So the evening long campaign for Legends of the High Seas took place last Friday night, and much fun was had and beerconsumed. We had our share of issues from getting a later start than I had planned to round 1 games taking too long. By the time we got round four going it was already almost idnight...and someone had already dropped in round 3 forcing a 3 player FFA the previous round which wasn't ideal. So in the end we only had 4 players for "X marks the spot" it turned into a blood bath on end between the Royal Navy, Spaniards, and Chinese Pirates...who basically killed each other off...while the sneaky green skinned pirates ran off with the gold...I went into round 4 at 3-0 and a crew of 15 and was the 1st player to arrive on the island, so I split up into 3 groups of 5 to hunt for the gold. Luck wasn't with me this game and I was taking fire from all sides. Eventually I ended up voluntarily routing with only 2 Heroes left.. Even this 4 player game took over 2.5 hours so by the time I shut the lights off and went to bed it was 3AM... a good time but lesson learned..the event was too long...Better organization and time management is a gimme and potentially a normal round for game 4 instead of big group game that's bound to eat up the clock are in order. I'll need to some homework on making a 1 day or evening campaign event work..there is already talk of doing another one..and I am quite happy we have a whole bunch of people eager to get in some Legends of the High Seas...despite the issues with time, I am calling the event a big success.
Some of my Spanish Privateers hunting for the treasure in the final "X marks the spot"
unfortunately I didnt get the mileage I wanted to out of my Cannibals...for having twelve "x" markers Cannibals only came up once! (if the treasure wasn't found..the marker had variety of game effects you rolled on 2d6, Cannibals were on the list twice..(4 and 10, ) I should have made
4,5 9,10
You know you've drank too much beer when your miniatures start getting attacked
by giant parrots!!! Argh..
Thursday, May 21, 2009
The Spanish Main - Post Campaign Wrap
Posted by JPL at 9:56 AM
Labels: Legends of the High Seas
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7 comments:
John,
It was a great event! I personally had a great time. While the length of the rounds and number of games to be played obviously needs to be tweaked a bit I still think these types of events are achievable. What if we did a two day event (running on consecutive Fridays? That way we could get the rounds in and it wouldn't run so late. We would have to figure out something to do if a player had a "bye" though. I'm all for giving this another shot.
The parrot looks awesome (if a bit fickle. We were using him as the Priority marker...and he never seemed to want to "perch" on my shoulder).
John,
Nice write up. Got to ask what time did you start? I am planning on a LotOW day on a weekend with a start time around 10:00am. How did the rest of the players do?
Tim,
the schedule was to meet at 7pm have an hour of orientation and then dice at 8pm..inevitably people were late some players had models and didnt own the book so needed help filling out crew rosters pre games...we did a brief demo game for the uninitiated. I don't think dice got rolling for round 1 until close to 9...and round wasnt rolling until 10:30...I had originally scheduled 8-12pm I figured a 1am overrun worst case for the whole event...
Its actually a good thing we ran late because we never would have finished an 8 player game or X Marks the spot..an 8 player game I think would take considerable time the way I was running it (i.e, every if someone got the treasure and escaped we still played it out until everyone voluntarily routed, left the island or was killed off
since the Navy was there to capture pirates first, get the treasure second.
So in reality a combination of factors bogged things down, from people arriving late unprepared to my own juggling with trying to run my own crew and run the event/ schedule match ups,
I think trying to run a actual narrative to the campaign with corresponding match ups was overly complicated, no one really cared that much and it slowed things down matching people up for the next round..so Instead of matching up people that were free and ready to play we waited for all the games to be done..because I had setup that dictated...loser of Scenario A, Plays Winner of B, etc.
I think the rest of the players did well, Jason who was playing the Navy had some really rough games..horrible rolls in the wound phase of the campaign game...he only should in round 4 with 7 man crew. I forgot to mention only 1 person died the entire campaign on my crew and that was my Captain! at the end of round 3...he got knocked out the match taking three gun shot wounds in a single turn..when I rolled one injury table he came up Snake Eyes..justifably so..my First Mate got promoted and was a much stronger character anyway especially after becoming captain.
I think Bill did pretty well...winning his first two, losing to me in round 3 and we all lost round 4...except for Brian...who I think was 2-2 and well but walked off with Blackbeard Treasure!..the remaining players had mixed records but didnt make the final round.
I don't know anything about this particular table top game but I have to say, that is some of the prettiest terrain I have ever seen. Who made it? Do they take commission jobs for that kind of stuff?
Hi Jared
The terrain for this event was as follows mainly done myself and Rich Nelson. Rich's Blog is the Chicago Terrain Factory of which this is numerous links to on the front page this blog.
fellow club members Bill Lim and Billy Sullivan also did several of the buildings in the town notably the stable and bridge house. Jason did the Tavernfight Board. I'm not sure on the commission thing for the others but I would depending on the time frame and project.
thanks for commenting.
Okay John, gotta ask, when are you going to run a LotHS campaign at Adepticon?? ;-) I think Adepticon would be a great format for this sort of game, plus if you run it, I could play in it!
One nice thing with my group here, they all know LotHS & LotOW, they were my local playtesters while I was writting LotHS. So one I run the LotHS I should have a pretty smooth session since most know the rules.
I will throw this out to you, if you ever make it to Phoenix, you will need to look me up and we can get in a game or I will throw together a Campaign day for you here.
But I am serious about the Adepticon thing, you need to step up and run this event, I know there would be a bunch of people wanting to play. Dean V is looking at running a LotOW game at Adepticon, so having a LotHS Campaign event would be cool.
Tim,
I'll email you..
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