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I've been running the Lucky 13 mega games at my FLGS and for some reason good has been getting slaughtered.
In the first game good lost by 1 objective, and in the second game good lost by 12 objectives.
Now its not that the points aren't balanced (they are), its not that Evil players have more experience (the teams seem to be evenly split), or even that evil players have more super heavies (2 to 2), it just seems the evil players are more determined at winning.

I stress the fact that to win games you need to take objectives but it seems that some players either
A) Don't care.
B) Decide that killing the enemy is more important.
C) Decide that other players are the ones who are supposed to take objectives.

I've created a forum for each side (which the opposing side can't see) and it seems evil players plan out their armies better.
They talk about who needs which strategic asset more, who should take which special character, and generally seem to plan more.


Do y'all have any suggestions on how to help players win mega games, or any similar stories to this?

Also does anyone know how you're supposed to limit data sheets in the lucky 13s?
The rules packet says players can buy extra datasheets but it doesn't state that there should be limits inplace in the beginning.

Not to answer your question with another question, but why are you concerned about this? Do the good players resent losing? Are the evil players upset that there's not more of a challenge in the game? Or do you just feel that the game isn't being run well?

If both sides are having fun, why mess with the chemistry?

I've had a few good players say they're tired of being slaughtered (maybe 2 or 3 out of the 8), and a few of the evil players are saying that the games are becoming a little boring.
I also wonder, at times, if there is something I am doing that's causing the one-sided-ness of the battles.

Hi Foda

I'm not sure if it would be possible, but perhaps breaking the game up into two or three smaller battles (with 3,000 points per person) might work for the next go around? Take the idea behind the scenario and turn it into two or three smaller versions.

If the players only have themselves and one or two others to work with it might mean more cooperation as there really is no one else to take the objectives. If you can organize this ahead of time the smaller teams could have time to plan their lists and strategies.

Also, I think the original intent was for one datasheet per player (if they're each bringing 1,000 to 1,500 points).

I hope this helps.

Cheers
Dave

I have no idea why this tends to be the case, but when people play games that are broken up into a “good” team and an “evil” team, evil dominates ~80% of the time assuming all other factors are balanced. Not sure why this happens but the symptoms you observe are much the same as the ones I’ve seen in many RPG's where players have been pitted against each other as well as some online games (WoW and the like) that focus on PVP in a good vs evil sort of way. Evil teams just generaly get more excited about the prospect of winning and organize and strategize more than good tends to. I’m sure someone could write a master’s thesis on why this is the case, but it seems to be an odd facet of gamer psychology.

As far as how to balance things out, I’m not sure you can. The simple fact is that one team is out playing the other. You may want to sit down with the good team and let them know how the evil team is doing things and try to encourage them to step up their game to match the evil team. However, if they are unwilling to put in the effort to play better, they deserve to lose to those that do.

If you want to throw a monkey wrench into things, you can set up the next mission with spys/traitors. Just announce at the beginning of the next game that there have been traitors in their mists who have defected to the other side. Then have 1 or 2 of the whiney good players get switched over to the evil side while 1 or 2 of the evil organizers gets shifted over to the good side for that battle. All the stuff they bought goes with them. You can say you picked the names randomly if you think it’s necessary. The end effect is that evil will be missing some things that it really needs to properly complete their plans as well as having someone fighting against them who knows what they are going to be doing. On the flip side, good won’t really be missing out on anything they really need. Hopefully this will (at least to some degree) enlighten the good side on what they are doing wrong (at least if they are smart) and maybe they will pick up their game. Even if they don’t, it may be enough to get them a win under their belts.

Simple. "Goodguys" includes all the space marine kids. I don't think I've ever seen a space marine kid actually go for some sort of objective.

Hm... That's probably a factor. Quite honestly, I've never participated in a mega battle that was actually balanced at all. Really, they always went one way or the other in a Crushing victory/defeat.

And often, it went to who brought more uberweapons.

I'm not sure how much of a concern this should be though.


You may simply have better evil players than good players. That's just how your store rolls, and that's fine. But if you look at it that way, the best option you have is to change the lineup. Traitors works really well, and YOU CAN MAKE IT ACTUALLY RANDOM! Go ahead and draw names out of a hat, and see how it shakes things up (unless you know who the best traitors would be. You get me thinking like a GM again).

The Traitors would do a lot to mess things up, most of all it would change the lineup- so even if Good still loses, the Good Team isn't the same.

stonefox wrote:Simple. "Goodguys" includes all the space marine kids. I don't think I've ever seen a space marine kid actually go for some sort of objective.

Foda_Bett wrote:Now its not that the points aren't balanced (they are), its not that Evil players have more experience (the teams seem to be evenly split), or even that evil players have more super heavies (2 to 2), it just seems the evil players are more determined at winning.

While I agree with your statement about marine kids, it sounds to me like Foda has taken that into account when setting up the teams (correct me if I'm wrong). Now if your "good" team consists of mostly marines and your "evil" team consists of a wide variety of other armies, you may have just found your problem. It's fairly easy to tool up an army to kill marines. It's harder to tool up an army to kill eldar, dark eldar, chaos, necrons and Nids. So if your "good" team is all marines, your are going to need to do something about it.

Another question. Have you looked over the various army lists? Are the "evil" team members fielding a lot of top tier units/army builds while "good" is playing with a hodge-podge of junk? Player experience aside, the all circus sister's army isn't helping out the good side against the nid zilla list on the other side of the field. While the players may be equal in experience, it doesn't mean that in a setting where they can bring whatever they want, that they will bring what's effective (particularly when it's painted nicely and has been collecting dust for years).

Just some things to think about.

Well, i wouldn't worry too horribly much about what, if anything, you're doing to cause unbalanced games. If one side is simply playing smarter and better then the other, there's really not that much that you can do, outside of a handicap or shaking things up like has been suggested.

You mention that the good players are tired of being slaughtered, yet aren't doing anything to take/hold objectives. Does the good side appear to be winning on points (killing more stuff) or are they getting trounced in every area?

If good is holding it's own but just not taking the objectives, then you simply need to tell the players sick of losing what they need to do to win. If they're simply getting beat all over the place, you can try to help them as best you can, but in the end, getting gamers to do what they're told is like getting cats' to march in a parade.

I see two strong options:
1) Have the stronger evil and good players (I'm assuming they're the ones tired of the status quo) work out a handicap between them. Instead of bringing 3000 each, the best evil players now only bring 2500, while the best good players get 3500. That will balance things a bit while being hardly noticable by the rest of the teams. Keep in mind that 500 points will buy the good side another baneblade.

2) Rejigger the scenario to better play to the strenghts of the good player. Give them extra assets, better terrain, more time to set up while still going first, etc. this is hard, because you have no clue how far to go, and the game becomes pretty clearly "rigged."

We've been doing the same thing at our store with the same general results. The difference is that the good team was slaughtered in the first game and the second was actually pretty close up until the last turn or two. No one worked together or strategized before the first game. In the second, one of the older good players had them talking for a week or two before the game. In that case, they lost because they were dumb. They counted on the flank march asset and deep striking/drop poding/etc to allow them to concentrate their forces but then, stupidly, brought their forces in far away from most of the objectives. The evil side was entirely focused on holding objectives. So in this recent case the reason for good losing was being outplayed.

The store also ran some megabattles last summer where the xenos side was really sticking it to the imperials. The imperial players were getting very frustrated and it was only when they really started working together that they began to hold their own. We/they found that the evil players could pretty much show up with whatever models they had and count on the inherent diversity of forces to give them tactical flexibility. The imperial players really had to work together in the list-building stage to ensure they were taking advantage of the strengths of the various imperial armies. They finally got to the point where they would tell two or three blood angel/space wolf guys to bring assault heavy armies, have the guard & sisters players bring the anti-tank and shooting units, and then have other marine players bring a mix of units to fill in the gaps based upon the mission, terrain, and opposition.

So long story short, in our experienecs the good armies need to do a lot more pre-game planning than the evil side if they want to win the game.


SteveW

Another thing you could do, is let them strategize before hand and all that, but then at the start of the game, flip several people to the other team, and then play the game.

That way, their strategizing is for nought, and the game get's a little interesting with the "traitor" aspect.

2 battles isn't a trend, it's just two battles. Worry about it after good loses 5 in a row. Even if you balance everything perfectly, good should lose 2 battles 25% of the time.

Some players will always complain that they got crushed, and that sides weren't even. Truthfully, you can balance the lists, number of players, super heavies, heavy weapons, number of models, and the color of the dice. Know what still happens? Someone loses, someone wins. (Or in my games they do, I like odd numbers of objectives.)

Balance isn't an objective for me. Fun is.
Apocalypse lets you throw your models at the enemy and not worry about who kills the most points. It uses great big warmachines that cause tons of death and destruction. For the person that wants to 'control the game' or 'not get wiped out' or 'get run over', this can cause issues. Hard to have give a stomper target priority based on who is ok with sucking up a 7" template.

We have split our two games so far, Good winning the first, and Evil the second.

I truthfully wouldn't worry about it too much.

Hm... That's probably a factor. Quite honestly, I've never participated in a mega battle that was actually balanced at all. Really, they always went one way or the other in a Crushing victory/defeat.

And often, it went to who brought more uberweapons.

Agree absolutely. And I had a player complain about it, when one side had a stomper, chaos baneblade, ork baneblade, brass scorpian, and Haridin. The good side had two baneblades. The big warmachines were just crushing things.

I pointed out to him:
-It's an apocalypse game, boring as hell if no one actually brought anything big to a 40,000pt game.
-The players that built, modified, and painted their big models would like to use them. Apocalypse is where they get to use them.
-He himself hadn't bought the book, or a baneblade. Yet we still let him play in the apocalypse battle, next to people that worked hard to paint up units on the datafaxes, make special terrain to represent strategies, or spent hundreds of dollars on superheavies.

Apocalypse is where the Uberweapons of 40k hang out, those wanting to avoid them should play combat patrol.

First off I’d like to thank everyone for their quick and informative responses. It seems I’m not the only one with this problem.

Thanks to Dave Taylor for the quick response, and getting next month’s scenario to my inbox already.

Last game I gave both teams a 5 minute meeting between each round, as well as limited each turn to 45 minutes.
Evil spent their 5 minutes talking about who should take care of what, what each person should shoot, and what to do if they started running out of time.
Good spent their time talking about how big their guns were, and how weedy the enemy was.

Some of the evil players switched over to good for this past game, and it seems they just fell into their team’s mentality.

Good includes 1 space marine kiddy while evil has their own, a chaos marine kiddy.

It seems that both evil and good take their best units. Last game a good player (1 person mind you) brought 9 wraithlords. He totally destroyed the ork armored company, but refused to leave his deployment zone and take any objectives. Evil’s mean unit was a unit of flank marching chaos melta/chainfist termis which took out a baneblade and many good tanks controlling a central objective.

We’ve had every player deploying across from other each other.
We have 6 table set up in 2 rows of 3 tables each with roughly 3-4 people spit among the 20 feet.

Evil will always win, because good is dumb.

>>Some of the evil players switched over to good for this past game, and it seems they just fell into their team’s mentality.

That's groupthink in action.

To be honest, if the players can't figure out why they win or lose, I don't know if spoonfeeding them will work.

Foda_Bett wrote:Some of the evil players switched over to good for this past game, and it seems they just fell into their team’s mentality.

Just goes to show that my "good" vs "evil" mentality theory isn't so off base.

They give you scenarioes you have to use, right? If they let you design your own, put all of the objectives on the good team's side of the field. Make them have to hold them against the bad guys.

Actually Rbb the last games have had an even spread some in each deployment zone and others in the middle, the next game actually calls for objectives in the middle (on top of what is brought in).
Its rather funny evil will take the weakly held objectives, usually take the middle ones and still have troops to claim their own.

I've thought about making someone an "overlord" for each force. They'd basically have to keep their team together, review lists, give advice, etc. but I don't know if good would even talk to theirs.

I've offered up the night before the game for both teams to meet up and talk about their tactics (after seeing a fully deployed board) but neither seems interested.

Has anyone else been running or observing Lucky 13 games and consistently finds that the good side are rubbish?

Sounds like the EoT global campaign on a micro scale.

We've had a vast mix. When observing the game, you start to see patterns develope, but it's usually something like:

"why were you guys so week on this side, with just IG hoding about 3 feet of table, and all the marines over here?"

"Well, see, I went to set up here, but Jim said he needed room for his IG, which has 300 models because of his conscript units, and he wanted the tall buildings for all his heavy weapons. The 3 SM players didn't want to bring in stuff as reserves because they would miss some shooting, so they all packed into the spot behind the 3 landraiders"

"What caused the hole in the marine line?"

"The bad guys dropped two 10" templates on the tight packed marines and killed 57 of them turn 1"

"What caused the hole in the IG line?"
"Once the conscripts got into HTH, they all consolidated into the combat, and chaos teleported into that big hole in the middle of the IG line, between the buildings where we couldn't see good, and charged next turn"

Explainable in hindsight, and no one looking at the mistakes in setup as it's happening. Meanwhile, the 'bad guys' were talking stragegy, noticing too many marines in a cluster, and wondering where they could break a hole in the line for terminators to teleport into.

Gathering random people and having them throw out troops will always cause problems.

Yes. When my buddies and I have played team games we have met up beforehand for a team talk, and we have a good idea of each others' playing styles and skills. It is much harder if you are lumped in with a bunch of strangers.

In some ways the bunch of random people approach can be fun as well. It's total anarchy, no play, no one knows exactly who is doing what, and all you can control is your little corner of the world. Much like what the poor IG put up with on a daily basis.