FeedBack and thank you's for 2016

[Hendal]

First

Thanks Fomox and the whole Crew - we have such great people running these things, I think everything went really smooth and was run very well.

Thanks to everyone who I scaped against for great battles, as always I was happy as a pig in **** just scaping all day.


Flex -- this is Genius, just really a great idea. You need to stress you can play as many different armies as you bring with you ( or that you can play different armies ). But so nice to be able to play 2 or more games in a row with a friend you only see at GC and get some points towards a chance at a prize , just spot on perfect for Thurs. Morning.

Next year I will have all my HS figures and cards for people to use ( I had 2 kids make armies and get in the flex with generics - 1 I even paid his way in so I was not waiting for someone to play against, he he. ). I would have done it this year, but as fate would have it, I took the bus in and could not comfortable bring everything.

Learn to Play - the only way to grow is keep teaching people so this seems like a no brainer to me also

The extra Dice - such a nice touch, to give a couple out to crazy team builds or sportmanship - spot on, again perfect.

Kids Tourney - don't give up on this, the 2 brothers are worth letting it go again even if they are the only ones entered.

4 x ? - I really enjoy these, I think these are great, and not just because I am the 4 x 500 Champ this year ( and got 2nd in the 4 x 400 - Go George )

[Dragon Ruler]

Ditto Hendel. Outstanding job by Fomox and crew. I wasn't sure I wanted to attend by myself once Orc's plans changed, but I had a blast. Events were well run, and as you all know, the scape community is the best gaming community out there. Nice to see newcomers too. Thanks to all who worked so hard to make this happen.

[FilmCriticFrog]

I wanted to give my thanks too. This was my first year attending as a Heroscape player, and I was happy to enter in the events. My only suggestion would be for more free play time, but aside from that, it was a wonderful time and I was so happy to meet all of you! I may have lost horribly, but I had fun doing it! Thanks for the warm welcome and I hope to see you all again soon!

[dok]

As always, event admin was great. Thanks to everyone who volunteers for this.

I already gave some feedback in person, and I also have lots of survey data to process. (THANK YOU to everyone who filled one out, and a special thanks to @capsocrates for working the room and getting them filled out.)

One additional totally random suggestion - go back to taping the glyphs down. Heck, even the healer glyph. I had many games later in the weekend where I just shrugged and told my opponent "we're playing the map in front of us" when there were fewer glyphs than officially called for.

[vegietarian18]

I had a great time. Things were very smooth this year without the computer. I do not know if it was easier or harder on the TDs but I know that there were fewer issues.

My only suggestion for next year is a slight change to the Main Event format. I think the Main Event is a huge draw, and will be for a while. Because of that, I think it is important to maintain a bit of simplicity in it so anyone can play (no drafting, no Bring 2, etc). However, I admit that RtW does have some flaws, so I tried to come up with a solution that would limit those: Alternating Reverse the Whip.

Instead of Day 1 using only your own army, and Day 2 only using your opponent’s, you would start with your own army in Round 1 of Day 1, then switch to your opponent’s army for round 2, and back to your own for round 3. Day 2 would be the same way, but you would start with your opponent’s army and alternate.

Day 1

Game 1: Own armies
Game 2: Reverse the Whip
Game 3: Own armies
Game 4: Reverse the Whip
Game 5: Own Armies

Day 2:

Semiquarterfinals: Reverse the Whip
Quarterfinals: Own armies
Semifinals: Reverse the Whip
Finals: Own armies

I like this change for a lot of reasons:

1. It makes the “bring cheese to make Day 2” strategy a lot less viable, since you have to beat your army at least once to guarantee a Day 2 position.

2. It gives everyone a chance to play Reverse the Whip. I’ve always thought that it was sad that there were so few games of Reverse the Whip at GenCon, since they are so fun. It’s so cool to see someone else play your army and plot out how to destroy your own figures. Everyone who signs up for the event would get at least two games of Reverse the Whip. This maintains the same number of rounds of Reverse the Whip, it just shifts their position to a time when more people are playing.

3. It further encourages people to bring armies that they think they can win both with and against, which was the original goal of Reverse the Whip.

4. It stops the strategy of bringing an army that will win on points on Day 1 and lose in untimed games on Day 2, which while not frequently abused, is certainly incorporated into some players’ army building decisions.

A few logistical things:

1. I decided to open Day 1 with games with your own army so players would get a feel for what they are playing before they have to beat it.

2. Day 2 opens with Reverse the Whip, partially to keep the alternating structure, and partially so a player who powergames to go 3-2 and hope to get lucky on SoS/Points would still lose in the first round on Day 2.

3. As a result of that choice, the finals are no longer Reverse the Whip. That’s sad, but I think it will result in really well-played finals matches, with really unique armies. At this point, finalists will have beat their own armies at least twice and won with them at least three times. They will be hard to play armies and good players playing their best game with their own armies.

4. There is one more game of playing your own armies on Day 1, and I think that’s really important so that players play real armies rather than piles of flagbearers. Piles of flagbearers are cool, but the games just aren’t as interesting or fun to play.

Overall, I think this change would make the event feel more like Reverse the Whip should. It eliminates some of the negative consequences of the format, like players who only want to make Day 2 powergaming their way there. It still keeps things simple and quick enough for GenCon’s tight timetable. Thoughts?

[Tornado]

That sounds pretty cool veggie.

We played random RtW at a local event and it was a blast.

[Dysole]

Major thank yous again to the organizers for putting this on and all of my opponents. Things were a lot of fun.

Things I liked:

• Generous dice distribution. While I never managed to earn a full set, fomox giving me a die was nice.
• Speed and efficiency of the tournaments was very well done
• Figure limits over space limits. STALKERS!
• Learn to Play looked like it was a success. When I did it see it happening, people seemed to be enjoying themselves.
• And of course as always this community is amazing

Things I was less than happy about:

• Wendigo could be a really unfun map to play on especially if someone had range and someone didn't. I think checking to make sure maps that won't lead to this could be really bad.
• Point differential + full card scoring. These two factors led me to make a few moves that I'm not sure I would've made were they not a factor. (Biggest one that comes to mind is making sure to kill the last EOV in Uniques Only)
• More events that encourage less used units
• I ended up playing on two of the same maps a lot. Not sure there's any way to fix this that would actually be easy on the organizers.

RtW isn't my favorite format (and admittedly unlike vegie I don't find it that much simpler than Bring 2) but that's mostly because success is at least somewhat dependent on how many good (or at least not bad) matchups you get and I'm not sure vegie's proposed solution actually removes that. That said, I prefer it to events which simply encourage top tier units. I might prefer alternating RtW to regular RtW. I'll have to mull it more.

I might think of more stuff later but once again had a great time.

~Dysole, always happy to get in some Scape

[Hendal]

Veg. - that is interesting, something to think about, seems like you have been thinking about it a lot.

I still want a 1,000 pt army build game, make it at least 500 in Heros, nd give it an hour and half.

[Rÿchean]

Thanks to fomox for running lead on all this. I had concerns going in but everything ran just fine, you all did an excellent job!

As far as the main event, I think it needs to be trimmed back to reflect the number of participants, like only 8 make day 2. That would work well with the alternating reverse suggestion, fewer 3&2 players have a shot.

I'm not even sure we should have a Day 2 anymore. If we went to reverse as you go there really wouldn't be much reason to other than the fanfare, which does have some value. I did have friends who did not participate in main because it had the potential for so many hours and maybe taking 2 days.

I want to compliment all the main event armies; I was amazed at what some of you were running. I really didn't think I would be the one to power to day 2. I was having fun playing the uniques, as I always do, so I rolled with it since I already snagged some dice. I had a hound build that probably would have been more in line with the other builds. Players were clearly in it to win it this year, which was nice to see.

Good job all around by everyone. I hope we can maintain that attendance level for a few more years. I still love playing heroscape with my friends at GenCon.

[Dysole]

I almost forgot a shoutout to this community. My anxiety was definitely giving me fits about how accepting people might be about my preferred gender pronouns, but everyone was absolutely fantastic and laid all that to rest. Thanks again for being such a wonderful and safe community.

~Dysole, so glad she's a part of this community

[lefton4ya]

Strengths & Opportunities:

• It was run very well. Even I was able to run an event with a fair amount of ease. Props to @fomox and everyone else who helped.
• Nice variety of formats. I didn't play in them all, but there was something for everyone. Keep it up, maybe an official take-two or chaos of the battle would be fun.
• I do like Reverse-the whip due to the variety of armies that show up, but agree with @vegietarian18 that we should go back and forth each round. I like having a Day 2, but also agree with @Rÿchean that if we went back-and-forth with RTW, we could reduce the number of rounds by one, so either only take the elite 8, or reduce Day 1 to four rounds and take 16 players to a four round Day 2. Since Day 2 games go to unlimited time, 3 or 4 games would take 4 or 5 hours, so make sure to allot for extra time by not overlapping the finals with a following event, as happened the last few years.
• I do like having an open play event, but I think the C3V tournament should be more "official" as a few people came to the open play event and where not fully prepared, and if it was on the official Gencon site and book, people would be prepared better.
• The learn-to-plays seemed like a hit. I think we need to be more prepared for it with armies set aside for the whole tourney. I think we should have Magic:Arena learn-to-plays as well.
• I liked the maps overall, but did not like that we only had 5 different maps. Assuming next year we can have 24 or more maps on the table, I don't see why we can't have 8 different maps. Also, am I the only one who wants to see at least one Tundra map with heavy snow and/or slippery ice?
• I was appreciative we had Magic:Arena represented, but I think we need to get more non-heroscape (including Magic CCG) players excited and involved, as only having 11 players was sad. I was the first who posted the event on planeswalker-arena and only did it a couple months ahead of time, and not sure if anyone posted on the regular Magic forums. I hope to see both a 500 point and a 600 point AoP tournament next year, and more buzz early on to get at least 24 players.
• I am glad we got 80 total players on 24 maps and sold out most events. Hopefully our numbers are good enough that Gencon will not only let us keep the same amount, but also up the amount of maps to 30.
• All the players were friendly and sportsmanlike - they would never throw a rock at me unprepared. Even if I $ucked this year, I had fun. The opportunity is more personal for me to get better.

[Raider30]

Heyo all,

In the interest of keeping thoughts together this thread should be considered the GenCon 2016 thoughts and feedback thread. Please give us your thoughts on the 2016 events, how the tourneys were run, shout outs to great players or fun matches, and of course suggestions for next year.

We certainly promise to read and consider all suggestions, no matter how out there!

On a personal note a big thank you to Fomox for taking the lead this year. I enjoyed both my tourney games and my stint as learn to play GM. Truth be told I easily had as much fun with the learn to play as my other events.

Thank you to those I played against, both the ones who were kind enough to let me win and those who slaughtered my wyrmling armies in the 4x300. Thanks to those who put up with Fomox and I yucking it up during the team tourney.

Thank you to those who offered kind words, encouragement, and thanks to the organizers and the gms who help us out!

Now a couple of quick comments to some of the earlier posts:
@dok - definitely they WILL be taped down glyphs next year. We have done that in prior years and for whatever reason didn't have a roll of scotch tape with us this year, just a big ole roll of packing tape so we thought we'd wing it and see how it went...heh, lesson learned.

@veggie - I'm curious about your thoughts on the main event format. What prevents everyone from 'bringing the cheese'? Then both people are playing decent armies regardless of if the round is rtw or normal, and if more do this than not, do we not end up with a bunch of cheese?

- Raider30