Hi all,
I saw that >G will have a small room and large booth space at the convention. Have any other plans been revealed? I am looking forward to picking up the new RPG modules!
Thanks.
The large room was great! I spent some time there all three days, and swung by the booth as well on Sunday. It was really wonderful to get to see some more OblivAeon (my home table hasn't been visited more than twice), finally get some actual play time with the RPG Starter Kit, try out Prime War, and even even play some customized SotM scenarios set up as a sort of competition between tables! It was a blast every time I was in there, and I was happy to get a chance to thank several of the people responsible for all of it.
Can you tell us more about the SotM competition? What were the rules? How did it go?
I can help with that. I played in the first competition. Conceptually, it was really cool. Practically, it still needs work. They were cool scenarios and would probably be fun to play through without competition rules. The competition rules added some interesting decision making but also seemed to promote us giving up versus winning.
Scenario: Plague Rat normal villain, Srgt Steele (Villains deck) joins in after the environment turn (cannot be targeted until this point), defeating SS gives you the big Cannon reward card from Oblivaeon, fight in Pike Industries
Heros: Dark Watch variants of Fixer, NM, Harpy, Setback, and Expat (in that order) all decks are random shuffle
Score: +20 for having the gun in play, +5 for killing PR with gun, -5 for every round, -10 for every incap hero.
The random starts between teams made it hard. My team started off with everyone infected by round two, cool vats causing card play damage and back to back ravages from PR. This resulted in 3 of 5 of the heros incapped by the start of round 4 with NM at 1 HP and Harpy at 3 HP (that was roughly 25-40 damage per hero in under three rounds). This was probably the worst start of any game you coud have with PR as everyone was hit hard and fast.
Worst yet, we got the cannon and gave it to Expat who died next turn with 12 damage directed to her in the round. This means we had no ability to earn positive points.
Our team held out, got NM to Mistform and eventually won around round 11 due to damage reflects and Env damage. This however, resulted in a score of -95. If we gave up and killed ourselves in round 3, we would have received a score of -65 (-10 per hero and -15 for 3 rounds). Struggling to win the fight actually hurt us. Of the three teams, scores range from -95 to -10 (maybe -5) for the winners.
The scenario setup was very cool as it used Villains decks as gatekeepers to Oblivaeon rewards. The random card starts, however, meant that my team lost before we even sat at the table and there was really nothing we could do about it.
There was a second scenario involving a fight against Ambuscade with Wage Master playing conditions. I did not get all the specifics of how that one was run.
As a proof of concept, it gave us a lot of ideas for future events. I'm hesitant to stack decks... but it does put everyone on a level playing field, and that is important. Problem is that we're dealing with people, so that we'll never have a perfectly level field- each time a deck is shuffled, it's going to end up random no matter how we stack it. We're basically going over everything with a fine-toothed comb to see what worked and what didn't (and the scoring is definitely on the "didn't" list for me).
Anyway! The Wager Master one:
Ambuscade vs. Stuntman, Road Warrior Mainstay, Scholar of the Infinite, and Guise in Champion Studios.
BUT!
Wager master is also there- not a target. We heavily edited his deck (just the conditions, and 1 copy each of What do you really know, Burning sense of failure, and Breaking the Rules) Every instance of "flip" is changed to "destroy" and every instance of "wager master" is changed to "ambuscade"
Before every hero turn starts (as in, BEFORE start of turn effects (or end of turn, if that WM card is in play)) as in, their turn has not properly started yet... they have to decide if they want to play the Wager Master game.
IF they do: that player reveals the top 2 cards of their deck. If the share a keyword, they win! They can put them into play, or into their hand in any order.
IF they do, and they lose: Wager master plays the top card of his deck (I put them in Ambuscade's play area so that you could keep track of turn order triggers for them)
If they choose NOT to play... Ambuscade takes advantage of the chaos and plays a card.
Scoring was -5/round, -10/incapped hero, +5 per destroyed WM card, and +5 each time a conflict was destroyed in Champion Studios.
I think it was really fun. As a concept it was very cool and I don't necessarily think you should go with a set deck order. PR is a kind of swingy villain and we had him at his worst. Other villains are a little less swingy and may help balance the card plays a little.
One scoring idea would be to have a set win score (such as 40 points) for winning the game. Every round, a -5 point decrease can be applied with the bonus minnimizing to 0 after 8 rounds and all subsequnet rounds. This prioritizes speed but also doesn't put a group with a slower set up draw so far behind after subsequent rounds.
Thanks, y'all. Interesting stuff.
You could always give everyone the same starting hand. That's reasonable and easy to do.
Next, make Handelabra implement these scenarios in the digital game. :D
Yes, please!
I've been running these around in my head a lot, and I am now very excited for more scenarios that help bolster the difficulty and fun of the standard game by using materials from the team and Oblivaeon scenarios that otherwise see less play. I wanna see more of these setups, for general play, not just conventions!