I more-or-less agree with everything except for the last paragraph. I don't think the quality of the report should dictate the victory points you receive in a theater, because instead of incentivizing people with a lot of time on their hands to play the minis wargame Infinity you're emphasizing short story writing and photo editing.
Unless it has changed in the last editions, it was enough to write a 150 words battle report with 3 photos or so (no need for photo edit), and link the report with your opponents. Unrelated videos and copy-pasted reports were a thing, but I personally struggled to not go past 300 words, just relating the movements and maneuvers result would eat the minimum word count easily. Now, I think the campaign gets less and less players due to the increasing entry barrier (on the old times, the default were 6 models boxes like the Tunguska starter or the Combined Army starter.. also, about 20-30% cheaper, nowadays it seems the minimum entry cost is 90+ euros), the unchanging nature of the campaign (I find hilarious that it doesn't even relate to the campaign guidelines on Daedalus' Falls, which were copy-pasted from Campaign Paradiso from N2... and I'm not talking about the experience system and the specops even), and how Corvus have been ignoring the community whenever it suited them for making whatever their greatest idea (that ends up spitting on the face of one or more factions) they had last night. At some point, the missions were kinda betas for the next ITS, with more or less extras baked in (for example, the change to terrain skills and rules from N3 to N4 was widely used in the campaign before that), but now the extras seem to be thrown there just for the heck of it (like the "all TAGs costs 0.5SWC" rule, which incidentally increased the cost of a pair of TAGs...)
Unfortunately, this year I couldn’t participate. My store had their twice a year auction and I couldn’t get any to play other days. Then I had a hurt back which makes it difficult to play. So, for my situation it was mostly bad luck. But I can agree with some here mentioning high entry. If I hadn’t started doing these from the beginning, I would have thought it was pretty intimidating. Hell, just finding the PDFs of the missions is irritating. I think the timing for it would be better more in the middle of the ITS season too. We are just getting used to the new missions and then they throw in even more missions.
I wonder if imposing a 150 (or 200) pts format, and Limited Insertion requirement would have helped that. And, of course, do it wothout discouraging veteran players. Such format is way more newbie-friendly, but some veterans don't like being forced to leave their expensive toys at home...
Making it limited insertion certainly speeds things up, capping at 150-200pts is less ideal because all new "starting boxes" carry more than 200pts or so. The biggest hurdles I found were mainly two: linking the battle reports of both players, and seeing how no matter what you write, it has less impact that the three copy-pasted reports of other guys (that is less of an issue to me, since I enjoy the writing in these instances, what kills me is the shorter timeframes to play, and how bad the usability of the system used to be)
In the french education system, there are lessons on how to write summaries and developments based on writing guidelines. If it helps to write reports in 150 words quickly, we can create a document that serves as a guideline and inspiration. Otherwise, among the problems I've noted is the case of some people who wanted to take part in the RP phase of the campaign but hadn't been able to register on the forum, because nobody validated their registration.
Are you ablento summarize the principles of those writing lessons in very few words, so I can steal your expertise?
1) read a lot. Vocabulary is extremely important, and you get a lot of examples of situations, narratives, and tropes (TvTropes will devour your soul!) 2) Learn to schematize. It's the same as grabbing a schoolbook and mark the critical parts, organize them, and then regurgitate a re-expanded version in the written text, since you need to simplify a great deal of information in an organized manner and then expand on it. 3) P3: Practice, Patience and Perseverance. This can be further compressed in: be articulate, organize your thoughts, and practice what you need.
