All of our rounds must involve respawning. We tried elimination a couple of times, it fails miserably every time. CTF also goes poorly - uncoordinated teams working against each other in the dense indoor terrain we use usually means it's a cinch to run in and out with a flag without being seen.
Which also means all of our rounds now involve time limits instead of point limits (Or, as in CTF, "capture and you win"). It works better for us to kick the kids out into the field ever ~30 minutes and then debrief than try to corral them after some sprinter took all the objectives in the first 5 minutes of play.
For some reason, Juggernaught hasn't worked well for us either. When mods are the Juggernaughts, it's really just play-as-normal since mods usually terrify the players anyway. When players are the Juggernaughts, we inevitibly have one or two who just wander aimlessly. It's now a gamemode we add as a side thing to a main gamemode.
3-team King of the hill went surprisingly well. Two teams totally ganged up on my team since we were so far ahead.
I've had mixed experiences with everything else. Standard Deathmatch can be a lot of fun if players are already energized and craving gunfights, but it often devolves into a standoff between teams who just kind of stand around taking potshots at each other. I've experimented with the click counters as a method of encouraging aggressive play (since it gives everyone infinite lives), but It's kind of annoying to run back to the spawn area constantly. Defend The Core is sometimes a lot of fun, but it suffers from the same "stand around taking potshots" problem that I sometimes see in other game types. I tend to try to push for objective-based game types, and I think sometimes people are unsure about what they're supposed to be doing, or don't have a clear idea of whether their side is winning or not. When that happens, there's a lot less buy-in by the players.
We did standard respawn deathmatch (with counters, failed miserably without since our players hate sitting out) to reasonable success, but our players also seem to prefer a goal. Our best seems to be simple collection of objects (cards, coins, whatever) - whoever has the most things wins (or with cards, whoever has the best poker hand). I'd like to introduce a way to steal other players' things, but haven't figured it out yet in a way that will work with out player group. Maybe if I give the things to the mods, and tagging a mod gives you a thing ... .
DtC worked ok, but ended up being basically like King of the Hill for our setup. If we had spread the cores out more it might've been different, I don't know if I'm miffed enough to try trouble shooting it though.
The host has to be pushy and hound people into getting ready to play. Chosing teams needs to happen quickly, and I've become less convinced over the years that having two captains choose teams is quick or balanced enough. Just go around pointing at people and saying "1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2" to split them into teams.
That's a good idea. For Armageddon last year, I bought two packs...
We assign teams at the start and just run with that. I don't think we've had to do it, but maybe re-balance the teams if one is getting weak. Our game also only lasts 3ish hours, so maybe assign teams twice if you're running all-day.
I was also referring to the growing number of people who use magazines at Nerf wars. It's fun for the variety but at the last war I hosted, a few people reloading magazines was consistently holding up the rest of us as we were trying to play. I'll take Beaver's suggestion of "being pushier" in regard to that. It also makes me want to try running ammo-limited rounds; maybe two mags per person, so you're shooting one while reloading the other, while people with hoppers are allowed maybe twenty or thirty darts.
This is our biggest killer, and I'm one of the biggest killers of it - I tried to load up ~400 boomco rounds one game. Doing it between rounds took nearly our whole ~20 person team. I've since voluntarily switched to running a double-stack 18 strayvan.
To further address the issue, I plan to bring enough mags (or mag-pairs, the double-stack worked well except for fully reloading at the end) that I can use my whole load in a round, drop the empties off, and pick up a new fresh load for the next round. Will it mean owning several times as many mags? Yes. But I'll be able to get in the game faster and, as a mod, that should really be my goal. I'll thus try to force the players into entering battle earlier by just starting the next round.
I'll also (hopefully fully prototyped this week!) have a new build that will (hopefully!) eliminate mag troubles entirely. Maybe it'll just make them cheaper and bulkier though.
