As Dawn Rises...
Spring has sprung, and life is getting busy again. The kids soccer season is in full swing, my wife and I are working like crazy to get the yard back into shape, and on top of all of that, I’m just took on a new role at work. Why do you care? Well, you probably don’t, but it does mean that my posts will probably be even more infrequent than usual for the next few months, so there.
The good news is that even though I haven’t had much time for blogging, I’ve managed to keep a decent gaming schedule going. We just wrapped up the Shattered Grounds: Nightfall league here last weekend, and that was a lot of fun. This was the first league I’ve ever participated in, and all-in-all, it was a good experience. As I thought about the mechanics of league play, it made me realize how hard it must be to put together a good league format. You need something that encourages people to play, but doesn’t punish the folks who can only really get in a few games a week. You need to encourage participation but not set it up so only your best and most active players get something out of it. I thought this league did a pretty good job with all of that.
The league scenarios enjoyable but nothing special, with the exception of Fight Club, which quickly became my favorite, to the point where I’m going to do my best to keep it around in the local meta. I got into the game because giant steam-powered stompy robots are super-cool, and I love a format that puts a lot of them on the table.
Which brings me to the only thing that didn’t work well – the finale event scenario. In our store, the defenders ruled with an iron fist. Every person who started the first game as a defender stayed a defender, which caused a few problems. First, it was demoralizing as hell, and second, it ended up becoming a game of player attrition… Attackers got frustrated and quit playing, and there was nothing to bring the defenders together to sort out a overall winner. As far as the scenario itself, it had several problems. First and foremost, the “flags” were too far back – a properly defensive army (I’ll share mine in a minute) could easily hold them. In fact, I annihilated my two enemies on their side of the field, which hardly felt defensive. Also, the attrition rules weren’t strong enough – it would take far too many games to wear a defender down to the point where it would matter. Personally, I would have liked to see an intentionally unbalanced scenario (Attacker get more points, or gets a reserve force they can bring on in waves or something like that.) As it stood, it was just far too easy to defend.
Here is what I brought for my 35 points:
The good news is that even though I haven’t had much time for blogging, I’ve managed to keep a decent gaming schedule going. We just wrapped up the Shattered Grounds: Nightfall league here last weekend, and that was a lot of fun. This was the first league I’ve ever participated in, and all-in-all, it was a good experience. As I thought about the mechanics of league play, it made me realize how hard it must be to put together a good league format. You need something that encourages people to play, but doesn’t punish the folks who can only really get in a few games a week. You need to encourage participation but not set it up so only your best and most active players get something out of it. I thought this league did a pretty good job with all of that. The “passport” concept, which admittedly seemed a little silly at first, ended up being one of the most enjoyable parts of the league. I guess it works for the same reason that people enjoy achievements on the XBOX – it gives you something incremental to focus on. Even if you can’t win the ladder, you can be focused on getting a stamp for playing (and another for beating) each faction. Or, maybe you are trying to unlock that next stratagem. I typically only have time to get in a couple of games a week, so I knew there was no way I was going to win the whole thing (when you earn more points for playing then winning, number of games becomes a powerful factor), but the passport concept still gave me something very enjoyable to focus on and work towards, and kept me wanting to get into the store and sneak a game in whenever I could.
The league scenarios enjoyable but nothing special, with the exception of Fight Club, which quickly became my favorite, to the point where I’m going to do my best to keep it around in the local meta. I got into the game because giant steam-powered stompy robots are super-cool, and I love a format that puts a lot of them on the table.
Which brings me to the only thing that didn’t work well – the finale event scenario. In our store, the defenders ruled with an iron fist. Every person who started the first game as a defender stayed a defender, which caused a few problems. First, it was demoralizing as hell, and second, it ended up becoming a game of player attrition… Attackers got frustrated and quit playing, and there was nothing to bring the defenders together to sort out a overall winner. As far as the scenario itself, it had several problems. First and foremost, the “flags” were too far back – a properly defensive army (I’ll share mine in a minute) could easily hold them. In fact, I annihilated my two enemies on their side of the field, which hardly felt defensive. Also, the attrition rules weren’t strong enough – it would take far too many games to wear a defender down to the point where it would matter. Personally, I would have liked to see an intentionally unbalanced scenario (Attacker get more points, or gets a reserve force they can bring on in waves or something like that.) As it stood, it was just far too easy to defend.
Here is what I brought for my 35 points:
- Commander Stryker
- Squire
- Ol' Rowdy
- Lancer
- Black 13th
- Gun Mage Captain Adept
- 10 Stormguard
- 6 Trencher Commandos + 3 Scattergunners
- Piper of Ord (From the "Pirate's Cove" map bonus)
Labels: Hordes, miniatures, MKII, wargaming, Warmachine
| Permalink | 
