your next opponent if they didn't do the same in their first game. It would be very lopsided and everybody would be saying that the winner only won because they got to play little Timmy's nagrub/khosumet/carr/Dumutef army in the first round.

[yagyuninja]

Originally Posted by gamjuven

I like the idea, but I see it getting messed up pretty easily. I mean even if you try to figure out starting zone restrictions and stuff like that, the winners will be the ones that get lucky in the strength of schedule. In every tournament there are new players or players that aren't good, or perhaps a bad matchup. I have played in tournaments where I haven't even lost a full squad. 99% you will crush your next opponent if they didn't do the same in their first game. It would be very lopsided and everybody would be saying that the winner only won because they got to play little Timmy's nagrub/khosumet/carr/Dumutef army in the first round.

Yup.

Perhaps then a return to something like Roninvalentina's original idea, but instead of set wounds every game (could be countered by marcu or trolls or something) it could be set points that are removed each game. Something like this perhaps...

600
500
425
375
300

With different (or equal) point totals being shaved off each round. It would be less thematically cool than a strict "battle damage" set up, but would remove the marcu/SoS issues.

[Warlord Alpha]

What if you brought 2000 points worth of figures to the game, and then each round you mandated how many points of figures could be used. So, the first round you can use 600 points worth of figures. The people who have their entire army destroyed now only have 1400 points worth of figures to work with, while the winners have somewhere between 1401 and 2000 points.

The next round maybe each army only has 500 points to work with, and maybe for round 4 you only get 350 or so points.

Eventually, people who have had all their figures destroyed are out of the tournament (but can still play for fun with other people who have been eliminated, of course), meanwhile the people who have consistently won continue to face off with the dwindling point amounts.

The result is that as the day goes on, both the number of figures you can select from and the number of figures you can use in any given army greatly diminishes. It would certainly be very interesting to try.

[RoninValentina]

I think the event idea I have works absolutely great but only if you bar Marcu. Trolls are decent HP sinks too, but if you're only playing with say, 450 points, a 90 point investment is fairly significant.

Oh. Or you could have a rule that forces players to spread wounds rather than stack them all onto Marcu. Something like, in round 4 you have to spread 7 wounds, but you cannot place a new wound on an army card until each army card you control has taken at least one wound.

That's the solution.

[gamjuven]

Another problem I see happening with some of these ideas is that the larger and larger you make the armies, the less and less new people you will likely have. Pretty much every tournament I've been to has had new people that haven't really played the game or are just starting out. Many of these people don't have a large collection and some not at all. having people bring 2,000 pts would be ridiculous for a lot of these people. Think of that little kid that only has 1 squad of 4th mass or something. They aren't really gonna have 2,000 pts worth of figures. We don't want to exclude these fine new budding 'Scapers.

Plus, I'm usually the guy lending armies to people that want to play in a tourney and more figures and points mean more chances to lose my figures, lol.

[S1R_ART0R1US]

That sounds like a good idea. In this case is putting wounds on common squads it would be one from each squad before placing more wounds right? ie 500 pts: Atlaga, Raelin, Minions x3 in round three (five wounds would start with a 3 life Atlaga, 4 life Raelin and Minions x2 rather than 2 life Atlaga, 3 life Raelin, and 8 Minions.