Size of game

[Rob]

What are people's thougthought about what is becoming the standard size of game?

There is still a strong element in some lists of just spamming the most powerful options (young meta so going to happen) but larger games may allow more counters to be included and more variety to enter.

Or does the sideboard cover this sufficiently and larger games punish hordes lists to much because of time restraints?

[StoneMonk]

Are you speaking specifically of Tournament play?

In general my fear is 'standard' leads to 'stagnant' but I also know that in the short term it leads to 'familiar'.

[Rob]

General play, not necessary tournament.

[Ben]

I'll be interested to see what happens with the points that various systems are posting. 

There is scope to do some interesting things.

E.g. You could lift the points cap to 150 so you get a load of stuff in, but hike the cost of infantry.  This will result in 'Monsterhammer' which means you can still play in 2 hours rather than needing extra time for the extra points.

[Darth Alec]

I don't think making infantry less useful is the way to go. They already suffer from being slow/unwieldy in serious games. I'd actually like to see more infantry. With their number-based buffs, it's much more interesting to play with and against than they used to be. Once people are more used to playing, games will naturally speed up.

 

100 SCGT pools seems like a fairly decent size. Given the flexibility of the game, you can fit a lot of stuff into that without really missing anything crucial. Restrictive, but not overly so.

[Ben]

It was purely an example of playing more points in the same time.  

But I agree, infantry should be encouraged more

[hobgoblinclub]

I've been thinking about smaller games. We're playing 100 points SCGT at the moment but I find the idea of quick fire games appealing. Lower points would probably need alternative scenarios written, as there wouldn't be many scoring units about. 

[Ben]

At blood and glory we will be doing smaller games again so I need to work on some scenarios that will work at lower points.  

I seem to remember @Total Fanboy saying he would run the skirmish level event on saturday night  

[The Jabber Tzeentch]

The game size will evolve to cope with whatever comp restrictions you are using to allow the game to fit in to the average gaming window. 

It'll probably increase over the years as people get more used to the rules. But at the moment 20 Clash, 100 SCGT, 2000 SDK all are about the same on average. 

It doesnt feel much different in overall size to Fantasy 8th to me. 

@Ben I'm happy with smaller games if the scenarios work well, it allows more time for drinking!

[hobgoblinclub]

I'll look forward to reading them @Ben. I've just started writing some campaign rules for our group. We're going to start off small and build towards bigger forces as we control more of the campaign map so I'm going to attempt to write some small scale scenarios myself.

[Tronhammer NZ]

I love the spectacle of having a lot of models on the table, and a mix of massed infantry with some larger centerpiece models.

However, for regular gaming, the group round these parts has been enjoying small 'warband' forces (8-12 Clash Comp Pool Choices or so). They enjoy having games which take about an hour to play - one of the advantages over previous editions which tacitly seemed to set the game size at 2400 points.

Game size seems to be one of the bigger differences between 'the old guard' tournament players and the new guys coming in.

Having struggled to get people signed up for a SCGT sized event, I will probably be looking at running more smaller, single-day type events, and continuing our Path to Glory campaign (which I modified to include rules for all deities - not just Chaos).

 

[Durty B]

Honestly, just play to the story. If the battle plan sounds like a skirmish, play a skirmish. If it sounds like a huge battle, go crazy. The last few months have got me caring less and less about points, size and balance. 

[Total Fanboy]

I will do it for sure!

[someone2040]

On 4/20/2016 at 10:27 AM, Tronhammer NZ said:

I love the spectacle of having a lot of models on the table, and a mix of massed infantry with some larger centerpiece models.

However, for regular gaming, the group round these parts has been enjoying small 'warband' forces (8-12 Clash Comp Pool Choices or so). They enjoy having games which take about an hour to play - one of the advantages over previous editions which tacitly seemed to set the game size at 2400 points.

Game size seems to be one of the bigger differences between 'the old guard' tournament players and the new guys coming in.

Having struggled to get people signed up for a SCGT sized event, I will probably be looking at running more smaller, single-day type events, and continuing our Path to Glory campaign (which I modified to include rules for all deities - not just Chaos).

 

I've been running an Escalation league, and we started off *really* small at 6 Clash Pool choices. This month we're up to 15 Clash Pool choices. Personally I feel that it's likely that anything between 12 and 20 will lead to interesting games. 

Certainly one of the issues we had at 6 (and 9) is that it's harder to come up with interesting objectives, as you don't have the unit count to be able to tackle multiple objectives.

Just for information, we ran the following battleplans at the following clash pool choice levels:

6 deployed pools : Battle plan with a single objective in the centre of the table

9 deployed pools : The Ritual (slightly modified objectives/ritual time)

12 deployed pools : The Hidden Artefact

Certainly in the smaller points levels have felt a bit limited in some tactical options, but overall all points levels have had interesting and enjoyable games going on. I think the fact the games have been shorter as well has also been a big perk, as it allows us to go again with a different opponent.

It'll be interesting to see what peoples thoughts are in my group as we get closer to 20 pool choices.

[Gharak]

20 pools (uk clash) is standard round our way. I find its too big for in store play in an evening where you've got about an hour and a half for a game. 20 points rarely gets you into turn 3. 

Friendly gaming with my mate we usually plumb for 12-15 pools points which gives us a solid game that gets to its conclusion within a couple of hours including setup/pack away time.

 

[Shane]

We rarely use any points system, however, when we have, it's been around 50 pools (SCGT). That allows us to get plenty of games in (sometimes multiplayer).

[Veterannoob]

We've been doing around 20-22 Clash (28 in the biggest battle) and 100 SCGT (though most recent event was deploy 80). Seems to work on table space fine on 4x4 if you have to cut table space.

[WarbossKurgan]

We've been trying to fit "skirmish sized" games into our lunch hours, so we normally use around 15 to 20 models each (we don't use a points / pools system, just RAW balancing by what look looks and feels right for the Battleplan).

We normally get through about 4 rounds but the game we played yesterday only needed 1 round to bring it to a satisfying (and bloody brutal) conclusion - it still took us the full hour to get through as we had more models on the table than normal!