I was first introduced to Warmachine through a Journeyman League. Starting with Khador's starter set, I was able to slowly grow my army into the tide of red it is today. The league's optional painting challenges is also solely responsible for my plethora of painting and modeling supplies.
My group is talking about starting another league of our own, and I've unofficially taken it upon myself to head it up. Rather than just sit down and try to pound it out alone I thought I'd take you guys with me through the entire process. This will let me take my time as well as get some good feedback during the planning, rather than trying to fix things I've already set in place. For this first step I thought it would be important to discuss the importance of a Journeyman League.
In a broad sense, a league like this should accomplish a few things:
- Serve as a starting point for new players
- Allow players, new and old, to slowly learn their armies by pacing how quickly they move on to larger games
- Encourage players to play painted armies
- Provide a relaxing environment that focuses on fun over winning
In addition, here are a few things I think this league should accomplish:
- Encourage scenario play, which is arguably how Warmachine is meant to be played
- Make the league fair for those who aren't able to play as often (we have a handufl of core Warmachine players and several fringe players)
- Remove the need to win the league, and instead encourage participation and fun
- For lack of a better word, have a "gimmick" that makes the league itself enjoyable without being too complex, bizarre, or against the normal style of Warmachine
- Avoid punishing those who don't take part in every aspect of the hobby
- Minimize my work load throughout the league without making players solely responsible for not losing their stats
- Don't lock players in to using 1 or 2 warcasters without just overwhelming them with options
To that end, a few tweaks to the normal Journeyman format are in order. I've bounced a few ideas around, but here are some of the better ones in nor particular order:
- Have the size of games progress based on points earned, rather than a time table. We will be competing with Magic for the players' time, and I don't want people to get left behind or jump from 12 points to 35 because they missed a week here and there or wanted to play Magic. I.e. players can move from Battlebox games (around 11-13 points) to 15 points after earning X points from wins/losses.
- Allow games to be played outside our Saturday night group
- Some sort of limit needs to be in place to prevent a single player from running away with the win and making it hopeless for the rest of the group. Having been "that guy" who loaded up on points just because I had so much fun painting, I know how important a limit is
- Have a few different titles to go for, allowing players to win based on achievement points, painting points, win/loss points, and overall total. Players who win overall cannot win the other categories.
- Halve the painting points for models painted by others, rather than disqualifying the painted models entirely. I'm torn on this one - only 1 or 2 other guys in the group actually paint. The others get their stuff painted through commissions or having someone abduct a model and return it painted because it looked fun to paint. I know most leagues disqualify those, but if the point is to get players to have painted armies, I don't see a problem with being more pragmatic about it while not letting people buy their points.
- Treat points as a currency that can be used to unlock different things in the league. Things to "purchase" with points earned by achievements, painting, or win/loss could be:
-Moving up to the next game size
-Unlocking the option to use another warcaster (this may also require X wins/games played with each unlocked warcaster first)
-Unlock the ability to play new scenarios (I would likely start with 2 or 3 options to start and let players unlock 3 or 4 others)
-"Money sinks" like purchasing a piece of terrain to be placed, buying a cumulative +1 to your next starting roll, letting you redeploy a single model/unit before the start of the game, etc.
This would probably take more bookkeeping that I hoped for, but it would always give people something to shoot for. - I got this one from Ticket to Ride - at the start of the league each player is given a random set of 3 goals. Eschewing typical achievement points, players would try to complete as many cards as possible. After completing one goal they'd be assigned a new card at the end of the week, keeping their count at 3 and not allowing players to basically "farm" cards.
Rather than systematically knocking out easier achievements for the points right away, people would have a random sampling of things to work on. Some would be worth more points than others, and some might be impossible for an army to accomplish. I'd need to set something up so people didn't get screwed with a bad draw - something like letting players with 2+ cards discard one at the start of the week.
I'm still working on a few ideas, but these are the ones with some meat to them. What do you guys think? Any that sound particularly fun or awful? Has your group done something that has really worked with casual attendance? I'm excited to hear your ideas!
See you tomorrow!
I'm not a huge fan of moving up levels based on achieving points. Some, like Fritz, will be moving up levels way faster than someone like me, which won't do him any good if he then has to keep playing games at the lower points level.
ReplyDeleteI like the template that is forming from this train of thought.
ReplyDeleteI am just concerned that advancing is based on wins, I think it should probably be games played more so than win or loss. Some people may just get the wins in and therefore get hindered.
I also think that we should consider going through the factions and picking 3 or 4 good casters that people would want in their collections but aren't overpowered in the lower points. ie. Karchev.
The format should allow players to have a point pool. I think starting at 15 pts is a great idea. Some people won't want what is in their battle box once they learn the game and I don't feel we should force them to purchase it.
So 15 pts, only Jacks and Beasts allowed to start.
The next step is to 20 pts, or we can simply do 18 where they are allowed to bring 1 or 2 solos.
The next step would take it to 25 where they would be allowed to bring Jacks / Beasts / Solos / Units.
The next step would be 35 where we open up the lists to anything people want to dream up.
We can go to 50 if that is what we want in an end goal but that is up for discussion.
I do believe that we need to plan everything around scenarios. I think it does a disservice to new players to train them on caster kill and then dunk them in the cold bath of scenario play when they have been tooling up for caster kill along. When you play for scenario you look at army structure in a different way and I think we should promote that from the get go.
I love the idea of achievements in a Ticket to Ride format.
To rob the many pod casts of their segments we could even host mini-dojos for the new players to help pick the army for them and construct a good starter army.
We can of course set limits like no character jacks or beasts until 25 or 35 pts.
There is more to be said on this subject but those are the immediate things that come to mind.
I really like the idea of the money sink. I think it would be awesome to be able to place a forest close enough for my Khador snipers or man hunters to be deployed in.
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