I like mass battle stuff to.

Some tips for fun speedey play.

-Still allow yourself 2 hours or so to play
-Don't make annihilation the goal, set quicker objectives(Kill commanders, hold certain locations for so many rounds,etc)
- Have set up areas set up through out the map instead of one end of a giant map or the other end.
- have a non player adjuducate the game, control tempo, and keep people on task.
-increase activations to 4 characters or 6, depending on the size of your armies.

Thanks for starting this thread CerousMutor. I've been snatching up C and UC mini's left and right so we can try this out at home. We have a rather large CIS Army so now I need some more Republic mini's to pit against them. Thanks for the tips guys, keep them coming.

Sometimes it's good to limit the Commander Affects, Perhaps to 1 to 3. As the Point spread gets bigger, Its much easier for some of the More powerful Factions to be Unbeatable. Also, we use a timer when the activations get to be over 35. I love Mass Battles though. Sometimes we might even play a thousand point game but say no more then 20 Activations, thereby each piece averages about 50 pts. Just an option.

When we played a 3000 pt. per side Sep. vs. Rep, we did just as Matt said with the set up; various ones assigned all over the maps. You can also make it kinda interesting and assign the set up areas numbers, and then draw for each squad. That way, you have no idea where you're going to start and can't pre-strategize. We also had 10 squads per side, each had to be within 30 pts. of 300, but you had to have 10. We activated an entire squad at time. Commander effects were limited to that commanders squad only - if the scrubs or commander is lost, oh well. The scrubs are without a commander the rest of the game, or the commander has noone to command.

(All of this post is assuming you're running a mass battle with around 10 people. If it's just 2 of you or so, this style may not work for you.)

Normally the way my group runs mass battles is to match up 1 person with another, say 10 people total, it will be 5 on 5, but the 5 seps "face off" individually with the 5 reps. (this can also help if you have a mix of beginners and experienced players, you can match people up more fairly.) All initiatives and attack rolls will be made with that person, although you do not need to only attack that player's pieces. Any enemy piece can be a target (within SWM targeting rules, if you choose to use those.)

The way it works is this: say player A is facing off with player B. Player A announces to player B that he wants to shoot at player C's piece. Player B then reads off that character's defense score (listed on a sheet given to all participants beforehand). Player A makes the roll, and if it hits, player B places damage counter on player C's piece, or removes it from the board.

If Cunning/Opportunist come into play, make all players face their characters and re-face them at the beginning of their own initiative. Keep in mind that in this style players will be rolling initiative (and starting new rounds) before the rest of their "team" may be done, so keeping track of who has and has not activated will be important.

The reason we do it this way is because it truly simulates the chaos of a battlefield. All players are going at the same time, so attacks can come from anywhere, so it makes you focus on what you're doing while still keeping the entire battlefield in mind.
It also keeps everyone engaged the entire time. You don't have to wait on 9 other people to finish before you make your 2 activations, which gets real boring real fast, and takes a ton longer to play.

A word of warning, though, if you have some players who are very methodical about how they play, they will not have fun in this style. The slower and more time you take to think about your moves, the quicker someone else will just wipe you off the board. And keep in mind that (assuming 10 people) there are at least 5 voices going concurrently, so this may not suit your gaming group. It's a fun yet exhausting way to do mass battles. Time is usually around the 1.5-2 hour mark with 300-500 pt squads.

Hope that helps. :)

+1'd manic and fun!

Really, I can't see any appeal to playing mass battles with any version of the standard rules. It will be long and clumsy, could take a very long time to activate every piece once, and tracking damage would be a nightmare.


What I would do for mass battles is focus on squad vs. squad with some room for heroes. I activate this squad of ten battle droids, then you activate that squad of ten clones, then I activate Greivous and his bodyguards' squad... etc.

If you don't want to house rule it all yourself (daunting), another good option is to just play another game designed for balanced mass battles (AT-43, Warhammer 40k, etc.) and just use Star Wars figures to stand in for similarly stat-lined pieces from those games. Alternatively, you could use that game's system to create your own points and stat values for Star Wars pieces.*


*to prevent people complaining that house rules are unbalanced, make sure to always play rotating factions. So, take turns playing the Republic and see who can achieve the best victories with each side. This way, if there is a lack of balance in the rules, it can still be competitive and fun (ie competing for the most crushing defeat of the droid army).