T&T balancing strategies, scenario play, and related discussion

So I've had T&T about a month now and have been playing it on a weekly basis. It's proven quite popular with my local sci-fi and fantasy -oriented gaming group, who were already casual fans of WoG. A number of them have now bought into T&T and/or expanded their collection of WoG planes with an eye towards playing more. That's great!

I was interested in discussing a couple things:

1. How are you balancing your games? Meaning, how many tripods to how many airplanes, and how do you account for the different capabilities of the tripods and planes?
   
   
2. Which scenarios are you playing? This is tightly related to the first question, as we've found that, depending on the scenario played, the balance can swing pretty wildly one way or another.

Our experiences:
We pretty quickly found that the objective based scenarios - like "First Spark" and similar, where the Tripods are tasked with destroying objectives and then walking off the Earthling side of the board - were extremely difficult for planes to win, even against a single Locust or similar. We found the Tripods could basically just ignore the planes, focus on destroying the objectives, and usually manage without too much difficulty to get off the board without much issue.

We were using the objective placement as described in the scenario description, on a playing surface consisting of two official WoG mats placed long-edge to long-edge (so roughly 90cm x 90cm, the size proposed in the scenario rules).

The resulting games were sort of non-interactive, in the sense that the planes were desperately trying to attack the Tripods, but despite causing some damage, mostly just flailed away as the Tripods easily walked between objectives and destroyed them without trouble before sauntering (scuttling?) off the board.

Our solution (so far): we then tried a simple dogfight scenario, where there was 1 objective per Tripod, with the objective not counting for victory conditions but serving instead as a recharge point for the Tripods. The goal for each side (Earthlings and Martians) was to destroy the other side completely.

We balanced the Tripods' sum of hitpoints + energy against a corresponding quantity of airplane hitpoints.

Example: if the Tripods used a Squid (12 HP / 6 Energy) and a Cuttlefish (20 HP / 10 Energy), we'd balance against roughly the same HP total for airplanes, so roughly 45-50 HP (i.e. in a recent game, a Sopwith Snipe 16 HP, a Fokker E.V 15 HP, and an Albatros D.III 14 HP)

Obviously, this is abstracting a lot, and is just our attempt at getting to rough parity in a scenario where mutual annihilation is the goal. In a scenario where the Tripods were attempting to destroy objectives and walk off the board, I'd expect you'd need even more airplanes to balance out the game (i.e. to be able to inflict enough damage fast enough to reasonably have a chance for the planes to win).

How are the rest of you getting on? Are you using scenarios in the book, are you creating your own, and above all, how are you figuring out balance?

I have tried two W.W.1 planes per Locust and that was not enough but I did not try using rockets.

Finding a balance is tricky. I've played very little but from what I've seen so far I'd be looking at a 3 on 1 minimum as a working number to give the Humies a reasonable chance of a win. Someone with more experience may have a better feel for it though.

Hi,

Very interested in your balancing strategies but I think it is worth noting that two seater planes that can shoot backwards certainly have an advantage against tripods so maybe having a second gunner should add X amount of points to the total. Quite what I am not sure!

Hedeby should be in his element then!
Rob.;)

6 pts vs a Mk I
Single seater 2 pts
Rocket armed 3 pts
2 seater 3 pts

Balance has swung back and forth on my kitchen table.

At first the tripods seemed way powerful, but now, they seem weaker.

The main scenario I try to get good balance on is Hunters and Hunted. (Basically two tripods on three planes.) Here is where I landed so far. Let me know if you are seeing the same thing.

2 Scarab/Cuttlefish vs 3 A firing planes.

2 Locust/Squid vs 3 B firing planes.

I find you have go low with planes and fill the gap with pilot skills. Because I have the retail version, so no Martian skills.

Let me know if this what you are seeing too.

Just quickly, are you saying that the scarab and cuttlefish are the same in terms of balance? In my opinion the cuttlefish is superior on almost every way.

My short answer to that is not exactly, but roughly.

More importantly, I find the biggest balancing act to be in the A Deck. It is just so darn consistent comparitively. Something I never thought I would say after my first few games of WoG where my opponent seemed to have half the deck and I got shot down in three shots LOL.

But the way to balance it is the heavy heat ray. It allows you deplete Zeros before they can even get their first shot.

But when you have just the medium heat ray, you do better to let planes get close to you to mitigate zeros. But against A guns, it is just too risky imo.

I'm not 100% sure but this is where our games have led us so far.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by surfimp

How are the rest of you getting on? Are you using scenarios in the book, are you creating your own, and above all, how are you figuring out balance?

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Hi Steve,
Thanks for starting this thread!

As far as i could tell so far Tripods are more than hps and energy points.

If i were to assign scores id put them between 150 and 250 points roughly.

They feel like a mix of bombers/behemots and ground objectives.

We have had decent results mixing one or two good A planes with good manouvering decks escorting one plane with rockets.

Rockets, or bombs, seem to be quite necessary to shorten the time neded to stop the Tripods.

I feel is quite realistic that it takes time for machinegun fire to take down an armored/shielded target like tripods.

I am still experimenting and would love to have your experience after trying the following scenario if you feel like:

- 1 or 2 planes escorting 1 plane with rockets
- One MK.1 trying to destroy one objective and then leave the table
- If the rocket armed plane score a significant but not serious/fatal hit the Tripod will add destroying the rocket equipped plane as secondary objective
- Variation: if owning only the T&T base set make use of some trenches and guns to protect/distract the Tripod while the plane with rockets try to stop it to balance things

Looking forward to hear the group feedback and maybe get to assign some point scores to the tripods .

Ciao,
Francesco