June 8th - all day Sunday

[Mark Wightman]

Anybody fancy doing something? I'm open to offers, but don't wish to play in the AoR game that Martyn is organising.

Who else is free?

Cheers


Mark

[Stephen Mawson]

I've got nothing arranged as yet.

I'm also not bothered what I play.

[dave3]

Well, we don't have any signs of Dr Halsall for the June meet, so I could be persuaded! We do seem to have got into a bit of a rut of late, with Fow or WAB or WFB being the staple diet. I could do with something different maybe. We have got these FOG rules???
or maybe you could have your Franco Prussians re appear? or the ACW Ironclads ?

[Mark Wightman]

Happy to try and arrange something different, but . . .

FoG: just doesn't appeal to me. Happy to stick with WAB for my Ancients games.

Franco-Prussians: Maybe later in the year. I've not unboxed those armies since moving, and frankly I can't be bothered to do it now.

Ironclads: Hardly worth it for an all-dayer, but I'll think about bringing them along on a Monday. Not sure where they are though.

I suspect that FoW, WAB and WHFB are taking over because,

A - they are easy to play
B - they are easy to arrange
C - most people have an army for at least one of them - it's always more fun pushing your own lead (or plastic) around than somebody elses.

[dave3]

This is very true! Perhapse we could try some WAB ? maybe some El Cid? we haven't played that period for a while, could get my castle out as a back drop!

[Mark Wightman]

Sadly, no El Cid for me. I'm rebasing mine, or trying to. Not finding it easy at all getting them off those blasted pennies

Got an Ancient German army I could give a run out - but would prefer that to be on a Monday. Not sure how many points I have, but I've lot of them, but then they're rather rubbish on the table

[John]

I'm free that Sunday so am hoping to come along.

I'm willing to give just about anything a try, but the game systems I know (and have forces for) are:
> WFB
> 40K
> AT-43
Depending on what peoples interests are I could do either a large game, or multiple small games (although I suggest future tournaments have a round time limit ).

[mike]

I'll be along - pretty much up for anything as usual

Couple of ideas:

Firstly - found some rules for really big WFB useing allied forses in the GW site
It's a free download too - don't get that often with GW - go to uk.games-workshop.com/warhammer/legendary-battles/1/ and click the "download PDF" link
Might be fun to give them a try

Alternately - I've been expanding my my Full Thrust fleet
I can now put the better part of 10,000 point on the table so if anyone fancies taking on a full scale ESU invasion - I'm on

Mike

[Stephen Mawson]

I was playng the Legendary battles WFB rules last Saturday at Wargames Workshop. The game worked out at about 10,000 to 12,000 points a side. It was quite a lot of fun, but there are a few issues with running a game of Warhammer that big, even with the legendary battles rules.

The first is simply the amount of time it took to play. We had 3 players a side, and it took us from 10am til 4:30pm to set up, and then play 4 turns.

The second was that the magic phases were pretty time consuming, and of minimal effect, simply due to the amount of power and dispell dice and scroll available to both sides. I think we were getting off perhaps one spell per magic phase out of more than a dozen castings.

If I get the rest of my NAC fleet painted up I'd have about 5,000 points worth.

[mike]

OK Steve - wasn't sure how the legendry battle rules would play - I'd just read through the rules and wondered about it

Certainly up for a 5000 pt full thrust - should take most of the day

If you're around on Mondy we'll finalise then

Mike

[dave3]

Hmm Rebasing El Cid (thinks...must finish my El Andalus!!) Your Germans presumably for EiR AD9 Tutenwald period? what do you feel up for Mark ?

[Mark Wightman]

Hi Dave,

Germans are early, yes. 180+ hairy yobs, with maybe 60 items of clothing between them, plus some cavalry. Not sure how many points I could do.

Have you got an army they could fight?

Re: Sunday - happy to play something. WAB or WHFB would seem easiest to arrange - if you're not too played out.

Any other suggestions?

Cheers


Mark

[John]

May 29, 2008 15:54:45 GMT Stephen Mawson said:

The first is simply the amount of time it took to play. We had 3 players a side, and it took us from 10am til 4:30pm to set up, and then play 4 turns.

The second was that the magic phases were pretty time consuming, and of minimal effect, simply due to the amount of power and dispell dice and scroll available to both sides. I think we were getting off perhaps one spell per magic phase out of more than a dozen castings.

I've played an 8k WFB game 2v2 in 5 hours including setup suprised Legendary didn't make it quicker.

Magic wise, a very good system for large games, each magic phase you pair players up 1 v 1 (either in fixed order or randomly). The only exception to this is that any player may use a dispel scroll on something that affects their units.
This works really well (you can all do magic at the same time) and seemed to balance about right.
How does it work in Legendary?

[Stephen Mawson]

I was suprised it took as long as it did to play as well, I had assumed that it would play quicker. Admittedly we weren't exactly playing really quickly, and as it was multiple players there was quite a bit of what do you want me to do with x,y,z.

Magic wise Legendary battles uses the standard magic rules, except you get a number of pool dice equal to the largest number of players on one side. We had three a side, so three pool dice. Each player gets an equal share of those dice, then essentially creates their own pile of magic or dispell from their own wizards.

I think we had 4 or possibly 5 level 4 wizards, plus 2 or 3 level 2's, plus some bound items on one side. (Orc's and Chaos). The other side had 3 level 4's, plus three level 2's, plus two Dwarf Runesmith and an Anvil of Doom (Woodelves, Dwarfs, Brettonians, Ogres).

Playing Dwarfs, and some of the brettonians I was generating about 11 dispell dice, and about 8 power dice. David playing chaos was generating somewhere in the region of 16 power dice, and about 13 dispell dice. The others weren't quite getting so much dice.

Only one player on a side can dispell any spell being cast, and they can only use their own dice, scrolls, etc. But as a number of spells have a long range, or battle field range this meant that different people were wanting to dispell each spell being cast. More so as most of the armies were intermingled to a limited extent. This means that you really have to do one spell at a time, per side, which slows the game down somewhat. Also if you're controlling multiple wizards each, it's difficult to work out what you want every wizard to cast in advance, or even to remember what each of their spells does, if you've got wizards casting from a variety of different spell lists.

[mike]

In light of this discussion, I have just re-read section in Legendary Battles regard magic dice pools (all one paragraph of it) - and you’re right, you do generate a LOT of dice. I do not think, however, that that should necessarily result in the problems you were having.

Firstly, the dispel issue (quote: “I think we were getting off about one spell per round”).

This, to a greater or lesser extent, is going to happen regardless of the size of the game. Lets face it, the system is rigged so that the defender has (nearly) enough dispel dice to neutralise all of the spells case by the attacker.

The only difference is that in Legendary you’re going to get through more cast-dispel cycles before the final spell actually goes off.

I do agree that in a larger battle that one spell (or two if you’re really lucky) will have less effect on the final outcome - that just means the tactics have to change to accommodate.

As for the long duration - I think that may have a lot more to do with you and your allies discussing tactics (you said it yourself, “there was quite a bit of what do you want me to do with x,y,z”) than any restrictions in the rules.

This, of course, is all theory – I’ve not played Legendry yet, but I’d love to give it try sometime