Building A Better Community: The Cheerleader

A couple months back I wrote about building a better game community.  I kind of touched on come different ways and things that needed to be in place to help sustain a community after you built it up.  I wanted to expand on one particular topic, one that is probably the most important and possibly the most dubious position to hold.  That is the roll of the community "Cheerleader".

Firestorm Armada: How do you get to 25%?

Since the Grand Tournament at Adepticon has concluded, a conversation has been emerging about terrain in Firestorm Armada. Wargaming in general seems to have always had an issue with some players not using enough terrain, regardless of which game is being played and we, as a community, are still working out what 25% board coverage seems to look like on our space boards. 

At Adepticon, we tried to get all the boards reasonably close to 25% covered, some were a little less, and some were a little more. I'm not writing today to discuss whether 25% coverage is the way to go, as far as I'm concerned, that is the way the main rule books says to do it. Also, one would think that that was the way it was play-tested as well. Ultimately, it is up to the players to decide where on the spectrum of vaccuum of space to space junk yard they want to battle.

What I would like to ponder though, is the options to get to 25%. We tend to use medium and small chunks of terrain which litters the board, about 25% of it actually. What we discovered during Adepticon, where all the great metas converged was that other people get to their 25% by using less pieces because they are much larger. Some people said our boards were "mazelike" which was very interesting. 

Part of the research and development for next year will to have a variety of board styles, some with many pieces like we had in 2015 and others with fewer but larger ones.

How does your gaming group grapple with terrain coverage? 

Adepticon 2015: Firestorm Feedback and Plans for 2016

The event at this year's Adepticon was glorious. Now that it is over, the work schedules have resettled, and the con-crud is basically evacuated, it is time to start pulling in feedback from the tournament and start brain storming for next year.

Terrain: There has been some interesting things said about our terrain; thankfully all positive in regards to appearance, at least. Some players felt out of balance with it because their local groups either play with much less total coverage, or at least fewer, but bigger pieces. Some of the boards were refered to as "maze-like" due to the coverage. We will be putting some R&D into terrain.

Size of Fleets: The decision to make the tournament a 900 point Battle Fleet standard has been fairly controversial since the beginning. Currently, there is a poll going in the Spartan Games Community forums to gather some hard data. The truth is, that there is no point limit that will make everyone super happy. However, we are committed to staying true to the wishes of the player base. 

Battle Log for Objectives: I don't think I've come across much, if any, displeasure about using this as a supplemental scoring mechanism. However, the points assigned and how the points were earned have received comment. Research will be done in this area as well.

As a first year event, I think that, overall, things went smoothley and a good time was had by most. And a big thank you to the players who showed up. We received several accolades from Adepticon staff for selling out a first year event, especially for a game that doesn't have as much recognition as some of the bigger convention staples.

That all being said, we have planted the seed for the Firestorm Armada Grand Tournament, now we need to focus on making each year better than the last. How fun would it be to get up to a 64 Admiral tournament? I think very.