BOYL 2019 - Realms of Chaos Sandbox

Snickit

Member
A few of us were discussing the idea of a Realms of Chaos Fantasy Sandbox for one of the large tables next year.

The buy in would be producing a 1ft by 1ft terrain square tile. We'd have a generic colour, say terracotta, as a base colour and so long as the edges of everyone's tile is the same then they'd all match up. If we have more than we need then we can change the lay out throughout the day. What is on your tile is up to you. You want a lake of blood? So be it, you want Snake Mountain? So be it. Erny brought up the idea of floating islands. This could even lead into having a a scenery modelling competition to add to the painting comp!

If you want to come play bring along a Warband and get involved. If you want to walk away for an hour or two? Simple, the Chaos gods have taken you away and will bring you back when you want to play again. Such is the whim of the Gods.

We also the idea of having challenge cards that could be "Slay the Hydra" or "Capture the Tower" which ,at be on a floating island that you have to find a way up to, maybe on a winged Tzeentch ship or after taming the Dark Pegasus etc...............

Could be, let's face it, I mean WILL be, that one objective will conflict with another "Keep the Hydra Alive" for example.

So, anyone interested?

EDIT

Signed up for certain:
Snickit
Ramshackle_Curtis
Fimm McCool
Lenihan
Weismonsters
Temple Dog
 

Benamon

Member
Warband and terrain, not an impossible buy in and if this takes off the board should look amazing! I couldn't make BOYL this year but determined not too miss another year and defiantly interested! Would give me some drive to get my Tzeentch war band, the Church of Transmogrification finished!
 

Leromides

Member
I'm up for this as you know Snickit. Put me down for doing a labyrinth although what I have planned will be 3ft square with a statue or tower of tzeentch in the middle.
 

Snickit

Member
Leromides":2zo1e0dx said:
I'm up for this as you know Snickit. Put me down for doing a labyrinth although what I have planned will be 3ft square with a statue or tower of tzeentch in the middle.

Sounds perfect. People are more than welcome go do more squares than just the one but bear in mind the more tiles we have the more likely we are to no need to rotate them so no one feels their tile has been left out.
 

Golgfag1

Moderator
Hold your horses a moment, let's do the math - the large tables are 8 x 12, equals 96 square feet, therefore, leaving you looking for 96 players, step back and say 2 x 2 squares and you're then looking for only 24 players and squares - which, given your time-frame appears a little more reasonable, yes? A smaller table (4x6) might be better for the 1x1squares, just as many players as the two by two, but folks start a lot closer together. :grin:

Apologies for being a damp squib :( , but somebody had to say it, as the first time this was done (BOYL 2013), people were quite a distance apart, and the game took a long time to get started, just because of the hike across the table, if, I recall correctly .

Paul/Golgfag1
 

Grumdril

Member
Paul is spot on about the table size issue (leaving aside the maths bit about the number of terrain pieces needed, which also seems a very good point). Large tables and RoC warbands don't go well together - warbands are predominantly slow moving melee units, with the exception of the occasional wizard, monster or rare missile unit. Small tables are good - off the top of my head I'd say 4ft x 4ft, but since small tables tend to be 6ft x 4ft that could easily be 2 separate 3ft x 4ft games (with their own time zones).

To make it look good you could set up a long row of tables, but one big table I'd say was a bad idea. At BOYL 2013 over the course of the day a lot of the action gravitated to one end (and the entire table was using the same turns) so at one end you'd have 4 or 5 warbands all slowly resolving their fully-detailed phases, while at the middle and far end the warbands would just go "I'll move towards the interesting end", and then wait... And even at the very beginning, with 7ft of separation and typical 3" moves there was a lot of plodding.

I'll love to see the terrain this produces, hopefully some properly wierd stuff. But let's make sure there's plenty of combat too!

Paul B / Grumdril
 

Snickit

Member
I take your points, my return is:

1) We already have people wanting to complete more than 1 tile or we could make tiles 2 by 2.
2) Whims of the Gods, who says we have to trudge anywhere? Teleporting Pools, Flying Ships and Floating Islands, anything goes. Plus time gets warped - it's the Realm of Chaos!
3) The whole point of posting now is too see how much of an uptake there is, if it's tiny then yes we decamp to a smaller table but we don't know how much appetite there is for it yet.
4) Remember the city table from a few years back? That was a similar concept and worked brilliantly.
 

Leromides

Member
I agree with points 1 to 4 but I do wonder about the idea of tiles actually tesselating. Would we not be better with terrain pieces sharing the same coloured base on an undercloth? The problem I foresee with people doing tiles meant to join directly with other people's tiles is wonky measurements may well lead to ugly cracks and even if they don't things will tend to fall into a very ordered grid and that isn't very chaossy. It also does mean that we do need a large amount even at 2 by 2 and I would be very surprised to get that uptake.
 

Snickit

Member
Leromides":1sbta106 said:
I agree with points 1 to 4 but I do wonder about the idea of tiles actually tesselating. Would we not be better with terrain pieces sharing the same coloured base on an undercloth? The problem I foresee with people doing tiles meant to join directly with other people's tiles is wonky measurements may well lead to ugly cracks and even if they don't things will tend to fall into a very ordered grid and that isn't very chaossy. It also does mean that we do need a large amount even at 2 by 2 and I would be very surprised to get that uptake.

Maybe tile idea is indeed flawed.

How about I offer to pick up cloths to cover and yes, instead participants are asked to create a terrain feature that is not just a typical wood or hill, it needs something "different".

Also, the objective cards should ensure Warbands are adequately dispersed along the table length.
 

EricF

Administrator
Leromides":ocnaar3b said:
I agree with points 1 to 4 but I do wonder about the idea of tiles actually tesselating.
You could always specify a common base component like Sally 4th's Terra-Former tiles (12" and 24" plane tile frames are £7.50 and £20 respectively) as a base to ensure they match up.
 

Scalene

Member
I really like the idea of a spectacular chaos table. There are some interesting practical points in the posts above. My thoughts combined with these are:
- It could be split into 2 to 4 'sub-tables', all set up on one big table. That would help avoid joints that don't quite fit together etc. and also each sub-table could be running at a different turn rate
- The tables could have plenty of 'warp gates' between them so they are effectively one game. Maybe each warband could have a couple of 'teleport' items that could be used to change table (and then discarded).
- I'd be tempted to mess with the turn sequence. At BOYL 2016 I used a system for 6 player 40K where everyone moved at the same time, and everyone did combat at the same time. There was a notional order of players each turn, but it only came into play when there was a clash (e.g. two models both firing at each other, or player A wants player B to move first so they can react to it etc). That can really accelerate the turn rate and it didn't seem to have any significant problems.
- Some scenery works much better on a tile, so it would be a good idea to agree a standard tile size and depth that people could work to, even if most are contributing pieces that sit on top of the playing surface.
 

Golgfag1

Moderator
OK, put me down for four small teleport/shrines, one for each of the gods, suitably decorated 8-) . I'll be making them anyway as I'm taken with the idea and am already considering designs :o :shock: :o

Paul/Golgfag1
 

Snickit

Member
Golgfag1":dtdbdrb4 said:
OK, put me down for four small teleport/shrines, one for each of the gods, suitably decorated 8-) . I'll be making them anyway as I'm taken with the idea and am already considering designs :o :shock: :o

Paul/Golgfag1

Awesome stuff.
 
FIrstly Id like to say that this seems 100% awesome. I am definitely in and will make at least one terrain tile. Kev White (of Hasslefree Games) also said he was very much up for doing some realm of chaos and it would be cool to invite him into this thread ;)

Secondly, its chaos, and chaos is chaotic. I would suggest for the board that you can make a tile that is any multiple of 1', so 1x1, 2x2, 1x2, 3x2 etc. Then when we play we just play with what is brought! SO if we get 10 tiles or 29 tiles, we just lay them out and play on them.

Thirdly, booking one of the big tables would be a good idea, so that then there is plenty of room for doing paper work and such like as well as a really wierd tile layout.


I have played ALOT of realm of chaos. Also from doing the Helsreach drop in table I would like to propose some ideas for making the day of gaming fun for drop in play:

1. The warband generation can be really unbalanced. I agree this is the fun of it, but if you get roll up one level 5 champion with 2 beastmen and a human its going to make for a dull gaming experience when up against a more average warband of a tricked out champion and 10 or so troops. I have some suggestions for balance and would like to read what other people think about this topic. I think the easiest way to implement "balance" would be that players may reroll each and every dice once while making their warband. This should mean that players dont end up just rolling a small crummy warband.

Alternatively, in the 2018 Helsreach I gave players 20 Helsreach Points, which they could spend to buff thier gang. Each point could be used to buy an upgrade. THe upgrades were a stat increase, a skill from necromunda, a vehicle upgrade, extra gang cred points or a "cheat". This seemed to be quite fun as it let players build some unique forces and was also really easy for players who just showed up with a random force and wanted to join in.

2. I think there should be a rule called The Eye of the Gods where players can progress during play. The original game works by players getting Victory Points after a game. WHen they get 10 they can roll on the Eye of the Gods table, but this is after the game. IM proposing that we make a custom Victory Point table, and players get a roll on the normal eye of the gods table when they get 10 points, even if it is during play. This way, players can develop their champion and retinue over the weekend. It would also be very cool if players could get Victory Points from doing things on some of the tiles too, and I would encourage anyone who wants to make a terrain tile to incorporate some kind of goal, event or task into the tile itself. This might be a sacrifical alter, some kind of strange game or beasts to hunt or other crazy task. It would be very fun.

3. Transport. I agree about teleportation portals, but things like floating platforms and such would also be fun. In helsreach, we has really nurfed vehicles, which seemed to work well. The vehicles went about 25" and this seemed a reasonable distance to cover each turn, but you couldnt really do much with them other than drive. Maybe let players bring a whacky "vehicle?" LIke magic carpets, chariots or giant snails?
 
I agree with Scalene about turn sequence too. Having everybody go in the same turn does work pretty well. Each new turn, a priority is given (probably to each power, so 5 tokens drawn at random, Nurgle, Tzeench,Khorne, Slaanesh and Undivided). Plop the tokens on a display board to show priority. Then players go in the order dictated if there is a clash of priority. You also have to straight out BAN players of the same faction fighting each other, as it makes for a horrible mess during play. If the Khorne players want to fight other Khorne players, who gets priority? Just say NO! THats what I had to do in Helsreach.
 
I also agree that just bringing a terrain piece would probably work better than tiles. Or several pieces! I liked the siege of Praague story that ran through the Lost and the Damned, where the city ended up warping partly into the realm of chaos, so twisted and wired chaos terrain plus some more normal actual warhammer buildings and stuff.
 

Scalene

Member
A few more ideas and thoughts:

1. As far as I'm concerned, whoever is running this should feel free to pick and choose from the ideas that others put forward. It's their idea, their game and they are editor-in-chief/director. Go with your vision.
2. The scenery people bring could have plenty of specific magical powers/inhabitants:
e.g. the forest has a magical guardian, an area where any models which die immediately regenerate as skeletons and attack the nearest none skeleton, living statues, shifting ground, poisonous vapours etc. etc.
3. The warband balance issue that Curtis raises are a tricky one. One way they could be addressed is that the umpire has a load of constraints/curses which will be applied on the day to whichever warbands they consider to be the most powerful. Possibly only the umpire knows what they are until their effects become applicable.
e.g.
1. The champion must slay an enemy at least every three turns or suffer immediate random limb loss
2. Fear of flying creatures/models with helmets/orcs etc.
3. Subject to stupidity/animosity/drunkenness
4. No save against missile weapons/creatures over 10'/2 handed weapons etc
5. Must visit a particular spot / shrine within X turns or suffer more penalties
6. Chased by zombies - d6-3 appear each turn and follow the champion.
 
I am so pumped up by this!

I agree with Scalene, but Im not sure nurfing is the way to do it, its too easy to get a crummy gang anyway. Better to give our freebies and buffs! But as I said, being able to re-roll your dice rolls one time will mean no-one comes with a bad-luck gang!

Also, the idea of having "Chaos Points" that can be used to make your gang better in a less random way really worked well for the Helsreach game. It let players build super fun gangs, and was easy to implement for players who just rocked-up with no paperwork done.

Here would be my proposed list of things that can be bought with "Chaos Points". Maybe each warband gets 10 points?

1. +1 to any stat
2. Choose an outcome of a roll instead of rolling it.
3. 1 basic creature with hand weapon and light armour, or additional member of a "unit" (ie if you roll 5 beastmen you can have another one)
4. 1 roll on the Universal Creatures Table at the back of The Lost and the Damned. (my favourite table in the whole of warhammer!)
5. Random Chaos weapon (maybe one max per warband?)
6. Random Magic Item
7. Random chaos attribute.
 
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