the nonprofit show. We're really excited you're here for another episode and we have a very special guest today. Jared Ransom, the nonprofit nerd, is with us in studio to talk about something that we talk about and talk around all the time and that is grant writing. But we're going to approach us in a different way. We're going to actually talk about how one might go ahead, go about getting in to the grant writing business. So I can't wait to dig into this for so many reasons. But before we do, I want to make sure we do a little bit of housekeeping. Again, I'm Julia Patrick, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. Jared Ransom, the nonprofit nerd here with me today, CEO of the Raven Group. We want to thank all of our presenting sponsors. Without them, we would not be here. Blue Morang, American Nonprofit Academy, fundraising academy, nonprofit nerd, your part-time controller, nonprofit atlas, nonprofit thought leader, and staffing boutique. These are the folks that join us day in and day out to help the nonprofit show come to you. And you can come to you on Roku, YouTube, Amazon Fire TV, the meal. And as Jared always likes to say, but wait, there's more. We are now in a podcast format moving through all of our daily episodes and putting those files up. I just got a note yesterday that we've had 750 downloads in this short period of time. So really, really exciting. But what's even more exciting is Jared Ransom has allowed us to take her brain, open it up, crack it open, and have her tchink, tchink, tchink, tchink, dump out all those things that she has in there. That's right. Bang on your head. It's in there. It's really interesting conversation. And I can't think of a better person to talk about this with because you are that person that was a nonprofit professional that moved into having your own grant writing business. Is that correct? That's right. I started the Raven Group in 2009. I was a reduction in force during that economic crisis. I was a chief development officer working for a $21 million operating budget. I was asked to lay my team off. Six months later, I got the hatchet, had no idea what I was going to do next. But I knew that as a nonprofit leader, professional Julia, that I had a lot of skill sets in my toolbox. So I used that opportunity to become a professional grant writer. You know, I created my business, as I said, the Raven Group, and really started as a grant writer, been known as a grant writer here in our community. I no longer offer this specific service anymore. So I've shifted into teaching people during this great resignation or the reshuffle. Maybe you're thinking about a side hustle, or maybe you're looking at that long term where you want to take the tools from your resources, your toolbox and say, you know what, I do want to make my own schedule, and I do want to work from home all the time, or Barbados or Aruba or wherever you might want to go, you can take this business with you and you can scale it to the size that's right for you and your business. So I'm really excited to share this topic. You know, it's so interesting, Jared.  And a lot of times a conversation goes like this. Yeah, Julia, we've got such a great program. If we could just get somebody doing grants for us, we'd be good to go. Like A, grants are going to solve everything, and B, we just need to find somebody. And a lot of times there's a sense that it's just somebody to do the work. It's not a professional. Like I can find, you know, my retired mom or somebody on the board who has some extra time. And I'm always like, oh, this is just not, this is bigger than that.  And so I always put up a photo of a monkey because it's like, even a monkey can do this. Like, no, we can all read and write. Most of us can read and write, but there is a science and there is an art to being a successful professional grant writer. I love it. I love that you say that. So first and foremost, I've got to ask the question, can you make money being a grant writer? And I'm saying, like somebody who's working from home or working in a co-working environment, can you do this? Capital YES exclamation point. Without a doubt, I've done it. I said, you know, I started my business 2009. I scaled to a place where I actually had multiple consultants or contractors working underneath me, was making six figures in my business, was really, you know, grateful to have the support of these individuals, mostly women, actually all women. And then they were able to go up on their own. So you get to set your prices. I do actually recommend that you do competitive, you know, cost, not a low ball. I will say when I started, it was about $40 an hour. When I got really involved with other professional grant writers, I realized that not only was I doing myself a disservice, I was doing the role, the career, a disservice by undercutting my peers to a place that was just unprofessional. So I learned that along the way, right? You really do want to be in that competitive range. And it depends on your community. But I will definitely say $40 is way too little. And I learned that quickly by really networking within my peers, having that rapport and that respect to learn, I'm not doing myself justice, but moreover, I'm not doing the sector justice by low balling at such a such a rate. So Capital YES exclamation point, you can absolutely make money as a grant writer. And again, this conversation is specific to non profit grant writing. Okay, sure. So then let's dig down a little bit deeper. And that is, you know, the question like, so we figured out you can get, you can get a good wage, you can create a business. How are you getting paid? And I, I'm not just saying, Oh, my credit card to check, I'm saying, do you take a commission? Do you get paid up front? Do you get paid a percentage of, you know, completion? Or do you get paid throughout the piece of work? You mentioned an hourly rate. I mean, wow, there's a lot to think about. And if you could kind of help guide us on that, there's a lot to think about. And I think it also depends on you as the professional what works for you, your budget, your finances.  So really taking this whole 20 years of, of experience, you know, packaging into a program and a course to teach you how to do all of this for what's right for you truly. So I did start honestly, as hourly, I then moved to project base, you know, I will do a grant one grant for X amount of dollars, I will do three grants for X amount of dollars. And then I moved into a retainer. So I was working monthly with specific clients. And I would set up to say I will produce X amount of written submitted grants, X amount of like reporting compliance issues. So the grant management piece. Wow. Okay. Prospecting. So I was also prospecting for them. So it was really more than a grant writer. It was really that grant manager for them. And there's multiple ways hourly project retainer. And I prefer the retainer. But you know, if you're not good at tracking your hours, and you might be giving one client a whole heap more than what you intended to, you might want to start off honestly doing the hourly. Now, Julia, you mentioned commission, right? We talk about this all the time. AFP, we refer to them, the Association of Fundraising Professionals, anytime. And it happens a lot. Someone asked me, how can I pay a grant writer? Surely I can pay commission, right? Because what if they don't get the grant? Grants are very competitive. And there's a 30% national award rate. So there's, you know, that's a big number right there. Relationships matter. So you really do want to make sure that you're doing the best for the organization. That's why prospecting these opportunities really need some attention. But never commission, never bonus, never anything based off of the ask amount. And again, I always reference the Association of Fundraising Professionals because I subscribe to those, you know, ethics and just best practices for professional fundraisers. So I'm going to back up and you, I've got to ask you this question. You, I've heard you say this 30% award rate. I've got to ask you, how many clients that you've worked with or nonprofits have any idea about that number? Very little. I will say when I stopped offering the service, I was at 60%. And so that exceeded the national average, it doubled the national average. Probably you're thinking, well, how did you do this? Right? There's a lot of strategy behind it. I have blogs and other articles about this, but it really comes down to that return on relationship. It comes down to prospecting the right proposals and the right applications. Two, is this the right time? Are we the right fit? Right. And so really, it doesn't mean you're doing the shotgun approach and you're applying to any and all opportunities because that's actually going to take your average down. So it might mean that you're applying to less, but you're asking for more. So in terms of that, this makes me think of something else. It seems like you're starting your business and you're trying to take on clients and build those relationships with the nonprofits before you ever even go out to the funders. And it seems like there must be a lot of prep work. Like for example, my question kind of goes towards that first grant where you're trying to get all of these data points and narratives that you're going to then apply to other grants. So is there something where as a grant writer, you're going to structure up something in the beginning to get somebody ready or does that... Or so smart. Yes. So I, again, this nonprofit nerd school, I've designed all of these resources that you need, but this grant checklist is what you're referring to. And it's part of the onboarding that I teach, but it really is, here's all the documents and information that I will need, case for support, budget, all of the different program narratives, who are the key staff members, your IRS documentation, your audited financials. Like there's a punch list, right? And often used, every time you apply, most grants are done online now from a portal. So I have a little folder that I would have for each of my clients. I would have all of their attachments in this folder. So you just draw upon that, but you ask for these key information pieces, board roster, that's another one. You ask for these key information pieces once you have a signed contract.  And before you actually hit that submit button, but you're getting all of this preparation as you just acknowledge, you know, done ahead of time. And then you're really delivering on those proposals, behalf of your client. So it kind of seems like your first grant, your first client or not your first client, but a new client, that first grant is probably going to take you so much more time, energy, and focus than ensuing grants, right? Because you're gathering all that stuff up. I would say 30 to 45 days that that is stretch, you know, but it really depends on how well is the organization organized and able to get this to you. So really looking at that maturity of an organization, do they have this readily available? Now it might be tricky at the end of a fiscal year when you're looking for those financials in the 990, but always go back to the previous year, always get, you know, that information and you can catch up from there. So I would say 30 to 45 days, but you can absolutely fast track that. You can start looking at the grant proposals prospecting. That's one of the first things to do as a grant writer. If you're offering the prospecting as well, I highly recommend it. Such an interesting thing because all of these things that I'm hearing you say, it seems like you as somebody who might want to start your own grant writing business, you need to know, but more importantly, your prospective clients or existing clients need to know. Do you think it's fair to say that there's a disconnect between what goes on behind this? And and do you find that nonprofits that are going to hire or contract with a grant writer even can fully understand what's going on? At a certain level, they do start up organizations. This might be so brand new to them, Julia, that they're just not really understanding some of the other questions that I ask and you often need to know as that grant writer is who are the top funders? Who are the top donors in your organization? I've had clients before say, that's very private. You know, I don't know if we should share that with you. Again, I go back, you know, donor bill of rights, code of ethics with the Association of Fundraising Professionals. You know, we do not work magic as grant writers. We are here as your partner as part of your team. And it is it is just is so important that we work together and that that data exchange is given. So I'm fascinated by this because again, I keep going back to all the conversations I have. And I will continue to have these conversations about that our our friend with if only we had a grant writer, you know, we need to hire one or we need to contract one or we need to train up somebody that's already doing a whole bunch of other stuff. I'm I'm wondering how you as as a person would go out and actually start attracting these clients, because it seems to me, Jared, that this is a huge opportunity for anybody who wanted to work from home or maybe control their own business. I mean, huge need for the service, huge opportunity across the nation. I've only worked within the US. I've not done grants outside of the US. It's a little different with NGOs. So I really stick to the to the nonprofits registered within the United States. Huge opportunity when I when I ended the service line, Julia, almost daily, I was receiving requests to take on a new client, of course, right, as soon as I decide to stop something, that's when the floodgates open up. Now I'm still receiving about a request a month. The words gotten out that I don't do it any longer, but I still do refer out to individuals. So there is such a great demand and such a great need grants should be, and this is the another statistic that you know, and I've said before, I know, should only make up no more than 30% of your nonprofits operating budget. So this means 30% of every nonprofit should be made up of grants, awards, and dollars revenue, right? So that is just a piece of every nonprofits diversified revenue model. If it's not, it should be. Sometimes they're much more dependent and it could be 50%, 60%. That's very risky. It could be 15%, which is okay, but you can still kind of move up to that 30%. So again, every nonprofit really needs to be the recipient of grants. So what how many are registered in the US, Julia? 1.8 million. We got it. So that need is high. It's out there. I also believe you can do it from anywhere. I've had clients that say, we really want someone on staff or we need someone sitting here in our office. Well, guess what? Thank you, COVID-19. That has definitely changed the way that we do business. I can absolutely write grants for someone in any part of the country, you know, as long as I have my grant checklist, I have their information. We have, you know, ongoing meetings. So this is very doable. You do not have to be in the office, sit in a cubicle. You don't even have to be in the same country.  Have fun, do it. That's exactly why this business model is so perfect for the individual looking for a change. And I know there's, you know, we talked a lot about the resignation, the reshuffle. So many people really, you know, prioritizing what is important to them. How do they want to spend their time? So if this is of interest, I say, really think about it. So let me ask you a little bit more about that, because one of the things that you talk about, and you have spoken about this from the get-go is that return on relationship. And a lot of times we think, oh, you know, this, the grant writer can just be somebody sitting in a cubicle writing away, filling out the forms, engaging in the portals, where they give you somebody that's more of a strategic partner in talking about what needs to be going on and working with funders and all that. It just seems to me like they're two levels. And is that a good observation or is that off? I would say there's two levels. There's definitely the churn and burn, the person that will write the grants and really no more, no less. Maybe they don't do reporting. Maybe they don't help with compliance. Maybe they don't prospect. For me, what I love, and again, I started doing grant writing when I had already really developed my relationships in the community. So I brought a tremendous value to my clients because I also brought those natural relationships that I had been working and establishing across my own professional career. But what I advise anyone to do is if you don't have these relationships, you work with the organization that you're representing to build these relationships. That also helps that 30% of award rate increase. Again, relationships, relationships, relationships. So, you know, it really is about creating those conversations for opportunity.  Every single one of them says, pick up the phone and call me. That's right, they do. They're always, it always amazes me that they're almost like begging people to call them. They're not scary people. I think they've been like, you know, created as this big, hairy monster that, oh my gosh, we cannot call them. Help, you know, they want you to call them. They want to develop these relationships. They really do, because their purpose is to give the money out. So let me ask you this then.  And this is kind of like a two-parter. If you're just writing grants, working with nonprofits, what's a logical, manageable number of clients that you could, that you could have with one person? That's a loaded question. I know, it's hard. It really depends. How much do you want to work? What else is on your plate?  So she's probably looking at two clients, I would say. There was times that I personally had five, right? That's a heavy load. That's a very, personally, that was a heavy load. You know, within my consulting business, when I had my subcontractors with me, we probably had about 30 and 35, but at different levels, again, like we might not have been writing for all, all of them, but we could have been prospecting or we could have been reporting, like just different levels of engagement. So it really depends on how much do you want to put on your plate? Right. I started my business in 2009, really committed as a single mom, being the most involved parent possible. So flexibility was important to me, freedom was important to me, travel important to me. I wanted to pick my son up from school. I wanted to drop him off. I wanted to pick him up if he was sick, and I wanted to go on field trips with him. So it really depends on how you want to manage your time as to how many clients you probably want to take on. Let me ask you one last question. And this time has just like flown by. You mentioned this the top of that the show. And this is such an important part about grant management and reporting out and compliance. How many grant writers do you think actually become a part of that process in that discussion? When I look at the landscape, it seems like that is we are falling short on that, that we are not as a sector really working that line of service. If you will customer service to our grantors. Yeah, and if we're not, we are falling short because that is our due diligence. We have the right responsibility and contractual obligation truly to stay in compliance. Again, I do know of grant writers that really just do that turn and burn and that's okay. That's what they do. But I do think that it's their responsibility to make sure that the contact of the organization then manages the rest of the grant right for me. I like to track all of that because then I could say, guess what, I've taken my award rate for my clients from 30 to 60%. We increased our ask amount by, you know, 50%. Therefore, we're not writing 12 grants at $5,000. We're writing five at $25,000 and above. So again, really looking at those metrics. I definitely did it as a business owner and so those analytics were really important to me.  So it's important to stay in compliance. It's definitely important to have that grant management and reporting. But whether it's you as the grant writer or the agency, you know, itself that that contact there, either way, it has to get done. Okay, one last question. What is the profile like the social profile of somebody who's going to take this risk? You know, it's interesting because you're such an extrovert and not just on camera.  Yes. I'm telling you, I get so much greed for that.  How do you manage to have that personality trait and be somebody that's sitting quietly writing? I mean, is that a conflict? Does that work? Can you be both? What kind of person should be looking? Yeah, it really depends on the person. You know, it's great for introverts as well, kind of that social profile, because you are in front of your computer, you're often researching, citing materials. You know, my undergrad is mass communication. So I really love the writing concept of it. I really love pulling together that narrative. As an extrovert, though, I found my ways to connect with my clients either in person over Zoom. I was doing Zoom before the pandemic. So, you know, really looking at that as part of my business model, being involved in board meetings so that you can listen and hear, and then also networking with peers. That was a huge opportunity for me. Like I said earlier in this episode, you know, I was charging way too less. And I thought I was only doing that for myself. But I realized the damage I was doing for my peers. And so having that network community was really important to me. And it was my outlet, you know, for socialization, but also to learn and to develop. Plus, it's a great way to do referrals, because, you know, if you set your niche on a market, and you get a prospect in a market that doesn't align with yours, now you have someone to pass it off to you, or someone's plural. And I did that all the time. Well, I think this is just a really cool thing that you've taken this amount of knowledge. Talk to us a little bit about how you have structured this for somebody who's watching who might be like, wow, this could be something for me. I can see a fit. How do you start this with the Nonprofit Nerd School? We're on how to start. Thank you, Julia. So, nonprofitnerdschool.com. If you want to share that slide, and people can take a look at that website, there's three different ways you can work with me on starting, building, scaling, and profiting from your non-profit grant writing business. So, online, in-person, small group, in-person, one-on-one, those two will absolutely fast track you to success. It's limited, but it is by far the highest touch experience of those private, they're semi-private, actually five individuals per course. And then one-on-one is another option or online. So, I'm really excited about this. Again, I started my business in 2009. I'm now a teenager, 13 years of doing this. And to empower other people, particularly women, that are looking to get back into the workforce, or you're looking at retirement, maybe you're going through a divorce. There's so many changes, but I'm here to help you and walk you through it, to teach you the things that I did wrong, so you don't have to play in that space. I love it. Well, nonprofitnerdschool.com. Check her out. I mean, for those of you that are with us day in and day out, Jared has just this amazing mind and is such a nationally recognized leader in our sector. So, I can't imagine anybody more fabulous to learn from. And just hearing you talk makes me want to do this.  I'd love to have you. Can you imagine? I have enough on my plate, but I know the value of it, and I just see it. I see it as such an incredibly positive thing. So, again, thank you, Jared, our ransom nonprofit nerd joining me, Julia Patrick, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. For another episode of the Nonprofit Show, we want to make sure to express our gratitude for all of our sponsors who are with us day in and day out. Bloomerang American Nonprofit Academy, your part-time controller, nonprofit nerd, Fundraising Academy, Nonprofit Atlas, Nonprofit Thought Leader, and Staffing Boutique. Hey, Jared, you've really done a great service yet again for our sector. Super, super exciting project that you're working on. Thank you for sharing it with us. Thanks for giving me the opportunity. Thanks for all of you joining us here, another episode of the Nonprofit Show. So very grateful. We'll be back here tomorrow, so make sure you tune in live or recording. Again, for all of you watching, listening, please stay well so you can do well. We'll see you here tomorrow. Thank you.


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What's going on guys it's your boy dpj here today with another destiny video now today is arms day and Banshee has those weapons for us now I'm not sure about you guys but across all three of my characters I believe I chose at least one of every weapon he has to offer well He had to offer package wise now. I think I didn't much certain what we will find out I mean I've got so many weapons now on me. I'm actually struggling to make space for the weapons He offers but because they're unique per twice some of them are for things you can't get another weapons I can't help but choose at least one. So let's just see what they offer this week Okay, the first one was I believe was a hack up all showing auto rifle Indeed it was what's that say?  I'm not too keen these High rate of fire low impact weapons to be honest. I mean just don't pack that punch in PVP And that to me or what these Banshee weapons are they are PVP weapons, I ain't gonna use them for PvE whatsoever I just I just basically get these to see what they're like in that PVP Okay, these ones got danger close and this weapon gates increase reload and handling when two or more enemies are in close Proximity we have persistence this weapon goes more accurate the long reach fired. I tell about rounds hand-loaded and Small ball not too great to be honest. What size do you got? Yeah? I'll see you ranged and ga post I'm not feeling this weapon to be honest. I just don't know what it is. I just What's this one here? This one don't too bad Okay, so we've got small ball Got rodeo, and we've got partial refund. That's probably the best I've seen Let's have a look and excuse my voice by the way I've got a cold coming up and feeling my nose my eyes and it's backing me up Oh, what's this one here? We've got We got partial reform. We got counter balance and we have Rifle bow really Yeah, I think I'm gonna take the middle one. I mean let me see you say good at least their marks at the end of the day Hey, what makes okay to sue us AI 45 and this is the weapon I chose last week It's actually an amazing an amazing auto rifle as long as you get much on it that max out of that stability Otherwise, you can get a better weapon called the answering cord from the vanguard. So let's have a look at what this one offers SPL 57 highlights enemy targets that bad and Proof target acquisition s joseph in here and s l o 19 About feet stuff increases a little bit of that stability feather mag faster reload reduce magazine size reinforce bow Don't forget though range range is very important. I don't know if you guys sort of Update, I think it was about a couple weeks back now, but I explained range and the range is extremely important I'm not sure I'm gonna sacrifice that much stability for that much range to be honest And we then have a lightweight and glass half full No, I'm not feeling that one to be honest the one I got last week was a million times better I think these may just be marks if none of them offer better perks and I'm one I've already got SPL 57 SPL 26 and s l o 19 High caliber rounds a pan did magazine And laid stuck against too bad quite a chunk of stability there and Unflinching now That could be quite decent actually really could be quite decent. Let's have a look at the further on offers Okay SPL 57 SPL 26 and s l o 12. We've got hammer forged improve range feather mag Small ball Single-point sling and gas awful. Yeah, I'm definitely going with the one Definitely, I'm gonna try it out. I don't think but I don't believe it's gonna be as good as the one I got last week I'll still will take it see what it's like at least at the end of a will be marks Okay, but the zoomie a zoom you zoom are for whatever the hell. This is a mollum.  I'm getting body shot one heat body shot in a PvP with snipers. It's unbelievable Final rounds gone.  You know, I rage is pretty decent as well aha now It's pretty quiet decent to be honest. Let's have a look what the others offer now may have chose this and another character as well, so I don't probably pick two of these bad boys a Willa Povo that army of one. We've got quick draw. We've got hand-made stuff. Oh look at that stability now That's what I'm talking about live support and last resort shame. None of these open flinching What's the further on offer? Okay, the game for all army of one quick draw casket mag Partridge and shoot to loot these ones at PvE went into damn sure Uh No, I'm gonna go on a middle one to be honest. That's how I look Yeah, that is it what I'm gonna do guys is I'm gonna switch to my other cast and see if I did choose One of the other two weapons, but I catch you guys back in a sec Okay, so I've switched over to my titan. I believe I've got three packages on my titan Not sure which ones I chose girl. I can check but I just can't be asked. This is all never luck Why not? I mean it's easier. Okay, so we chose. Oh, so I did choose the primary The hot car also rifle Now which was the one I chose on overcounter was it that one there? I believe it was so I'm just gonna choose that one Feastability Go with that. Let's just go with that. Oh, I got a rocket launcher now. We're talking. Oh, yes Now I like look at that with nays and horses. What we've got on this Hot shoes as well. Just have to compare these bad boys. Just gonna have to compare these bad boys Flood magwell heavy pale. Oh, oh, oh now we're talking Oh, now we are talking and that is quite a decent rocket launcher I haven't actually got a decent year-to-rocket launch yet. I still haven't got one believe it or not. It's crazy I haven't Not even gonna have a look at that Good days and horseshoes PVP murderous murderous No, it's definitely gonna be that middle one was it? I think was it the first one. I remember double check Yes, it was heavy-paid Payload and we got good days and horses. Oh, let's go with that. Let's go with that. That was void as well The old word is dear What's the third weapon I chose? Oh, it's the sniper again and now which was the one I chose That's a PvE one You know what? No, no, no, no, no, I've got loads of decent PvE weapons sniper wise Unflinching which one I chose. Oh, yeah, it was this one. Yeah, it was different than that one But that's stability. Let's go with this one don't really matter I probably ain't even gonna use this weapon for PVP. I've got a couple of decent snipers I'm because I'm mainly losing my hunter my steel piece. I'm just in love with that weapon. So yeah Not too fussed about that But at least got a decent rocket launcher out of it now. I'm gonna switch to my wall I can see if I did choose that final package. I'm not certain to be honest But I know I chose one. I'm not sure what it was. Yep. Catch you guys back in a sec Okay guys, so I do have two packages on my warlock also now I actually bought I thought that there was a fusion rifle the other last week. I was mistaken. It's another auto rifle and it's a Suas I can't remember. Let's see. Let's just see Okay, so this is the ARI 41 Oh that focus fire now I'm curious to find out High rate of fire low impact weapons with that focus fire. I'm super curious to see how that works. I mean What's the damage gonna be like? What we've got here as well. We've got feather mag faster reload with feet stuck We've got reinforced barrel and we've got speed reload with focus fire That's our old 37 And SPL 26 Now I might just choose that looks quite decent to me. I mean, I'm curious about that weapon So that's might be the one I've always At least I first nothing great. I haven't forged the audio SPL 57 SPL 28. I'm not I got a serious AR I 41 already max stability. So I'm not really looking forward to that Well, I'm not looking for one of them another one of them anyway, so I'm just gonna choose this one here and I'm just I'm curious to know about focus fire and higher fire low impact weapons. We've got another Sue us a I 45 now, which was the one I chose last time. It was that one, weren't it? More stability and Yes, it was indeed so I'm just gonna go to your one.  But yep guys That is what Banshee has to offer all five weapons and Next week, I will be sure doing the exact same thing with all five weapons again, but I could choose our next week I'll probably be able to choose even more. I will rank well three on each character because I'm max you can pick So yeah, that'd be nine weapons. I'll be looking at next week because hopefully enjoyed the video Do drop a like I'd appreciate support subscribe for daily destiny, and I'll catch you guys on the next one I'm gonna drive about my voice as well. Like I said, I have to get feels like I'm coming down with a cold And that's what you get for having a key to go to school with manky other kids But yeah, thanks for talking wise always and peace out until next time post


Here's how to practice. Listen. Record yourself. Apartment. Then listen. Apartment. Apartment. An apartment is a rented room or set of rooms. Meet. Meet. Meet means to see and speak to someone for the first time. New. New. New means not known before, recently bought or rented. Nice. Nice. Nice means good and enjoyable. Street. Street. A street is a road in a city, town, or village. Try. Try means to make an effort to do something. Welcome is used as a friendly greeting to someone who arrives at a place.


This is a very important campaign, particularly in light of the tragedies we've seen on our roads over the last month or so. No matter how you're using our roads or which roads you're using, please make the best possible decision you can for the circumstance that you're in for your safety, the safety of the people that are with you and the safety of anybody who's around you.


Hello everybody! If it's Wednesday, it's Warhammer and that must mean it's time for another episode of Warhammer Weekly. Obviously, as you can see, this is a hotel show and I'm also alone.  But as always, if it's Wednesday, the show must go on. We're never gonna not do a show. We're just gonna make sure it might be an unusual time. So, you know, you gotta, we'll have to just deal with that sometimes.  If probably not a lot of you will be watching this live just because I originally thought this was gonna be much later tonight and then I moved it earlier. So, hey, I'm sorry everyone. I apologize for all of the confusion. But nonetheless, hey, look, I'm thrilled about it. I've got me up here, Skaven me, ready to go. He's, as you can see, he's serving up some some fresh paint, some fresh action, and we've still got all our standard news and everything we're gonna do. Today, we're gonna talk a little bit about multiplayer and alternative wind conditions. I've just started putting some thinking around the alternative battle pack I want to work on with Tyler and I think Colonel Cabbage put his hand up and and volunteered as well to join on that. So, I'm excited about that. We're gonna do a little multiplayer pack much like what Tyler did with Warcoda. I don't have a time frame for it yet, but I want your feedback. So, whether you're watching this live, I want you to drop it in the chat. If you're watching this in the future, then I want to hear your thoughts down in the comments, especially when we get to sort of alternative wind conditions and start talking about other things we could be doing in these battle plans. So, lots to talk about tonight and not a lot of time to do it. This will be a relatively short show as it's just gonna be me talking for like an hour. So, you know, hey, there we go. Okay. So, the yeah, I'm you know, look the showtime. I'm much like a wizard. I'm never early. I'm never late. I always arrive exactly what I mean to. So at any rate, let's start. Let's get into some news. We got the standard stuff here, of course. Go up here. There we go. We got a little rumor engine action. And boy, if this isn't exactly the rumor engine that I hate. It's a 40k thing. I don't know. It's a thing. It's a 40k thing. That's all I have to say about it.  I assume it's like a cloak with a backpack thing. But there you go. Sidney Straub asked me, Vince, did you enjoy Holy Wars? My friend, I absolutely loved Holy Wars. So for those who don't know, I was at Holy Wars this last weekend. That's also, I suppose, an item of news of sorts. Yes, it was great. We came one point shy of winning Tom and I, of winning the sort of best general, whatever, best. We dropped a couple points and randomly in the last one, we tied our opponent for a single objective.  Tom rolled well. I rolled a one. It's what happens. Having me as a partner means you're cursed to rolling poorly. And that one point that we lost on that random roll lost us the first place for the tournament, sadly. But that's okay. It was still an incredibly fun time. Like we had five amazing games, five amazing teams and opponents, 10 people we played against. The tables are always fun. Like really, if you can get out to any of the holy events at any point in time, I simply cannot recommend them enough. They are really, really tremendous and fantastic events. So yeah, it was a great time. We'll probably mention it a little more during hobby time. All right, next news item. We got a, hey, Battleshock Wargaming says they're loving Warcoda. That's awesome to hear. This is why I want to continue expanding it. I really do think that we just don't get enough battle plans that serve a wide enough audience. And that's why we're going to be talking about it tonight. So there you go. So next up is our organized play expansion. We had this little announcement that they sent out that some stores will be getting these little participating packs. The funniest thing to me is the insane amount of little three inch measuring sticks that you get for everybody who participates.  I mean, it's fine. Anything that can help stores run tournaments is in my estimation, a good thing. So I don't know what this, how this exactly works as I don't own a store, but it seems like a fun thing. And also that art piece is pretty awesome on the cover. I just want to say that that was the first thing that grabbed me when I saw this article. Why do we always get so many cooler images of like storm cast and things like that in the mortal realms? And then we then we then we just don't get the like what make that make that that should be a thing. So goodness sakes, excuse me.  That's fine. Hey, why not? Martin said my bad guys only is why I lost to him in 2020 or 2019. You know, I think you just play a great game there, Martin, and I took a big risk at the beginning and it did not pay off for me. That's that's what happened there. But sometimes you got to risk it for the biscuit and have some fun, you know. All right, next up on the news. Hey, we got the official announcement of our cities and such for the US Open 2024 Dallas Tacoma and Tampa Bay within the Atlanta, Georgia being the world championships of Warhammer and the grand narrative. So yeah, that's cool. Good stuff I did not attend any of these last year, although I heard many good things about them.  Certainly what I'm interested in seeing is, you know, how the rest of this year shakes out. You know, we're going to talk about battle plans some tonight and I'll be honest, I think we're in a weird, weird place. You know, Tom and I were talking about this a lot over the weekend. That the last sort of six months of an addition is always the weirdest time and obviously some of these will happen after the addition change. So that'll be weird. I think the order of them is that Tacoma would be after the issue change probably. Because again, we don't know dates on anything yet. So who knows they could sort of us and move things around and do them in unusual timing and it could be slightly different than how we've come to expect you never know. You know, this last six months of this year of the year now at this point we've got what theoretically four months, five months left or whatever is always like, it's always just an unusual time to play because you always feel like you're playing in the twilight of a falling empire as you're sort of fiddling as Rome burns I suppose as it were. And you know, I just don't know in the end what it's going to amount to as far as how the games are going to go we were what now two and a half months delayed on a battle scroll or something like that or two months delayed I don't know. You know, so we just haven't seen a lot of changes. I don't know what to think of it for these last couple months but I guess we'll we'll we'll see, you know, sort of what it all comes down to. I'll be interested for a sort of your, your takes on what you see as happening in these last couple months of the year. You know, again, like are you excited to keep playing this current season. I hate the idea of six month seasons I really do. And at the same time, they're, it's, it's, I don't I want the seasons to go for a year but it's rough when it's all the same thing for people who are regularly attending tournaments. This is why Tyler and I have, you know, advocated so hard for having like a six month battle pack update that's just like some additional battle plans for folks who are playing in tournaments I think that would keep things a lot more fresh. So, there you go. Mark Andre, Mark says the irony of hosting a multiplayer show by myself. Hey, I'm here with me. Me's here. See, all good to go.  Okay. And that's more or less all the news. So, you know, there you go. Pretty, pretty easy. As far as Pick of the Week goes, I actually do want to direct everybody over to Steve Herner and to his Twitter, which you will find down specifically the Holy Wars GT Twitter and the associated website. You'll find both of those down in the description after the show. And the reason I want to direct everybody there is because this event really is awesome. I try to take a quick minute to talk about it. I mentioned that I was a Holy Wars this last weekend. This is one of the most sort of immersive tournament experiences and there's really not anything else like it as far as I know in the country. You know, Steve has handcrafted at this point, you know, 18, 19 tables. Every one of them is an amazing experience. The tables play the game as much as that. Like you've ever said, I wish there was more terrain or terrain doesn't mean anything. You've never played on a Steve table. The terrain kills your models. It gives you bonuses. It's hugely impactful on the game. It's amazing. It's immersive. It's incredible. Every table has its own story, its own narrative, its own things you're trying to accomplish and interact with and do and can help you achieve or not achieve your ultimate strategy. You know, part of our last game, we knew we had a test match and we ended up getting table choice. And, you know, we chose a table that we gave us, we thought the best shot and it worked out sort of in our favor, 50-50, I guess. But it's just such an incredible experience to play on those amazing tables. And at the same time, I think a lot of people ask what would a, what does a quote-unquote narrative event even look like that I could actually experience? There's lots of narrative events at Nova and at Adapticon and stuff like that. And certainly these have some story to them, but you're still playing Warhammer as you know it, just with some different rules on top, given the particular scenario. And it's really a version of Warhammer I love. Like, this weekend I had nothing but fun playing AOS. Now, admittedly, Steve doesn't use battle tactics, so right there, point in the favor. But just the nature of how you have to play the tables, the different objectives he has you sort of chasing down in each game, it's really interactive and it's one of the things that got me thinking about what I wanted to talk about in this show. Because it's also a doubles event. So it was myself and Tom as partners going up against, you know, other doubles. And I see a lot of people there with their kids, like them and their sons or their daughters.  And it's just such an inviting sort of environment. Because you're not alone. You're not going from table to table alone. Everybody's super friendly. You're meeting all these different teams. You always know you've got a friend there with you at every table. So, you know, playing doubles, playing these immersive tables, having all these different objectives I was trying to achieve, having a really incredible time made me want to do this show more than anything. Like, obviously, this has been in my head for several weeks. And then when we saw that the sort of Mad King rises that the new book also has tri-infantry material in it, I was like, OK, well, the stars have just aligned for this. And we'll talk more about that tri-infantry stuff next week. But I thought it'd be good to sort of lay some groundwork this week in advance. So there you go. Sadly, my hobby time this week to move over to that was, well, let's just say not very much. So to explain my week, as I'm obviously in a hotel right now, you know, I did the show last week, and then I did some hobby on Thursday. I started painting a little something, you know, for a video. And then immediately early Friday morning had to get up, get in the car or drive Chicago playing the event all weekend, got home late Sunday night. And then very early Monday morning got up, got on a plane and flew here where I've been at a business conference all week and will not be home until late Thursday night. So needless to say, my hobby time over the past seven days has been minuscule to say the best. So unfortunately, I don't have much to report there. But what I am going to do is tease you all with something very exciting. If you're watching this live, hey, thanks everyone for watching this live in the middle of the day. Maybe some of you are over in Europe or the UK and this show is actually at a friendly time for you. How about that? I got something pretty exciting coming for the hobby cheating this Saturday. It's a little bit different of a video than what I would normally do, I think. And I'm going to share what came out of it. It's been a very big project I've been working on. I've mentioned it on the show before. I'm not going to say anything else other than you can look forward to seeing the fruits of what came out of that big project this weekend. So I hope everybody checks out the hobby cheating on Saturday for something really fun, really different and sort of really unique and unusual. So there you go. My hobby time was putting the final touches on everything there to get that going. So there you go. Also, if you haven't hit like yet or subscribed or done all those things that make all those dings, you should certainly do so. I know a hotel show is a weird one to ask for that on. I know this isn't the highest of quality content we put out in a year. But I thank you all for tuning in and watching. It really does mean the world to me. And I'm sorry that I can't always be at home. Unfortunately, my work does behoove some amount of travel. So just sort of the nature of the thing, I guess. All right. Cool. Let's see. Cool says please Steve do a four player Triumph and Treachery tournament. It's funny you say that cruel. It's funny you say that. Dougie fresh said I hate battle tactics, but I understand how it could get stale without them. And so what I'll say Dougie fresh is that's why Steve's tables rule because on Steve's tables, you're never just playing to kill the opponent or get the objectives like he's using a wonderful mix and we'll talk about it in alternative win cons later on in the show. But he's he's doing stuff where yes, you have to go stand places and hold circles right like that's a thing sometimes including terrain by the way sometimes it's actually terrain you're trying to capture which is good that's mixed in. Sometimes you're trying to accomplish things on that particular board, ie what I mean is each board has things you can interact with. So sometimes you're trying to actually accomplish more of a sort of an interaction with a board than someone else. So like you can go and you can pray at this place on the board and you know you have to pray more and get more boons than your opponent or something right. Okay, fine. And then at the same time he also you're also trying to complete a secret objective. That's just one thing over the course of the game it's kind of like how we would structure a grand strat, I guess. But the cool part about it is there's a list of six or seven of them I don't remember I think it's seven. And over the course of the tournament you have to pick five of them, you can't repeat. So that's super cool. So you're trying to do that as well. And then he has an extra little kicker bonus point for having more of your original deployed units still alive at the end of the game. So like there's there actually is sort of a lot of different ways to get at points and to keep it fresh and so each table is a different experience. And that's the kind of thing that I think actually has an immense amount of value when we come to these. I think we need to broaden our horizon when it comes to that kind of battle plan design, which I think seems like a really good segue to talk about our topic tonight, which is tonight's topic is alternative win conditions and multiplayer. And as I said, the real reason that I'm kind of on about this is because it's been a it's been a bug up my bottom, I suppose, for a while. Because, you know, we did that GHB show talked about that and I talked about the glory of GHB 2017. And from that point forward, it was really like, why don't we have these triumphant rhetoric scenarios. Why don't we have these multiplayer coalition, you know, three player four player five player scenarios, you know why, why doesn't this stuff exist. It should it could. We're not asking to get rid of anything we currently have I think having a clean, well functioning tournament event battle pack with like just very straightforward clean matched place scenarios is actually really really really really really important to the overall health of the game. I think that GW has gotten better over the past, you know, three, four or five years at making quality battle plans for that purpose. So what I mean is in every GHB basically over the course of for the second and third, they've sort of sharpened the knife, and I legitimately do like a lot of what's there. This most recent GHB from my estimation was the most successful one ever when it came to actual battle plans. And so, you know, I, in my head, what I think is, yeah, so that's all working, but where's the rest. That's the issue here ultimately. The issue I have is that, like, we've got that this great stuff going on as far as those elements go. But we do not have the multiplayer support the triumphant trajectory support the other sort of support that, frankly, I think makes for a fully well rounded game. And that's my issue, because I really want to see a lot more types of play supported. Let me go ahead and take us into the preso here. This is a pretty short presentation, but I'm just going to walk us through it. Like, I just think that ultimately battle packs and battle plans simply have a lot more versatility than what is on offer. I mentioned already that they are they did really some they're the fourth book of the of the dawn bringers is going to has some triumphant trajectory stuff in it. And we'll talk about that in detail next week because I am very interested and I'll be honest, I really haven't had a chance to absorb it given my weekend. So, you know, book for having triumphant trajectory material. It's like, that's great. I'm glad to hear that we're back on this train. How long is that going to last right like it's good. And so but that's triumphant trajectory is itself pretty heavy. What I mean by that it's like, there's a lot of extra stuff you're doing in a triumphant trajectory game. And admittedly you kind of have to be amongst friends to play a triumphant trajectory game. But let me see if I can unpack what I mean there. I wouldn't just rock up to my game store and have three or four people in a night or five people or something.  Because you can sometimes get a little. Well, it is it does have treachery in the title. So, you know, I think that's ultimately the issue.  Yeah, fine, great, whatever, right. I think people in that regard are generally pretty fine. But I also just want multiplayer support doubles support like all those other game modes. And I think that I think that like when it comes to it that will be like supporting all of those different modes to play only makes the game stronger. Like doubles fantastic entry point fun easy plate for to easy way to get people to experience events tournaments. Does I said bring your kids bring your partner bring your spouse bring a friend that you made that maybe isn't it doesn't think tournaments are for them. All of that becomes very possible with doubles. It's the best way to open the door. Right. Multiplayer is great fun and sometimes like I know sometimes all you know hit up my club mates and it turns out sort of three total people are available to play. Okay, like what do we do there. Do we just let one of those people just sit out and not play like that seems crappy. Right. So let's do they let's have some port for odd numbers of people it turns out that not all of our friendships and nights when people are available and club nights or whatever exist in perfectly even numbers. Like sometimes you will have three or five people. And so having some kind of support for those odd numbers of players is pretty cool because then somebody doesn't just have to sit around and watch the game be played and be like boy it looks like you guys are having a real good time. Shame I can't join. You know like it just it gets them in the game and it keeps them engaged so like I think that multiplayer is just like this really important aspect of overall age Sigma that's often ignored. And, you know, the another thing on the doubles and even multiplayer is both of these games tend to be played at less than 2000 points, which is the point that pad is making in the chat and I agree with. Like, getting a 2000 point army, some people like hey whoa he talked about this in one of his recent streams.  Done. And like that was his road and from he went from zero to 2000 and for him that totally worked. You know, maybe he's like disciplined or just the nature of how he gets into things or whatever you know whatever about his personality. But I think that that's probably not everybody's experience to be honest. I think there's plenty of people who would say that they don't at all look like that or act like that or haven't been like that. And you know so providing them a better road where with doubles they only need maybe 1000 points or multiplayer you can have 1000 point or 1500 point games. And, you know, double like I think the game alone at 1000 points versus 1000 points is kind of a struggle. I don't know that it super works. But when you have doubles which is 2000 point armies together versus 2000 point armies together. It actually works fine it's just you yeah it's. This is a weird thing to say, but it's my favorite mode of play because it cuts out the BS often. What I mean by that is you just can't build the really insane critical NPE synergies into your 1000 point list that you can in your 2000 points. So even though both of you together, like you're still playing a 2000 point game, right 2k on 2k it's just actually to one case versus to one case. It it makes it so you you don't experience the really awful stuff in the game. I don't know that sounds weird to say, but a lot of the most sort of broken egregious awful NPE tends to come because you can build it into a 2k list because you can achieve a sort of critical mass of synergy or you can include really expensive pieces or something like that that you just can't do at 1000 points. You know I'll give you a good example. This last weekend we played at Holy Wars, one of our opponents, you know one of the one of the one of the members the team was running a steam tanks list like an all steam tanks list. This is not a meta chaser. This guy's awesome. His team tanks are incredible. They're all custom made like literally handmade from from child's toys that he has converted and painted and weathered and they look amazing. That's one of my favorite armies I've ever seen. It's absolutely gorgeous. And by the way, he's had that army for years. So this is he's not a meta chaser. He just has a deep love of steam tanks and he's played it many many times and the good times in the bad. Well, it turns out right now is a really really good time for steam tanks right like they're obviously very very very powerful. And but when you're when he has 1000 points like yeah he can he can have some steam tanks. He can, you know, and they're good. They're there. They're a good piece turns out they're like they're they do some good stuff. But he can't have like all the trimmings right he can't have like Warforger's running around and Command Corps running around and Pontifex Zanestro running around right like he can't have all the trimmings he can still have some turkey. He just can't have the candy DMS. And you know maybe the mashed potatoes with chives or whatever he gets he gets a little bit of the dinner he gets a healthy meal but he's not stuffed. So anyways, that's my point right and it was honestly a really fun game to play against it was very challenging. And whereas I think if I played the sort of 2k all oops all steam tanks with like all of that accoutrement I would find it to be a very unfun game. And so, you know when you're doing 2000 point armies it kind of cuts off that nonsense so it gives you and it's an easier on road for new players it's easier to get people involved in events it's easier to play to lower points value it's a, in my opinion, a less NPE written version of the game, you might have a different opinion but that's my experience.  So I just think there's a lot more space to explore here. At the same time, playing in this term at this last weekend, and I mentioned this already, I really think scoring could be much broader than what we have on offer. Like, right now, you know, scoring is basically a matter of sit on circles and do battle tactics. Maybe that's compelling to you maybe it's not I don't know. And if it is that's cool. I have no issue with it. But certainly we all must admit that the world of how we could score points or we could have battle plan scoring points. Once we leave behind the concept that these have to be for a 2k match flex, you know, you're going to have to be able to score points. Once we leave behind the concept that these have to be for a 2k match play tournament level event becomes much broader. Right, like the experiences we could have could be much, much, much more broad. If we were if we if we remove ourselves from those shackles. And I so that's that's another reason that I'm just very keen to explore this. And the last thing I want to mention here is I don't want to take anything away from the existing stuff. These additional options should not do not need to under no circumstances do I want them to subtract from the existing GHPs and event packs. Like I those are fine. Those are those have a purpose. They have a role. Good, like they should continue and be there and be a valid and continued and strong part of the game that gets love and attention. I just want there to be more right. So there we go. That's kind of my overview. Some quick, some quick comments from the chat here. Yeah, Pepo says exactly the stuff that when I'm talking about MP, like it's a lot of the stuff that newer players are not prepared to handle. Yeah, exactly. Like when you're when you're getting that highly synergistic 2k list, like that's where you get into the stuff that just newer players aren't going to be like, I'm sorry, you can do what they're just not ready for that. So there you go. Yeah, Pat noon talks about the time constraints of a smaller point game. Absolutely. Dances is how would you feel if battle tactics are only worth one? It wouldn't matter. It would matter because the objectives aren't the hard part. It's it's like in a tournament you drop the battle tactic you lose. It doesn't matter if it's one point or two points, you're still down points, right? So like the reality is it is the deciding factor. If it's worth any amount of points, it's the deciding factor. And as long as you have to go five for five, like you can set the bar at 28 points for a game, you can set the bar at 23 points for a game. It doesn't matter. It's still who can achieve that number of points. Drop one, you lose, right? That's it. Okay, and then I like games that Catharsis, Chaser are both talking about different ideas of yeah, just like Circle Hammer. Absolutely. Yep, and Elder Tor says three player fights really just need a few missions that support it like King of the Hill. I agree, buddy. I agree. I think that like it's we're talking about three, six missions here and you've got you've got rock and roll. It's really not that hard. And that's what kills me that we've gone seven years now almost and not had another another bite at this apple. I mean, we're finally getting one of a sort with Triumph and Treachery. But geez, that's a long time to wait in between there like that that feels too long, frankly. So anyways, alright, let's talk about multiplayer. And here's where I want your your thoughts chat. I want you I want you to weigh in here. So I've been thinking about how I want to structure the multiplayer battle pack. So again, by the way, if you haven't hit like, go ahead and hit that like button do those things really help. And I'll help other people find the show later and then give their ideas for what they want to see in multiplayer. So my basic idea for how I want to structure the sort of quote unquote war coda to electric moogaloo, as we will undoubtedly call it. But the multiplayer focused war coda that I want to work on with Tyler is I want to structure it so there is some support for kind of doubles and coalition style games where you have like even numbers on each side but multiple people so two people aside three people aside something like that. And then I also want to have some support for for just like multiplayer true traditional multiplayer lots of individual people all just playing the game. Right. So not really like Triumph and Treachery because again, I think that's a lot of extra weight not everybody's ready for like oh it's my secret objective and you now I got my trap car and all of that and it's like okay. You know there's just there's just a lot on there. And so I want I want a simpler stripped down version that's just like yes this mission can handle three or five people. By the way, this cannot be that hard. I've, I've, I've written many games at this point. Our new game, Uncle Adam and I's newest game which is ready to come out this year. I'm not ready. I shouldn't say that but it's written. It's currently in development. Tom and I had much much discussion of that and it's more play testing this weekend of that as well actually. But, you know, every game I've written supports multiplayer in some way, usually, you know, tanks for the apocalypse. Our most recent game that was in snarl is two to 10 players not giving you only have one tank so it's a little bit easier. Like I'm always thinking about what happens when you have more friends more people who want to play. So, you know, like just take it into account. GW come on. So some potential elements of multiplayer and what I want here chat is you I want you to tell me if you think I've missed anything what else you would want to see here so please throw it in the chat now and or leave in the comments if you're watching this in the future. To me the important elements of multiplayer is first off we've got to have the multiple alternative deployment options to be able to handle three plus people three people five people and to have a way to structure that. I think if you go beyond five people you're really going to need a giant table. It's probably tough, but I think you can play smaller points with five people on a table and that would be fine. You know if you're all doing it at like like that's not going to work with 3000 points or something but but if you were all playing I don't know 1000 or 1500 points you get away with it. Let's see I like game said hint at the new game theme. Nope. Actually you know what I will give you a hint I will give you I will give you the hint that was literally the primary guiding principle for the entire game as I designed it. You ready. Here you go. I like games since you asked pro activity. There you go. I've just given the whole game away. So I'll let you go from there. All right so multiple alternative deployment options to be able to handle those people. So things like that. And then number two multiple objectives dispersed around the board I didn't say it here, but also in varying positions throughout the scenarios. But this is to make sure that all armies aren't plowing into the center of board like you want reasons to play the whole board to be on the outer ring. I think that's even more important in multiplayer games than it is in standard games. Oftentimes warhammer a lot of it is played in the middle war cry sized board. So what I mean by that is if you look at a traditional board we play on right now which is like four war cry boards put together right since 60 by 44. The outer ring of like, you know 11 inches, 15 inches, 11 inches. That's where the least action happens almost the end like a lot of the game ends up happening within the central 30 by 22. Right because that tends to be the sort of people deploy on the line that's where a lot of fighting in the middle happens a lot of objectives end up being placed around that square or are often primarily on that square, not always but you know often. And the, and so as a result of that. If when you're when you're doing a one on one game it's sort of fine to have you just kind of scrum up in that area and have a lot of fights kind of bleeding into each other and stuff like that and it's that's fine. But when you're doing three armies or, you know, more, you got four armies on the table. If they're all plowing into the center of the table like just that tiny area it's going to just become unwieldy, like very, very quickly. And so I think you have to have reasons to get people dispersed out like objectives that would tend to be on the outer edge of the board or reasons to go out to the out of the edge of the board. I think that's really important. The other thing that I think is interesting there that could also work that way is mobile objectives. So mobile objectives is interesting because this is a thing we kind of don't really play with too much anymore in the tournament battle packs. And by the way, I get it. I get why we don't use them in tournaments like in tournaments the objectives are, you know, sort of very stable imaginary things they sit here at a point of people put down their little clear plastic rings which I hate. And they you know they toe into this extension line and it's lots of stuff like that right. And that's fine again for tournament games. It's fine. I'm not, I'm not hating on it. It just it is what it is. But again freeing ourselves from the shackles of that mindset. I think it's really possible to go further and so mobile objectives is a thing that I often write into a lot of my games and that a lot of the earlier GW games had in them. So what I mean by this is these are objectives that move in some way. They move around the board either of their own accord or because you interact with them. So sometimes they might move for example an objective might just move on like a pre sort of described pattern. Now Tyler built this into one of the games of Warcoda when he basically gave a sort of updated his take on on relocation. Right. So he had two things that started here and then they kind of went right and they kind of like flipped right. So they can do that and sort of travel along a pre prescribed path where they move around the board or they can be the kinds of things where your unit touches it and then it kind of kills its capture ability. It can no longer be contested. It travels with that model from that point on until that model is killed and then it drops and it can now be contested again. And, you know, there's lots of early battle plans, especially in that 2017 GHB that worked like this. And, you know, sort of the first hero that touches it stops being contested and moves that hero or first unit that touches it doesn't always have to be a hero but you know could be.  And so I think that like that kind of of mobile objective again helps it from just being a static scrum in the middle, which I think is really important. And Dan says says, I am thinking of things like capture the flag where the flag starts in the middle. Exactly. That's exactly right. Dan says you're dead on And then Sean Williams says middle or strategy battle game has some great multiplayer maps that usually lead to fight all over the table e.g. checkerboard deployment zones. Awesome. Thank you Sean. I'll have to go off to go check out Middle Earth maps that sounds super cool. You write a sigma or ball battle plan where you grab ball objectives from the center line of the scrimmage and bring them to the opposing sides or corners as goal posts. I mean that kind of thing sounds awesome right and that's just it like if they can be a little silly they can be a little fun because they're not for like tournament that's meant to be five rounds over a weekend and you know play very serious competitive warhammer whatever that means right. These can be for like they're these are designed with the audience of a night of fun with you and your friends to have some you know to have a sort of good time with them. Right. So, you know that kind of thing. I think all of those to me make sense as the elements of multiplayer, but I'm curious if you all think I missed anything there that that's sort of critical in multiplayer. We'll talk about the scoring in just a moment because that's a whole other ball backs right here I was trying to talk about just the fundamentals of the design of a multiplayer battle plan. I think alternative scoring is very important, but I've got a whole different slide on that. All right. So with that, let's let's go ahead and jump down and talk about some alternate scoring alternate win conditions and other scoring options. So, importantly, in these types of games, you know, these can replace battle tactics as an idea simply be other options and battle packs and or battle plans. I think that's the important thing to understand here is, for me, I'm having this discussion with all of you solely within the context of, you know, that this sort of war coded to electric Boogaloo that I want to work on, wherein I have these coalition and multiplayer scenarios and want to include these things. I do think it's important. I do think it's important to state, though, that there's no reason these couldn't be part of almost anything. Some of these, I think, are perfectly fine even for quote unquote hardcore traditional event pack battle plans. So some of the stuff I'd like to see them experiment with more in the future. But whether they do or not, I don't know if they will. I mean, maybe we stay with the simple in the morning and just, you know, hold one hold two hold more kind of sit on a point and do your battle tactics. And again, that's fine if it ain't broke, I suppose, right? So, you know, we'll have to see whether or not that's doable. But I think at least conceptually, a lot of these could easily slot into existing battle plans. And I don't mean that as like they become generic scoring. I think that's really important. They could be in a battle pack where all battle plans in this battle pack use this thing. That's possible. They could be in a particular battle plan where just in this battle plan, this extra thing gives you points. So they don't need to be part of everything. It's not like suddenly by including it once it's every single battle plan you ever play from now until the end of time. This is about creating more variants, not homogeneity. Okay, Julius Starcraft said multiplayer games are often PVP any possibility for PvE. That's an interesting challenge. The problem with PvE, first of all, I've been interested in my own game writing at some point in the future and doing a like we've done. I've done plenty of solo and co-op games already. I'm interested in actually doing a purely sort of cozy game where you're not actually killing anything. The challenge with PvE where you still have fighting is that you have to have the opponent opponent, whatever it is, right? The thing that you're actually doing and working against the antagonist has to have some kind of quote unquote AI behind it. Like they have to have something that prescribes their actions. And so it's a very different game. So you have to figure out what that AI looks like. And that's that's a bit tricky. The nice part about writing versus games is that you don't have to worry about any of that crap. It just like the other human just does it, right? It's you against other human skill against Skrull. And so, you know, I think that that that is a sort of easy path. I think you'd have to do a whole separate battle pack to make that happen. Okay. So let's talk about alternative win conditions and a little more details. Let's start with the most obvious one, which is kill points. Now, I think kill points as the only determinant factor of winning is actually a pretty bad idea. If I have one problem with the old world, it's that it's primarily almost completely a kill point game that I shouldn't say it's definitely not completely. There are alternative things and ways to score points. But like, I, I like kill points as a conception of the thing, but I don't like it as the sole determinant factor of the thing. And, but I think that you can it has a lot of variance in it and it is a valid and useful part of the larger victory point discussion. What I mean by that is like, there's lots of different ways you can take that you can be killing a particular model, killing a particular type of model, killing some number of models, all of a particular model type.  This many points if you kill at least three monsters or whatever, or units with more than four wounds or more, okay, whatever. So you can imagine lots of different ways to construct this, right? Now you have to be careful with these because sometimes when you get into those particular model types it can become very iniquitous. We saw that during the monster season so I'm certainly aware of that and that's why but at the same time if these are spread out through the battle plans and if you tend to go more broad with them so like everybody has a general, everybody has heroes, everybody has battle line, right? Like that stuff is all true. And so I think that that kind of thing is can be done.  That's a great point Sean Williams said kill X points with your general. Yes.  Like these can have any like the permutations on kill points is massive. You know kill a unit that has a banner with one of your units that has a banner or something, right? Kill a unit that is battle line with one of your units that isn't battle line. Okay so anything in your army that isn't battle line or so on you know you can you can literally imagine a thousand permutations of this right? And so I just think there's I just think there's like an unlimited area to explore here and it's interesting as something to supplement the rest of the scoring. Like you can still have objectives you're trying to stand on and go to and do things to encourage mobility around the map. And like I said I think kill points alone you can end up just kind of skewing what people build if you if you like oh you know I remember Tom had a list way back in the day when sort of kill points were the thing like that was basically how he decided games are very early AOS.  Nothing ever died right and he would just slowly cause some damage through like reflected mortal wounds and so he would inevitably win because nothing of his would ever get would would ever get killed and he would just eke out these minor victories and it was just a horrible play experience right and so you want to avoid stuff like that becoming sort of the the smart choice as it were.  What I mean by that is it could sort of be a trader scenario at the start of the game pick one of your heroes right you score an extra point at the end of the game or extra two points or three points or whatever I don't know some amount of points right if you're if the hero you picked is killed right because oh they were a trader and you got them killed like that kind of stuff sort of a win for losing is really fun it's why bloodtide is such a fun interesting mechanic because it's a win for losing mechanic like corn carers not from whence the blood flows so if you kill units you get points if you lose units you get bloodtide points right and this is really just the same concept writ large into the actual victory points and so I think that stuff like that is really important because it also can make people who are kind of getting their teeth kicked in or having a bad game still feel like they're accomplishing something which I think is fun. Okay so sort of the next one here is battle plan specific actions and what I mean by this is one of the ways we should be able to free ourselves here is to say okay we can write battle plans that expect you to do certain things to interact with certain things this is something Steve does really well at holy wars with his tables and in his scenarios he's expecting you to interact with the table in some way right so you need to go to this place this piece of terrain interact with this thing do this thing roll a die get a number of models onto it whatever right so like you go and it doesn't mean you have to have some incredible amount of terrain you could just say like choose a terrain piece this becomes the thing your goal is to go to the thing get at least x models on the thing roll this many when you do roll this dice get a many this many five six pluses like there's tons of ways to implement this and you can you know have to move into around specific locations you get a point if by the end of round three you're you have at least two two units in their deployment zone or something like that or in table quarters deployment areas territories whatever right so again there's just like a million sort of interaction and movement based ones which is what this really boils down to that you could also bake in that aren't just going to a place and standing on a circle they could be a thing you achieve one time and then flip off so it like it encourages you to go move to go get to that place to go do that thing you know get three units into enemy territory or something like that by the bottom of round three okay sure right like that encourages a certain play pattern if that's worth points and that can be valuable it gets you moving it gets you out of that zone you know stuff like that and you know sort of lastly here is a combination of the above and or other actions so what i mean by that is you get extra points if you manage to do thing a and thing b so if you and if you think about this this is how battle tactics were often structured initially when we first had them they aren't usually structured like this but the most common one was pick an objective and enemy controls you know if you kill a unit and take that objective so that's doing a and b right then you you got the the points it could be the same thing here right go to a place do the thing kill a thing lose somebody of your own in this place like you know get a model killed in their territory kill a thing in their deployment zone you know there's a bunch of different variations of this again and you want to be careful how like the the dark side here that all design is a double-edged sword and the sort of dark side here is obviously what happens if you get too hyper specific if you make it too impossible to accomplish you can get yourself in trouble because just like there's there's just no way they'll end up being like lots of matches where these people just can't score those points and so you've got to really watch that you want to make sure that one if you're going to use anything hyper specific it's hyper localized so there's only one battle plan that uses that thing and if people aren't using that thing they just don't use that battle plan two i think you want to make sure that you tend to try to be more broad and generic encompassing elements and play patterns that most armies could do like most armies can move somewhere across the board like if it's get into the enemy territory that's fine especially if your enemy territories tend to be kind of a dividing line across the middle elfin or something like that right you can shape it to the battle plan make sure all the elements of the battle plan are working together to sort of hum there because i think it is really important to to make sure that like you don't just have armies that ought to lose and i think that's a place where we've gone wrong a lot in the past when we've tried stuff like this but that doesn't mean it's not possible that just means we need to be more thoughtful and careful when we're actually sort of writing these things right so there you go there's my pitch and really this week is like i said it's a very short show i apologize everyone but i really wanted to bring this to everybody and have a quick conversation not because i think my ideas are great i think my ideas are are pretty average at best but i want to know what your ideas are and what i really want is for you to you know kind of talk about what you'd want out of multiplayer scenarios what you'd want out of those alternative win conditions stuff like that drop those down in the comments for me you know hit me up tell me what you'd like to see when tyler and i are working on this war coded to electric boogaloo because i want it to be something that you're all going to use to enjoy to really find valuable and have a good time with i think that's really really really important so don't hold back give me some feedback give me some comments give me some thoughts there's no bad ideas in brainstorming so you know hit me up it's going to be nothing but very helpful you know and with that pretty much we're going to bring it to a close everybody i know it's a short show today i'm sorry everyone i've been very very busy this week but i do right i do really really really appreciate all of you watching and thank you all especially those who tuned in i hope this is more convenient time for for our european friends i didn't think i was going to be able to do this early show and then my schedule just flipped around it's very chaotic when i'm traveling so thank you all so much for all of your patience and everything else and tuning into these road shows it is deeply appreciated uh hit like if you haven't already subscribe do all those fun things if you want to support the show just share it out there that's the best way you can do it there's also lots of links down there you can buy some paints for monument and support the channel use our our affiliate link same thing with the affiliate links for amazon if you're picking up some new hobby stuff there's a merch store down there and of course there's our patreon if you want to check in a few bucks and and help out the channel that keeps the lights on and is really really deeply appreciated but as always i am very curious as to your feedback please give me your thoughts what are some other scoring options what are the things you want to see out a multiplayer do not hold back give me those thoughts in the comments below i will be reading all of them and very much looking forward to uh to what you all have to say so thank you so much everybody for watching i really really appreciate it as always we'll see you next wednesday