Mech Hunter was the quick play game at origins this year. Since I didnt want to spend my entire weekend playing nationals, and the fact that I didnt want to go through sealed to get there, I spent some time playing this Mech Hunter. For the benifit of those that weren't there or didnt get the chance to play Ill lay it out for you.

Four players per table. Each player purchases a single booster. The game is played on a heroclix play mat. The bold lines on the map are considered blocking, all other features are ignored. Each player opens their booster, and plays with the mech only. All the other pieces are placed into a pool of units in the center of the table. The player with the lowest point cost mech is the first player. Starting with the first player they select a piece and place it 12 squares away from their corner of the map. Placement proceeds around the table till all pieces are placed. The goal is to eliminate as many pieces as you can. You keep what you kill. Ranges and movement are measured in squares. All SEs are turned off. If you have a avalible target you must shoot it. If you move when you have a valid target you take two clicks. Very quick game. The winner is generally the person with the unique and longest range. And as it turned out the fellowship was generally the person who didnt kill much.

Which is where things got shady. There was no prize for coming in first other than the pieces they recieved. The only LE was given to the fellowship winner. Good in theory, bad in practice. None of the games I played in had the players vote for fellowship. It was mainly the BM choice. So what ended up happening was people hoping for a forestrymech and loading up the big mechs on the table with alot of targets. The expression I heard for the event was if you want to win, suck out loud. The worse you "lost" the better your chances of getting a LE.

Now I saw alot of giving piece to new players or just trading to get the pieces people wanted, there was cetainly alot of good sportsmanship in the game hall. However there was really no incentive to be the winner. It was more like buying a booster for a 25% chance of getting a LE.

I think this format would be a great thing for the release of a new set. Where no one has any of the pieces in a set and would want to win to get the lions share of the pieces, with a LE to the fellowship winner would be a remarkable was to introduce a set. With a set that has been out for awhile and people have a lot of its just not that great. If there had been a prize for both the winner and for fellowship, in my opinion it would have made it better.

Sounds fun to me. exept the keep what you kill thing. definatly should be an LE for both prizes. but if its just playing around at home, keep what you kill is good...

<mash>

It was an ok format. Certainly they played VERY quick. Actually I found that the 'winner' was generally a person who got a very SHORT range mech. That way they get to pick and choose what targets they want to go after and can move at will towards whatever target they want without having to take damage. The first one I played one of the other players pulled the Merc 'shieldturion' (no ranged combat whatsoever). If you pick something with long range and someone pulls a Behemoth (out of the 3 MechHunters I played EVERY single game someone pulled one of those darn beasts) ... then you usually either have to either take 2 damage and get behind a wall so you can't see it to shoot it so you can go after other prey ... or else you are forced to go after it (and unless you're real lucky you'll end up getting wiped out as a result).

As far as the prize giving I didn't see any problems with it. I only won Fellowship 1 out of 3 times and didn't get many overly good pieces from the kill-n-keep (got 2 DF ATVs but that was about it).

What I was disappointed with was that was about the ONLY event you could play in all weekend aside from nationals. There was a dropship event and I think there was 1 draft and 1 or 2 constructed ... but it woulda been nice if there had been 2 or 3 normal constructed events each day. That would have given players a chance to try out their favorite armies (or army ideas they wanted to see would work or not) against a lot of new people they've never played before. Hopefully they'll have more next year.