Setting up and running a Boomerang Squads game

This article covers the dashboard steps that are specific to Boomerang Squads. Everything else works as described in Creating and editing Sessions and Setting up a game.

1. Create a Squads session

From the home page choose Create Session and select Boomerang Squads as the application. The game mode is part of the application, so there is nothing to set per game: every game in the session is a Squads game.

Because Squads runs on the Boomerang platform, the session also offers the AI companion field. See Adding an AI companion to a Boomerang session.

2. Assign players

On the game's management page, the Player Roles editor offers only A Players (and the Facilitator), with a counter such as (n / 24). Add players as usual; each one is placed on the least-used colour so that squads stay balanced. The familiar messages still apply: "This group is full", "This player has no device" and "All players have been assigned."

Click Save Game Settings when you are done. The Games table still shows the B Players and C Players columns, which stay empty for Squads games.

3. Add players to a running game

Squads is the first Boomerang mode where players can join after the round has started. While a Squads game is active, its row on the Games tab shows a member dropdown and an Add to game button next to Edit.

1. Choose a session member from the dropdown. If everyone is already in the game it reads Everyone is in and is disabled.
2. Click Add to game.

The newcomer joins as an A player on the least-filled colour. They skip avatar selection and appear beside their squad's basket. Quotas are re-split across the squads, and blocks already delivered still count.

If the add is refused you will see "Game cannot be started:" followed by the reason, for example "The game is not running.", "... is already in this game." or "The game is full." Players can only be added to a running Squads game; before the start, use the Player Roles editor as normal.

Boomerang Basic games have not changed: players can only be edited before the game starts.

Nicknames

The name shown above each avatar comes from the user's Initials field, which can now be up to 10 characters (previously 6). Users can edit it on their own profile page, and organisation admins can edit it on the user's edit form. The help text reads "Enter your initials or nickname, as you'd like them to appear in Boomerang (max 10 chars)."

Things to know

• A Squads game holds up to 24 players: six colours with up to four players each.
• The facilitator cannot change quotas during a Squads round.
• Rotate game players is not available for Squads, because there are no roles to rotate.
• Squads can also be run as a Jenson8-managed browser streaming experience. In that case late arrivals join the active round automatically. Contact Jenson8 to arrange this.