18 hours ago, LagJanson said:

Hey! Shouldn't you be watching the eclipse now? Seriously you were a great opponent. It was good to meet you.

Tagging @Jeff Wilder and the Crew. Always good to meet people. Good to see @rilesman again this year.

I was actually at dinner....but the eclipse was awesome!!!

I had a great time, but have been an exhausted mess. Didn't get into bed at home until 2am Sunday night.

Was great to meet listeners and forum folk! Had a great time running the event. Lost the ability to speak by end of Saturday. Was very fun.

Have lots of ideas for next year. Especially want to speed things up. Might split the event into 2 parts. Had a great time, though. I still think Imperial list selection hurt them. Few people had even a single Tie Fighter! I think they were needed for the event. Talking to people showed many felt Tie Fighters would die way too easily. I think it's due to meta thinking, but this is vs. Generics! Many lists for missions were only 3 ships! I can't even imagine fewer than 4 ships, but would only feel OK with 6 or so.

Did anyone take pics of the scenery/sets?

Get your rest fellas. Then we can see the pics, yes?

53 minutes ago, heychadwick said:

I had a great time, but have been an exhausted mess. Didn't get into bed at home until 2am Sunday night.

Was great to meet listeners and forum folk! Had a great time running the event. Lost the ability to speak by end of Saturday. Was very fun.

Have lots of ideas for next year. Especially want to speed things up. Might split the event into 2 parts. Had a great time, though. I still think Imperial list selection hurt them. Few people had even a single Tie Fighter! I think they were needed for the event. Talking to people showed many felt Tie Fighters would die way too easily. I think it's due to meta thinking, but this is vs. Generics! Many lists for missions were only 3 ships! I can't even imagine fewer than 4 ships, but would only feel OK with 6 or so.

2am was a common bedtime at GenCon. You should feel rested.

I'm surprised to hear that the Imperials took a lot of 3 ship lists. I never faced anything less than four, and that list included a pair of TIE Defenders. I hit five ships twice and facing @Darth Meanie meant I faced plenty more TIEs in the final round. I think he had an advantage in playing through the missions prior to the event and was able to get ahead of the curve on his list building. I would have preferred to fly more ships in my Rebel teams, but I was hurt by the draft in ways. I put two big aces as my top picks expecting to maybe get one... not both! Having drafted Miranda, Janson, Porkins and Hobbie meant many of my X-Wings had to be grounded for lack of space. I still flew four ships in three events and only flew three in the second round when I planned to do a hit and fade, destroying what I could and getting off the map by turn four.

By the by, a quick write up is posted on Docking Bay 416.

14 minutes ago, Force Majeure said:

Did anyone take pics of the scenery/sets?

Get your rest fellas. Then we can see the pics, yes?

There are a few pics on the Tydirium facebook page. I meant to take pictures but got so wrapped up in the event I pretty much forgot to take my phone out of my pocket. I had before and after only.

6 hours ago, LagJanson said:

2am was a common bedtime at GenCon. You should feel rested.

2am might have worked for GenCon, but I had to actually work the next day! Several days of GenCon and I then needed some real sleep.

I'll check out the report.

6 hours ago, Force Majeure said:

Did anyone take pics of the scenery/sets?

Get your rest fellas. Then we can see the pics, yes?

Let's see if I can get these links to work. Not sure what to use with Photobucket going dead.

Not only was someone able to land their A-wing directly on the smallest asteroid, but their opponent somehow managed to bump into them directly on top of it!

Hi guys!

A huge thanks to all those who made their way out and spent a pretty crazy amount of time at our tables! I hope you all had lots of fun!

I'm really proud of the crew and impressed by everyone who played; there were a lot less rules questions than I expected - you all did a great job grasping what the scenarios were all about.

We'll be doing a critical post-event analysis and looking for ways to improve the event rules, mission pack, and the administrative aspects of the event. I'll be releasing a patched version of the rules within a couple of weeks with all the fast fixes I can think of, and we'll be working on a Grayskull 2.0 with more significant improvements down the road. Hopefully we can make Grayskull something that local groups can run and have lots of fun with!

My voice is still not back to 100%. Maybe by Thursday I will be feeling back to my good ol' self.

We've got video from both Round 1 missions, two of the three missions in both Round 2 and 3, and the Top Table battle from Round 4. We'll be posting these soon to the ST YouTube page.

19 hours ago, LagJanson said:

2am was a common bedtime at GenCon. You should feel rested.

I'm surprised to hear that the Imperials took a lot of 3 ship lists. I never faced anything less than four, and that list included a pair of TIE Defenders. I hit five ships twice and facing @Darth Meanie meant I faced plenty more TIEs in the final round. I think he had an advantage in playing through the missions prior to the event and was able to get ahead of the curve on his list building. I would have preferred to fly more ships in my Rebel teams, but I was hurt by the draft in ways. I put two big aces as my top picks expecting to maybe get one... not both! Having drafted Miranda, Janson, Porkins and Hobbie meant many of my X-Wings had to be grounded for lack of space. I still flew four ships in three events and only flew three in the second round when I planned to do a hit and fade, destroying what I could and getting off the map by turn four.

This was true for me, too. I had pre-built "ideal" lists based around my generics, and having to shoe-horn in my draft picks in generally meant I was down by 1 ship. To be honest, to do it again I might draft only 1-2 aces, or maybe none at all.

I also think that breaking this event into 2 days would be a good idea. I was exhausted by the final team epic round, and really wish I had played that game better. I made 2 tactical errors and probably 1 game mechanic one; maybe I would have made those mistakes anyways, or maybe it was fatigue. It would also have been fun to have more "post action" chats, but by 1 AM it was well past bedtime.

6 minutes ago, Darth Meanie said:

I also think that breaking this event into 2 days would be a good idea. I was exhausted by the final team epic round, and really wish I had played that game better.

While this is probably a good idea, and I support it, it's worth saying that I was already exhausted before we even started the first game. GenCon Saturdays are not for the faint of heart, if you've done Thursday and Friday any justice. I'm positive I made more mistakes in my first game than you did in your final!

3 minutes ago, Jeff Wilder said:

While this is probably a good idea, and I support it, it's worth saying that I was already exhausted before we even started the first game. GenCon Saturdays are not for the faint of heart, if you've done Thursday and Friday any justice. I'm positive I made more mistakes in my first game than you did in your final!

It's true. . .I am a lazy slug. I rolled into town on Friday, ate dinner, watched a stand-up comedian at the Fringe Festival, then wound down with a bourbon. Got 7 hours of sleep, played XWM, then rolled out of town late the next morning after brekkie to catch the eclipse.

I guess I'm not as hardcore of a gamer as I'd like to think I am

Hmm.. Question on the length, actually... How long were the missions? What was the time limits? It felt very loosely defined as though when Phil felt it had gone on long enough he'd wander through and let the player know that time was running out. Now, knowing what I know of Phil, (which is little and could be faulty but...) I highly doubt anything was left loosely defined.

I do think for the 'local run' of the event a multi-day split is likely the workaround the total event time length. I doubt I can find a store willing to let me run an event for 17 hours straight. This does introduce new problems with drops, re-checking lists, new players, etc...

• I can create a spreadsheet to help manage scoring - a new tab per mission profile - and then tabulate rankings and pairings based on this, so that might cut down on some of the manual effort.
• An excel scoring sheet could also be used to simplify the player reporting sheet, meaning less double-checking of player's math. If the sheet only tallied the kills, and noted 'how many objectives achieved' then this could be entered into the excel master and the score added up there.
• If the lists were checked ahead of time, and only compared the day of to make sure nothing had changed, that might cut some of the morning routine as well.

Did I already cover these points? Uhg.. Apologies if I did. It feels like I have, perhaps verbally. Anyway, just trying to find a way to streamline the process a bit.

Just now, LagJanson said:

Hmm.. Question on the length, actually... How long were the missions? What was the time limits? It felt very loosely defined as though when Phil felt it had gone on long enough he'd wander through and let the player know that time was running out. Now, knowing what I know of Phil, (which is little and could be faulty but...) I highly doubt anything was left loosely defined.

I do think for the 'local run' of the event a multi-day split is likely the workaround the total event time length. I doubt I can find a store willing to let me run an event for 17 hours straight. This does introduce new problems with drops, re-checking lists, new players, etc...

• I can create a spreadsheet to help manage scoring - a new tab per mission profile - and then tabulate rankings and pairings based on this, so that might cut down on some of the manual effort.
• An excel scoring sheet could also be used to simplify the player reporting sheet, meaning less double-checking of player's math. If the sheet only tallied the kills, and noted 'how many objectives achieved' then this could be entered into the excel master and the score added up there.
• If the lists were checked ahead of time, and only compared the day of to make sure nothing had changed, that might cut some of the morning routine as well.

Did I already cover these points? Uhg.. Apologies if I did. It feels like I have, perhaps verbally. Anyway, just trying to find a way to streamline the process a bit.

Sounds like you give me a little too much credit!

I was in fact wandering around and getting a sense of when things were wrapping up generally, and then setting an end time for missions based on everyone's progress. We were keeping track of how long things were running; most missions ended about 1.5 hours after mission briefings were finished, with the exception of the final mission, which went about 4 hours total. We didn't have a concrete sense of how long people would need to make lists and play missions, since this is essentially the first time everything was happening at the same time. We did keep an eye on the clock and had a general schedule mapped out so that we would end more or less on time, and avoid a big run-over.

Those all seem like good ideas if you're going to run this locally. We were a little limited by lack of power for laptops during the event; excel spreadsheets would definitely be helpful. Preregistration, and if possible, drafting ahead of time, would be very useful for speeding up the event. The scoring of player's scoresheets did hold us up a bit, largely because the sheets weren't optimally laid out.

In general I'd suggest running the event over two or more days, unless you have 14 hours at least to work with. Depends on how much time you have, I suppose. Running this locally over the course of a few weeks would probably be the easiest thing to do.

Maybe locally would be good to do one round a week?

4 minutes ago, Babaganoosh said:

Sounds like you give me a little too much credit!

I was in fact wandering around and getting a sense of when things were wrapping up generally, and then setting an end time for missions based on everyone's progress. We were keeping track of how long things were running; most missions ended about 1.5 hours after mission briefings were finished, with the exception of the final mission, which went about 4 hours total. We didn't have a concrete sense of how long people would need to make lists and play missions, since this is essentially the first time everything was happening at the same time. We did keep an eye on the clock and had a general schedule mapped out so that we would end more or less on time, and avoid a big run-over.

Those all seem like good ideas if you're going to run this locally. We were a little limited by lack of power for laptops during the event; excel spreadsheets would definitely be helpful. Preregistration, and if possible, drafting ahead of time, would be very useful for speeding up the event. The scoring of player's scoresheets did hold us up a bit, largely because the sheets weren't optimally laid out.

In general I'd suggest running the event over two or more days, unless you have 14 hours at least to work with. Depends on how much time you have, I suppose. Running this locally over the course of a few weeks would probably be the easiest thing to do.

Credit where it's due. I'd probably not even noticed had I not been in your shoes on occasion. Do you mind if I continue to ask questions/theory build on the event?

1.5 hours probably is a good time limit for the first three rounds. I think the third round probably should have been capped at 3, myself... I think putting that out in writing would help push things a bit in getting started and controlling overruns. Probably stating a fixed time to get lists ready would be good as well. Maybe 20 minutes subtracted from the first three rounds max time for list prep, and 20 minutes added to the final round?

On the power issue... A tablet running the spreadsheet might work better due to the lack of access to a socket. Laptops due tend to become a paperweight quickly. One of those portable battery packs might be able to extend the life a bit... I'll think on this a bit... It still might not be feasible to go 100% digital.

Running it over a couple of weeks would probably work nicely in most places. I know locally we could run a scenario once a week on our usual X-Wing meetup. I'd prefer to run it as a single day event but... well, it may not be possible!

On 8/23/2017 at 8:37 AM, LagJanson said:

Hmm.. Question on the length, actually... How long were the missions? What was the time limits? It felt very loosely defined as though when Phil felt it had gone on long enough he'd wander through and let the player know that time was running out. Now, knowing what I know of Phil, (which is little and could be faulty but...) I highly doubt anything was left loosely defined.

I do think for the 'local run' of the event a multi-day split is likely the workaround the total event time length. I doubt I can find a store willing to let me run an event for 17 hours straight. This does introduce new problems with drops, re-checking lists, new players, etc...

• I can create a spreadsheet to help manage scoring - a new tab per mission profile - and then tabulate rankings and pairings based on this, so that might cut down on some of the manual effort.
• An excel scoring sheet could also be used to simplify the player reporting sheet, meaning less double-checking of player's math. If the sheet only tallied the kills, and noted 'how many objectives achieved' then this could be entered into the excel master and the score added up there.
• If the lists were checked ahead of time, and only compared the day of to make sure nothing had changed, that might cut some of the morning routine as well.

Did I already cover these points? Uhg.. Apologies if I did. It feels like I have, perhaps verbally. Anyway, just trying to find a way to streamline the process a bit.

I am already starting the conditioning of the troops. Going to run most of the scenarios as a year long league. It will compete with our other League and HotAC but I going to let them run their missions when they have time. At least here are some of the ideas I have so far.

1. Silent Auction - (from S&V podcast) - Each player is going to get 100 credits to bid on their picks. How valuable their first, second, third picks will be of their choosing. I can then just pull out the highest bids in order till I use up all the sheets. Then in order i will assign the pilots. When I get a duplicate I either slip them in order of the current stack or if second bid is below that of the last bid in the stack then they go to round two. That way it goes in order of bid price. I think this will save time in the draft.

2. 2.5 hours max for mission

3. They will know their opponent a week before so they get to cheat a little on squad building to save time.

4. Maybe up some of the points for Imperial. (ok, just realized I need to feed the little one so forgot my other two points) Will edit when I have time.

Thanks @ LagJanson for being my teammate on the last mission. I think you said you hoped I wasn't on the Rebel team because how tired loopy I was in the morning, hope I did you proud Well, besides the bump that killed Wes. Sorry.

2 hours ago, rilesman said:

Thanks @ LagJanson for being my teammate on the last mission. I think you said you hoped I wasn't on the Rebel team because how tired loopy I was in the morning, hope I did you proud Well, besides the bump that killed Wes. Sorry.

I was kidding with you that morning, hope that was clear! Besides, the joke was on me since you outscored me in the event. No worries, I'd take you as a partner any day.

55 minutes ago, LagJanson said:

I was kidding with you that morning, hope that was clear! Besides, the joke was on me since you outscored me in the event. No worries, I'd take you as a partner any day.

Yes, stupid text doesn't come over as joking. I actually took great delight in the friendly banter in the morning. I really enjoyed seeing you again, talking Epic, and flying with you against the Imperial Scum Horde. I played against 3 scum lists that day.

I already have wife approval so see you next year.