Alternate Game Mode: Unsupervised

Hey there,

Tonight I want to discuss something that’s come up since my application for Henchman was approved. Alternate Game Modes. Ways to get new players to learn different aspects of the game in small chunks to make it easier to pickup. (These are demo ideas more or less)

One of the most popular I believe is an Enforcer Brawl. Each player only using a model at a time and focusing on combat trims a lot of the tactical and tough decisions a player would typically make in a full size 50ss game. One of the ideas I’ve been toying with lately is similar to Enforcer brawl, and yet pretty much the opposite. I’m dubbing it “Unsupervised.”

A small 20-25 SS game that is minions and peons only. Now, we’ve only tested it once and that was at 24 SS with Arcanist vs Ten Thunders (so, expensive minions) and it went fairly well. For testing purposes we initially went with 24 SS and 2 schemes. So it would be sort of the Yang to Enforcer Brawl’s Ying, trading combat focus for objective focus and practice with schemes. We had a tough time running it with having 2 schemes, it basically came down to completing one of the two, or a combined of 3 points.

The adjustment that makes this game mode a bit more viable, I think, is that instead of each player choosing their schemes as you normally would (no strat), each player has a scheme assigned to them. Now now, I know that could be unbalanced, but whoever is running the Demo would essentially craft scheme pools of 2 (1 to each player) that would have interesting interactions with each other. You could also use your knowledge of what models each player has to better Taelor the game to what they can play. Only have killy minions? Mark for Death! Only have schemey schemers? Claim Jump! I haven’t yet gone through and figured out which schemes would be facing off against each other and I know it would be fairly limited but it would still serve a fun and quick way to learn some schemes.

We did our test game of this mode in about 15 minutes, and that was with two schemes and 4 models each. So it definitely seems like this mode is worth looking into for your really quick game slot. Also, you could still give out a full scheme pool on Crewfaux or what have you so the players can have practice trying to deduce what scheme their opponent has.

More thoughts to come on these alternate game mode ideas…

Let me know what you think!

-Alan