Category Archives: game design

Combat Patrol Tournament/Campaign Design Notes (Part 1)

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combat-patrol-smAs announced earlier, I am currently running a multi-week 40k Combat Patrol tournament here in Philadelphia. We just finished Round 1, and things are going fairly well. Sixteen people have joined the party, and there’s a decent mix of armies. The only really surprising omission is the lack of Imperial Guard, but it sounds like several of the guys with new IG armies haven’t graduated them to their tournament faction yet. Last week we had a really good group session with twelve people playing at Redcap’s Corner in West Philadelphia. This coincided with their grand reopening after expanding the store, and it was a great time. The new space is awesome and many good games were played.

One of the plans I have for the tournament is to take the campaign oriented mission writeups, package them up with my notes on running the tournament, and post them up afterward for other groups to use in running similar events with minimal work. Toward that end, I’m going to record some of my design notes and observations here as we go along.

Combat Patrol

Perhaps most fundamentally, there are some mixed reactions to the Combat Patrol rules. Our restrictions follow fairly faithfully from those in the 4th Edition rulebook but at 750 points, and feelings are positive but a few issues have come up.

On the positive side, this setup has four big advantages going for it:

  • The tournament is more accessible. Running at a low points scale and with mostly only core units allowed, more players will be able to jump in. As a bonus, it also means more players will have fully painted armies, a nice side effect. I will note though that this has had only mixed success; we did not pull in quite the crowd of new people I was hoping to.
  • Games only require 4×4 tables, which means you can fit a good number of matches into a small space. We have a lot of room at Redcap’s and PAGE, but 4×6 tables are a limited supply at the latter and the former is contested by card players (mostly Magic). Physically fitting more games just makes things easier at a lot of venues.
  • Small games like these can be played in 90–120 minutes. I’ve taken advantage of that to set up asymmetric missions where a match consists of two games with players alternating rounds. At 750 points that can easily be done in three hours, and therefore still works well for people to get together and play after work.
  • Perhaps most importantly though, and most conflicted, the restrictions generally keep crazy and specialized units out of the game. This also helps accessibility, leveling the playing field a great deal: You know you won’t go up against someone who’s invested in a handful of Landraiders or has every model on hand to pick and choose from for an optimal list. I don’t have a problem with that at all, but it can be discouraging to new people.
    What also happens is that the restrictions take some of the tactics out of list construction and puts them back onto the table. Since everyone’s forced to focus on core, common units, it’s a lot more predictable what people will have, and the forces are a lot more similar. I certainly don’t have a problem at all with good list construction, and really enjoy that as a key aspect of the game. However, at these low point levels it’s very susceptible to rock, paper, scissors effects, where a game’s outcome is dominated by good, bad, or unexpected list selections. Given that small games have advantages otherwise, reducing that effect is a good thing.

However, the restrictions also raise some problems. Some people are turned off by the lack of crazy units, and don’t see big gains in board tactics focus or value in reducing the rock, paper, scissors effect. That’s basically a style choice; I think the former is just different, not better, but the latter is important for games of this size.

Worse though is that the Combat Patrol rules aren’t holding up well under the 5th Edition codexes. Just like we bumped the points to 750 to better suit codexes with expensive units, such as Necrons, with the additional restrictions there are just so many units barred from play that it’s a little overkill. I was really, really sad to realize my Drop Pods would not be legal, and neither would my Captain. I don’t see either of those as unstoppable at this point level, but the loss of the Drop Pods especially has really changed my play style, and forced me to scrounge together some Rhinos—in complete contrast to the goal of enabling people to play with anything they have on hand. Similarly, I don’t see huge problems in allowing in an IG Company Commander. Tyranid players also seem really cramped by the rules, with very few permitted unit choices in the new book. The newer books seem to trend toward having more wounds, armor, and so on floating around, frequently making previously available units forbidden in Combat Patrol.

I can see some value in keeping out Landraiders, Terminators, special characters, Chaos Sorcerors, etc. at this point level and game style. But, I think in the future I would relax the restrictions, probably allowing 3 wounds, 36 armor, and possibly 2+ saves. I would definitely even consider letting anything go; at 750 points these kinds of balance issues are less of a problem than at the standard Combat Patrol 400 points, and a lot of it is self balancing. Yes, a Landraider could be hugely dominating. But a couple Sternguard could also drop it in Turn 1 and wipe out a third of your points… I certainly foresee spending a good bit of time revisiting this issue for future events.

New Codexes

I expected the new Tyranid codex to drop in the middle of the tournament and wanted to afford players some flexibility. People might not be able to get it quickly, it might invalidate their models, and so on. I therefore put this in the tournament rules:

Current codexes must be used. However, players of armies with codexes released during the tournament may opt to use either the latest or previous codex, declared before a match begins.

However, what I really should have said was:

Current codexes must be used. However, players of armies with codexes released during or up to two weeks before the tournament begins may opt to use either the latest or previous codex. They must inform their opponents which book they are using when arranging a match, and once they upgrade to the newer book they must not switch back to the older book for their remaining matches..

This won’t actually be an issue for us because we have a good group with the right attitude, but it addresses a couple potential issues:

  • More leeway is needed for when the book comes out; it being released the day before the tournament starts versus the day after doesn’t really change the core issues such as book availability and reworking models or lists, but in the original wording everyone would technically be forced to upgrade.
  • The original intent was definitely that opponents could plan around which book would be used but the original wording didn’t actually quite say that, so it is spelled out better in the second version. Not that I think it’s a huge issue at this point level and with these restrictions, but it’s definitely the more sporting approach so it may as well be formalized.
  • Similarly, allowing people to switch back and forth between books in some attempt to tune to the mission or opponent seems very gamey and unsporting. The second wording encodes that intent and eliminates that problem.

Starting & Registration

The tournament is being run in a multi-week format with only a fixed date for the climactic, dramatic final round(s). In the interim, players schedule their matches as they please to fit their schedule. This is working out well so far in enabling people flexibility to participate, but it has made the start a little awkward. For example, I still don’t have contact information for some people who were registered by their friends. It’s working—they’re making their matches and so on—but it’s a little cumbersome. In the future I would definitely consider having a mandatory session for the first round as well so that I can physically collect all the contact information, registration fees, etc., and then roll from there rather than trying to play catchup with people for a couple days or weeks.

The campaign map for the tournament.

The campaign map for the tournament.

In any event, so far so good, and I’m looking forward to a bunch of fun, tough matches in the next couple weeks. More details on games and notes on the tournament and campaign to come!

PAGE CC 2009/7/26

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The other week at PAGE we played a quick round of our Obscurus Descendent micro-campaign in progress. It was actually a great night—there were space conflicts at our usual venue, so instead all ten of us met at my house! Fortunately I was in the process of moving, so I had one house pretty much empty of furniture such that we could set up a whole bunch of gaming tables. It did involve several long nights though doing some simple construction to make free standing supports for my boards so that we would have enough tables!

Biggest issues on the campaign were:

  • There was some confusion about army construction. We had put out two sets of army composition rules, and everybody was supposed to bring one for each. That worked reasonably enough, but several people assumed that those armies would be combined in the final round, rather than being free standing in their own right. Lesson: Campaign managers need to give their players a solid set of expectations, such that they can construct effective armies. The campaign writeup in turn should help the managers do that, i.e., tell them what to say.
  • Boards are everything. The final round is sort of a micro-apocalypse, all-in team gaming pitting good versus evil. We used an excellently done Mordheim board a friend had constructed. It was very thematic, with a ruined manor front leading into a temple crypt behind, but much too clogged with terrain for 40k. The board was very small and had plentiful difficult terrain, so much so that many of the good guys simply could not get into the rule thick of the action. Lesson: There is such a thing as too much terrain, and boards made for one system may not work well for others.

That said, it was a fine time, and we all had a hoot crowding around one board. I think there were three really standout moments in the game:

  • After the evil team deployed, it was like one of those goofy scenes from cheesy spy movies where they wish to show you how powerful the bad guy is by panning out on a wide open plateau of soldiers and such covering every available inch of it. In this case, we faced something like 50 guardsman covering the icon at the center of the crypt. They were literally wall-to-wall, loosely spread out in a grid in there.
  • On the first turn, Kingbreakers Sternguard entered the board through the graveyard in front of the manor. Silently rushing through the trees, they vault over the low wall and drop to their knees in the road before the manor, taking careful but instantaneous aim through the many chinks and holes in its facade. Meanwhile, Librarian Rorschach lingers in the graveyard, fighting a desperate mental battle with the C’Tan lurking within the ruins, punching through its defenses precisely as the Sternguard let loose with a stupendous volley of fire. Its psychic armor negated and its body pierced by round after round of poisoned bolts, the Nightbringer howled in rage as his physical form came unbound all around him.
  • Space Wolves Terminators leverage their hard-won knowledge of the dark leaders’ lair to infiltrate directly into the crypt. They slay corrupted guardsmen left and right, hacking their way through the wall of flesh toward the ruinous icon set in the half-light glow of the ritual pit. But just as they break through and their wolf priest braces to cleave it in two at the last possible moment, they realize the trap that has been laid! Dozens and dozens of guardsmen rush to the scene, pouring in volleys of fire as their officers and commissars bellow them onward, feeding their Warp tainted rage with boxes and boxes of extra ammunition placed in the crypt earlier with a mind to precisely such desperate times…

Long story short, the forces of good did not manage to stop the ritual in time. Intelligence is unclear given the lack of survivors reporting back from the climactic final moments, but all signs indicate that the rebellious undercurrents that had been sweeping the Obscurus Segmentum were indeed successful preparations for a dark menace to breach through from the Warp. Inquisitors dispatched to investigate are overdue to report back…

40k HQ Unit Point Costs

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Jason and I have been working on some micro-campaign rules for 40k. Among these are some alternative force organization charts, missions, and rules. Critical to the design of these has been discussion about how many points different HQs may cost. I thought I’d share the results of the “research” so far (research meaning flipping through the codexes I have or know about):

  • Daemonhunters: Characters ~150–200, generics ~50–200
  • Space Marines: Characters ~125–250 (most ~200), generics ~100–175 tricked out
  • IG: Characters ~ 150–200 (most ~150), generics ~50–100 tricked out
  • Black Templars: Characters ~175–200, generics ~ 100–200
  • Chaos Marines: Characters ~ 160–275, generics ~ 90–150 tricked out
  • Tau: Characters ~ 170–225, generics ~ 50–150 tricked out
  • Necron: Characters ~ 200–360, generics ~100–200 tricked out

Somewhat surprisingly, there’s less spread there than I expected, though most of them are fairly similar. Big questions are Chaos Demons and Eldar lists, though I expect they’re probably not too different.