Post by gdnerd on Sept 19, 2018 22:51:00 GMT
Hey all, some interested was generated on Facebook about the Build-A-Caster League I'm running at the Game Kastle stores in Northern California so I figured I'd do a little writeup and share for people who wanted to take a crack at it themselves.
(Poster credit to fellow community organizer Luis Nin)
Overview
My Build-A-Caster League is an escalation league that tries to bring new players and veterans together by making something fun and interesting for everyone. It's built on the existing Caster Draft system that you can read about here:
privateerpress.com/organized-play/caster-draft
And plays with the existing Caster Draft decks which you can purchase here:
www.drivethrurpg.com/product/234334/Caster-Draft
Drafting
Rather than doing a Magic: The Gathering style booster draft, the league plays out more akin to a Hearthstone Arena draft or Dungeon Run deck. Players are dealt 3 cards at random, then get to pick one to add to their basic warcaster/warlock. Players can get multiple picks depending on the week, starting with a whopping 3 picks on week one to get things started.
For example, let's walk through one league player's draft:
First draft round they had a choice between +1 def on their warcaster, +1 arm, or Shae's Feat (Godspeed: Friendly Faction models currently in Warcaster's CTRL range immediately advance up to 3". During this movement, affected models cannot be targeted by free strikes and gain Pathfinder.) He chose Godspeed.
Second draft round their choices were a bit tougher: Rock Wall, Mortality, Dark Guidance. He ended up settling on Rock Wall.
Third draft pick was between Revive, Parasite, and Stranglehold. Wanting a damage buff he went with Parasite.
As you can see he had a high amount of variance in the options afforded to him - the first draft pick Godspeed was a standout but he could have gone for some survivability instead (the base feat on a draft warcaster is +3 arm to everything which isn't shabby at all). He also could have gone for a much more infantry focused build with Revive and Dark Guidance, but his goal was to build a fun battlegroup Warcaster for his Convergence of Cyriss army.
The only limitations on drafting are that you can never have more than one feat (if you draft a new feat you replace your old one) and you can never have more than 2 weapons (2 guns or 2 swords is fine but stick by the rule of 2). If a player drafts 3 weapons or 3 feats and wants none of them they aren't forced to replace their existing slots. You can even play around with the concept of mulligans if someone gets a super un-fun draw. Remember: the whole point of a league like this is to have fun so feel free to bend things if it means everyone gets to have a more fun time.
Schedule
For our 8 week schedule we ended up coming up with the following schedule:
The trickiest bit was deciding which points levels should have the double weeks. We decided on 15 and 25 being the double weeks to help new players ease into the game a bit better, but for a meatier league for more experienced players could have the double weeks on 35, 50, or even 75 points. Also to help simplify things, we are not allowing themes until the second half of the league (2nd week of 25 points).
We also have special scenarios for the early weeks to teach basic concepts to start - first week is a mangled metal scenario where you have to keep models in the circle zone in the center to stay in it. Second week begins to explore how scoring in steamroller works with one of each type of zone, then by week 4 we move on to standard SR2018 scenarios.
Prizing
Our prizing structure was also intentionally built to encourage people to just show up and play - in my time running events I've found the best way to onboard newer players is to de-emphasize competition. Even though competitive casual is the endgame of our stores, newer players can often be afraid of failure and running before they can walk. So our league has a prize just for signing up then awards raffle tickets for playing at least one game every week, painting a model/unit every week (more painted stuff on the table the better!) and purchasing WMH product from the store (gotta keep the FLGS interested in supporting the WMH community).
This encourages people to show up weekly and participate and so far we've seen an 25-50% attendance bump in attendance at the locations we are running this league at. If previous experience is any indicator, attendance will dip a bit at the end of the league but you'll keep a third to half of the new players who got in for the league.
(Poster credit to fellow community organizer Luis Nin)
Overview
My Build-A-Caster League is an escalation league that tries to bring new players and veterans together by making something fun and interesting for everyone. It's built on the existing Caster Draft system that you can read about here:
privateerpress.com/organized-play/caster-draft
And plays with the existing Caster Draft decks which you can purchase here:
www.drivethrurpg.com/product/234334/Caster-Draft
Drafting
Rather than doing a Magic: The Gathering style booster draft, the league plays out more akin to a Hearthstone Arena draft or Dungeon Run deck. Players are dealt 3 cards at random, then get to pick one to add to their basic warcaster/warlock. Players can get multiple picks depending on the week, starting with a whopping 3 picks on week one to get things started.
For example, let's walk through one league player's draft:
First draft round they had a choice between +1 def on their warcaster, +1 arm, or Shae's Feat (Godspeed: Friendly Faction models currently in Warcaster's CTRL range immediately advance up to 3". During this movement, affected models cannot be targeted by free strikes and gain Pathfinder.) He chose Godspeed.
Second draft round their choices were a bit tougher: Rock Wall, Mortality, Dark Guidance. He ended up settling on Rock Wall.
Third draft pick was between Revive, Parasite, and Stranglehold. Wanting a damage buff he went with Parasite.
As you can see he had a high amount of variance in the options afforded to him - the first draft pick Godspeed was a standout but he could have gone for some survivability instead (the base feat on a draft warcaster is +3 arm to everything which isn't shabby at all). He also could have gone for a much more infantry focused build with Revive and Dark Guidance, but his goal was to build a fun battlegroup Warcaster for his Convergence of Cyriss army.
The only limitations on drafting are that you can never have more than one feat (if you draft a new feat you replace your old one) and you can never have more than 2 weapons (2 guns or 2 swords is fine but stick by the rule of 2). If a player drafts 3 weapons or 3 feats and wants none of them they aren't forced to replace their existing slots. You can even play around with the concept of mulligans if someone gets a super un-fun draw. Remember: the whole point of a league like this is to have fun so feel free to bend things if it means everyone gets to have a more fun time.
Schedule
For our 8 week schedule we ended up coming up with the following schedule:
The trickiest bit was deciding which points levels should have the double weeks. We decided on 15 and 25 being the double weeks to help new players ease into the game a bit better, but for a meatier league for more experienced players could have the double weeks on 35, 50, or even 75 points. Also to help simplify things, we are not allowing themes until the second half of the league (2nd week of 25 points).
We also have special scenarios for the early weeks to teach basic concepts to start - first week is a mangled metal scenario where you have to keep models in the circle zone in the center to stay in it. Second week begins to explore how scoring in steamroller works with one of each type of zone, then by week 4 we move on to standard SR2018 scenarios.
Prizing
Our prizing structure was also intentionally built to encourage people to just show up and play - in my time running events I've found the best way to onboard newer players is to de-emphasize competition. Even though competitive casual is the endgame of our stores, newer players can often be afraid of failure and running before they can walk. So our league has a prize just for signing up then awards raffle tickets for playing at least one game every week, painting a model/unit every week (more painted stuff on the table the better!) and purchasing WMH product from the store (gotta keep the FLGS interested in supporting the WMH community).
This encourages people to show up weekly and participate and so far we've seen an 25-50% attendance bump in attendance at the locations we are running this league at. If previous experience is any indicator, attendance will dip a bit at the end of the league but you'll keep a third to half of the new players who got in for the league.