What are the Planned Changes for this Year's Historicon Games

This's year's convention game will be a revised and (hopefully) improved version of last years "DAK & Dragons" and "SOCOM & Sorcery" games.  The games were A LOT of fun to put on but there are also a lot of improvements that can and need to be made to improve both playability and appearances.


Lets list out the changes in this post so I don't forget.

1) Make the center section a Jungle.  OK given the previous two posts, this shouldn't be a surprise.  The game rules I use really emphasize cover and having such a sparse center section where all the side collide was a bit stark for me.  I'll need to tweak the rules to ensure things don't completely bog down.

2) Add a 6th, 2x2ft catacomb section.  Last year I didn't have enough Egyptian themed dungeon section to build out the 6th section.  I used some Dwarven Forge cavern tiles which worked fine but looked a little out of place.  I've got enough now (thanks to Lunesdargent Workshops recent kickstarter).

3) Redo the oasis terrain plates.  These were done at the last minute (two days before the con) and really showed it.  I was kind of embarrassed to have them on my table.

4) Simplify the rules.  I used a homegrown set of rules for the game which were essentially a love child from a dalliance between Warlord's "Bolt Action "and The League of Augsburg's "Donnybrook" rulesets.  While most people grasped the concepts, a few really struggled with the rules, which means they are still too complex for a con game.  There will be a separate post that details the rules and how I may change them.

5) Movement Trays for the troops.  One thing that slowed both game play and setup was having all the troops move individually.  I purchased some skirmish infantry movement trays and will need to prepare them for play but they will speed up game play immensely.  The trays will not work in the catacombs but most players forces are pretty thinned out by the time they get there.
:)

6) Better Objective Markers.  Last year objective markers were dime sized plastic discs in different colors:

- yellow for treasure
- red for monsters
- blue for objectives

They were functional but looked awful.  I've got the time to make some WAYYYY better markers and have down some tests during this year's painting challenge - as you can see in the following picture:

7) Improve the random encounter table.  The one I used became very cumbersome as the game went on and didn't scale as well as I hoped.  There were also, at times, too many monsters so the players factions rarely focused on fighting each other.

8) Better special objectives for each faction.  I really like secret objectives for players in a game that is umpired and didn't put a lot of effort into fleshing that out last year.  The suspense of not knowing if one of your allies is really on your side is a lot a fun in a game.

9) Kid-Player objectives.  I have a rule that any kid players always win - always.  But that can be done without throwing the game in their favor so I'll come up with some special objectives for them and let the game play out for the rest of the players.