Fantasy Votewar Suggestions Thread

[Spector]

Got a suggestion or an idea for Fantasy Votewar? Got a "themed" Votewar which you might like to see happen?

Well here's the place to gather all that information together. The Fantasy Votewar staff is interested in everyone's ideas, so let us know!

[Manu_Forti]

I think first turn is important to a lot of battles, enough to warrant randomly determining who gets it in a votewar.

Cheers

[kooshlord]

I had some thoughts about the maps used in the fantasy votewar. Here they are:

Concerns:

- In a standard game, the board is 4'x6', or 4'x8' for really large battles. Having boards where deployment zones are more than 24" apart means that all-infantry armies are at a disadvantage, and shooty armies are at an advantage. If an infantry army potentially has to slug across 3-4' opposing shooting in a 6 round game, it might as well not be played.

- No terrain within 12" of the center point of the map. This means there is at least a small open corridor (deathhill comes to mind here) for LOS and shooting.

- Hills and forests normally occupy a maximum 1'x1' space. Walls are generally in 6" segments. While there is nothing necessarily wrong with GIANT hills or the great wall of china being in play, they do tend to rather drastically affect gameplay, and in several cases decided my vote for me. As such, I'd be more comfortable if these obstacles were within the bounds set in the basic rules.

Suggestions:

- I didn't see any village/small-walled-section setups. Those would be interesting.

- I also didn't see any non-forest difficult terrain. This affects movement without affecting LOS, and is a tactical advantage for shooting/ranged magic.

- No terrain within 12" of the board center, terrain pieces in 1' square segments.

- It might be good to define which terrain provides cover for large targets as well as normal units. This could be very valuable for giants/dragons/etc.

Cheers!
-Koosh

[DavidWC09]

I like Koosh's and Manu's suggestions. Knowing first turn and clearer maps that aren't far-fetched in some way.

Also, it might be fun to one day do a special character, 3000 pt list votewar. Let the heavies duke it out.

[Spector]

Another thing I think we really need to emphasis is people really do need to keep voting even if their list has been eliminated. We had a big voting drop-off after lists started getting knocked off.

[Cyric the Mad]

Unfortunately, you can't make people continue voting after their list is eliminated - some people lose interest in an event once they are no longer part of said event. It's human nature. It's not cool, but it's common.

I think for the next votewar, there should be a lot more cross-promotion on the fantasy boards. The issue I see with getting people to the VW is that, once it has started, it is all but invisible to the rest of the FB members. We could even create, or encourage VW participants to create threads in their respective army forums about their matchup. Something as simple as, "Hey, my latest match in the votewar is against a Snork army. What kind of tactics would you use against these Snorks?" or something as blatant as "Will the noble Bretonnians defeat the foul vermin of Skavenblight? Come vote in the blah, blah, blah..."

You see what I'm getting at. I think we'll get more voters if we keep the VW in front of people. David and Stoney's announcements were a good start, but seems like we can do a bit more. I think we can even dredge up a few FB mods to help.

[Sammy the Squib]

Another thing I think we really need to emphasis is people really do need to keep voting even if their list has been eliminated. We had a big voting drop-off after lists started getting knocked off.

I have posted an announcement with a link to the final. Don't know how much good it will do we'll have to wait and see.

There was a lot of interest when this votewar started, I think there will be similar interest with the second one. Try to encourage people to link to the votewar in the sig. I shall edit my sig in a moment after this post.

It's unfortunate that the votewar section is in the GD part of LO rather than the FB section, I think this might cause people to miss it altogether

[kooshlord]

I stopped voting as frequently once my army was eliminated for a few reasons:

1. My army was eliminated. I'll admit that my interest in participating went down once my army was no longer participating. Human nature, as misanthrope said.

2. As the matches kept going, I rarely saw obvious wins. Many of the higher level matches seemed to depend on who got a break (good or bad luck) first. And there isn't any way to tell this without actually rolling it out. Prime examples are the magic-heavy armies (miscasts/irresistable force could have a tremendous impact on game-play, and aren't accounted for) and the orc army (with their Billion random movement rules, orcs are extremely unpredicatable, even to the orc player). My votes started feeling pretty arbitrary, especially when they concerned the armies I'm not very familiar with (undead, new orcs, new empire).

3. The tables dominated the outcome much more than the armies in some cases, as per my above post.

Cheers!
-Koosh

[Arklite]

it might be a thought to let the two players involved see the table before the game and form up a strategy based on knowing who they are against as well. a day before hand would be perfect. Have them write up how they would deploy their army and how their opening moves would take place. This results in voters knowing how the opening steps of the battle would occur and the odds of what units would engage what and so on fourth. 2-3 paragraphs would be ideal.

[trodi]

1. I think that participation will probably drop no matter what, however, it would be very benificial to have all the participants provide a link in their signature and for a mod to put up an announcement in the FB forums. Is there any way we could get a VoteWar folder in the Fantasy section? Like the "Fluff" and the "battle reports"? Having it down here with general off topic will make it easy for people to miss. I wouldn't have paid attention to it if mods didn't place stuff about it in the WE forum.

2. About the maps and giving a discription of how one would play: This would be fine but if we did this then it would not be based as much on the composition of the lists. If we did let the players tell how they would play, would we have to base our vote on their battle plans? That could totally change a vote, just need to make this all clear before the tournaments start.