Hosted my first melee game on OCTGN last night.

Things I learned:

1. Only 1 person needs titles and there is no pile slot allotted for them (unlike your deck, plot deck, dead, and discard piles)

Just move them to the table in a designated area face down.

When saving a deck to play on OCTGN, save 1 version with titles marked: "Melee with Titles" and the version without: "Melee" that way you can quickly load the deck you want with or without titles.

2. In my game, I controlled the titles.

When selecting which title(s) to randomly removed, I rapidly selected and moved them around erratically on the table. While I was doing that, another player would "take control" of a card and move it to the side. Do this with the number of titles you need to remove before selecting (based on # of players). Then, whoever won initiative, would peek at each title lined up neatly in a row (ctrl-p), select their title and other players would do the same in turn order. the unused title if there is one would go with the other removed titles off to the side. At the end of the turn, all titles are returned facedown to the center of the table, the removed are added and "shuffled". Rinse, repeat.

3. Use a 1-sided table and designate locations for each player (ie. Bottom Left, Upper Middle, Bottom Right for a three player game, or Upper/Lower Right/Left for a 4 player game).

4. When selecting a player for actions/challenges use the shift click arrow option (as you would for stealthing a character. Or shift click select a Faction Card.

5. All players need to agree on which way to count and keep track of gold (on the plot card or using the counter on their player tab), combining both is a pain and difficult to keep track of.

6. Be patient, it can take some time to get enough players depending on time of day.

The description line of my games will always read "MELEE!!" and the number of players I am setting up for.

7. It didn't actually take all that long to play the game out. We only made it to plot 5.

The rest of the game plays our just like a joust would, mechanically.

All in all, it was actually pretty fun and I plan to host more.

Just finished up another melee game with Shikaku (my first melee ever). It was a good time and doable on OCTGN with 4 players. Took about 2.5 hours and ended on turn 5. I pulled out a victory with Tyrell (Randyll had 4 power, about to get a 5th), although Shikaku came very close and the guy after me probably would have gotten 15.

I'll try to do add a title pile this weekend (I don't control when the updates are pushed, though) and put titles in it at the start (I'll make it shrinked by default, like the used pile, and visible to no one, like the deck). If I can, I'll also make a function on it to create the title cards (some other plugins create cards, so it should be possible). That way, the title selection could go:

1) Shuffle the title pile.

2) Move titles facedown to the table to remove them

3) In turn order, each player takes control of the title pile, looks at the remaining titles, and moves one facedown to their play area. Alternately, skip the previous step and look at fewer cards (all players should look from the same side, top or bottom).

4) All players reveal their titles. Return removed titles to the title pile.

5) When returning titles, move them to the title pile.