Victory condition ideas

[earlofwessex]

Hey, I'm not sure where to post this, but I'll try here. My group's got some ways of playing that I'd thought I'd share. The ideas seem really obvious, but I've never seen them mentioned and they do make for a different game.

We started looking for an alternative to a "last man standing" game, mainly because they last so long and we wanted to get more games in.

We put 4 glyphs on the board (with no powers, just markers). To win a player has to have figures on 3 of the 4 glyphs at the end of a turn. It's amazing how long these games last and the number of times that the whole game would ride on a single roll of a die, which would invariably succeed. I recommend this game - it's great fun.

Second we put a lot of glyphs on the board, one in each starting area, one just outside each starting area, one mid-way between each of the neighboring starting areas, and several more in the middle. At the end of each turn (I mean when we are placing order markers), each player gets a point for each glyph is controls. The first player to 21 points wins. The genius of this system is that you can set the point total lower or higher depending on what kind of game you want and how long you want to play. It also makes different types of armies viable - Knights of Weston and Raelin (plus Templars) won our first game because it was so hard to push them off their markers. The games are not quite as bloody because each army is trying to both attack and defend.

Let me know what you think. Has anyone else tried something like this? Do you have any suggestions?

[spiteofthedice]

Interesting.

We tend not to use glyphs at all. However, we've been thinking about trying a scenario or two, and your method of play seems like a great way to set up a balanced scenario-style battle (not that the Official scenarios aren't balanced, but Earl's way is essentially a regular HS battle, but with different victory conditions). We may have to try something like this.

[guido]

Originally Posted by earlofwessex

We started looking for an alternative to a "last man standing" game, mainly because they last so long and we wanted to get more games in.

We put 4 glyphs on the board (with no powers, just markers). To win a player has to have figures on 3 of the 4 glyphs at the end of a turn. It's amazing how long these games last and the number of times that the whole game would ride on a single roll of a die, which would invariably succeed. I recommend this game - it's great fun.

So you were aiming for quicker games and accidentally made them longer?

One thing I've tried were declaring a 7-hex tile "goal". Whoever had at least two figures on that tile at the end of a round, with no opponents on that tile was the winner.

I've also tried capture the flag, but that usually takes longer.

In both cases we made rules where the army respawns or the player drafts new units.

[Kroc]

Nice ideas, earlofwessex, I also find ending conditions like these to be better when you have more than two people. With this type of game people who hang back and wait for the others to slug it out tend to loose more.

My personal favorite is a few "glyph piles." Each time someone ends a move on one of the piles they get one of the glyphs at random. They win when they get enough glyphs. The glyph is placed on the card of the unit that captured it, and if someone destroys that unit they get all the glyphs on that card. This way early movers also become progressively stronger, and bigger targets.

Its fun, but then again I use kill them all a lot lately. You may also want to browse through the game night ideas thread. Its got lots of good suggestions to make it more fun.

[earlofwessex]

[quote=guido;717323]

Originally Posted by earlofwessex

We started looking for an alternative to a "last man standing" game, mainly because they last so long and we wanted to get more games in.

We put 4 glyphs on the board (with no powers, just markers). To win a player has to have figures on 3 of the 4 glyphs at the end of a turn. It's amazing how long these games last and the number of times that the whole game would ride on a single roll of a die, which would invariably succeed. I recommend this game - it's great fun.

So you were aiming for quicker games and accidentally made them longer?

quote]

Yes, these games ended up taking longer than before. One time one of the teams had only 2 figures left, which meant that they couldn't win since they couldn't have men on 3 glyphs. However, instead of graciously conceeding defeat, they chose to try to deny us the victory. I can't blame them. More than once they were down to one dice roll to kill one of our men on a glyph and keep us from getting 3. They got us down to 3 men so there were only 5 left on the board. However, we did win in the end (at about 2 AM).

The point counting games don't last nearly as long.

[eternaldream]

I've always wanted to come up with good rules for capture the flag. The biggest problem I've come across is map design. If the map has too many high points or obstacles, then fliers dominate. Also, either way, fast units like Vipers do very well too. As do units that disengage like Orcs.

I'm also working on an idea where you can continuously receive reinforcements. After each round you get X number of points to spend. You can cash them in right away, or hold onto them to draft a more powerful unit later.

[Jexik]

I like the idea of an area control victory condition. It seems like a great way to change the way the game is played without actually changing any core rules. I could see this even being an interesting way to organize a team tournament, although if the maps are small I might stipulate that you can't win that way until after the 1st, or even 2nd round.

If your main goal is to shorten games, large team games might not be the way to go. If you have enough terrain to make multiple small maps, I suggest playing several 1 on 1 games. Most 500 point games like that should clock in around 30-60 minutes, and then you have time for another.

[1Mmirg]

We have used glyph control for games and it is a blast. The rule to have to hold them until the end of a round is important. In fact, we often played a two round rule (b/c people were getting glyphs on their 3rd OM and winning for having held it at the end of the round).

We added a rule that after you hold the glyph at the end of a round, then you get a marker that designates you will win the game, if you still hold the glyph(s) at the end of the next round.

(We also play to allow elimination as well; no regenerating armies, etc.--if you can kill everyone else, that still counts as a win, but better have good map control in the process, so someone doesn't pull the victory out from under you using the glyphs.)

Thanks for sharing this--it has been a while since we've played this kind of game. I'm itching to do one again now--thanks!

[The B.I.V.]

Nice post, Earl. I've always found the general kill 'em-all scenarios to be the most juvenile part of 'scape... I mean, real-world military battles are never like that. Thanks for the ideas!

Brandon