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Playing with 8 to 10 Players

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28 Dec 2016 15:05 #241427 by Shellhead
I'm hosting a boardgame day on January First, and it appears that I will have 8 to 10 players. I realize that the conventional wisdom is to split a group like that into two separate tables of gaming, but I love the idea of an epic experience shared by all. But maybe you FATties can talk some sense into me. Here are some games that I own that can handle 8+ players, though some I had to modify to accept extra players:

Arkham Horror - scaling math still works for 9 players.
Silver Tower - I now have two stripped sets with two sets of my tokens for the monsters, plus one full set of tokens that includes all the expansion heroes. So I am thinking about a team vs team setup with four players on each team plus a DM. Each team will pass through an identical set of rooms with identical encounters, though in random order, before clashing over a treasure in a final room that connects both sides.
Psycho Raiders - In theory, this scales up to 12, but some of the townsfolk may not come into play until very late in the game.
Nuclear War - this came can easily handle up to ten players, but the pace can be sluggish with a mostly inexperienced group.
Wiz-War - my print & play set scales up to 12 players, but the one time that I played with six players ran somewhat long.
Strange Synergy - Though designed for up to six players (though only components for four), I scaled my set up to nine. It's Capture the Flag with small teams of superheroes.
Star Wars Epic Duels - I played this once before with ten players, and the game ran overly long at 2.5 hours. The maps in the box are very crowded with that many players, but a bigger map would shift the balance of the game more to guys with ranged attacks, like Stormtroopers.
Slasher Flick - Revenge of the Boogeyman - this lost classic from Fantasy Gamer #1 can potentially handle 14 players, but realistically that number drops to 8 or 9 by the second half of the game, due to character deaths.
My own unpublished Lords of Amber & Chaos - This game was designed from the start to handle up to ten players, and ten players will burn through the card deck more quickly than the minimum four players.

Ideally, I think that a big game should have minimal down time, some player interaction, and maybe some player elimination if not too early in the game. I think that team versus team games can be good for a large group, because the people on each team will work together and there will be conflict with the opposing team(s).

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28 Dec 2016 15:24 #241429 by Msample
You want epic ? I once saw a 12 player game of TI3 at a game convention. I think it used 2 or even 3 games to get a big enough play area.

But not realistic I know, but had to throw it out there.

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28 Dec 2016 16:12 #241431 by jeb
Replied by jeb on topic Playing with 8 to 10 Players
ARKHAM can have a lot of downtime if folks don't know how to play. You'd have to run it, or perhaps even have two runners. Just thinking about this makes me want to set up that interdimensional ARKHAM idea we'd bandied about on here a couple of years ago.

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28 Dec 2016 16:22 #241432 by charlest
The problem with scaling games up is that they're not meant to be played that way. Wiz-War with 10 sounds miserable.

My larger go to games are:

Captain Sonar (for 8)
Two Rooms and a Boom (for 11+)
One Night Ultimate Werewolf
Resistance: Avalon
Codenames
Deception: Murder in Hong Kong
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28 Dec 2016 16:35 #241433 by Oatmeal
Cosmic Encounter (table talk, alliances and stuff-to-do "out of turn" make downtime feel small)

Secret Hitler (best with 8 or 10)

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28 Dec 2016 16:43 #241434 by charlest
Yes, Secret Hitler is fantastic.

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28 Dec 2016 16:44 #241435 by Shellhead
Yeah, Wiz-War and Strange Synergy are out because I think there will be too much downtime. I do have a home-made Werewolf set that would work for this group. What's the right ratio of werewolfs per players? Is it roughly one per five players?

As I think about interaction, downtime, and elimination, these games that I mentioned all seem promising:

1. Psycho Raiders - only issue is the wait to join the game for additional players beyond seven. Maybe we can start promptly with this game and make stragglers play townspeople.
2. Silver Tower - the more I think about it, the team vs team scenario should be fun. I think that I will add in a simplified initiative deck for the final battle, like Gorechosen but only one initiative card per player.
3. Star Wars Epic Duels - I still think that the map will be problematic, but I know this is otherwise workable.
4. Nuclear War - there really is no excuse for slow turns. I will photocopy playmats so that everybody has one. Experienced player don't need the mats, but I will probably be the only Nuclear War veteran there.

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28 Dec 2016 16:46 #241436 by Shellhead
I have played 8-player Cosmic Encounter before, and it does work fine. However, the first time we played, I didn't even get a turn before the game ended. I'm okay with that, but it might freak out some players. I actually have an extra copy of the expansion with the white ships, so I can easily scale up to nine players with a sharpie.

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28 Dec 2016 17:07 #241437 by Shellhead
Secret Hitler looks very promising, and I have some time between now and Sunday to make my own copy.

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28 Dec 2016 18:35 #241439 by Shellhead
The only drawback I see to Secret Hitler is that it will inspire a friendly but lengthy discussion about Trump that will probably take up at least a half hour after the game.
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29 Dec 2016 10:09 #241455 by Shellhead
I read through Secret Hitler rules last night, and it may have just fired Werewolf/Mafia, Junta and Battlestar Galactica.

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31 Dec 2016 19:12 - 01 Jan 2017 02:00 #241630 by Oatmeal
Yeah, I've loved Battlestar Galactica since forever, but Secret Hitler is the only "short" traitor game that has really made me question whether I really need to play BSG as much anymore.

They're good at different player counts though. Secret Hitler really wants a large group and is significantly worse at 5-6 so in the end they compliment each other nicely.
Last edit: 01 Jan 2017 02:00 by Oatmeal.

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02 Jan 2017 00:15 #241670 by Shellhead
We ended up with eight players total, but one didn't show up until 6:00 and two left at 4:00 PM. This is what we played:

Silver Tower (7 players): My team vs team scenario. My team had the Tenebral Shard and a Slaughter Priest, plus I played the Great Bray-Shaman, a freaky goat-headed guy who sometimes hit people with a fetish stick and sometimes did an area attack that stunned opponents and sometimes let me force an opponent attack another opponent. I didn't pay close attention to the opposing team, except that one of their characters was the necromancer with two skeletons, so they outnumbered us two to one. But we whipped through our four rooms a little faster than they got through their four identical rooms. So our Tenebral Shard got a hell of a headstart running out with the Amulet piece. One of their team killed my already wounded goat man, and one sprinted ahead to get two successful hits on our Tenebral Shard. But the Shard made one of his save throws and lived to escape on his next action. My team won!

Secret Hitler (7 players): I was a liberal. Due partly to luck, the first three turns yield 3 liberal policies. By the end of the game the fascists only had three policies in play and the liberals won with five. My team won!

Colt Express (5 players): I played Django, the black guy, in this surprisingly fun train robbery game. Even though I got shot a total of 10 times and also punched repeatedly, I managed to come in second place with $2,250, as I managed to grab both strong boxes late in the game.

Sons of Anarchy (4 players): I played the One-Niners, against SAMCRO, Calveras, and the Lin Syndicate. The first four turns were moderately peaceful, but turn five featured some very strategic fights and the final was mostly mindless mayhem. I came in third place.

Camp Grizzly, first game (3 players): Highest difficulty setting. Thanks to a first turn Blood Moon, by the end of the second turn, all three counselors were badly wounded and crawling at one space per turn. The other two players urged me to bail and start over.

Camp Grizzly, second game (3 players): Highest difficulty setting, except that we overlooked a scenario rule that would cause the slasher to get more powerful every time we drew an objective chit. This was a fun game, but ultimately we all escaped and the body count was relatively low.

Camp Grizzly, third game (3 players): Highest difficulty setting, except that we used the scenario rule that would cause the slasher to get more powerful every time we drew an objective chit. The game started out promising but ended in a bloody debacle with one player eliminated each turn for three turns in a row.

All in all, it was a great day of gaming. I think that I need to pick up Colt Express one of these days.
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02 Jan 2017 14:14 #241687 by Shellhead
I forgot that we also played a seven-player game of Shadow Hunters right after Secret Hitler. This was my first time playing Shadow Hunters, and I found it too abstract to be enjoyable. I was also the first ousted, but I don't hold that against the game. After all, I was executed in the first turn of my first game of Gorechosen last month, and I still thought it was a great game.

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