X-Wing Vassal Tournament
By mrfroggies– February 4, 2013
The Kessel Run events are mostly over now, and Wave 2 is on the slow boat from China, but a new Vassal X-Wing Tournament is right here. If your looking to test your piloting skill against opponents from all over the world then this vassal event is your chance. Vassal isn’t the same as playing at your LGS, but it offers other benefits. With Vassal you get to play people from all over, and maybe learn some tricks that your local gaming group hasn’t thought of yet. It also has the Wave 2 ships available to play right now. The Tournament begins February 18th. Here’s how things will break down.
What you will need:
- Here’s the latest version of Vassal
- Here’s the current version of the X-Wing Game which is 4.0
- A Quick Reference Guide for the X-Wing Vassal Module.
- The rules and the current FAQ for the game
- Vassal Walkthrough
- Time to play.
How To Enter:
Please email me at mrfroggies@gmail.com to let me know that you are signing up. Please include your time zone, and city your from as I will try to make the first round pairing a little easier based on location. Posting comments in the blog is not an official sign up.
The Rules:
This will be a 4 round Swiss style event. You will have one week to contact your opponent and play your match. If you just can’t find a time to meet up and play I will allow players to play via email. The first 2 rounds you will play with just wave 1 ships, and the last 2 rounds will be open to Wave 1 and 2 ships. You will also play 2 rounds as a Rebel and 2 rounds as an Imperial player. If in the first round you play as the Rebels, then in the second round you will play as the Imperial, then in the third round you will switch back to Rebel, and in the 4 round you will finish as the Imperials. This tournament will test your pilot skills with both List making, and Piloting, as you will need to make lists for both sides. I will be diviating from the offcial FFG Tournament rules so here’s the break down of how the event will be run.
Squad Building:
- Before the start of each round you will be informed if you will be playing the Rebels or the Imperials. There will be no Mirror Matches in this Tournament. After the first round you will switch to the opposite side for the next round.
- The maximum squad points for each list will be 100pts. A squad cannot exceed that amount, but you may have fewer points
Squad Deployment in Vassal:
- Each player sets up all his ships and movement pieces outside the map. The rest of the players cards, upgrades, and dials will be placed in their hands (The X-Wing Vassal FAQ will explain that if you don’t know). Make sure your ships are numbered and labeled clearly.
- Players determine initiative. Initiative goes to the player with the lowest squad point total. If both players have the same point total, then they will roll for it. Each player will roll 3 attack dice, and the winner is the one with the most hits. Treat focus as a blank, and critical hits are just regular hits.
- Each player picks 3 different Asteroid tokens and sets them outside of the Map area. Then each player takes turns placing the Asteroids starting with the player who won initiative.
- Players place their ships in Ascending order of Pilot skill as per standard X-Wing Rules.
End of Match:
Each match will end in one of the following 4 ways.
- All of one players ships are destroyed. We will be ignoring the simultaneous attack rule if both players are down to there last ship, and they have the same pilot skill level. If pilot A attacks and destroys pilot B then the game ends, and pilot B doesn’t get there last attack. The player with at least one remaining ship earns a match win.
- If at the end of 15 rounds of play, and both players have ships remaining in the play area, then the player who the highest squad point value receives a modified match win.
- Conceding the match. If one of the players can’t make it to the match, or during the course of the game find that they have no reasonable chance to win, they may concede the match. The player who concedes gets a modified match lose and there opponent gets a Modified Match win
- No match takes place. If no game is reported, it will be concedered a draw and both players will be rewarded 25pts.
Scoring the Match:
Scoring the match will be very different then the standard FFG rules. We will not be using the match win equals 5 pts, modified win equals 3 pts etc. Instead your points will be based on the squad point value of your opponent. If you destroy all of your opponents ships and they had a 100 point squad, then you would receive 100 points for your win. They would receive the number of points in ships that they have destroyed.
For matches where one player concedes the game. The losing player receives 30 points and the winning player receives 70 points.
Players may receive additional bonus points for the following in game achievements. Players are not eligible for achievements if the game was conceded.
- The Iron Man – Win match without losing a ship (+10pts)
- Squadron Elite – Win match without taking damage (+25pts)
- The Nail Biter – Finish match with a single hull point left (+5pts)
- The Sniper – One shot kill. The ship loses all it’s hull points in one attack. (+10pts)
- Forced Retreat – Ion gunning an enemy ship off the map (+10pts)
- The Rock – Ion gunning an enemy ship into an asteroid for the kill (+10pts)
- Chain Lightning – Defeating all your enemy ships in a single round (+20pts)
- Can’t Touch This – Successfully evade three attacks in one turn (+5)
- Mine Your Path – Successfully Destroy a ship with a mine token (+10)
- Mine Games – Successfully hit 3 or more ships with one mine token (+10)
Recap:
- All signups must be submitted by Sunday February the 17th. The first round pairings will be posted on Monday, February 18th.
- You will have 1 week to complete your match and turn in your results.
- Pairings will be done in a Swiss-style, with Strength of Schedule affecting matchups.
- The results of the game must be reported by the winner to mrfroggies via email.
- All questions, disagreements, or potential problems must be reported to mrfroggies for proper resolution.
- Have fun! May the Force be with you.
WIcked. Let’s get it on like Diddy Kong!
Cool idea, and that’s for putting this together froggies! I have a couple of questions/comments, though:
1. I’ve played several email games, but have never seen an area “outside the map” to place ships, other than player 1-6′s hands. Is it ok to just leave a squad in the deployment zone during setup, as asteroids cannot be placed there anyway?
2. Can both players choose the same 3 asteroids for their force (ie, both players include the “big” asteroid for their deployment)?
3. It seems that a lot of the achievement points heavily favor the rebel player. At least for the first two rounds, only the Rebel player can get the Sniper, Forced Retreat and the Rock. This doesn’t seem fair at first glance. And even in the latter rounds, the Rebel is heavily favored to be getting any Sniper achievements, as fully half of any ships the Imperials can field have only 3 hull, while the weakest the Rebels have is one quarter of the ship types with 3 hull. Unless convinced otherwise, I’d suggest dropping achievements (or at least these three) from the competition.
The three named Firespray pilots get Ion Cannon. But it does force someone to run ships with the Ion Cannon.
That’s why I said it was a problem for the first two rounds, where the Firespray is not a legal ship.
Reading a computer screen with bifocals sucks. Don’t get old my friends.
NIck, Here’s your answers.
1. If you zoom out there is space on the side, but It’s okay to setup as you like, as long as it’s acceptable for both of you.
2. Yes. You pick any three you want, and your opponent does the same. They could happen to be the same ones.
3. Sense you will be playing half your games as rebels and the other as imperials, it is still fair, but I see your point. There’s a couple I will add to the post that should favor Imperials more.
Do the rounds using round 1 ships mean that only wave 1 pilot skills/secondary weapons/upgrades will be allowed?
Another great question, the answer is yes. For the first 2 rounds you are restricted to just the first wave cards and such. No using stealth upgrades or push the limit.
Neat idea. Like the point scoring system. While the achievements are not even between Rebel/Imp forces, each player will have an equal chance to earn both sets of achievements. I don’t see any real issue there.
I’m not sure I’ll sign up…I want to, but time for sametime games is always an issue for me. Also, turns require a more constant presence than I can normally muster over the course of 1-2 hours. I know e-mail is an option, but will there be many other players that will put up with the slower pace?
I understand the time comment is tricky for you, but I hope you reconsider.
Bobb, just so you know I specifically thought about you when I added the email option. I was hoping by adding that it would make things easier for people who have very limited time.
Just to be clear, I would actually need between two and four lists for the tournament–Wave 1 Rebel, Wave 1 Imperial, Wave 2 Rebel, and Wave 2 Imperial?
Also, for those with more (that is, more than zero) experience with Vassal, how long is a realtime match likely to take?
Yes you will need between 2 to 4 lists. The first two rounds will be wave 1 only, and the 3rd and 4th rounds will be wave 1 & 2, or any combination there of.
Games take about the same as they do in real life. What I have found that takes extra time, is not having your lists pre made. Putting all you ships together when you meet takes a bit of time, but I’m working on showing people how to save their lists so that they are ready to play when they meet. Also with the turn limit of 15 I’m hoping to keep games from going on for to long.
I’ve added a Walkthrough for Vassal now. This should help get people started with it.
This sounds fantastic! I look forward to it.
You aren’t worried about how swingy the achievements will make the game? It seems odd that I could “win” the match by defeating all my opponent’s ships but he could still outscore me due to some random lucky achievement bonuses.
There are several other aspects that are a bit odd…
If I concede, I get 30 points. If people are playing to optimize points, no one should ever receive the “Iron Man” or “Squadron Elite” achievement. If I’m losing and down to my last ship and have yet to take down an opponent’s ship all game, I can either play it out and likely lose this last ship to score no points, give my opponent 100 points plus any achievement extra points and the win. Or, I can concede and score a minimum of 30 points and limit my opponent to 70 points.
Conceding is a powerful tournament tool to let games run efficiently. If I’m losing bad, there’s no reason for either player to waste time playing the game to its inevitable conclusion if the losing party doesn’t want to. With this system, you can now concede to game the system intentionally. It changes an act that was previously a sportsmanlike thing to do and turns it into something that can be used in an unsportsmanlike way.
In the very least, you might need to make a condition on when a player has the option to concede (like at the beginning of the round before maneuvers are selected). It’s still broken but at least it won’t lead to cheesy situations where people are conceding after some last ditch attack and right before their opponent can attack back to get some high score win.
I don’t think Achievements will be as big of an impact to the game as you might think. I doubt I will see a game where the winner has less points then the loser.
You bring up some good points about Conceding the game. My goal with that was to promote sportsmanship, but as you pointed out it can be abused. I’m open to suggestions on how to fix this. I’ll think on this some and see what I come up with. I like you idea of conceding at the beginning of a turn. I will have to be more specific about this rule.
if a game is conceded mid-match like that, award the greater points to the winner. So in the example Christian gives, the conceding player would score zero points for ships, plus any achievements attained, while the winner would score whatever ships were destroyed…some 70+ likely…and achievements. In the case where the winner would score less points than 70, then award the 70, but only award the loser actual ships destroyed. Only in the case where neither side actually plays or destroys any ships would the 70/30 points be awarded.
I like your idea’s Bobb, I think I will update the rules to include them, and also I think then you can only concede the game at the beginning of the turn.
It looks like a newer version of the Star Wars module has been posted. Do you want us to use that one?
Also, do we need to download all of the booster modules we wish to use?
Thanks,
Yes, the 4.1 module fixes some bugs in the earlier version. You will also want to download “ALL” vmdx extensions that are listed. If you don’t you might not have all the pieces that you need. I’m pretty sure that if you don’t load “Explodey_Things.vmdx” then you won’t have the mine tokens. Even if you don’t plan on using mines, one of you opponents might. If you don’t have that installed then you won’t see the mines on the map, and it can make things messy in the game. Better to have everything installed that way you don’t have to worry about that.