Toys for Tots WHFB Dec. 3, GPC. Info and sign-ups.

Darkblood Skullpulper · Earthshaker Joined: 29 Nov 2010 Posts: 195

For the record, Don Mondo is currently winning the competition for best donation. I'll try to figure out exactly how complete his Man O
War box set is before the silent auction.
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There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged.
One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.

Creon · Joined: 20 Dec 2010 Posts: 143

Truly looking forward to this event!

And, Fyi, I like the independent list slightly more than Azgorh, but I like going with "official" when possible. It's a weakness.

alaitoc420 · Joined: 25 Feb 2011 Posts: 74 Location: Herndon, VA

I'm going to have to bow out of this one. I've had some family issues come up that weren't expected. Sorry for the late notice.
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Jeremy

Orcs & Goblins 12-8

JonsForces · Joined: 15 Jan 2011 Posts: 18

I know that I am FAR, FAR to late on this, but I will probably show up with an army just in case there are some no shows. I would like to be considered on the wait list.

Thanks!

Skipschnit · Herr Pyramid Dictator! Joined: 29 Nov 2010 Posts: 2274

Nice job, Eric. That was a lot of money and toys for a great cause. Laughing

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Thanks,
Ben J.

Orationem pulchram non habens, scribo ista linea in lingua Latina

Davall · Nerd Rager! Joined: 29 Nov 2010 Posts: 1925

I didn't take many photos again, but here are a few from the Toys for Tots.

http://s1223.photobucket.com/albums/dd516/jcole97/Toys%20for%20Tots/
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Tone on the internet can be a bitch. Honest, I am not Nerd Raging. Well, maybe not.

Rushputin · Posted: Sun Dec 04, 2011 10:07 am Post subject:

It looked like it was hugely successful when I popped in. Congratulations, Eric!
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Rush - Warpstone Pile

"My experience with Warhammer is that pretty much everything in the setting actually existed in real life, only in real life it was bigger, stupider, sillier, ruder, exploded more often and killed more people." - SteveD

treehugger · Questing knight Joined: 30 Nov 2010 Posts: 2166

had a great time Eric thank you.

sorry I had to cut out early but Andrew's wife was having a birthday thing for my wife.
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I lose cause I can

parker781 · Joined: 25 Aug 2011 Posts: 149 Location: Fairfax, Va

Hey thanks for the tournament Eric, it was a blast. As some of you may have noticed I took some video during the tournament. I put it together today and put it on the web so take a look.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gi9xmQTqsp0&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Gym Shorts · Joined: 23 May 2011 Posts: 1052

I had an excellent time. Thank you for all your effort organizing the event and creating all the scenarios.

Eric · Joined: 27 Dec 2010 Posts: 532

Eric, outstanding job!!! Thank you for organizing such a fun event! Congratulations!!!

Also, Parker, that is a great video, thanks for sharing.
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All hail, WARHAMMER is Dead. Long live WARHAMMER!

Darkblood Skullpulper · Earthshaker Joined: 29 Nov 2010 Posts: 195

Well, I can;t figure out how to upload anything here.

Here is a link to the scores for the Toys for Tots thing, I think.
http://www.mediafire.com/?h1ez80giidks89n

I'll add some remarks below. Thanks for all of the complimentary words so far, not to mention your support of the Tots out there who need some Toys. I appreciate all of the patience and help that I got this last weekend.
_________________
There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged.
One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.

Darkblood Skullpulper · Earthshaker Joined: 29 Nov 2010 Posts: 195

I considered starting a new thread for the T4T post-mortem, but instead I'll just try to put down a few brief (oops. I'm not good at brief) thoughts.

- These were scenarios that I wanted to play, and I was glad to see that they made some people excited. Maybe your idea of fun is not exactly the same as my idea of fun, but I think you'll all remember this tourney for a long time. Even if you hated it, you've got a good horror story to tell future gaming buddies.

- I won't apologize for the scenarios themselves, as I think they all generally turned out well. Factories were hard to kill, squigs were random as hell, and tic tac toe created a completely different meta game. We certainly could have used some tweaks on certain rules, but I think the scenarios each presented a unique angle on Warhammer.

- I probably did err in not being explicit that some scenarios would require multiple units to be successful. At the very least, I needed to do that, and I did apologize to one disgruntled player for not being more upfront. I wanted surprises and although I warned people to be ready for anything, I probably needed to make it more clear. I really didn't want people to be able to prep for the specific scenarios, since this thing was supposed to operate under the premise that any army could win. If you let people figure out how to game the system, and you've defeated that goal.

- On the other hand, there were an ass-load of special rules and I think I expected the players to digest too much information in too short of a time. It's completely fair to throw out a non-standard game like watchtower, messenger, or blood and glory with no warning, but those are simpler. I had to do too much explaining in person, and lots of people got confused. I saw lots of errors that i just let go, also. Maybe I should have cut out the fluff (that I had a ton of fun writing) and used fewer words and larger font. Alternately, I could have sent out the scenarios beforehand to make sure everyone was familiar. Honestly, though, I never even considered doing that because I wanted to shock people with unexpected scenarios. (I wonder what would have happened if I had only sent out the text fluff for each scenario and none of the special rules. Interesting concept there.)

- To summarize on the prior point, I probably could have written a rule set for my scenarios that people could have picked up and played immediately, but I would have had to cut out half of the words on the page. If I wanted to present as much stuff per scenario as I actually did, I should have gotten it into people's hands days earlier.

- Bigger point: We raised about $300 in cash for the foundation and dropped off somewhere between 60-80 toys for needy kids. That's some good effort, there.
Thanks.
_________________
There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged.
One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.

Casey · Genestealer Joined: 20 Dec 2010 Posts: 714

It was a very fun tournament and I had a good time!

I also didn't mind the scenarios, but I think you would have benefited by having someone look over them for editing / clarity / balance.

I actually really enjoyed the Tic Tac Toe scenario and would not mind playing that one again with a different deployment. Maybe each player deploys in opposite corner squares? It's a fun scenario, though, and made a lot of sense.

I'm of two minds about publishing scenarios in advance: if they're weird I feel that people need to know but I also hate the wailing and gnashing of teeth that would happen the weeks leading up to the event. You really can't win.

That being said, I think scenarios should discourage people from taking two hordes and 5 warmachines and other such lists that, win or lose, aren't fun to play against.

ExecutionerofKhaine. · Shade Joined: 30 Nov 2010 Posts: 2420

I liked the scenarios and enjoyed the fluff. There were a bit wordy and hard to understand(with my limited mental ability) when trying to setup and deploy, which I do believe takes away from actual time needed for game play. That said, I think all that was needed was to have placed necessary bullet points at the bottom for reference.

I really liked the tic-tac-toe, but really was surprised(the effect you wanted) and didn't know how to deploy or what strategy to use. Once the game was underway, it came clearer and of course Harry is always a good game, even though he didn't let me win Wink

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Joey

9th Age Armies
Vermin Swarms 8-5-1
Mixed Daemons 2-6-0

Eric · Joined: 27 Dec 2010 Posts: 532

Eric,

As I already mentioned above, I thought it was an astounding event! Well done and great effort.

Regarding the scenarios themselves, I enjoyed all of them and like how they forced me to think a little bit differently about how to approach the game. I also think you achieved your desired effect, which (for me) was "Wow, I've got to do what?!"

I think my favorite was the second scenario. I had a relatively slow army vs. a really quick army, and I didn't feel like I was at that much of a disadvantage because (1) the movement of the squig was very random and (2) subduing the squig meant you had to do more than just get there. I thought that those two elements balanced the game nicely.

I would say that my least favorite was the first scenario. This may have been unique to me, but I found that since shooting could only do a single wound per round to your opponents objective, but magic spells could do multiple wounds, I felt that I (dwarfs) was at a distinct disadvantage. I would submit as a possible alternative to allow all ranged attacks to do their normal damage or to have all ranged attacks do a maximum of one wound per round to the objective marker. The problem I can see is that the former will benefit heavy shooting armies, while the latter will benefit heavy close combat armies. However, in a game where the scenarios are unknown, this may not be as big an issue. As written the scenario seemed to benefit magic heavy armies, which would be nearly all armies except dwarfs. That said, my defeat had more to do with my poor deployment and trying (and failing) to get my head around the scenario. Still, I had a great opponent and a fun time.

The third scenario was also fun. I don't feel that here is any need to change the scenario. However, a possible suggestion would be to consider allowing the opponents to place their units in any square on the board like an actual game of tic-tac-toe during deployment. You would probably need to consider modifying the rules for what is considered a legal unit for deployment (minimum of 10 wounds in the unit or some such limit. All models with less then 10 wounds are deployed last and can go anywhere or something like that). Each "square" can only have one unit in it until all squares have at least one unit. You may have to also change what constitutes holding a square vs just contesting one (obviously I am thinking this off the top of my head, which is a dangerous thing most times).

My only other comment is that because of the complexity of the scenarios and the length of the games, I didn't have time to even look at the silent auction or see any of the other armies. I don't know if a smaller point size games is the solution or maybe easier scenarios, but I would have like feeling a little less rushed so that I could partake in the auction for instance.

I also liked that the scenarios were unknown, as it prevented me from trying to min-max my army to suit, and I think meant that we were all at an equal disadvantage.

Cheers,
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All hail, WARHAMMER is Dead. Long live WARHAMMER!

Darkblood Skullpulper · Earthshaker Joined: 29 Nov 2010 Posts: 195

Thanks for the feedback, Eric. I like the idea of deploying in squares to start game 3. If the rule was that you may only deploy in squares that the enemy did not already control, then suddenly you've got an initial game of tic tac toe that sets the stage for the rest of the game. I'm sorry I didn't think of that, because it's a great expansion of the basic concept.

Final note on how the scenarios actually played out - the only one that really disappointed me was #1. Every game ended in a win/loss. No draws. Unlimited rounds meant that once one army had been mortally wounded, their opponent could go beat on the objective for 4 or 5 rounds of combat until it was done.

My intent was for people to set up an offensive force to go get the enemy objective and a defensive force to protect their own, and the setup rules were geared towards facilitating that. It turned out to not matter, really, because most games turned into chaotic slug-fests with the victor having plenty of time to whittle away at the objective. In hindsight, it probably would have been more interesting to do the following:
1) keep a 6 turn limit
2) make the objectives very weak in hth, so that there would be an actual race to get the objective destroyed, requiring more strategy than just outlasting the enemy.
3) limit missile fire (and magic missles) more than I did. I considered Bill's dragon rules of one wound per spell or per shooting unit, but decided high toughness was enough. In conjunction with a lower T on the objective, a limit on damage from all missiles should have been jsut fine.

If I had done those 3 things, I think that my intent of forcing people to commit partly to attack and partly to defense would have played out better.

Lots of lessons learned - hope one or more of these scenarios see the light of day in someone ese's tourney some day so I can actually play them. Depending on what happens next year, and who else would want a shot at organizing, I'd be tempted to run revised versions of each scenario at another T4T next year...
_________________
There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged.
One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.

treehugger · Questing knight Joined: 30 Nov 2010 Posts: 2166

Eric did you post the scores anywhere?
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I lose cause I can

Skipschnit · Herr Pyramid Dictator! Joined: 29 Nov 2010 Posts: 2274

I have an idea about an event and I will use your tic-tac-toe set up for it. Very Happy

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Thanks,
Ben J.

Orationem pulchram non habens, scribo ista linea in lingua Latina

Darkblood Skullpulper · Earthshaker Joined: 29 Nov 2010 Posts: 195