Post by silence on Oct 10, 2011 7:31:16 GMT -5
My impressions from the game, in semi-chronological order:
1) Check-in
I like the fact that my waiver is stored on file somewhere. Getting everyone's waiver filled out before check in is a pain, especially when people are traveling from all over.
2) Air fills
Good: It was filling to 4500 for most of the weekend.
Bad: If you weren't paying attention it would fill up to 5k+. The fill nipple valve in one of my tanks blew when I hit the fill paddle - brand new reg - because it shot from 1k up to ~4.7k very very quickly. The air system needs to regulate its output to 4.5k. It's dangerous to players and equipment otherwise.
3) Paint
Nothing bad to say about the paint! Very consistent, no barrel breaks (except for one which was my fault entirely) great price. I shot three cases and was very happy with it.
4) Reffing
Good: The refs I saw were as professional as I've come to expect from Splatbrother's refs. Thanks to the ref who was keeping an eye on me during the barn mission, and thanks to the Maze ref for keeping us honest with the props.
Bad: I RARELY saw a ref on the field. I would see the ref at insertion chrono, the base ref, and then play for an hour without seeing a single ref. This was very frustrating, especially when using LAW rockets on bunkers. Thankfully the players at Splatbrothers are generally honorable so they would call themselves when we hit a bunker with a LAW, but every now and then someone wouldn't, and that's exactly when there'd be no refs within sight. We searched for a while to find a ref to help us with the LAW issue, but literally could not find one anywhere near the action.
I think this is a major issue. Splatbrothers has always impressed me with its reffing crew and their past performance is one of the main reasons we like to come to these games. As I said, individual ref performance was good, but there should have been twice or three times as many refs out there for a field of that size. The lack of refs was disappointing and not what I've come to expect from Splatbrothers.
5) Format
5a) Missions
Good: Missions were pretty well constructed, and I especially liked the multi-stage missions - like building the bomb. Those were very well done.
The food/ammo depot concept was also good. One of the problems with mission based games is that it's easy for the average player to get frozen out of the scenario by virtue of never being on the mission crew. The depots provided meaningful targets for everyone to gun for even in the absence of a full mission. Definitely keep that concept.
Night missions were well constructed for the field and lead to one of the craziest moments of the game. More on that later.
Bad: My only beef with the missions was not knowing how much they were worth in terms of points. Being able to prioritize where to put your people is always a challenge in a scenario, but when you don't know how much a certain mission/location is worth, it becomes a bit of a guessing game. We could generally figure out the value of the food/slapstick missions, but could only guess at the value of the scenario missions. Maybe that's intentional, but personally I'd like to be able to make a decision like, "Well, we only have 20 people on the field, let's skunk that mission to make sure our food is safe." instead of "Well, that mission might be worth a bazillion points, I dunno, so.. yeah go for the mission?"
One problem with the night missions, specifically the mission where we had to guard the flashing light. Once we realized that we could not respawn, we set ourselves up to defend the light objective and hunkered down. Staying hidden was key to staying alive and ensuring we didn't lose the objective. The ref at the objective (the producer?) REPEATEDLY shined his flashlight at us, pointing out our positions and yelling to see if we were red or blue.
If you are going to have a night game, do NOT point out player positions, and do your best not to shine a light in people's eyes. That was incredibly frustrating and irritating. If blue players had been watching it would have completely blown our cover, and thanks to the repeated flashlight to the eyes, all of our light discipline was irrelevant to preserving our night vision.
5b) Final battle:
I liked the format for the final battle. The towers field is always weird to play but definitely fun.
My only complaint there was confusion about the game ending. When the blue player planted their last flag, that was the end of the game... but the game kept going?
6) The infamous Splatbrothers end of game ceremony
I come down from North Jersey, so after the game I have a 6+ hour drive ahead of me. I like to stay for the score and awards to see which teams and players earned the spotlight from the general, listen to the generals' end speeches, say thanks to my general, and then go home. I'm not really one for the raffle.
I have never seen an award ceremony take as long as it does at Splatbrothers. As a request from us traveling folks, if you wouldn't mind getting the game stuff out of the way before doing the bulk of the raffle, that would be greatly appreciated. Let the generals talk for a minute or two, hand out their awards, read the scores, and then move on to handing stuff out. That way I can hit the road an hour earlier.
7) Overall
I had fun this weekend. Hard not to at Splatbrothers - the field and the players are always a challenge and fun to play.
I want to give some recognition to the blue player whole stole our flag on Saturday night for making one of the ballsiest moves ever. I had fogged up a little so I decided to wander around behind our position as a decoy target - if I got shot, it would alert the rest of our guys to the danger. Sure enough, just before the game ended, a player wandered past me and lit me up. I sprinted back to my base to respawn and warn people on the radio. I sprinted back to the splathouse (total round trip less than 30 seconds) but all I saw was a stream of dead red players walking back out, and no flag. He just walked right in, destroyed everyone, took the flag, and disappeared. Wow.
Also, to the guy from Death Dealers with the vest, for one of the funniest moments of the weekend. Once the half hour had passed and there were no points left, I pretty much forgot about the vest mission. We were stacking up on the splathouse to make a rush when suddenly a blue player stepped out of the door and sprayed the crowd. I shot him a few times in panic mode, then started yelling "you're out! he's out!" to try to prevent a massacre.
The blue player stops, points at me, then starts unzipping some of his gear. My first thought was "oh crap this guy is going to attack me." So did every other red player standing around; we all thought "oh boy, here comes a fight". Then the blue player handed me the vest and walked away. We all were very confused until we remembered the vest mission, at which point it all clicked. Had a good laugh over that one.
1) Check-in
I like the fact that my waiver is stored on file somewhere. Getting everyone's waiver filled out before check in is a pain, especially when people are traveling from all over.
2) Air fills
Good: It was filling to 4500 for most of the weekend.
Bad: If you weren't paying attention it would fill up to 5k+. The fill nipple valve in one of my tanks blew when I hit the fill paddle - brand new reg - because it shot from 1k up to ~4.7k very very quickly. The air system needs to regulate its output to 4.5k. It's dangerous to players and equipment otherwise.
3) Paint
Nothing bad to say about the paint! Very consistent, no barrel breaks (except for one which was my fault entirely) great price. I shot three cases and was very happy with it.
4) Reffing
Good: The refs I saw were as professional as I've come to expect from Splatbrother's refs. Thanks to the ref who was keeping an eye on me during the barn mission, and thanks to the Maze ref for keeping us honest with the props.
Bad: I RARELY saw a ref on the field. I would see the ref at insertion chrono, the base ref, and then play for an hour without seeing a single ref. This was very frustrating, especially when using LAW rockets on bunkers. Thankfully the players at Splatbrothers are generally honorable so they would call themselves when we hit a bunker with a LAW, but every now and then someone wouldn't, and that's exactly when there'd be no refs within sight. We searched for a while to find a ref to help us with the LAW issue, but literally could not find one anywhere near the action.
I think this is a major issue. Splatbrothers has always impressed me with its reffing crew and their past performance is one of the main reasons we like to come to these games. As I said, individual ref performance was good, but there should have been twice or three times as many refs out there for a field of that size. The lack of refs was disappointing and not what I've come to expect from Splatbrothers.
5) Format
5a) Missions
Good: Missions were pretty well constructed, and I especially liked the multi-stage missions - like building the bomb. Those were very well done.
The food/ammo depot concept was also good. One of the problems with mission based games is that it's easy for the average player to get frozen out of the scenario by virtue of never being on the mission crew. The depots provided meaningful targets for everyone to gun for even in the absence of a full mission. Definitely keep that concept.
Night missions were well constructed for the field and lead to one of the craziest moments of the game. More on that later.
Bad: My only beef with the missions was not knowing how much they were worth in terms of points. Being able to prioritize where to put your people is always a challenge in a scenario, but when you don't know how much a certain mission/location is worth, it becomes a bit of a guessing game. We could generally figure out the value of the food/slapstick missions, but could only guess at the value of the scenario missions. Maybe that's intentional, but personally I'd like to be able to make a decision like, "Well, we only have 20 people on the field, let's skunk that mission to make sure our food is safe." instead of "Well, that mission might be worth a bazillion points, I dunno, so.. yeah go for the mission?"
One problem with the night missions, specifically the mission where we had to guard the flashing light. Once we realized that we could not respawn, we set ourselves up to defend the light objective and hunkered down. Staying hidden was key to staying alive and ensuring we didn't lose the objective. The ref at the objective (the producer?) REPEATEDLY shined his flashlight at us, pointing out our positions and yelling to see if we were red or blue.
If you are going to have a night game, do NOT point out player positions, and do your best not to shine a light in people's eyes. That was incredibly frustrating and irritating. If blue players had been watching it would have completely blown our cover, and thanks to the repeated flashlight to the eyes, all of our light discipline was irrelevant to preserving our night vision.
5b) Final battle:
I liked the format for the final battle. The towers field is always weird to play but definitely fun.
My only complaint there was confusion about the game ending. When the blue player planted their last flag, that was the end of the game... but the game kept going?
6) The infamous Splatbrothers end of game ceremony
I come down from North Jersey, so after the game I have a 6+ hour drive ahead of me. I like to stay for the score and awards to see which teams and players earned the spotlight from the general, listen to the generals' end speeches, say thanks to my general, and then go home. I'm not really one for the raffle.
I have never seen an award ceremony take as long as it does at Splatbrothers. As a request from us traveling folks, if you wouldn't mind getting the game stuff out of the way before doing the bulk of the raffle, that would be greatly appreciated. Let the generals talk for a minute or two, hand out their awards, read the scores, and then move on to handing stuff out. That way I can hit the road an hour earlier.
7) Overall
I had fun this weekend. Hard not to at Splatbrothers - the field and the players are always a challenge and fun to play.
I want to give some recognition to the blue player whole stole our flag on Saturday night for making one of the ballsiest moves ever. I had fogged up a little so I decided to wander around behind our position as a decoy target - if I got shot, it would alert the rest of our guys to the danger. Sure enough, just before the game ended, a player wandered past me and lit me up. I sprinted back to my base to respawn and warn people on the radio. I sprinted back to the splathouse (total round trip less than 30 seconds) but all I saw was a stream of dead red players walking back out, and no flag. He just walked right in, destroyed everyone, took the flag, and disappeared. Wow.
Also, to the guy from Death Dealers with the vest, for one of the funniest moments of the weekend. Once the half hour had passed and there were no points left, I pretty much forgot about the vest mission. We were stacking up on the splathouse to make a rush when suddenly a blue player stepped out of the door and sprayed the crowd. I shot him a few times in panic mode, then started yelling "you're out! he's out!" to try to prevent a massacre.
The blue player stops, points at me, then starts unzipping some of his gear. My first thought was "oh crap this guy is going to attack me." So did every other red player standing around; we all thought "oh boy, here comes a fight". Then the blue player handed me the vest and walked away. We all were very confused until we remembered the vest mission, at which point it all clicked. Had a good laugh over that one.
