New England HS Events

[Bengi]

Originally Posted by nyys

I'd like to try a team tourney once, but I feel like that after the experience I won't look forward to one for a while... who knows.

The pairing is the toughest part IMO. Do we pair online so teammates can plan their army, or so we randomly pair at the event and risk far too powerful and weak teams?

A third option is to pair with a new partner after each round. I like this option because it maximizes the number of people you get to 'scape with on a given day. It's also not bad for gameplay as a particularly strong or weak team is broken up after 1 game.

[Scapemage]

Originally Posted by Bengi

A third option is to pair with a new partner after each round. I like this option because it maximizes the number of people you get to 'scape with on a given day. It's also not bad for gameplay as a particularly strong or weak team is broken up after 1 game.

As mentioned, it's not going to be team unfortuneately. However, we are considering drafting, maybe with some general wars thrown in somehow...

Who knows? Does anyone have a neat, new, interesting idea?

[Darkmage7a]

Originally Posted by Cleon

The original:

NHSD Scape-A-Palooza 2008

Thanks, I was hoping someone would find that.

[nyys]

Originally Posted by Bengi

A third option is to pair with a new partner after each round. I like this option because it maximizes the number of people you get to 'scape with on a given day. It's also not bad for gameplay as a particularly strong or weak team is broken up after 1 game.

I like that. Definitely makes it more fun, IMO, to get paired up with more people.

Though again, how to do pairings. Ramdom? Opposite records (1-0 gets paired with an 0-1, 1-1 with 1-1, 2-1 with 1-2)? Like a regular tourney with like records getting paired and go up against like records? A lot of ways you could go with it.

[arp12]

If there is another Pestered in Westford , it will be a simple x point armies kill-em-all. I think we need more events like that.

Maybe I should start planning...

[Warlord Alpha]

I still want somebody to host a team tournament. Me and my friend would slaughter. Or we would lose horribly. But we would lose together at least!

[Scapemage]

OK i'll talk to Ollie again to see about doing a team tournament in November, as it seems to be the demand. I would also like a team tournament, but hte other ideas were good.

[ollie]

I'm still against a team event. I suppose "against" is not the right word---I'm in favour of a team event but less so than a lot of other formats I'm in favour of.

Scapemage, if this is your event and you want to do team, then go for it. If I'm going to be co-hosting and putting a fair amount of the prep work in then I think we should come up with something else. I'm happy either way. Given that I want as little novelty as possible and you want as much, I think drafting might be the way to go using something similar to the outline Dok posted recently: it'll be a first for the northeast while also having at its core two people sitting down with armies they've chosen without much restriction and trying to destroy each other.

A few reasons for not wanting team:

• You only play a quarter of the markers not half.
• Team games have an intrinsic positive feedback loop: once a team knocks out one of the opposing players it's hard for the single player to cling on. This leads to repetitive strategy and one person sitting not doing anything for longer.
• Of all the events I've played in, the team one was my least favourite (being merely awesome rather than really awesome).
• The team dynamic can be weird: how much do you discuss moves? I've seen games where it was essentially one player playing both sets of order markers and others where the weaker player was making bad moves without any guidance. I didn't like either much.

Also, Kinseth has been talking about getting Revelations III on the calendar. Given that we're in similar areas and a similar hefty drive for the east coast folks, we should see what he has planned.

[Darkmage7a]

has anyone tried these formats?

a) 3+players, first person to kill the player on the left/right wins.

b) Assassin;3-5 players, pull your opponents name from a hat, that is your target, do not reveal your target until they are dead. If your target dies you win, regardless of who actually make the killing blow.

c) Star; 5 player, arranged in a circle forming 5 points of a star. Your goal is to kill the two players opposite of yourself. The two players next to you are your pseudo allies. Note: This format usually ends in a tie between 2 players. But can be really fun.

Most of these I adapted from other games and haven't tried in HS yet, but I think they could work with very little tweaking.

[Onacara]

The problem with those formats is that they only work with the right number of people attending. That means you have to get at least X number of players there and if a lot of people want to go then you need to cut people off.

[ollie]

They also add Politics to the mix. I appreciate that this is part of boardgames generally, but I think it's the part I like least. I much prefer games like chess, Summoner Wars, two-player Scrabble, two-player kill 'em all Heroscape and so on where any advantage that accrues to you is a disadvantage to your opponent. There's a well-defined notion of the "best move" (even though you may well disagree about what that is) that crumbles in multiplayer formats.

In short, as the resident wet blanket of the thread, I'd like to say that I'm not keen on those ideas for a tournament before Scapemage declares a five-player kill-the-person-three-spaces-clockwise general-specific event that I'm helping to organise.

[Darkmage7a]

Maybe they aren't the best formats for tournament play. However, I don't think there is quite as much politics involved as you might think at first glance. Each format has a clearly defined opponent. In fact often if you kill figures that belong to someone who is not your target you force a different player to win. Possibly toward the end you may try to help a specific player out of a tight spot, but your motivation for doing so is to prevent another player from winning before you. Thats not really political tactics as much as good strategy. Yes, I can see where these formats have issues in tournament, but I think it could be quite fun on a small scale game night.