So, in the truest form of "Put Up or Shut Up", I wanted to publish my own thoughts on a tournament structure. We have a big tournament coming up in September that we are preparing for. But, in the mean time, I'd like to test out a structure I've been thinking about for some time. The goal here is simple and understandable scenarios, accessable to all. The structure has been adopted from the 40K at the NOVA Open (here), and the missions were adopted from the mission set from the Nut Up or Shut Up Tournament in Devon, England (packet here)
The format is this: There are three objectives that are used throughout all rounds. For each round, they are rotated between Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Objective. Therefore, if round one the Primary, Secondary, Tertiary was Advance, Degrade, Collect, next round it might be Collect, Advance, Degrade.
If a player gains more tournament points in the primary objective that round than his opponent, he wins that round. If the players tie the primary objective, then they move to the secondary objective, and whoever wins that wins that round. If that is tied, move on to tertiary. If tertiary is tied, then it becomes straight points remaining at the end of the game. If this is tied, then it is a tie.
Advance
1 Tournament Point for none of your army in your deployment zone
1 Tournament Point for ½ of your army’s starting point value across the board center line
1 Tournament Point for having one of your models in the enemy’s deployment zone
Degrade
1 Tournament Point for killing the enemy LT.
1 Tournament Point for killing the most expensive lieutenant enemy model
1 Tournament Point for killing one or more enemy specialists (hacker/doctor/engineer). If the enemy does not own any specialists, the enemy must nominate a model that is not the lieutenant or the most expensive non-lieutenant that will count as a proxy in terms of this objective.
Collect
1 Tournament Point (max. 3) for each Cube/document acquired from an unconscious/dead model
I am gearing towards a competitive, interesting yet fair and balanced method of gameplay. If anyone is willing to playtest this, I would be interested in finding out how it works out. The rotating primary/secondary/tertiary objective scheme has worked well for 40K at the NOVA Open, and I think it can be adapted for Infinity as well.
These are actually really good starting points for missions. Have you considered putting a turn limit on games so there is a clear end point. Infinity games seem to have no definite endgame. This would need to be mitigated for tournament play.
ReplyDeleteI adjusted some of the conditions and gave this a whirl - but only one game, so nothing conclusive. Here are the new conditions for the missions I used:
ReplyDeleteAdvance (score only one of the below)-
1 TP for having a stronger presence (more points) in the first quarter of the field after your deployment zone (your infiltrating area).
2 TP for having a strong presence in the next quarter (your enemy's infiltrating zone).
3 TP for having a stronger presence in your enemy's deployment zone.
Degrade -
1 TP for losing equal or fewer points in models than your enemy.
1 TP for losing equal or fewer SWC than your enemy.
1 TP for dropping the enemy LT.
Collect (scored at end of game or immediately after walking off friendly table edge)-
1 TP for acquiring 1 enemy cube (short skill in BtB) or mission document (long skill in BtB for enemies that don't have cubes)
1 TP for possessing a dead enemy (using rules of carrying bodies).
1 TP for possessing an unconscious enemy.
I made changes to Advance to deal with situations where most (if not all) of a force can be deployed outside the DZ. Now it's simply about owning as much of the forward table as possible. As for degrade, I greatly dislike the "kill the specialist" type objectives, basically because I rarely field a doctor, engineer, or hacker, anyway. It's the simplest concept of take out more of your enemy than he does of you (except it's as much or more). Collect I expanded because the grab 3 cubes thing just seemed too simple.
Anyway, my game went well enough :) I (JSA) picked advance and my opponent (PanO Shock Army) picked degrade. He scored 1 TP for taking out more of my SWC than he lost and I scored 2 TP for owning the 2 areas in front of his DZ. It was an interesting game with some very influential crits (disabled his TAG on the first turn - his turn).
Dude,
DeleteI agree with you wholeheartedly regarding the specialists, and I really like the idea of counting SWC. Also, it seems like your modifications on Advance are exactly what I was trying to get at.
I'm still a bit reluctant about the Collect modifications. Acquiring cubes/documents may be too simple, but possessing dead and unconscious enemies may be a bit too far in the other direction. It seems to rely on obtaining the right level of unconscious and dead enemy models, which is more of luck than anything else. It's worth looking into how we can expand that.
Thank you for the input! Looking forward to modifying and bringing it back out.