Megabattle 2010: What did you NOT like?

[Grand Master Steve]

Does any one else have anything they didnt like about the game and not the venue?

[Chase]

Things I did not like:

- Last Minute Rule Changes, lets try and get things set in stone (i.e big rulings) many months beforehand.  To do this maybe set up a player council to deal with these issues so Chase doesnt have his head explode

Yes.  Let's try and keep my sperg'ing to a minimum.

On a serious note, I think we made a LOT of progress on the rules front this year.  I am very happy with the choices and changes we made overall and felt like the game played out almost exactly how we wanted it to.  I would expect almost everything to remain unchanged going forward.  There's only one issue remaining that I would like to see cleared up.

I can promise that things will be a lot more refined and organized next year in at least this department.  MUCH was learned. 

[Rob S]

Chase,

We should teach you how to play 40k.  Haha.

[Chase]

Another thing I did not like was how difficult the "Hero Character" (white based character) was to kill.  

This may or may not be a function of the amount of attention he was paid or how the players chose to play the game itself.

[Chase]

Chase,

We should teach you how to play 40k.  Haha.

Negative, but I appreciate the offer.

[Rurouni Benshin]

Another thing I did not like was how difficult the "Hero Character" (white based character) was to kill. 

This was very evident at our table, specifically between Nate's and Doug's Heroes.  At the end of round 1, they went toe to toe with each other, and only until the end of turn 4 did Doug's HC finally win, with only 1 wound left.  Hitting on 4's and wounding on 6's was pretty tough...

It was like watching Ali and Frazier going at it forever, before Ali finally won. 

[Rob S]

Another thing I did not like was how difficult the "Hero Character" (white based character) was to kill.  

This may or may not be a function of the amount of attention he was paid or how the players chose to play the game itself.

On my table at least, I didn't notice this at all.  On the highlands side, there were multiple dead Chaos heroes which nabbed us quite a few points.  I don't think we had that much difficulty taking them down.  On the swamp table, both mine and Dave's hero lived unhurt mainly because there was no attention paid to them.  I personally think that the hero was perfect in creation.

[Chase]

I felt like he was an awesome piece for players to play around and presented a considerable amount of options for players to take advantage of.  It seems to me like many did not embrace the significance of the piece and it's value to the game, which is totally fine.  The intent was to give each person something to play around (or not).  I think we achieved that.

I heard many, many times that he was too difficult to kill or that he was completely ignored.  Again, I don't know how much of this is due to flawed design (or desire) on my part (seeing as I wanted him to be tough to kill) or a lack of attention paid to how important he was on parts of each table.

Anyhow I'm glad to hear that, Rob.

[blantyr]

My problem with the mobile objective was in fluff.  There was no attempt to create a story that went with the game mechanics, there was no motivation that made sense role playing wise.  I'd rather not duplicate the particular mechanism in future years.  I'd rather have more emphasis on tell-a-story rather than play-to-win.

[Chase]

This is obviously not the place to debate this but the goal of the piece was to make sure that each person had something he could play around no matter what.  How each player chose to do this was entirely up to him, but I feel like the potential for many things was definitely there.

Even if a person felt totally overwhelmed or that they couldn't contribute in any other meaningful way (maybe like the people having to face down an Emperor Titan, or something similar) they could still *game* around the fact that they can contribute effectively to their team from a loss management perspective.

The piece certainly served his intended purpose but I feel like maybe he was a bit too tough to kill.  This would translate into him either being too good or too bad at his intended "job" (as defined by the player).

Fluff wise we made no attempt to justify the piece for several reasons.  It was added simply as something for each person to play around.

[Bgpopapmp]

My problem with the mobile objective was in fluff.  There was no attempt to create a story that went with the game mechanics, there was no motivation that made sense role playing wise.  I'd rather not duplicate the particular mechanism in future years.  I'd rather have more emphasis on tell-a-story rather than play-to-win.

I disagree. I made mine from a successor chapter of the Dark Angels, The Angels of Redemption. They hunt The Fallen as hard if not harder than the Dark Angels. It fit nicely with the theme of my army. It was also an aded bonus that Cypher was a mobile objective on the Disorder side that I was facing. I was trying to get to him to have the epic battle but I couldn't quite make it through the Thousand Sons that were protecting him.

With that being said, I do think that those character were difficult to kill. The armor saves were a bit too much . Perhaps a 3+/4+ would work out better with 3 wounds.


There really wasn't too much that I disliked besides my rolling. I had a ton of fun and look forward to next year. I think the Key for every one to remember is fun. Just put a bunch of stuff that you worked hard painting on theboard, roll some dice and enjoy yourself. One other thing that people should focus on is maybe not doing something that will inhibit the fun of others. I know that people want to field a bunch of cool stuff that blows up the world, but that is only fun for you for about 2 seconds. It will quickly become not fun if you have a pissed off opponent that just is shooting fire out of his/her eyes at you.

That's my 2 cents.

[blantyr]

Fluff wise we made no attempt to justify the piece for several reasons.  It was added simply as something for each person to play around.

Noted.

I found that there were implied story lines in the table interactions.  While you didn't spend a lot of time writing stories, the logic of the table interactions were easy enough to see, and if anyone wanted to write them up in a fluffy way, they could.

The fixed and mobile objectives, less so.  They were game mechanics not part of a meaningful story.  To the extent that this became painfully obvious, one might get suspension of disbelief problems, or a feeling of micromanagement.  Certain styles of play were rewarded.

But this would be a taste thing.  I'll just note it as one of the things I didn't like, acknowledge that others feel differently, and suggest that you might make an attempt at a theme or story line in future years.

[blantyr]

My problem with the mobile objective was in fluff.  There was no attempt to create a story that went with the game mechanics, there was no motivation that made sense role playing wise.  I'd rather not duplicate the particular mechanism in future years.  I'd rather have more emphasis on tell-a-story rather than play-to-win.

I disagree. I made mine from a successor chapter of the Dark Angels, The Angels of Redemption. They hunt The Fallen as hard if not harder than the Dark Angels. It fit nicely with the theme of my army.

That is a good example of incorporating fluff into the mega battle, but it was a Dark Angel thing not available to most other players.  I'd like to see it done more.

There really wasn't too much that I disliked besides my rolling. I had a ton of fun and look forward to next year. I think the Key for every one to remember is fun. Just put a bunch of stuff that you worked hard painting on the board, roll some dice and enjoy yourself. One other thing that people should focus on is maybe not doing something that will inhibit the fun of others. I know that people want to field a bunch of cool stuff that blows up the world, but that is only fun for you for about 2 seconds. It will quickly become not fun if you have a pissed off opponent that just is shooting fire out of his/her eyes at you.

The Superheavy imbalance problem seems to be at the core of the above paragraph.  I heard various conflicting snippets when in the store today.  One Disorder player grumbled about facing a surplus of D templates on the Big Table, and it not being a lot of fun.  (I sympathized, but...)  A few talked about taking out titans as a fun aspect of the game that they'd like to play.  A few people were talking about building titans for next year.  Having superiority in D Templates does seem to give a side an advantage, so we are apt to see more escalation next year.

I'm not even sure what group is in the majority, the no-holds-barred folk or the keep-it-reasonably-balanced people.  If I could figure out how many potential players prefer what, I might argue either for an Iron Man Table to keep the small number of folk who will spend all their points on superheavies happy, or a repeat of the no-titan underground table, where a few folks might want to go if they don't want to deal with the possibility of fighting an all superheavy opponent.

[Chase]

I would expect to see something very, very similar to the Sewer table in terms of restrictions again next year.

[Spooky]

I wish we could have finished the game, so maybe more time? Though we could've played more efficiently... The thing that seemed to hold up the game most on the planet table was waiting for all the players who had their units spread out all over the board to walk to all the places they were needed, assess what was happening there, and then roll the dice they needed to roll. Heck, even when all they needed to do was roll dice, it still took a long time. It is for this reason that I wanted to throw any weight I have behind this:

"Players being spread out across the table. If you are going to spread out too far, then you MUST allow the people on that section to fight your models for you. I lost track of how many times I asked are we done yet and was told now, I'm waiting on player x...."

I'd even say, "If you're going to spread out at ALL beyond your initial starting point + a few feet beyond..." Perhaps an "I am bringing these guys over here to secure this objective and/or kill that unit. When they're done doing that or if you have any brilliant ideas, swing by during our opponents' turn to discuss" would be useful.