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 Post subject: A post Gencon Call to Arms( I'll supply the maps)
PostPosted: Fri Jun 06, 2008 11:03 pm 
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With the Gencon around the corner, and Metatalkin' everywhere, I find myself getting burnt out on the Standard 100 to 200 point skirmish. Although there are a few different game formats, I believe it that the one format of the game that never got the support it deserved was the mutiplayer, epic style battles. With 541 different miniatures to choose from, the need for bigger games, and support for bigger games can't be overlooked anymore.

I have a collection of about 2,000 miniatures, out off the 541 miniatures I may have used half of those pieces only once, and maybe a pool of about 20 or 30 I always go back to. Let’s face it; a good number of the pieces just don't make much sense in a standard skirmish.
Sure 350 points armies may have space for some of the lower mid card Republic Jedi, but honestly, has anyone had fun playing epic battles on a 22X34 map? Probably not, when the map becomes crowded it becomes a Dice Rolling competition, a war of initiative. This game was not designed for Epic Battles.

Boris, I believe a few others as well, put a lot of work into a battle of Hoth Scenario, every year for Gencon, which I think gets about 5 percent of Hype, and recognition it deserves. To me Star Wars is about these massive battles and Epic Scenery. It's about massive haze grey war machines, and the faceless troopers swarming the mountains in droves. It’s about the brave out number rebels entrenched holding of the bad guys just long enough to let there friend escape.

Star Wars isn't about black ops teams run by A Sith Lord, A mercenary, and a handful of Ughnaughts.....and Wicket. While these types of squads are vital to the Meta lifestyle, they don't fulfill my imagination, and they don't immerse me in the Star Wars Universe. :palps: :Ewok: :boba: :?:

It's time for the casual game to move towards team play and epic battles. I'd rather spend my Sundays with Friends Teamed up against other Friends in a straight up Slobberknocker. I want my Rebel Troopers to Climb Mount yoda and raise the flag, Just like Doc Bradley, and Ira Hayes in the Battle of Iwo Jima. I don't want to worry about Gambit, and Worrying about rounds.

Its time to put down the Ughnaughts (well at least a few of them) and its time to finally get some use out of those huges, YEAH I'M TALKING ABOUT THE TIE CRAWLER!!! It's time to man the HOTH TURRETS!!!!

ENTER THE KILL ZONE BROTHERS!!!! :atat: :atat: :atat: :atat:

The biggest obstacle facing epic battles is the battlefield itself. Chris Preksta has made an excellent Death Star Map, perfect for many mass combat scenarios. WOTC has made a respectable, if a little dull series of Hoth maps that connect for At-At scenarios. Lingster has an excellent Naboo Map

I want to go bigger. I want people to have to come up with house rules to be able to get to the other side of the map. For 6 month now the blueprints to Rhen Var Harbor, as Well as Plans for a Giant Kashyyk Ocean Front, and Coruscant have been sitting on my desk burning a whole in my brain.

But I'm not here to talk about maps, but I want you all to know I'm willing to do my part make Epic Gaming a reality for SW Minis.

I really want to urge the rest of you to start developing the aspects of epic battles, I think SWMgamers has enough talent, brains, creativity, and imagination to develop the manual for this project.

Gencon is looming over the horizon, and the meta-gamers are polishing their dice cups for the showcase of the immortals. And that’s the way it should be. This is our big game. It's our Stanley Cup or Super bowl. But Come Monday Morning August 17th please have you thinking caps on because the game is gonna get bigger.

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Jedi Cartographer
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 Post subject: Re: A post Gencon Call to Arms( I'll supply the maps)
PostPosted: Sat Jun 07, 2008 6:51 am 
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Jedicartographer wrote:
Star Wars isn't about black ops teams run by A Sith Lord, A mercenary, and a handful of Ughnaughts.....and Wicket. While these types of squads are vital to the Meta lifestyle, they don't fulfill my imagination, and they don't immerse me in the Star Wars Universe.


100% agreement. As much as I love gaming, I got into this game solely b/c of my love for all things STAR WARS.
Meta needs a timeout...

If you build the epic maps, they will come.


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 Post subject: Re: A post Gencon Call to Arms( I'll supply the maps)
PostPosted: Sat Jun 07, 2008 9:20 am 
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I have no interest in large scale games. They take too long to play and that to me is the warhammer problem. In the time to play an epic game of 40k or fantasy or Flames of War or a host of other games (including say... a Hoth battle or any larger game of SWM), I can play many games of SWM or SWTCG or Wings of War or War at Sea or a host of smaller scale games. The worst thing about the epic games is that halfway into it, you know who is going to win the game and who is going to lose the game. However, you still waste another 90 minutes to play it out because, well you already have the pieces out and well, luck can change, but you also already invested the first 2 hours to paying this game out.

We play team games at our store, we play 5 way Free for Alls, but we modify the squad building rules and targeting rules so the game only lasts the typical hour. We only have 3 hours to play games on Monday, and we don't want to play one skirmish in that time.


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 Post subject: Re: A post Gencon Call to Arms( I'll supply the maps)
PostPosted: Sat Jun 07, 2008 10:12 am 
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I certainly agree with all you issues, especially on Pace and Outcome.

In real battles here on earthYou never really fight to the las man of course. ITs one of those thing you have to know when to retreat, surrender, or go all in. I thinkk that may help with pace issues as well as sitting through 3 hours of game your bound to lose.

But its also one of those things of you have no interet in large scale warfare then It will never probably be fun for you.

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 Post subject: Re: A post Gencon Call to Arms( I'll supply the maps)
PostPosted: Sat Jun 07, 2008 11:02 am 
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Well it really depends on who you are playing. I can do a HUGE game with some people and have a BLAST. We'd be joking around and having a grand Ol' time. While others I play a 200pt with and just go all out to finish them quickly so I can move on. It's those people I would dread playing in the first place, that if I got caught up in a Mass Battle with them-I'd cry.
But if I'm playing a Mass Battle with a really good friend and a very good player, even though we're chatting and joking, it can get dull. Which is why when I do Mass Battle, I prefer Jedi vs Sith, Light Vs Dark. Those are the ones I can do ALL day. Take 2 Munn plaza maps, flip them, go wild with the scenery and it looks fantastic!

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 Post subject: Re: A post Gencon Call to Arms( I'll supply the maps)
PostPosted: Sat Jun 07, 2008 11:43 am 
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500pts of stormtroopers can get tiresome. But to each his own. :D

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 Post subject: Re: A post Gencon Call to Arms( I'll supply the maps)
PostPosted: Sat Jun 07, 2008 11:48 am 
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I love the idea and the concept. I really like all things that make me play minis I wouldn't normally and really like playing non-DCI multiplayer for fun. Really the issue is time. My friends and I aren't good enough to play blitz minis and when we play 200 multiplayer 2 vs 2 teams( so like 1 vs 1) it can still take 2-3 hours. That's really the only reason we introduced DCI in the first place was to try and speed up the games. What seems to work is lowering the victory condition so say you are playing 200 you only need 150 points to win, things like this. I am really looking forward to seeing the map(s). :boba:

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 Post subject: Re: A post Gencon Call to Arms( I'll supply the maps)
PostPosted: Sat Jun 07, 2008 12:27 pm 
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When we've done our epic-scale battles with our group (Hoth an Endor mostly) we have incorporated victory objectives to score points so the whole battle doesn't have to be played out. For example, every 100 points of kills equals one point, kill Han and Chewie, one point, storm the Endor bunker, one point, etc. It makes the game go quickly and has the "Star Wars" feel for sure. We usually play on 4'x4' gridded boards (or at least two-three standard maps) with 3D terrain which adds to the feel. Massive battles can be fun and does allow a lot of the minis to come out of the storage box. we also activated 4-6 each time a person goes rather than just 2 to help with the time - or a mini "squad" within the full squad.

A series of maps which can be played separately, but designed to go together would be great. That's a map pack I would buy, but I don't know if you could get 300 sales for a scenario-driven set. I haven't printed out most of the ones you mentioned in the first post due to ink expenses, although they are wonderful maps.


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 Post subject: Re: A post Gencon Call to Arms( I'll supply the maps)
PostPosted: Sat Jun 07, 2008 2:32 pm 
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DarkLordVerjal wrote:
500pts of stormtroopers can get tiresome. But to each his own. :D



Well the point is to come up with fresh ways to play. Maybe rules for mas movement, and more than to activations

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 Post subject: Re: A post Gencon Call to Arms( I'll supply the maps)
PostPosted: Mon Jun 09, 2008 9:45 am 
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Some of it depends on the maps, but something that I think would have to be adressed for Mass battle play is the range of weaponry. Last time I did a massive battle, I think it was either 400 or 500 points, Republic vs. Separatists, and the Seps obliterated every single Jedi before they even got close enough to do anything. The only Republic pieces that stood a chance from the beginning were the super stealthed Republic Commandos. Granted, the map we were playing on was the giant Kashyyyk map, which is REALLy wide open, and leaves very little areas for anyone to advance in total hiding, but even so, it made it incredibly un-fun to be on the Republic side of that match.

As I said, perhaps Maps which restrict that kind of long-range damage would work better. Otherwise, maybe just house rules like "Large or smaller characters that are granted cover by Huge or larger characters cannot be targetted". It certainly is fun to play that way. I have a custom scenario for a mass Geonosis Arena/Battle that I keep meaning to finish up and post on here. I think it would make for another cool event to do at GenCon at some point. We'll see.

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 Post subject: Re: A post Gencon Call to Arms( I'll supply the maps)
PostPosted: Mon Jun 09, 2008 4:46 pm 
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Memior '44 uses a zone based movement system. Think of the battlefield as a series of 200-300 point battles. When you have defeated 70% of your opponents forces you are free to attack to your right and left.


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 Post subject: Re: A post Gencon Call to Arms( I'll supply the maps)
PostPosted: Tue Jun 10, 2008 9:24 am 
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im with you on that i would love bigger games
but the movement is fine, this will make the X-1 Either Very Deadly or Extremely Deadly, just imagine a squad with 3 Vipers, with Mandalorians, o man that would be sweet

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 Post subject: Re: A post Gencon Call to Arms( I'll supply the maps)
PostPosted: Tue Jun 10, 2008 10:43 am 
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Here is something I just thought of- right off the top of my head....

It would be for an essentially endless series of battles.

Set up a large game board- perhaps around 9 maps put together. There have to be 12 areas on the maps where players can deploy their army. The zones should be RELATIVELY sheltered from one another.

There are 12 players per map set, and Each player fields 100 point army.

You roll once for initiative. The highest initiative picks which deployment zone they wish. After that, the second highest initiative has to take the next deployment zone to the left of the first player and sets up. So on and so forth, until the lowest initiative deploys to the right of top initiative army.

Now, instead of each player having 2 activations, each player gets 90 seconds to accomplish ALL the actions they can cram into that time. Any partial actions are discounted (for example a move-then-shoot where the player didn’t get to roll his attack is discounted, and the character did not move).

After they accomplish all of their actions, control moves to the next player to the left, and so on, around the battle-map.

There is no gambit, and players keep track of the points they have killed. A tally board tracks the highest kill ratio per army for all map sets. The goal here is to rack up the kill points.

Players can play until their army is defeated, or they retire. If they retire, they must subtract the points of their remaining characters from their kill score.

As long as there are players to play, it keeps going. Older armies are destoyed, new ones are fielded. New players can join at any time by taking spots vacated by other players. Upon their turn, they are given 2 minutes to set up, followed by 1 minute of action.

Of course, this completely removes certain metas- intiative control and activation control is essentially useless. There would also have to be restrictions on certain special abilitites- abilities that remove the opponents special abilities (e.g. cancelling super-stealth) would have to be restricted in some manner.

But mass battle and variety is what we are aiming for, right?

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 Post subject: Re: A post Gencon Call to Arms( I'll supply the maps)
PostPosted: Tue Jun 10, 2008 11:18 am 
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lt_murgen wrote:
Now, instead of each player having 2 activations, each player gets 90 seconds to accomplish ALL the actions they can cram into that time. Any partial actions are discounted (for example a move-then-shoot where the player didn’t get to roll his attack is discounted, and the character did not move).

After they accomplish all of their actions, control moves to the next player to the left, and so on, around the battle-map.


The only problem I see with this time limit is someone who will stall as far as responding to your attacks. Being slow on a block or deflect or tallying damage. Then you can only get one attack against his characters in time. If you could come up with some way to limit that, it would work well.

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As long as there are players to play, it keeps going. Older armies are destoyed, new ones are fielded. New players can join at any time by taking spots vacated by other players. Upon their turn, they are given 2 minutes to set up, followed by 1 minute of action.


I like the endless army idea for mass battles like this. That way you still can play if you get wiped out with your first attempt and gets others involved if they want.


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