Favorite Formats

[OEAO]

Hey All,

What are your favorite formats to play that I may not have heard of/haven’t tested enough? I have a lot of time to play and try new things during this quarantine, so what are some cool formats?

[superfrog]

Escape!

[OEAO]

Originally Posted by superfrog

Escape!

Lol, is this a format? Also include the details of the format, I guess.

[superfrog]

Originally Posted by OrcElfArmyOne

Lol, is this a format? Also include the details of the format, I guess.

Kind of a joke, this was a format that OHS ran one season but didn't go very well IIRC.

The idea was that you could escape figures by having them unengaged in your opponent's start zone at the end of a turn or round or something, and then they'd be removed from the battlefield. Whoever escaped the most points won.

Escape Rules

• For this scenario you cannot leave a figure from your army unplaced if it would fit in your startzone.
• At the end of your turn, if you have a figure unengaged in your opponent's startzone, you may remove that figure from the game. That figure "escapes" the game.
• You score points based on full card scoring of escaped heroes, and partial card scoring for escaped squads.
• The game ends when one player has no figures left on the battlefield. The player with the most escaped points wins. If there is a tie for escaped points then the player who still has figures on the battlefield wins.
• Clarification on order of end-of-turn effects - they are completed in this order:
  1. Any card-related effects (returning control of Marcu, rolling for Thunder Step wounds, etc)
  2. Deciding whether to Escape with any eligible figures
  3. Evaluating victory conditions

[lefton4ya]

I like Take two with "Cut the Cake" format - one person selects 2 armies from all 4 brought, the other person picks from those chosen 2. Also I ran one time: Combo of Take 2, Pick Your Poison, and Reverse the Whip!

• For rounds 1-2, it is Take 2 - Before each game, there will be a dice-off, done by the players. The winner of the dice-off chooses first army choice or second army choice. Whoever has first army choice may choose any of the four armies (either of their two or either of their opponent's two). The other player may then choose from any of the other three armies.
• For round 3, it is Pick Your Poison, your opponent picks an army for you to play from your army pool only. Highest ranked picks first.
• For round 4, it is Reverse the Whip, you pick an army for you to play from your opponents pool only. Highest ranked picks first.

This makes it some someone brings two good but not great armies.

[Dysole]

Take 2 CtC is also a favorite of mine because it's the format that's easiest for me to bring my weird piles of garbage and have my opponent try and figure out what to do with it. Really a format that lets me play weird stuff is always going to go up in my enjoyment because that's where I get my fun (this is why I find Q9 and 4th my least favorite units because they're straightforward and good so when I run them it ends up being with Obsidians or Templar). So this does end up making double blind no restrictions one of my least favorite formats since while there are a number of viable options, they're all less exciting to me.

I'll be back later with some other variants that were fun for me.

~Dysole, who thinks her reasons put her in a small group of similar people

[mtl1998]

I can’t think of the name, but i like the format where each player brings three groups of figures. To decide which armies to play, one person chooses one of the groups out of the combined six. The other player choses two of the groups and the first person responds by choosing another group (So a 1-2-1 draft). I know OHS has done this before. It’s probably my favorite format.

[superfrog]

I think we'd call that Pod Draft.

[BiggaBullfrog]

Probably my favorite 1v1 format would be one of the various drafting formats depending on my mood -- pooled draft, pod draft, etc. (Reverse draft seems cool, but I've only done one game with it so don't have much experience with it.) An easy college favorite is 4-6 player Heat of Battle Free For All. We did that a lot to introduce new players to the game and it always made for crazy fast action and fun games.

All time favorite is 2v2, and I've been having fun experimenting with different takes on that. We've been talking about doing more variants in our Utah scene (hopefully that is able to start up again soon), like a random team assassination. Or, the one I'm most looking forward to and pushing for NHSD, 2v2 Reverse the Whip.

[Chris Perkins]

About 6 months or so back there was a run on a format that involved drafting all the heroes from a given general. For example, we decide on Jandar, pull all the Jandar unique heroes (plus 1 of each uncommon), and then go back and forth (or 1-2-2-2, or 1-2-1-1-1, etc.) picking heroes til they are all gone (no point total).

Those games were pretty fun and allowed some very seldom used units to shine (Ice Elemental w/ Raelin held as a great screen for like 3 rounds in one game).

With this format it's fun to track how many points each hero kills. The Einar game I played involved Master of the Hunt killing something like 600 points worth of figures.

Edit: I'd love to try an Utgar version of this sometime if anyone's got 4 hours to kill

[Owlman]

General Wars, Heat of Battle, and 5 card stud, as made popular by LegoBoy and Cap. Canuck back in the day

5 card stud: Must have 5 different Valkyrie Generals, no general can e repeated. (You can have multiple common squads for a general)

[vegietarian18]

A fun variant of five card stud is kevindola's no point limit variation that we did at Peoria NHSD 2014.

Tournament Format: United Generals
Bring one army constructed under the following restrictions:

- Classic figures only (no marvel or customs)
- Choose 4 Army Cards (Each army card must be from a different general)
- No Point Limit
- 11 figure limit (no sitting of figures is allowed)
- You may only have one hero figure in your army that is 150 points or higher.
- If you have no large or huge hero figures in your army then you may choose a 5th general’s army card to use in your army.