Slitherine

Here in Australia we are considering what table size and how many points work best in 15mm comps playing 2 games a day. What has worked well in the UK to produce a good balance between Shooty and Foot armies across most lists?

We tend to play open comps with any list from any book.

Some options include;

600-650pts - 4x3 table
650-750pts - 5x3 table
750-900pts - 6x4 table


For our next national comp we are considering;

When organising the DBM championship, we used to vary the army points from year to year to give different types of armies a chance to shine. We would like to continue that tradition with the FoG championship, so we will NOT be using 800 points. Rather than everyone bringing mounted shooty armies, I think it would be nice to see some of the heavy and medium foot armies come out for a run.

Your choices for points are:

Option 1: 650 points on a playing area of 5 feet by 3 feet, with one fewer maximum terrain piece per player. That is effectively a starter army plus some
minor add-ons. This option will require players to take more care in their deployment, but has the advantage that heavy foot armies will get to grips with
each other with enough time to achieve a game resolution.

Option 2: 900 points points on a standard 6 feet by 4 feet playing area. This option provides foot armies with an extra couple of units to fill the table. The
downside is that some players may need to paint extra units.

peter777 wrote:Your choices for points are:

Option 1: 650 points on a playing area of 5 feet by 3 feet, with one fewer maximum terrain piece per player. That is effectively a starter army plus some
minor add-ons. This option will require players to take more care in their deployment, but has the advantage that heavy foot armies will get to grips with
each other with enough time to achieve a game resolution.

Option 2: 900 points points on a standard 6 feet by 4 feet playing area. This option provides foot armies with an extra couple of units to fill the table. The
downside is that some players may need to paint extra units.

My only comment with regard to this is that the majority of people seem to be building toward an 800 point army. To give an extra 100 points (to 900) means and extra 2 BG's, which players may not have ready access to. Asking them to beg, borrow or steel (spelling mistake intended) minis so that they can play in a comp limits the appeal I believe.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe everyone and their dog (except me) has enough 'left overs' to build up a 900AP out of an 800AP army... but I might not be too!

Ian

(copied to Oz_FoG)

Ian - That could be big factor here in Aust, so may be smaller tables may be better.

Peter

At the IWF here in the states.. Their really wasn't that many shooty cav armies that i played against... Shooty cav armies are hard to out right WIN with in 3.5 hours... Heck the rounds were 3.75 hours... My first FOG tourney i won with Medieval Germans(spear units).. Though we were all noobs.

At IWF I found myself playing a number of highly manouverable armies and even with3.75 hours we struggled for a decisive result.

I would suggest less points on narrower tables. More people will have armies that fit and if you have inexperienced players they'll be a bit too slow at 900 i suggest.

How many points was the IWF?

The IWF was 800pts,interestingly we are about to play a comp here (Rampage)where we have one 700pt,one 900 and one 800,we must play the 800 twice and the other two once ,our choice ,scores to be weighted accordingly,you could have a 700 v a 900 for example.
All this on 6x4 ,about 16 entrants so far
David

Sorry to dredge this up peter777 but I pleased to see some discussion of smaller games and tables. A few of us are getting into FOG at the other wargames club in Chch NZ and we had decided on smaller armies since we play in the evening and FOG painting has to compete with all our other projects. Personally, I've never been the type of gamer who thinks bigger is always better (heresy, I know).

We had been going with 600 AP on 4x4, is this not a good idea? Also, are comps with 650 on 5x3 a common thing? How well is that particular structure working in terms of balance and game length? 4' deep has the advantage that our club tables are precut that size, but I would definitely be willing to modify if it will improve the games.

I'm stealing the suggestion on one less terrain pick per player.

4' by 4' will work, the extra foot of table will probably mean the games are a bit longer than on a 4' by 3' but they should still be mostly over inside 3 hours.

Cheers Hammy.

Insofar as I think quicker is better (a FOG game is longer than what I am accustomed to), I'd be more keen on 4'x3' if that turned out to be a balanced format used by comp gamers etc

Just one guy in our group seems to be going the runaway Cav route so most of the other forces are HF + extras and my MF + Cav. At this stage we are inclined to just get stuck in while we try things out, but anything that speeds things up without sacrificing balance suits me.