Game Report 5/9/14

This will be the last Tag Recon game I report on right after the event. The next ones will probably be condensed into once a fortnight or something. I should have a new review up before then though.

Gamemodes:
Old:
Mini HvZ - same as always, 5 second stun for zombies. Ever popular and usually works if you choose the right number of original zombies (OZs) (and alter stun times or add human victory conditions if necessary).
Capture the Bomb (FFA) - Oddball stolen from Halo. You would try to hold the Lanard Scatter Blast for some amount of time (10 seconds) uninterrupted, while fending off the other players. Tagging rules are one-shot respawn as usual, and drop the bomb (not throw) when tagged. If the bomb touches the ground then the timer resets. In FFA CtB to respawn you would go to the surrounding grass area, count to 5 and get back in the game.
Tag Teams - this is a variant of regular Team Deathmatch. Instead of respawning when tagged, you would wait for a teammate to come and revive you. To revive a teammate, you would place your hand on them, and count out loud to 3. If your whole team got tagged, then your team would be out of the game. Works better with several smaller teams, rather than a few large teams.

New:
Attack and Defend - a variant of Basic Nerf's Siege the Fort. In this gamemode you would have a small team of attackers and a large team of defenders. The attackers would try and convert all defenders into attackers, or steal an objective and return it to their spawn point (and would win if successful in either). The defenders would try and survive as long as possible while defending the objective. Attackers are one-shot-respawn, while defenders take three shots, and then turn into an attacker. The defenders would be restricted to a marked area, while attackers would respawn from a given area.

Blasters:
Regulars:
Strongarms - the usual comparison blaster.
Sweet Revenges - my usual dual wield pistols. Worked great as always.
Roughcuts - performed as per usual.
Single Shots (e.g. NF, Firestrike) - rarely used, except as backup to a Strongarm or Roughcut.
Elite Rayven (Barricade motors, 2 IMR 14500s) - still grossly overpowered, but at least there was something else that was on par.
Magstrikes - surprisingly we had one person actually use the Magstrike in HvZ. They used it to fire off bursts, which were highly effective at tagging zombies. Once it ran out though, the user dumped it in favour of Strongarms. The Magstrike still isn't a particularly practical blaster because we've yet to find a portable and effective cover system.

New:
Elite Stryfe (Barricade motors, 2 Trustfire 14500s) - performed basically the same as the Rayven, that is to say, stupidly and grossly overpowered compared to everything else. Range, rate of fire, capacity, the Stryfe and Rayven have basically everything needed for the games we play and the area we play in. They were pretty scary to go up against, considering the volume of fire they put out.
EDIT: Please don't use Trustfires. Please use eFest, AW or Windyfire IMRs instead.
DT Snapfire (AR removed) - didn't see a lot of action, and I'm not entirely sure why. Maybe it's because it wasn't near the Strongarms and Roughcuts. People were surprised at the semi auto action though, and it was powerful enough to keep up with stock grey trigger Elites, though not as accurate. The extra capacity doesn't hurt either.
Buzz Bee Air Max 6 - brought it just for fun, to compare to the other blasters around. It's certainly better in range and accuracy, though the lack of ROF will probably prevent it from being a popular blaster. I probably won't bother with it next game anyway.
Elite Spectre - pretty much a Strongarm without slam fire, the 6th dart, and with a harder to pop in cylinder. Range did seem a little better than Strongarms, though practically the Strongarms' extra shot and superior ROF are far more important than a little extra range. I really only got the Spectre for the accesories anyway, you're far better off getting a Strongarm.
Unknown Toy Crossbow - this was a blaster one of our players brought along themselves. It uses a string to propel darts, and as a result it can fling a suction dart 15m+ with great accuracy almost silently. However the fact remains that it was a single shot, and so if the user missed (which they often did), they would be vulnerable for several seconds trying to reprime and reload the crossbow. Because of how few shots it could put out, it wasn't gamebreaking or overpowered by any means, and I could easily take out the user by dodging their shot, then moving in to guarantee a hit.


For most of the time this game, we had an odd number of people so we couldn't do CTF or BR, and so instead we played a few rounds of Tag Teams and HvZ.
In Tag Teams we had 3 teams of 3 people, and it worked quite well. The new 3-second-revive greatly reduced a team's ability to clump together and become invincible, and it also prevented people from doing run-by-revives. My team got taken out early, so I got to watch how the new revive system affected gameplay, and it really does help promote the teamwork aspect of the game.
HvZ worked well as usual, with 2 OZs and the rest humans. Once again there was an emphasis on being able to run, as in mid and late game it would become difficult to find time to reload.

Once about half of the players left, we decided to play a round of free for all CtB.
In this new version you would have to hold the bomb for just 10 seconds, because in free for all it's incredibly difficult to hold it for much longer. If you got tagged you would have to run to the grass (which was surrounding the tambark play area), and count to 5 to respawn. This worked really well, as 5 seconds is more than enough for the victor of the firefight to pick up the bomb and run away from the respawning player. Additionally, the tambark area is large enough for a bomb carrier to get away from most (or all) of the respawning players.
I personally enjoyed this version of CtB much more than any of the other CtB games we've played, as the respawning system seemed to work a lot better than previous stun systems.

Besides the tweaks to old gamemodes, we managed to trial a game of Attack and Defend with just 3 of us. It wasn't a proper game, more of just a trial run to see how things would go and what would be needed to make it run well. Nonetheless it was rather fun for just the three of us and it did run as expected and as hoped. As always, the game lasted several minutes while the attacker would get a few tags on the defenders, but would be taken out rather quickly. Once one defender was converted into an attacker though, it took less than a minute for the second defender to fall.
When I've run this game with my friends, usually the last defender(s) would simply just run away to prolong the game and try and win. The addition of the objective prevents the defenders from just running away to survive, as if they do the attackers can simply just capture the objective to win. The addition of the objective hopefully will also add an extra tactical element to the game, as the attackers have two ways to win.
It took about 5 minutes for the trial game to finish with starting teams of 1v2, so I'm hoping that with some larger teams we can implement some defender win conditions and make this into a great gametype.