The Grand Ring (My second Grand-Melee style format)

[Sailor Vulcan]

Here is my second Grand Melee-ish style format. While my first one looked pretty fun, it would probably be very, very difficult to set up, and it was somewhat based on tournament mechanics that I borrowed from the Battle City arc of the Yugioh anime (not that that's necessarily a bad thing, just that it can complicate things a bit).

This is a much simpler way of doing a Grand Melee style Mage Wars game. Instead of borrowing and building off of a LARPish tournament mechanic from a teen shonen anime, I'm going to use a rule from...MUSICAL CHAIRS?

Sort of.

Presenting
_______________
the GRAND RING

The way this works is that the Arena is shaped like a HUGE circular corridor made of three rings of zones. At the start of the game, each Mage is spaced five zones apart from their opponents to their left and to their right.

When enough opponent's are eliminated, the arena shrinks in size. Space warps so that empty space disappears, and the space still being used moves in a little closer to the center, as there is a strange void in space at the very center of the Grand Ring. While you could use modular tile zones, the problem with them is that you have a choice between using perfect squares that don't line up with each other in a circle, OR you have zones get smaller the closer to the center they are.

I think it would be better to use zone border cards just like in ACG's Mage Wars Portability Project. This way, zone sizes can be adjusted midgame to make room for all the cards that need to fit in them, regardless of how close to the center they are. In fact, rather than using one enormous round table, I think players should each have their own little minitables or desks. Players are not allowed to move their mage or any objects they control more than five zones away from their starting zones, nor are they allowed to cast spells onto targets more than five zones away from their starting zones. When a player is eliminated, their minitable is removed, and everyone scoots their chairs and tables in until all of the zones are touching. Then play resumes. This continues until there is only 1 or less Mages left in the game, or until time is called.

Every other player starts with an initiative marker. At the beginning of each round, the initiative markers move one seat to the right. There is no die rolling for initiative. Rather, initiative markers are randomly assigned based on where you are sitting. When a Mage dies while holding an initiative marker, that initiative marker is removed from the game at the end of the round. When a player's mage dies without holding an initiative marker, the initiative marker held by the player next to them who did not kill their mage is removed at the end of the round.

If a Mage is killed by both opponents simultaneously (due to upkeep damage, for instance), then that kill is shared between them. When this happens the player on the left gets initiative (since initiative can only pass one seat to the right at the beginning of the round)

The length of the game of course depends on the number of players. This means that there would need to be a player cap if and when this is played at conventions, depending on how much time is blocked out.

There are three winners: the player with the most Magekills, the player with the first Mage kill, and the last player remaining in the game.

Okay, so it didn't end up quite as much like Musical Chairs as I had originally thought. I realized that having a limit to where your objects can move was necessary, so that people don't constantly have to stand up and walk around to reach their cards. However, I realize this presents the problem of a Mage standing just out of reach even when they're within your range. I worry that such a mechanic can be abused. Thoughts?

[ACG]

Nice idea for a large scale game. There are a few issues that need to be addressed:

Players are not allowed to move their mage or any objects they control more than five zones away from their starting zones, nor are they allowed to cast spells onto targets more than five zones away from their starting zones. When a player is eliminated, their minitable is removed, and everyone scoots their chairs and tables in until all of the zones are touching.

What happens if another player has objects on a minitable belonging to a player who is then eliminated? Where do they go?

Every other player starts with an initiative marker. At the beginning of each round, the initiative markers move one seat to the right. There is no die rolling for initiative. Rather, initiative markers are randomly assigned based on where you are sitting. When a Mage dies while holding an initiative marker, that initiative marker is removed from the game at the end of the round. When a player's mage dies without holding an initiative marker, the initiative marker held by the player next to them who did not kill their mage is removed at the end of the round.

I don't think I understand how timing works in this variant. Does every player in the circle have a separate turn, or are there simultaneous turns of a sort? The former option leads to a tremendous amount of downtime, whereas the latter lead to some timing conflicts. Possible solutions:

1. Eclipse-Style simultaneous turns, where players opposite each other at the table (and hence too far apart to affect each other) go at the same time. Can run into problems if one turn marker catches up to the other one, though.

2. Alternating turns, where every other player goes during the same phase, and then wait until all such players have gone. If mages can't do anything 5 zones away, this should work, although it still has a considerable downtime problem, since the game for everybody only progresses at the speed of the slowest mage. This could be solved partially by instituting timed turns, I suppose.

[Sailor Vulcan]

Nice idea for a large scale game. There are a few issues that need to be addressed:

Players are not allowed to move their mage or any objects they control more than five zones away from their starting zones, nor are they allowed to cast spells onto targets more than five zones away from their starting zones. When a player is eliminated, their minitable is removed, and everyone scoots their chairs and tables in until all of the zones are touching.

What happens if another player has objects on a minitable belonging to a player who is then eliminated? Where do they go?

Every other player starts with an initiative marker. At the beginning of each round, the initiative markers move one seat to the right. There is no die rolling for initiative. Rather, initiative markers are randomly assigned based on where you are sitting. When a Mage dies while holding an initiative marker, that initiative marker is removed from the game at the end of the round. When a player's mage dies without holding an initiative marker, the initiative marker held by the player next to them who did not kill their mage is removed at the end of the round.

I don't think I understand how timing works in this variant. Does every player in the circle have a separate turn, or are there simultaneous turns of a sort? The former option leads to a tremendous amount of downtime, whereas the latter lead to some timing conflicts. Possible solutions:

1. Eclipse-Style simultaneous turns, where players opposite each other at the table (and hence too far apart to affect each other) go at the same time. Can run into problems if one turn marker catches up to the other one, though.

2. Alternating turns, where every other player goes during the same phase, and then wait until all such players have gone. If mages can't do anything 5 zones away, this should work, although it still has a considerable downtime problem, since the game for everybody only progresses at the speed of the slowest mage. This could be solved partially by instituting timed turns, I suppose.

If there are objects on an eliminated player's minitable, they are automatically moved to the nearest zone on your own minitable.

Alternating. Initiative passes to the right each round, and at the start of the game every other player has initiative. When a player with initiative is eliminated, their initiative is passed to whoever eliminated them. If that is uncertain, because of an elimination by upkeep damage from sources controlled by different players for instance, then all the players that could have been responsible for that player elimination roll for initiative to decide the turn order specifically between them.

Initiative does not stack, of course. The initiative roll is only used to decide initiative and turn order, not for determining who eliminated a mage. If a mage dies from upkeep damage from sources controlled by different opponents, those opponents all share the magekill.