Belegarth

Some of the guys are feeling we're doing way too much stand and deliver/red rover battles and while the majority enjoy that I think the newer fighters might be a little discouraged, most of our fighters locally are fairly vetted...

So what are good battles to get the newer guys enthused, and what are some good fights that keep the vets and the newbs happy?

Kill your killer is pretty common here, rez battles where they form up in groups as they come in seem to be pretty popular.

I like bridge battles, I'd like to do a four corner bridge or a bear pit in the near future or a dual bridge rez battle...

As an aside I'd love to include battles that encourage group awareness and working together, I think that value is lacking (a good chunk think they're the next Braveheart, common problem) Other than kill the king I can't think of much else...

So yeah, just looking for any additional ideas or insights on this.

I like what we call 'elites'. You pick a small group of people, generally about 10-20% of the field, so on a 30 person field you'd have 3-4. These people are the elites.

The object of the game is to become (and stay) an elite. If you kill an elite, you become elite. Any time you kill someone, you regenerate all wounds, so you regenerate upon becoming elite, and elites regenerate whenever they kill a normal person.

Usually we do 2 lives/30 seconds. When you die, you sit down and count slowly to 30, stand up and call something like '1, 2, 3 I'm up!' and join back in the fight.

It's good on multiple levels. Picking vets to be the elites at the beginning can help to show newer folks how to work together to take down people who are much more skilled than them, and once they become elites, they get to learn how to fight many opponents.

It's somewhat similar to a kill your killer battle, except that it doesn't take forever and it doesn't always result in one or two people winning every game.

New guys seem to love a Necromancer battle too, and it can definitely be fun, though it doesn't lend itself to skill building too much. http://geddon.org/index.php/Necromancer_Battle

Oh, I'm also a fan of standard CTF. Games that are at their core a team battle but have some element other than fighting can help to keep the interest of someone who will have their * beat by 90% of the fighters on the field. CTF is good because Joe Newb on his first day out can absolutely win one or several battles even though he's trying to fight like an anime character.

We've done teams of two where if your partner dies you're dead.

Helps to promote team work.

There is a game floating around my way that a group called Galatia came up with. It works really well with a small group. It's called Blob!

More or less starts out with a Chaos. Each fighter starts with a team name and as that palyer kills another player that player is on that team. Once you are killed your association with that pryor team ends. You rez in the spot you are killed. The game goes on until there is only one team on the field. Very cool game!!

I've been bouncing around ideas for a fighting/ultimate frisbee hybrid. I think it would work best with single-blue weapons, for obvious reasons. And you'd probably have to make it so that you don't have to stay stationary when you have the frisbee, maybe you are allowed to move backwards. We haven't had a chance to try it yet, though, in Riverbend.

In the wacky vein of armed ultimate frisbee, I tried to get people to bring their paintball guns for Musketeer-style fighting. You bring your single blue and ten rounds, loading paint one at a time. No one seemed to want to fight wearing a paintball mask...

We play a game called huntsman. It's intended purpose is to educate new people on player names (so they get to know everyone) and positioning.
-2 teams
-You can call a dead person's name and trade your life for theirs as you are about to die. This allows you to do sneaky things like Rez a dead teammate that is behind your opponent. It is a fun and silly game.

The Bruce wrote:In the wacky vein of armed ultimate frisbee, I tried to get people to bring their paintball guns for Musketeer-style fighting. You bring your single blue and ten rounds, loading paint one at a time. No one seemed to want to fight wearing a paintball mask... :neutral:

Dude, running down and butchering a guy who just missed you with a paintball sounds crazy intense.

Try to get them to do it in just goggles with the velocities turned down to 250 fps.

The SCA uses very powerful rubberband guns for their fencing (sometimes).


To the OP: They love the hell out of I Have the Power (you kill the guy with the power, now you have it, when the guy with the power dies, all the people he killed come back to life to attack the new guy with the power), zombies (one zombie v. world. Any kills by the zombie become zombies next round. Zombies res in place on a ten count), and infinite res bridge battles. I hate infinite res games, though, so, I like Death Tax Bridge (team life totals (2-3x number of people on the team) or individual (2-5 lives apiece)). Another good one is Ring the Bell. It's like CTF, only instead of getting a flag from their base and capturing it, you just have to strike a shield laying on the ground or (even better) hung from a tree limb that is only half a dozen yards in front of the enemy res point. For more scores and to reward better fighting, increase res time from 0s to 5s or 10s.


Noik, that sounds baller. I'm gonna try it up here. Call it Blood Brothers or something.

Our noobs love zombie battles.
1) Zombies don't take limbs.
2) If a Zombie kills someone, they count to 5 and become a zombie.
3) Zombies can't run and they can only say 'Brains!'
Optional house rule:
4) When a Zombie dies, they aren't truly dead, they can still grab ankles and hold humans in place for other zombies to kill.

Great for single blue practice, or you can do weapons of choice, either way.

Highlander Rez battle. Everyone enters the field. If you make eye contact, you are in a duel with that person. Loosers go to the sideline. If the person who killed them is killed, then they are back in. So to win the prize, you have to kill everyone else on the field. It's a fun game.

We have a CTF type game we play called bash the shiel that seems to always please the nooblets, without annoying vets. Instead of capturing a flag and returning it to base, all you have to do is hit a stationary shield protected by the other team before they hit yours. The shield have to be immune to ranged damage, or things can get pretty silly. We usually give each team a valhalla somewhere near their shield where they can respawn. It's a good game for working on field strategy and teamwork, as well as field awareness and prioritizing. Just an idea.

We call that game Ring the Bell. It gets pretty intense but it levels the field pretty easily.
I'm mos def gonna try out the Elites game Derian mentioned this week, should be interesting.

We fight a game in Rhovanion called Escalation. It's great for the end of the day. Here's the rules copied from the wiki.

Escalation
Number of Players: 2-200
Type of Battle: Field battle
Time to fight: About 30 minutes, with a 12-20 person field of fighters
Special Rules: No Reusable Missiles

Escalation is a game designed to get players used to fighting in imbalanced situations, with minimal gear. It’s a great game to play towards the end of the day, as it requires people to remove their armor. In Rhovanion, we end almost every practice with an endurance fight, usually Escalation or Capture the Flag, so people leave as they tire out. Here’s how you play:

1 – Teams are chosen and divided as appropriate
2 – Each fighter begins Escalation with only a single blue
3 – The fight lasts until one team wins
4 – The losing team may pick up one piece of gear for every 10 fighters on the field
5 – Teams line up and fight again, repeating this cycle until each team has all the gear they want
6 - Teams then fight a best 3 out of 5 to determine the game's overall winnner.

Variations
-- Any end condition to the game may be set, including a timer, exhaustion, or attrition if you want play to emphasize endurance.
-- For sheer amusement, the herald may dictate what equipment each team picks up when they lose.

Gaining Gear
When a team picks up a piece of gear, it may be anything allowed by the rules of the game. Each piece of gear is counted separately, so it can take a while for a team to gain full sets of gear. Note, in Escalation, there are NO REUSABLE MISSILES. Reusable missiles effectively compound the amount of gear a given team receives.

Armor:
A single player may gain up to full armor and it counts as a single piece of gear.

Bows/Arrows:
If a player elects to pick up a bow, the player may have ONE arrow. They may pick up more arrows at the cost of 2 arrows for one piece of gear selection. In escalation, missiles are NOT reusable.

That sounds like a lotta fun, great idea man.

We have one like capture the flag get 2 javelins tie different colored fabric to them cut the field down the middle. flag cap is the other teams flag to you base we do unlimited re spwans tell the cap. set the re spawn point opposite side of the field to your base. we start will 4 people at the re spawn are and there all alive and change it as needed. its a long game but alot of people at practice as well as border ways really like it.