Tournament advice

[AdrianH]

There's a chance I'll be running a tournament of B5:ACTA at next year's Student Nationals.

The first thing this means is that if you are in any way associated with one of the universities sending a team, don't scrap your fleet and burn your books just yet.

But mainly, I'm here to pick people's brains. Has anyone any advice for someone who has never run a tournament of any sort before, specifically one for B5:ACTA?

I can say it won't be the same format as some of the tournaments I've read about here, in which players were divided into two teams (e.g. Earth vs. Coalition, Order vs. Chaos) and the tournament was a campaign. This will be a "Swiss" style tournament, i.e. matches for first round determined at random, thereafter winners play winners, losers play losers, but nobody can play against the same opponent more than once. Individual players are scoring points for their universities.

I'm considering going for 5 point Raid with the condition that at least one ship must be at least Battle level. This should prevent swarms which, apart from anything else, could make the game take too long.

 

[KennyBoy]

5 pt Raid is the standard PL for tourneys, and is just about the right size for 90 minute games.
Some people limit numbers of ships to avoid swarms, but then you have to take into account the likes of the Drakh (with their carried ships) and the Drazi (who really are the ACTA swarm fleet specialists).
It's probably best to stick to "standard" scenarios like "A Call to Arms" and "Assassination" or, if you're feeling adventurous, then write up some scenarios yourself (check out Funbeast's tourney pack for the next Warlords of Walsall tourney).

 

[AdrianH]

Yes, I was planning on using the same scenarios as were used during the B5 Open Day - Annihilation, Call To Arms and Space Superiority. (Should I drop Space Superiority, that being the one which allows hyperspace deployment? When I played Shadows during the B5 Open Day, I was very pleased when I got that one. :twisted

The limit I'm considering won't upset the Drakh - if they have carried ships, they'll have a Battle level ship to carry them, meaning they're obeying the limit. Perhaps I should drop the "1 Battle" rule for Drazi? Maybe change it for them so that they must field 2 Raid, or 4 Skirmish?

 

[H]

if you implement a rule, eg one battleship, you have to be consistant accross fleets. some fleets have crud battleships, so they loose that way, the Drazi loose by not having as big a swarm. with TTT, Drazi are a touch more flexible now anyway.

 

[KennyBoy]

Should I drop Space Superiority, that being the one which allows hyperspace deployment? When I played Shadows during the B5 Open Day, I was very pleased when I got that one. :twisted

Shadows, ISA and Minbari really benefit from Hyperspace, so i'd consider dropping it... saying that, one scenario may not be too bad, especially for players that want to really show their fleets strength.
I'd advise the Space Superiority scenario be the last scenario played, as it may well involve the fleets mentioned above, and they would likely share the advantage that Hyperspace brings.

 

[Greg Smith]

Assination is a good one in conjuction with the battle-level ship. Both players have a target to aim for (which is a neccesary modification in a tourney-style assassination).

 

[Foxmeister]

I was under the impression that the new P&P FAP table "fixed" the swarm problem!

Personally, at 5pt Raid, I'd try to avoid artificial fleet limitations like ship limits or requiring a Battle PL ship because it would most likely turn some people off. I can see the logic at higher PLs (e.g. 5 Battle) but at lower levels it should be much less of an issue.

Regards,

Dave

 

[Burger]

I would go for space superiority, assassination and then annihilation, with fixed terrain, and remove hyperspace capability form all 3 scenarios. Stick with 5pt raid, with no other restrictions. Allow 2 hours per game. For your first time running a tournament, keep it simple.

 

[AdrianH]

The P&P FAP table does mean it's unwise to take a swarm of small ships to a high level game, but does little for a Raid level game. Perhaps I should use 3 Battle rather than 5 Raid, and dump the restriction?

I do like the idea of Assassination plus the "1 Battle" rule, with each side's target being the other's Battle level ship. This means players can score 1 point for winning and 1 point for destroying the target, i.e. they can score 0, 1 or 2 points per battle. This gives a wider scale than just 1 for winning and 0 for losing. Other scenarios with objectives, e.g. Rescue, might be useful.

There should be no real difference between the first, last or any rounds in between, except that everyone faces a different opponent. The objective of the game is to earn points for the player's university, which are added to the scores of other players from other board games, wargames and role-playing games. So there won't be a fixed sequence of scenarios; if different scenarios are being used, a random die roll will determine which scenario is used for each battle. Games probably will be limited to 2 hours, as they're part of a wider event, which incidentally means time-limited scenarios are good - forget "Annihilation".

Another feature of all games in the Nationals, by the way, is charity re-rolls. One of the objectives of the Nationals is to raise money for charity, and re-rolls at 50p each are a major source of income. I'm not sure whether to allow tactical re-rolls as in campaigns at 50p each, or only allow players to re-roll their own dice and not force an opponent's re-roll. On the one hand, allowing you to make the opponent re-roll means criticals may be drastically reduced, which won't please Shadows, Vorlons or Minbari. On the other hand, it would make Stealth into a bidding war, which is good for charity purposes! Maybe 50p to buy your own re-roll and £1 to force an opponent to re-roll...

 

[Burger]

I don't like the 50p re-rolls thing! It means that who is prepared to spend the most money, will win the game. Especially if this is exempt from the "cannot re-roll a re-roll" rule.

If it has to be in, I'd say you can only re-roll a die that you have rolled yourself, and only do it once per dice.

 

[Greg Smith]

If your opponent is Minbari, it could be very expensive!

 

[AdrianH]

That is the idea, yes.

Charity re-rolls will happen. They are a key part of any games in the Nationals, both wargames and role-playing games. (I personally spent £2 on multiple re-rolls for one dice roll in a role-playing game last year, probably on more than one occasion, and lesser amounts for numerous other re-rolls.)

One possibility is that you can buy as many re-rolls as you want for your own dice but only one for the opponent's. This does mean stealth will eventually fail, but also means precise weapons will eventually get lots of criticals. (So will other weapons but it will cost about twice as much.) The other option is to leave it as a bidding war, and if one stealth roll nets us £100 for charity, good - the charity will be happy and we'll go down in Nationals history. In practice one side or the other will back down, not least because they want to keep some money for lunch, beer and the next re-roll...

 

[Foxmeister]

One possibility is that you can buy as many re-rolls as you want for your own dice but only one for the opponent's.

I understand that the re-rolls are for charity, and they are part and parcel of the Nationals and thus are a given, but I really think you need to limit it in ACTA as the potential for ruining a days gaming is just too great.

Allowing multiple re-rolls of just your own dice has potential to massively skew stealth, the crit table, beam roll-ups etc. Allowing multiple re-rolls on both sides will just hand victory to those prepared to outspend their opponent, which may be great for the charity concerned, but not so great for those players who are more financially challenged than others.

A maximum of one re-roll per dice per player would be much fairer IMHO.

In practice one side or the other will back down, not least because they want to keep some money for lunch, beer and the next re-roll...

For some people there will always be money left for lunch, beer, next re-roll etc....... You only need to get one player with more money than sense and an unsportsmanlike attitude and your whole tournament could be ruined.

Regards,

Dave

 

[AdrianH]

OK, you've convinced me. I'll go along with the maximum of one re-roll per die, and only for your own dice.

And you can't re-roll for damage, or for the effects of criticals.

As for sportsmanship, there are bonus points available for that.

Another thing I need to work out is scoring. Apparently in Battlefleet Gothic, which is the usual space wargame at the Nationals, scoring is based on massacre, major victory, minor victory, draw, minor loss, major loss, massacred. There are 20 points up for grabs, divided between the players depending on the result, e.g. if one scored major victory then by definition the other scored major defeat. I'd like to do something similar. What I'm considering at the moment:

Massacre: wipe out the enemy, no losses: 20 points
Major victory: either win without losses or wipe out the enemy: 17 points
Minor victory: win the battle: 13 points
Draw: 10 points
Minor defeat: lose the battle: 7 points
Major defeat: either wiped out or defeated without destroying anything: 3 points
Massacred: wiped out without destroying anything: 0

On the other hand, the Deep Space tournament goes for 20, 15, 10, 5 and 0 point for various levels of admiralship.

If there's an objective (e.g. assassination or rescue scenarios) would it be worth changing the scores and assigning some points for achieving the objective, or should I just assume that the objective is taken care of by its contribution to the victory points? It might, for example, be possible to score a minor defeat but still bag the target of an assassination; or destroy the enemy's biggest ship, put your own big ship near the target of a rescue, but still lose enough smaller ships to lose the battle for a minor defeat.

 

[Democratus]

If all the objectives are worth VP, would it make sense to simply count up VP (along with points for sportsmanship) for the players to determine winner?