Great idea - cuts down the time between game time and dinner time, and vice versa. Come to think of it, you could combine the two for extra temporal efficiency :)Originally Posted by 7eat51
Great idea - cuts down the time between game time and dinner time, and vice versa. Come to think of it, you could combine the two for extra temporal efficiency :)
Would make for a good in shore battle. Battle around the dinner sevice. Don't move the gravy boat
Be safe
Rory
To be honest, I'm now thinking on skipping the mat at this time. It looks like it's going to be either $60 or $80 for enough mat to run a convention game. If it looks like the game is quite easy and fast and everyone would have more fun running two ships, I'm going to need to get more ships..now. I already have a felt blue mat with a hex grid printed on it I can use. I'm thinking I need to drop the mats and spend the money on extra ships instead.
If the gravy boat goes down all hands to the biscuits.Would make for a good in shore battle. Battle around the dinner sevice. Don't move the gravy boat
Be safe
Rory
Get a dinner table with a separate glass top; slide the map under the glass. :)
"Look out for that reef!"
"That's a gravy stain, you nob."
Another felt mat is HOTZ MATS. I have a sea mat of theirs with 5" hexes. They cost some but I thing worth the price. I use their European Fields mat for my WWI Wings games
I'm just not yet sure about any grid on them. I hope we have a chance to see them before purchase commitment.
And did you ask your better half?I know your good lady enjoys the games and taking photos. But does she enjoy it enough to have the mats as a table cloth?
Funny thing is, Sue is working on mat designs. She has contacted printing companies and material supply companies, has been looking at images, etc. I should discuss dual purpose gaming mats with her - dining cloths, bed spreads, afghans, carpets.
When I am in trouble, she could use a no-man's land bedspread as a sign that I am sleeping on the couch.
I've now played a game where each player was sailing a single ship and one where each was sailing two ships. One ship per person is much better. It's easy to run two ships, but you lose the attachment you have to your ship when doing that. It also allows for near perfect coordination between two ships. I'll keep all of my Con events to a single ship per player.
Please let me know a few details here.
How many players did you have at the same time in the game you played with the largest numbers of players? How long did it take to play a single game?
That was pretty much my findings as well. I have played up to three ships per person, but at that stage the informaton overload and sense of detachment was pretty severe. One per person felt "right".
Kind of mirrors my experiences with Mark Campbell's "Close Action" where I've played some thrilling fleet action games with one person controlling one ship (which did mean games with over 50 players!). Victory goes to those Admirals who establish a simple command and control strategy (we used signalling rules as the only way to communicate between ships unless those ships were running side by side - which for various reasons ISN'T advisable normally), who devise and maintain a simple plan on which they brief their captains prior to battle, and captains who remain focussed on that plan and who do as they are ordered. It was noticeable that, on at least one occasion, a fleet fell apart because some of the players decided they knew better and manoeuvred accordingly - not good!
I would expect that success in a SOG fleet level game would see the same characteristics if done properly. I'm already working on adapting my signalling system from FLoB to SOG. Alas getting 50 players together could be a challenge (in the UK at least) but I'll be keeping my eye open for reports of monster games from some of the big conventions in the US, where they already run big CA games :)
Interesting issue with the connection between one player and his/her ship. I had a similar experience last week in WGF. I started by controlling a few planes, but after an opposing player was shot down and helped me run my side, the emotional investment in the one plane I then flew grew. I had not thought about that with SoG before. This could encourage even more small-scale battles when playing at home.
I look forward to seeing your signaling system translation to SoG.
If you want "real fog of war" do the battle on line with 50 players and an umpire for each fleet...that would be a whole new experience although impossible to organise.
I REALLY like the idea of players controlling individual ships (or maybe two if they are unrated of Fifth Rate in a larger engagement) but my biggest concern is one of inappropriate coordination. Though this is 'just a game' the chain of command (or freedom from!) was often a major factor in the success of fleet actions. In many friendly games at the LGS this isn't a big deal (though it would be a fun factor) but when using SoG either at a tournament or else in educational settings having individual ships require signal flags would be great (and possibly account for smoke if you really want to be evil). I'm going to spin up a separate thread to discuss that so we don't derail this one.
Sticking to topic...anyone see the mats yet? Pics would be VERY appreciated before ordering. I'd almost rather put funds to more ships than an unknown mat style but if it's really nice it might win out.
I think Ares would be making a serious economic error if they make these mats incompatible with the WoG mats. They would be cutting out a large portion of potential sales.
I am sure I speak for more than a few WoG players when I say, even if I weren't buying into SoG, I would buy multiple mats just to expand my options for WoG.
It all depends on your requirements for being compatible. They will be the same size and made out of the same materiel as the Wings mats. The artwork (to whatever extent they chose to do) is going to be geared towards Sails. So, they are going to physically be compatible with the Wings mats, but the look might be quite different. While I agree that dual purpose mats would be great, I would not want to sacrifice functionality or looks in regards to the game that each mat is supposed to support.
If they do grids on the open sea mats maybe they should make them as light as possible. From all of the discussion it seems like all of the terrain is going to be overlays anyway. If you had a wind indicator off the map you could use a laser pointer or level to set the AI facing.
Multi-purpose mats are not just great, they are a smart financial decision for the company. Like making reversed copies of shoreline mats to give more options like harbors.
Laser pointer?
We have had conversations about the tradeoffs between realism/accuracy and playability. As much as I would like to see mats without grids for aesthetic reasons as well as the desire to place open sea mats next to WoG coastal mats, I have come to agree with Keith about their usefulness in playing the game, especially since he has played it and I have not. Once things become too technical or too detailed, the spirit of SoG will take a hit, and that is not a price I find worthy to pay.
If the point of the game is to have fun anyway I don't think a slight adjustment to the AI would matter that much. I was suggesting the laser pointer for those really competitive folks who need everything exact. I guess we just wait and see how they handle it when we are not watching "prototype" game play mechanics and props.
I can't wait to see the real parts.
I don't think any given game can be all things to all people. I wouldn't worry about those highly competitive folks, because they probably will find fault someplace else within the system. If some want to use laser pointer because they enjoy such fine detail, they can use them. To make decisions about the game with such folks in mind would require significant changes in game design throughout, for example not every cannon has the same firing range. The grid, as I understand it, facilitates game play by making it easier for folks to know the general orientation of the wind. This way, players spend more time thinking about moves than managing mechanics.
You will probably run into the same issues as in wings of glory where people don't line things exactly bump other mink
is. You can usually see if someone is doing it intentionally or repeatedly. Not the kind of people I want to game with.
Ares has stated from the beginning that it will be a “light grid”. I can only trust in them to strike a good balance between game play and game visuals. I can’t fault them on anything they have done in Wings (Well, they could have made the maneuver arrows show up a little better on the maneuver cards).
As for dual mats being smart financial decisions, that all depends on the total number of sales. If 70% of Sails players would have bought the Sails mats, but only 50% did because they had lost some function to fit in with another game and, that other game only generated about 15% in additional sales, the company would have lost out by making them dual purpose.
As a company, Ares has to look at several factors when deciding if it is worth making these mats dual purpose. The first is, does it detract from the game it is being designed for? Do, they even make a product to use an all sea mat in Wings (no, not at this time)? How many all sea mats would they even sell to Wings players? Finally, would they sell more if they made a separate mat for each game (how many Wings players want a Sails logo on their mat and vice versa?)?
I can tell you from sales data from my store that in regards to the number they would sell to Wings players would be very small. I sell about 10-12 Country mats for each Coastal mat I sale. I would imagine that would drop to around 25-30 to 1 for an all sea mat. So, assuming they produce 5000 Country mats per print run (and I think it’s actually much lower then that), they would need to print only about 160 all sea mats. Would you be willing to pay $5-$10 more for an all sea mat then a Country mat? Because in order for them to make them and me to stock them as a store, we’d need better margins on them to make up for the amount of time we would have to sit on them to recuperate our outlay. And if we charged more for them, we’d sell less… just making the problem worse.
Out of curiosity, how many Costal mats for Wings do you have?
I’ve got and played with several of the “real” parts and my thoughts and posts are based on those.
Does all this mater and what scale is the sea mat in
Be safe
Rory
Since I have only been collecting since last month I only have one of each of the currently released WoG items. So I only have 1 Coastal Map. I am going to buy several more so I can do some coastal scenarios for War at Sea.
Only started collecting WoG a month ago and straight away into SGN. Dale, Dale, Dale, I too suffer from addiction to collecting little plastic ships but it sounds like you have it worse.
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