I think we need some kind of list of rules or an official gameplay agreement like Ridgewood and Waterbridge had. The rules should concern ONLY things that can be enforced. Perhaps we can start another topic on this if there's enough interest. Anyway, here's my opinion on some subjects that have been brought up...
Bringing Stuff In
scottthewaterwarrior wrote:
As far as carrying stuff to the field, if we can't make it in one trip then we have too much stuff. Next year I plan on laying out everything I want to bring for a days battle the night before including who will carry what.
This issue is battlefield-dependent in my opinion. I hope you all agree. If we are camping at the battlefield this will not be an issue. If the battlefield is like Dug Hill and you have a parking lot and a pavilion reasonably close to the action I don't think it's much of an issue. Where we get in trouble is when we hike in a long ways to a battlefield, or when we have to drive to multiple battlefields during a war. In those situations I completely agree that we need to only bring as much as we can carry in at one time. That requires 2 things. First, the games list needs to be centered around the use of only 1 or 2 primaries. Second, everyone needs to layout their equipment the night before, as Scott suggested, and make sure they can carry it all at once.
Bed Time and Wake Up
scottthewaterwarrior wrote:7One things for sure though, we all need to go to bed earlier at these things. I know I have trouble playing when I stay up real late and I have even more problems with thinking straight. Not even counting the fact that we could have gotten an earlier start, if we hadn't stayed up so darn late we probably would have been more organized as our brains would have had more rest.
This varies from person to person. I could go all night if I had to. In fact, I like fighting, scouting, and hanging out late in to the night. But, everyone like me needs to respect people like Scott and make sure we are being active far away from people who are sleeping. That brings me to the second part of this issue - waking up. Not getting enough sleep the night before is NOT an excuse for showing up more than just a little late. DX and I were at Legend Park for about an hour before Scott arrived one day. I don't know if this was because of miscommunication, lack of sleep, or something out, but this is not acceptable. I'm not pointing the finger at Scott or anyone else, who's to blame doesn't matter as it's over now, but this should not happen again. In the future I think teams should be held responsible for this in rivalry games. If your player is late you must suffer a handicap. The later you are the more severe the handicap and it should be a team handicap because there is no reason that 4,5,6+ people can't get their teammate to the right place at the right time for anything other than a medical emergency. The same handicap should apply to non rivalry games, but the handicap should only apply to the player who is late. The handicap rule shouldn't apply to people who have said ahead of time that they hope to arrive at the war at a certain time and are driving from out of state, it would only apply to people who are already there and are late in getting to the next battlefield or late getting to the battlefield on time in the morning.
Time Limits
SEAL wrote:As for your comment on standard OHS games, I agree with you that time limits should be longer (unless the teams start within sight of each other), but I don't really like the idea of putting a time limit on searching. Maybe some of you don't feel this way, but I think it's kind of fun searching for the enemy, trying to predict what they're going to do and figuring out how to ambush them.
Yeah, I'm not too keen on placing time limits on searching. Sometime it's ok to ask everyone if they are cool with extending the time of a game. Just whatever is best for the fighting. I am all for longer OHS games as well, but this is again, battlefield dependent. Some battlefields, eg Saint John's Woods are better suited to this than other battlefields. I am more concerned about the over all time spent fighting, the amount of time spent on each round is important to me, but less so than decreasing the amount of time getting from one place to another.
Weapon Restrictive Games
I think these games do a lot to mix things up, but they HAVE to fit the battlefield. If you have to hike in to the battlefield then it's not a good idea unless everyone can carry 2 guns each, eg 1 anything primary and 1 BBT. Restrictive rounds are also ok if the host can cache the weapons on site the day before, eg MOAB. Which brings us to the next subject. I also agree that the best HTL and or attack/defend rounds are ones in which the defense has either less people or less powerful blasters.
Hosting and Decision Making
Reread everything DX just said. Ultimately I think it's best that the host has final say in what rounds we are playing. It helps us make decisions quicker. If a host wants a cohost to decide this than that is fine too, but people need to be able to not only make quick decisions but to get everyone together and ready to fight instead of standing around the water faucet talking and throwing out ideas for 15 minutes. I think there should be a handicap on any player who takes longer than x amount of time to get ready between rounds. Something reasonable, not like 5 minutes for everyone to fill up, but maybe 10 or 15.