Great White Games/Pinnacle Entertainment Group

TheLoremaster · Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2011 9:42 am Post subject: Suggested Points per side?

I'm planning on running a Showdown game soon, but one of the things I'm struggling with is how many points to give to each side. I can calculate the points totals for the figs without too much difficulty, but I'm not sure how many of these figs each side should get for a decent size battle. Any suggestions?

Assume a (roughly) two hour playtime.
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Doc Holliday · Posted: Tue Mar 29, 2011 2:11 pm Post subject:

I would say 5 to 10 actions per side per round. Generally, this might mean having 1 to 3 Wild Cards/singles/vehicles with 2 to 5 group units with 3 to 5 individuals per unit. In my experience, there are usually approximately 20-30 figures per side. Of course, there is a significant difference between 2 players and 6 players.

It also depends on what you're playing. Vehicles and magic users are more time intensive than five goblins with clubs.

I don't know how helpful this was, but there you go.
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TheLoremaster · Posted: Tue Mar 29, 2011 7:32 pm Post subject:

I'm planning on re-casting the "Capture The Achilles" Savage Tale from Slipstream as a Showdown game. The idea is that the rebellion team needs to attack and board the Achilles prison ship, find their NPC leader, then escape in their own ship. The Queen's Minion side needs to defend the position, and capture as many rebels as possible. Not much in the way of vehicles, but possibly some psionics on the rebels side.

I want to be able to accommodate up to 6 players, so I'm thinking one 5-person squad per player; 1 WC leader and 4 allies. I suspect 100 point squads might be sufficient, but I'm looking for a sanity check. Does that seem right?
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"Your GM is metagaming ... and wrong!"

Doc Holliday · Posted: Tue Mar 29, 2011 7:46 pm Post subject:

I think that would work fine. I would make sure that the allies on each player's team all act on the same action card. So that would be two actions per player per round. Depending on how experienced the players are with Showdown or at least Savage Worlds, you should fall under the 2 hour mark. I might even make it two, four person allied units per player plus the WC, but if the experience level is low or you don't want to risk it, I would be surprised if the setup you described took longer than two hours or so to bring to conclusion.
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Never play cards with a man called Doc

TheLoremaster · Posted: Tue Mar 29, 2011 10:04 pm Post subject:

DanDiamond · Novice Joined: 19 Mar 2010 Posts: 32

That last option is wildly optimistic to do in two hours. The Star Wars Showdown game I ran and detailed below had two squads and one leader per player, three players and took four hours. If they had been experienced with Showdown that would have been much less- easily under two hours. They speeded up fast once they knew the rules rather than having me explain the rules. If you want 6 players in 2 hours, I would recommend one wild card and one squad per player.

I had origianally planned my game to run much shorter, but at the last moment changed to two squads per player because I was afraid a bad morale roll in the beginning of the game would be too easy to take out a plyer's effectiveness. Adding in the extra squad each made a big difference on run time.

TheLoremaster