Ok, wanted to do this on Sunday, and make it more complete, but such is the way of things.
Three players and I attempted to play out the Placement Trials, unfortunately time became an issue so here is what we managed to do and managed to learn:
I threw open clan selection to all of the 17 clans and those chosen were Jade Falcon, Fire Mandrill, Goliath Scorpion and Cloud Cobra. As the Cobras were chosen and to keep things simple we did not use unit abilities. We also decided not to use the weather options.
In order to keep things simple, we limited each player to a single trinary. Combat showed that three trinaries is probably better as repair costs alone can put a track winner into the hole SP-wise. Also, three trinaries would help eliminate the problem we had of the Falcons and Cobras rolling a light trinary and the Mandrills and Scorpions rolling heavy trinaries. Though we were able to balance the fights, I did have to bid away a medium mech in my first battle against a the Falcons.
Time limits ARE NECESSARY but a good time limit has to be determined. We set 30 minutes, but after it became obvious that was going to be too short we raised it to one hour. With the difference in trinary weights, only one fight reached the time limit, Scorpions-Cobras and that was one 5 points to 4, the lowest scoring game of the two round we finished. Granted we ran out of time because we had planned to play on the table top, but printer issues forced us to go with Megamek and we had to make sure we all had the right version.
Once those issues were taken care of it went very well. The point system encouraged players to be aggressive, with my group eclipsing their normal levels of aggressiveness. And this is a group who thinks "Forced Withdrawal" is really a suggestion.
The first round saw Falcons-Mandrills and Scorpions-Cobras, with the Mandrills and Scorpions winning. The Scorpions took it to the Mandrills and put a hurt on my Mandrills knocking me to the loser bracket just as we ran out of time. In the second round loser bracket game, the Falcons beat the Cobras in another close match.
Sorry I do not have more. I am hoping to get a bigger group together and finishing the match. Since we will likely megamek it again, I will push for the full three trinaries. Rolling them takes less time than selecting mechs for an average game.
