Thursday, January 29, 2015

Roundup!


Down the barrel of our quite nice two tables



The ABS Journalist and Cameraman zero in on the action


We ended up with four players. A but small, but a mighty start. Back of the book lists with two elite Germans playing two regular Americans. Day One had each player getting three games, over two tables. The Germans won every game.

Day Two had a playoff, with The Elite Panzergrenadiers defeating the Elite Fallshirmjager, and the Regular Infantry platoon defeated the Regular Armour Infantry Platoon. After that we played big CoC, with the T.O. (me) taking Regular Russian Tank Riders and the Americans, facing the Germans in the middle of the table, scenario six. The Americans got to the objective, but could not force the Germans to retreat.

Some of the games were closer than the 6-0 scorecard displayed, but some were whitewashes.

Most games were finished in the alloted two hours. Those that were not stopped at the two hour mark with only one game semi-affected by the stop time.

We played the scenarios as written day one. With the Allies/Axis matter decided, I improvised on day two.

The ABC News team picked one of our guys to interview. We suspect the lady journalist liked his impressively twirled mustache, as well as the handsome tables. CoC made the Canberra local News :)

Prize pool - Many thanks to our prize wrangler and sponsors, each player ended up with two buildings each, and at least one tank kit each, and a whole British Platoon was awarded. Random draw for all prizes kept the spirit of the thing!

I want to do it all again and build up player numbers and interest.

Lessons learnt:

1) Elites. Just no. All regular lists, no lists with more than five dice.

2) Two hours per game is enough. A couple of games were over in two hours and were stopped on the force morale chart. In each case, these games were not truly effected by the stop, and the players acknowledged they were slow playing. There were short games - players just shopped.

3) Rule simplicity. KISS. If you think most of your players truly follow your minor rules modification, you are wrong.

4) Scenario simplicity. KISS. If you think most of your players have read your Scenario pack, you are wrong.

5) All prizes are random draw. Behind some quite nice players is a prize driven ass waiting to come out.

6) You can't have enough tokens or templates.

7) Some players who have not read all the rules will want you to double check their every decision with a rules query. Negate this with the "gather two opinions, roll a dice and move on" technique. You can't gain rules knowledge from random rolls.


1 comment:

  1. Hi Bart
    Glad to see you got the CoC up and running
    Some comments on your Lessons Learned
    1.) I would have thought the force difference on the Elite (+7) would have balanced
    out the bonus? I must admit we do not play many elites ....yet.
    2.) Good not know we are still in learning mode and I wondered if 2.5 hours was needed.
    3.) & 4.) Could not agree more - I read your rules pack and thought wow ambitious - I have made minor changes in comps I have run and it was rather trying - NO ONE reads the pack properly.
    5.) I use a mixture of both - small trophy/prize for places and bigger ones for Fairest, Best Painted and random door prize

    ReplyDelete