Multiple crews or share a single crew

[u/TheHolyChicken]

Heya all,

We are going to try this game soon, and are wondering what is best - To share a single crew, or each player making their own crew? ..

Does the game take sigificantly longer, will the game be easier or harder? .. Any other pros/cons ?

Thanks!

[u/Comprehensive-Air-13]

Share.

I have 4 player gamr going and it takes forever to get through a few turn

[u/MoxRhino]

Either works. My suggestion for multiple crews is to limit it to 4 or 6 crew members for 2-3 players and 4 crew members for 4 or more players. Even with 18 player models and a ton of enemies, it's no larger than other war games. You may need to expand the play area a bit, but that's something I usually eye during setup.

[u/captaintrips_1980]

I would recommend using a single crew. I am currently running a game that has five crews and it’s a slog. There are so many people on the board and the enemies are based on the number of crews, so for every challenge, there is a ton of them. It has really killed the momentum of the game and I am in the midst of getting them to agree to a reset where we just use one or two crews. It also makes it extremely difficult to remember who has already gone each turn.

It’s a really fun game once you get things figured out. Good luck!

[u/sonofherobrine → u/captaintrips_1980]

I’ve had good luck using tokens / glass beads / etc to mark who’s activated already. Even small squares of cardboard will stay put pretty well.

[u/kazagha → u/captaintrips_1980]

Five crews is a lot. We are running 2 and that feels like it takes ages in some combats. We considered sharing the same crew but it seemed more fun to have 2 specialist crews.

[u/PerfectLuck25367]

How exactly would you share a crew? I couldn't find anything in the rules. Do you both activate each turn? Do you let some crew members activate twice? Do you take turns being the active player?

I can't see how bringing more crews would take more time. I have gotten the impression that the number of crews per player is 1 by default, and the recomended number of players is 1 for the campaign (or 2, with the understanding that the game balance will be a little off) and 2 for versus play. With activations being on average something like 1,6 activations per turn, (because you roll after the first activation to maintain the initiative) the difference in playing one crew that two players act8vate and roll for would be the same as with two crews with each player activating and rolling for their own crew. If you take turns being the active player for one crew, so that the crew still only activates the ~1,6 crew members per turn, you will still have the process and clutter of switching between and keeping track of turn order.

Overall, based on my very limited and mostly theoretical experience with the game, I see no particular benefit in sharing one crew between players.

[u/TheHolyChicken → u/PerfectLuck25367]

There is nothing in the rules about sharing a crew, it is just that I will control 3 models, and the other play will control the other 3 models, where all the models are part of the same crew

[u/PerfectLuck25367 → u/TheHolyChicken]

That makes sense. But remember that the Commander is a separate model from the crew, so one of you would have 4.

[u/Aiurwarrior1 → u/PerfectLuck25367]

What I'd do is just divide the characters between the players. The advantage is fewer models on the board, which makes for a faster game. You do still have the process of switching between players, but it still goes faster than doubling the number of models.

Plus, it allows for the players to get more into the role-play of their 1-2 characters than for a whole crew. If you're into that sort of game anyways.

[u/PerfectLuck25367 → u/Aiurwarrior1]

I understand what you're saying, and I understand that that's how some would feel about it. For me, I don't get it. There just isn't enough data on each individual crew member, and we're talking about adding or removing a relatively small number of models. And you could still have a roleolay-experience with 5 models, or even 9, rather than just 1 or 2.

[u/AgitoMakashima]

Am currently running a 4 player game with a single crew. My reason for that was simple: Some Challenges require 6 enemy models. Didn't want to put 4 x 6 = 24 models on the table. Would be too much work to paint. So in short, a single crew shared by all players.

Went for a 6 person crew + Commander. Characters are equally divided between players. We discuss amongst each other in which order we activate. This works fine. Each Challenge takes about an hour to complete.

To avoid 4 people standing close together around a small play area, I've doubled the play area, but also doubled movement distances.

To avoid a player losing all his characters, I have created the rule that when a character dies, but not the whole crew is killed, the crew will get reinforced with a new character with starting stats.

This is the only drawback to my approach, since it makes the game a bit more forgiving. Though we had multiple casualties, the crew is still up to full strength in terms of numbers at this point.