“If I wanted to play a one on one game then you may as well be playing a computer game than a PBM.”
Notice the use of the word I at the start of the sentence. Whilst I conceed I mixed the personal pronoun a bit here, I think it is clear that I’m saying it about myself than other people in general.
Oh and to make it clear as well I personally am not big on one on one Computer games either or 1 on 1 board games. Its a personal preference thing here.
Gavin
Oops, Humbug is back. Always suspected he lived in Silicon Valley.
[i]Choose 2 nations from 1650 module, but amend them so they are equivalently similar…
eg Har and Cor… Battle of the Pirates/Merchants…
make the Har characters a bit stronger.
make the Cor pop centres a bit stronger.
Also have slightly more balanced starting armies/navies.[/i]
I think this is the way forward here. I agree with Ed with Michael’s updates. It’s really easy to create one of these if you don’t allow outside of XX/YY region (to be defined but pretty simple). Navy battle is possible. If you want flexibility you can have the Harad have 40 points to spend on characters (no agent above 40, no stealth) and Corsair to have upgrade any two Pcs by one size, and any one PC to have the fortification upgraded by one size. That would be simple enough. Ideally if we don’t delete the rest of the game map then it’s simple to have a game that we can create a-new (unlike Bofa and UW which use a template game) so that you get some variability with set-ups.
As to how long, well depends on how much of the work you guys do… 
Clint
Hey Ed, I live in silicon valley, but I don’t know Humbug.
Hey Humbug, if you do live in Silicon valley, send me an email. There’s one other player who lives in the East Bay. Maybe we could all get together for lunch? And if anyone else lives here, speak up!
cheers,
Dave
allergic to silicon and valleys. ed mills sounds familiar - do i owe you money?
guys
Interesting idea and could provide a bit of variety. As Clint says I think you would have to define a pretty limited area rather than the full map else many games could last a very long time. Simply finding who your opponent is [if using 1650 nations but not stating that at the start could take a few turns]. With FA nations starting anywhere that could be an even bigger job. Also a sharply reduced camp limit to mark the fact there are 2 rather than 25 nations. The map limit could reduce the number of options available as a bit difficult to have say Dwarves, Sinda or Easterlings let along their opponents without having a very large slice of the 1650 map.
You might also have to ban the Noldor from any such game as they have too broad a range of characters. Possibly the Sinda or DarkLs approach their range but wouldn’t bet on them against the Noldor. Don’t think anyone else could live with them, except possibly a Corsairs smash and grab.
Never played a FA game, so can’t really say on how their nations compare.
How would you handle items in such a scenario. If you had two FP nations say would evil aligned items be unusable or would that be changed to allow their use?
Personally, being heavily involved in my 1st grudge game, I don’t have the time at the moment, especially as the illusion known as RL is very hectic, but definitely a tempting idea.
Steve
[i]Never played a FA game, so can’t really say on how their nations compare.
How would you handle items in such a scenario. If you had two FP nations say would evil aligned items be unusable or would that be changed to allow their use?[/i]
1000 we’d used regional set-ups next to each other and you’d have maybe a buffer region inbetween. That would be the extent of the map (ie no outside of it allowed). Items would be the same as normal, and DS vs FP nation would be fine, if it’s DS v DS or FP v FP we have to put in a dummy nation, which is doable just takes a little longer to sort out.
So if anyone wants to try one of these that’s fine with us - I’m happy to experiment with it.
Clint
It seems that the FA option is most preferred. Here’s a proposal for how to set it up:
SideA: Northern Mordor & Rhun
SideB: Southern Mordor & Khand
Additional Regions in game: Eastern Mordor + hex 3424
2 FA nations vs. 2 FA nations
No +20 K/A SNA
all other SNAs allowed.
Each player may choose one allegiance and both of their nations must be of that allegiance. (i.e. to get the racial types & character bonuses you want)
It is Middle Earth and multi-player strategy (on the order of 25 rather than 2 or 6 or some other small number) that draws me to this game, not a desire for an even match-up. There are plenty of other games with an arbitrary setting that can accomplish that. By all means, enjoy yourself if a module is created to satisfy your cage-match scenario. I just can’t see myself paying for it on a turn-fee basis.