Speeding up the game

Other Games SotM Game Engine
1

I was looking for some ideas for helping to speed up the game.  (Please don't say to play faster.)  Some Villains seem to take longer than others to play.  Some games I've played took 2+ hours to get through.  Sometimes I'll be playing for over an hour and the Villain hasn't even taken a hit.

 

For me, the most fun games are the ones I can get though in an hour or less (Baron Blade, Ambuscade, etc)  The least fun for me are the ones that take over 2 hours (akash'bhuta is the one I particularly notice).  Please list any other Villains that seems to drag games out and give ideas how to speed it up but still be challenging.

 

I haven't tried it yet but reducing HP of the Villains comes to mind but not sure if it'll make the Villains too easy. 

2

Any alteration you make will effect balance. You could always just increase all villain damage by 2. That would make games go really fast, but you may not win many games that way haha

3

Plague Rat games go pretty quick especially with advanced rules.  

 

The Chairman normal can take a while but on advanced he flips fairly quickly so the game ends much sooner.  

4

I'm not entirely sure what you're asking for.  If you just want the games to take less time, then a simple change like giving the heroes +1 to all damage would help move things along.  But maybe you want the games to go more quickly without also being easier?  I guess you're just looking for a list of the quickest villains in the game?  Iron Legacy tends to be the quickest game as near as I can tell - you either get stomped immediately or you get lucky and stomp him immediately.  But somehow I don't think this is useful info to you.

5

I've tried cutting all character card HP in half, but that favors villains since most games hero set up tips the power about half-way through, when a 1/2 hp game is pretty well lost.

 

I haven't found a good way to shorten the games at all.  Like has been said, Plague Rat, Chairman advanced and Iron Legacy go quickly, as does Mad Bomber Baron Blade.

6

Would a global +1 damage help much?

7

 

I guess you're just looking for a list of the quickest villains in the game?

More so, I'm looking for a list of the Villains that usually take longer and ideas of how to speed the games up with those particular Villains while keeping balance.

 

I'm wondering if anyone has tried any of the suggestions that have been listed so far?  I want to try cutting Akash'bhuta's HP in half to see how that goes.

 

8

Don't play the villains that take a long time? La Capitan, Chairman, and V5 are right out.

9

My game group plays Sentinels at our lunch hour every Friday. We have specified which villains are lunch villains and which are not. Here is our list of "lunch villains." They consistently play in an hour or less.

 

Baron Blade

Bomber Blade

Omnitron

Cosmic Omnitron

Plague Rat

Normal mode Ennead

Skinwalker Gloomweaver

Ambuscade

Dreamer

Iron Legacy

Kismet

 

You are certainly welcome to argue one way or another on the remaining villains. I agree that some games against Chairman are very quick. Some are extremely long. This list is just the ones that consistently finish in an hour.

 

10

That's a pretty valuable list.  Thanks, j1.

11

"Lunch Villains"  I love the term!

 

I would love to be able to have every Villain have a Lunch Villain mode.

12

I played a game vs. Iron Legacy (IL) this last weekend that took an hour and a half.  Team was:

Sentinels, DW Setback, Scholar, Naturalist.

If Setback hadn't died early on, the Sentinals would have been toast.  As it is, he gave them an extra power each turn, and Naturalist removed Iron Legacy's Ongoings.  But yeah, usually IL games are 2 or 3 rounds. :D

13

Donner,

Any game with the Scholar, Naturalist, and DW Setback is going to take longer than normal since they are such good tanks. Then again, I don't usually limit players to particular "lunch heroes" so point taken.