Today, I have the very first St Andrews Wargaming video battle report. I've been wanting to try this out for a little while, and managed to get the opportunity this past weekend to play Doug and his Aeldari army with my Deathwatch.
This was a 2000 pts maelstrom of war game, playing Cleanse and Capture. The link to the video is below:
If you are interested in video battle reports, please check it out.
This is my first attempt, so please let me have any feedback on the report. Was it too long? Was it clear enough? What did you like? What did you not like? Are the maps a worthy inclusion, or just a distraction? I know the camera work is very shaky in this first one, hopefully, I can improve that in time!
Check out the video and follow the channel on youtube if you are interested to get all the latest updates.
I am hoping to get a new video made every month or so. Don't worry though, the written battle reports are not going anywhere! In fact, I've got a great one coming up this week, where my Deathwatch take on the Death Guard, led my Mortarion himself. It'll be up on the blog on Thursday, so look out for it.
I like it, but you need steady cam technology or a tripod mate... it’s a bit shaky. Otherwise, I enjoyed it, a good departure with nice maps interspersed.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the feedback! I'm looking into a proper camera and tripod now.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed it buddy, really good job, I liked the static maps and the fact that you and your opponent talked through some of your tactical thinking, I like to learn about why the players made the decisions they did when I'm watching batreps so enjoyed that. As Siph says a slightly steadier camera would help but appreciate that isn't as easy as it sounds, also a slightly more zoomed out view if possible would be great so we get to see a bit more of the table and how what is going on relates to the rest of the game, little niggles though, overall really good :)
ReplyDeleteThanks Carl! The shaky cam is simply awful, I only realised when watching it back. I'll definitely be fixing that in the future.
DeleteI think the tactics throughout the report are useful. Most of the time you don't get to hear the inner workings of the player, and why they are making the move.
I thought the maps would be a useful overview of the turn ends. I'll probably try and make them a bit bigger in the future. Was the length of time they were on the screen sufficient?
The maps were spot on for me dude, I'm a big fan of your style of reports and it gave a nice overview of what was happening, thanks for all your work with the site and reports, looking forward to the next vid :)
ReplyDeleteThanks for the kind words, Carl! Hoping to try and get another game set up for the holiday weekend coming up.
DeleteGood start Mike, well done! As someone who has tried his hand at video batreps I know how time consuming and frustrating it can be.
ReplyDeleteI would reiterate the above comments - steady camera is top priority, goes a bit 'blair witch' there :) What are you using? I found a phone to be better than a camera as it was much less cumbersome to hold at arms length.
A slightly panned out view would also be better and allow for people to get a better idea of the board and relative dispositions of forces.
Maps are great as an alternative to the standard 'turn title cards', but need to be up for a bit longer - maybe some fancy fading of unit placement / movement arrows or something to keep it interesting?
Also not sure how much editing you did but I prefer less dice rolling and just the crucial stuff being shown, but I guess everyone is different.
Overall though very encouraging, and about right lengthwise. Carry on the good work, looking forward to the next one!
Thanks for the feedback!
DeleteThis was filmed on my phone. I've actually recently picked up a camera and tripod, so will try these out to see if they work better.
I also realised that it was too close in to the view as well, I'll try and fix this.
I think the length is about right, any more than an hour is a tough watch in one go. I can edit out more of the dice rolls and have the maps up for a few seconds longer.