Heroscape Tournament for Kids

So, I think in early March I'm going to run a little tournament for my son and three buddies (3rd-5th grades). One has never played the game, another once, the third twice, and my son quite a bit. Here's what I think I'm going to do, please provide feedback.

Prep
* Pre-build two maps
* Pre-build 6 armies, each assigned a number 1-6
* Place the rest of the units on a table nearby

Play
* Each player rolls a d6 and that is the army they are assigned for the course of the tourney
* Each round they roll a d20. High roll either chooses the side to start on or to go first.
* Each kid will play each kid once (three games total)
* They rotate between the two maps
* Each round the loser can change one of their units out with one on the side-table for the same cost if they choose
* I'm hoping this only goes 3-5 hours tops. I'd like it to be more on the 3 hour side of things. Got a good force point recommendation? 250?

I think playing randomly rolled pre-built armies will save a lot of time up front as the unfamiliar kids won't have to spend all morning reading over every unit. Plus, it'll take away some of my son's familiarity advantage. Between game adjustments will allow the losers some sense of tweaking and perhaps adapting. This seems like a good idea to get this going. If it does well, I may make it a monthly event.

The only thing I'm curious about is what would be good prize support. Something small that won't set expectations for future events too high. I was thinking maybe a copy of Star Realms or something. It'd also like participation prizes. Ideas?

Overall thoughts?

I wish you were my dad Jeff White

IIRC his adults blood bowl tournament sounded totally sweet.

Sounds like fun!

One thought- rather than just thinking about a point limit when it comes to time, think about the figure limit. Armies should still take the same number of points, but the Gencon tourneys recently went from having a 24 space limit to a 16 figure limit in an effort to reduce the time that matches take as well as making double-spaced squad figures more viable. Kids like playing with the big 200ish point dragons, but if you're running 250 points that's basically your whole army. A slugfest between Charos and Jotun certainly won't last an hour. Even the Incredible Hulk v. Abomination or whoever wouldn't be that long. Using the dragons would also make it harder to do the swapping thing, so maybe it doesn't quite fit your desired format. But 250 points worth of Roman Legionnaires or Blade Gruts could take awhile to grind it out. Squads like Gladiatrons+Blastatrons or Sir GIlbert + Knights of Weston also have a ton of movements and choices per turn.

Map size definitely plays a role in game length as well. There are a bunch of maps over on Heroscapers.com that are designed for tournament play.

Good tip to think about figure count when building the armies!

I was thinking about leaving dragons and marvel heroes out for this inaugural event. Their omission leaves open the option to theme up later events. Say, one event is 'Flight of Dragons' or something where each side has a dragon and a few units. Another tourney could be 'Secret Wars' where each player has one of the Marvel characters and a few squads. Since I'll be pre-building these forces, I'll would likely leave out the super hitters like Hulk, Surfer etc.

Anyway, for this first one I was going to base each forces around characters from Rise of the Valkyries. So, Agent Carr and Co, Sgt. Drake Alexander and Friends, etc.

Thanks for the compliments, fellas. Gary, I believe you are referring to the DreadBall tourney I ran.

If they're only playing 3 games, it should easily be done in 3 hours even with 500 point armies.

I'm no authority, in fact, I'm a total QPCloudy when it comes to Scape, but the kid in me definitely says that its better to make the armies based around a huge figurehead, then 1 or 2 big generals and try not to have too much squadscape, also very cool to go with themed type armies, it sounds awesome to have each one based round a dragon!

How much stuff do you have, I've just laid out quite a bit on scape the last few months and have amassed a pretty big collection, the part of me telling me it was stupid and I should have just used customs and proxies was drowned out by the petulant child in me, but I also figured it would pay off in spades for many years of fun with the kids, and then would probably not be difficult to recoup a reasonable amount of the cost later (or hand it down to the kids if its that popular with them). Plus I raised a fair bit of wad by simply selling shit on my shelf that I only played in imaginary scenarios with people on boardgame forums, forgetting that in real life I have hardly any free time,or gamer type friends (read: Friends at all)....

/tryingtorationalise dropping what might be a couple of grand on Heroscapeinthevainhopeofbeing35%ofthecooldadthatJeffWhiteis

PS
I demand a full pictorial report, session writeup and general exhaustive coverage of this event, if not a live feed

Maybe I'll increase the pt count. I could do dragons, but for some reason I feel like that would be too much too soon. I want to whet their appetites for more. Maybe center each force around one large character like LAP says. The ogre, the giant, a big robot, Grimnak, etc. I'll think about it.

Also, for terrain I have one copy of RotV, two jungle sets, and a Marvel set. I'll need to make two small, somewhat balanced, arenas out of that. Most of the tourney boards I see on heroscapers uses the whole starter and then some. I don't mind making my own boards, decades of setting up minis terrain hopefully trained my eye to creating decently fair maps.

this thread has the 32 Battlefields of Valhalla listed
www.heroscapers.com/community/showthread.php?t=5725
I think these ones are kind of the best ones / judged rated by the HS community

you can see a preview image of them all and which sets it needs.
4 of which jump out - 2 of them specifically need 2 jungles with your base set
10) Turret Rocks (RotV)
18 ) Can't See the Jungle (RotV, TJ x2)

23) Quasatch Playground (RotV, TJ x2)

25) Fulcrum (RotV, TJ)

If I were you I'd sell your jungle sets (more than 100 bucks each) and reinvest in some other stuff but thats easy fo rme to say!

heres a thread with other maps needing only 1 master set RotV
www.heroscapers.com/community/downloads.php?do=cat&id=11
youll have to look which need only jungle and marvel with it

and here is the public map database, fill in what you have and it shows you all the maps you can build
docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1y1N3Yf85...gl9pXPLUA/edit#gid=1
giving you
Art District
Genotech
Genotech: Escalating Battle
Genotech: Hulk Mad!
Genotech: Theft at Stark Enterprises
Heroes Day Parade
Marvel MOP - Straight Road
Merry-Go-Round
Tribeca Labs
Tribeca Labs: A Very Mad Genius
Tribeca Labs: Clash on the Streets
Zombie Assault

heres a useful excel sheet for helping you pick out synergistic units, costs and ratings
www.heroscapers.com/community/downloads.php?do=file&id=3396


So many great categories, not just dragons, but I think thats a bit my OCD, I actually think HS is best when you have mixed theme (but synergised) armies and probably more fun... still its a hobby in itself for those of us with too little time with opponents

for cheap "big guys", stuff like Krug, Tor Kul Na, Taelord, Q9, Venoc Warlord, Sir Dupuis, Jotun, Iron Golem are all reasonably priced and stand out

Krug / Grimnak / Nerak / Tornak
Gruts, Goblins, Brutes, Swogs, Death Chasers, Ogres, Trolls

Tul Kor Na
with all the marro stuff (loads of stuff you can get cheap)

Taelord or Raelin or Kelda etc with
Minions of Utgar, Sentinels of Jandar, Protectors of Ullar etc

Vikings/Dwarves
from the base set, proxy in Axegrinders and Migol Ironwill, or add the elves

Robots
the Deathwalker robiots with the zettians, omnicrons, deathreavers, deathstalkers, Q9/10/17 etc

Vipers (woo hoo!)
Venoc Warlord, Fen Hydra, Sahaguan Raider
Venoc Vipers, Armoc Vipers, Onyx Vipers, Greenscale Warriors

Giants/Titans
Torin, Dund, Jotun, Shurrak, Iron Golem

Ice themed
Frost Giant, Ice Troll, Ice Elemental (with the elementals, Obsidians, Dzu Teh etc)


Samurai
loads of different samurai

sci fi
Krav Maga, Nakita, Gorillanators, Microcorps

Ninja/Monk
Ninjas, Shaolin

Armies
Greeks (Sacred Band) and Parmenio
Romans with Marcus
Alastiar and the MacDirks
Brave Arrow and Mohicans
10th and 4th
Airborne Elite
Ashigarus
Gladiators

Undead
Shades, Phantom Knights, Zombies, Werewolf Lord and wolves etc

the cowboys DD, Murphy, Sullivan, McCreech

Thanks for the excel spreadsheet and faction ideas.

Any suggestions on participation rewards? Going with some sort of fun edible treat might be the way to go. I don't want to dump needles crap on these kids that they take home to clutter their likely already cluttered rooms. Oh, maybe special dice they can then use next time and at future events. Some cool d20s or something. First place picks first, then second, etc.

Then maybe after a few of these, and the kids have become familiar, I'll have a 'super tourney' or something and give out Star Realms.

Mr. White wrote: Good tip to think about figure count when building the armies!

I was thinking about leaving dragons and marvel heroes out for this inaugural event. Their omission leaves open the option to theme up later events. Say, one event is 'Flight of Dragons' or something where each side has a dragon and a few units. Another tourney could be 'Secret Wars' where each player has one of the Marvel characters and a few squads. Since I'll be pre-building these forces, I'll would likely leave out the super hitters like Hulk, Surfer etc.

Anyway, for this first one I was going to base each forces around characters from Rise of the Valkyries. So, Agent Carr and Co, Sgt. Drake Alexander and Friends, etc.

Thanks for the compliments, fellas. Gary, I believe you are referring to the DreadBall tourney I ran.

His Blood Bowl leagues are pretty solid too. Except when he tried to play online

Looks good, brother. Prize support is always epic, and the way I always ran them, everyone brings ~something~ (like bags of skittles on the low end, games or boosters for HS on the high end) and then from winner-to-loser, everyone takes turns picking one from what's left. If there's leftovers, then the order goes from loser back to winner (to soften the blow for the losers).

There's a guy on Heroscapers, Rychean, who is a great guy to talk to about tournaments. He runs the national championships at GenCon and helps with Hexes in Texas annual tournament. He's a close friend, and one of the kindest, nicest guys you'll ever meet.

You're right, it was dreadball.

Can I enter? I'm gonna trash talk the shit out of these kids.

"Nice move pointdexter! You might be as short as Napoleon but you're no tactician. Hey, see this guy? Elevation GOOD. See your guy? Water BAD. Also you can't roll dice if your dad's life depended on it! And it might one day..."