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crowdedmind

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Posts posted by crowdedmind

  2. Posted

    Pretty much.  Blitzing is an version of aggro that attacks early (in theory sacrificing late game development to do so) in order to beat the other player before they can get set up.  Orcs do this very well primarily because they have a lot of cheap units that have 2 power.

  3. Posted

    I still think that you're being too broad when using the term 'competitive player'. It seem like the negative competitive player you're referring to is an average player who plays a game where very powerful decklists are circulated so all they do is follow what the playerbase says is good. A combination of not playing Magic and living in the UK means that I've not really come across many of this player, but I understand that they make up a not-insignificant proportion of many Magic tournaments. To me, they're not good players (although I've been trying not to use the word 'good'). Good players are people that can build decent decks and play well. They are able to understand the environment and make those minor tweaks to a deck that take it from a basic build of archetype to one that has increased utility and synergy. I'm sure that there are casual players who would make good competitive players but you don't really meet them at they tend not to have the cards available to build the deck they'd like to. I'd much prefer to label players good, average and bad rather than competitive and casual because we're only really going to be talking about players who attend tournaments. I realise that using adjectives such as good and bad are likely to cause problems however so I'm refraining from doing so.


    I'd also like to point out that I don't think that we've really seen an innovative deck yet (although ironically we've seen lots of decks with Innovation). The destruction blitz builds are so obvious and their power comes from a handful of overpowered cards (and one actually broken one) that it's no surprise people are building them. I'd even go so far as to say that Bolt Thrower is not really that innovative a build. The first thing some players do when looking at a new game is see what the core intention is and then see if you can build a deck that is the polar opposite. The core intention of Invasion is units hitting each other and so building a deck with no units is the first step to avoid that. We may still see a unit-less deck that's innovative but Repeater Bolt Thrower took away the need to worry about what your win condition was going to be and it's so different as to be obvious.


    We will see innovative builds do well in the future, but we currently have a limited card pool (the equivalent of only one expansion) that has been stretched across an environment lasting 6+ months. There are some builds that are bubbling under (I've got an Empire defensive switch deck that's almost there), but we need something to stop blitz being the default build before anything else can flourish.

     

    For Wytefang:


    Switch refers to switching between two styles of play or victory conditions (or having the capability to do so) during a game.  Defensive (or step up) switch is an initially defensive control build which switches to an explosive aggro finish.  Aggressive (or step down) switch is an initially, well, aggressive aggro deck that can switch to control to finish the game.
     

     

  5. Posted

    cyberfunk said:

    However, if you go second, the chances of Pillage and/or Lobber Crew crushing your opponent's king/quest is pretty small. If you have to play it on a Village or Warpstone from a turn behind, it almost certainly would have done more as random guy.

    You can still play Pillage/Lobba Crew on your first turn when going second, but it's a much more difficult decision (which is helped by having some acceleration to mitigate its cost directly or indirectly).  The Orc deck likely has more cheap cards it can play than its opponent's deck, so reseting the board (especially if their first turn was one unit or support) is not a bad play as you are more likely to have a productive turn two than they are.  You have to look at how many cards they have left in hand, try to gauge what their deck is trying to do and read them to see if they are confident making one thing against Orcs.

  7. Posted

    Scarow said:

     

    Because, unlike you, I got the correct answer the first try. Tells you something about using abstractions like HYPGEOMDIST...

    If HYPGEOMDIST is an abstraction then muliplication is an abstraction when compared to addition.  HYPGEOMDIST wasn't incorrect (we got the 37%), I was because I was lazy and a muppet.

     

    Several people have suggested summoning sickness as it's present in several games as well as Magic (WoW, for example).  I've not tried playing Invasion with it so I've no idea how much it would affect the current card pool.  I would have liked to have seen Sigmar's Intervention be a 0R neutral tactic.  Everyone would have to play it (so it's not an ideal solution), but it would have certainly taken some of the bite out of blitz.

  9. Posted

    darkdeal said:

    Look at this in the Orc Rush vs Orc/Skaven. The initial deck vs my deck. I have more units. Neither deck is that great at dealing with opposing units, and because of that, my deck will have more threats on the board. If you do your plan, and I do mine, I should win more often just from applying damage faster.

    Just because a deck has more units doesn't mean that it will play more units.  The race in blitz mirror matches is who can get more units on the table the fastest (and therefore burn two zones before their opponent).  Cards that accelerate your deck are key to achieving this.

    A better argument against We'z Bigga  (and one that agg and I keep discussing) is that there aren't that many targets in the deck.  We can live with Followers of Mork being a cheaper unit (however none exist), but the games when you do go first being able to play a Squig Herders that will let you draw two more cards on turn two is difficult to pass up.  They could be Clan Rats to go with the newly-added Thanquol but Clan Rats are only useful with other Skaven (otherwise you're paying for a poor 2R unit).  I really dislike playing units to the battlefield on turn one if I'm going first.  They are resources that could be drawing you cards and your opponent can take their first turn seeing what they need to deal with (whether holding resources for We Need Your Blood is a good idea etc).  I'd much rather develop my board on turn one when going first and then force out all my battlefield units on turn two and the accerlation of We'z Bigg and Innovation allow that.

  12. Posted

    When you say 'usually' you mean less than half the time after taking the mulligan, correct?  If you really want a Thanquol/2 unit start why aren't you playing three copies of him?

    The point of playing We'z Bigga and Innovation is to increase the chances of seeing one or two early on which allows you to force out an extra unit and gain more tempo.  I think that if you don't believe Pillage is good then you probably don't understand the power of disrupting your opponent's earl y game.

  13. Posted

    dormouse said:

    Do not expect rotation in any of the LCG's. Nate and I had a discussion about it and the fundamental nature by which it would violate the vision of the LCG. Understand I am not saying there won't ever be rotation, but the original idea behind the LCG was supplement packs were printed in a limited run and would not be reprinted, only the Core Set would see reprinting. That as cards wee no longer available and new cards came about allowing for new strategies that older cards would often fall out of use with the exception of the more powerful cards. Nate said he was really considering spot banning rather than rotation to remove cards that started to constrict design space or started dominating the environment.

    This is quite important.  The fundamental nature of the game was to deny new players access to old cards?  I'm sure that casual players wouldn't mind that much, but the more competitive playerbase might have an issue with that.  If I convince a few new players to satrt this summer I have to tell them that they can no longer get the Corruption Cycle cards (apart from hunting down odd packs here and there) and so they can;t play with card X even though it's legal for me to build a deck using it?

     

    dormouse said:

    I have seen more casually minded players find really interesting combos. That to me translates as players with sharp quick minds that may play in tournaments but don't feel the need to play the best deck(s) available at all times, saving those for actual tournaments and the various strategy and testing sessions leading up to them. Playing with cards that had been summarily dismissed by the competitive meta will sometimes lead to discoveries. This should not be taken to say competition minded players never refer back to older cards that were considered too inefficient to use, in an attempt to find some way of breaking something, but again it tends to be the quickest of the quick, the sharpest of the sharp, and those with the most  mental flexibility when it comes to thinking outside of the box... and we definitely have some people on this board that qualify... though I'd go so far as to say most competition minded players won't. Thinking outside of the box is not what they do. Net decking and minor tweaking is what they do. Sticking to formulas about unit/support/tactic numbers, deck size, and other assumed truths because of the structure it provides. We have some of those here too. And we have some that fall inbewteen. They have very ordered minds that cling to certain truisms, but will evaluate and re-evaluate cards and combos and tactics, constantly trying to find ways to beat or redefine the metagame, rather than trying to keep up or climb to the top of it.

    Wow, you really have a chip on your shoulder about competitve play.  I think that you've confused good competitive players with bad players who play good decks designed by others.

  15. Posted

    Clamatius said:

    Correct, they have to have played 2 units for you to be able to play We Need Your Blood (or if you went first and played a unit, that's ok too).

    I run Chittering Horde in DE just because it gives you another early play off Hate.  Gives you a slightly better chance of drawing Deathmasters in the mirror too, which is pretty important.

    You can't always play We Need Your Blood before your first turn, but sometimes you can and killing an early unit is very powerful.

    As I said, I found it a difficult call between We Need Your Blood and Chittering Horde.  I suppose a variant would be to run two of each and a Caught the Scent to make space.

  16. Posted

    Dormouse's post is on this page, reply number 66: www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp

     

    Wytefang said:

    I'm sorry but we'll have to agree to disagree here, CrowdedMind.  No one (to my knowledge) has successfully and from a mathematical perspective refuted Dormouse's points about card-draw.  Most people refuse to address the other points (also) about the impact of the game's resource-generation engine (by placment/location) and the usage and impact of Development cards as they affect deck-size, either.

    I responded in post 74.  The maths he uses is incorrect: I and others point out that he needs to use hypergeometric distribution and not (to be blunt) his made up numbers.  He isn't using a more simple system, he's using an incorrect system.  He follows this with a lop-sided argument that unfairly allocates more of an important card to his larger deck than to the smaller deck.  There's a bit of hand-waving regarding drawing cards where he again creates a biased argument by letting the larger deck draw more cards due to a limit he creates to satisfy his position.  He is discussing probabilities without being able to calulate them and then with that incorrect data creating biased scenarios to support himself.  I honestly can't see how anyone can support his argument knowing that the entire foundation is wrong.  For you to to post that comment implies that you don't understand the arguments.  I'm not trying to insult you, but for you to agree with what he says you must disagree with those that say his maths is incorrect.  Also how does the postition change if you draw more cards?  1 card or 10, you're more likely to see the cards you want in a smaller deck.  I don't dislike Dormouse but I find that he posts unsupportable arguments without a logical base.  I object to that because intentionally or not (and I assume not) he is misleading players.  If you don't understand probabilties then educate yourself, that's what I had to do when I started playing cards.

     

    I'm also fairly sure that I addressed developments.  If not here it is:

    Developments mean that a card which is of no use to you can have some purpose, but it is not a reason to put a lot of poor cards in your deck.  It allows cards with a narrow focus to be included in your deck for certain match-ups but they are still dead cards outside of those games.  This begins to move into the area of virtual card advantage.  Developments mean that one dead card in your hand each turn is OK (if you were intending to play a development), but more than that is not.  I'd rather have a hand of good cards and play one as a development than half a hand of good cards and half a hand of dead cards in this match.

  18. Posted

    plueschi has beaten me to it.  After posting my 64% figure I was mulling it over and after Bountyhunter posted =100%-HYPGEOMDIST(0,14,3,50) I knew that I'd been lazy and got it wrong.eusa_doh.gif  The answer is indeed 60%.  Despite Bountyhunter's praise please point out any mistkes I make as I'm only really an interested amateur when it comes to this type of stat and probability work.  I've only just started to learn negaitve binomial distribution but as I understand it this is the process that you'd use to calculate mulligans (although as you can only mulligan once it's easy to calculate it by hand).

     

  20. Posted

    Wytefang said:

     

    The "theory" is that less cards should translate to better overall decks but it's hardly been proven 100% true, regardless of claims to the contrary.  Common sense seems to indicate that less cards should boost your chances to draw a card but as Dormouse has shown in these forums in a different thread, that's a bit misleading too.  I tend not to worry about being a few cards off of the minimum amount, in general, but with the current gameplay environment being pretty heavily slanted towards Rush, it does help to have closer to the minimum amount.

     

     

    Dormouse used faulty logic, slanted comparisons and incorrect maths in his argument.  To say that he showed anything that supported his argument is incorrect.

     

    The logic behind small decks is this:

    Some cards are better than others.  You want to see those cards as often as possible in a game so the smaller the deck the higher the likelihood of seeing those cards.

    Realistically you won't notice a difference between 50 and 51 cards, but you'll also never know how often you're one card away from the one that you want to see.  It's also much easier to talk yourself into playing a 52, 53 etc card deck once you've crossed the psychological boundary of minimum deck size.

  22. Posted

    deviant-dj said:

     

    Now given that there is no way to hand manipulate or scout for selected cards as there was in say raw deal, in my oppinion it all comes down to when you get it. In a starting hand yes it can cause a rush deck to just dominate.

    You mean apart from being able to re-draw your starting hand?  You've got a 37% chance of seeing at least one in your opening hand and if you re-draw your hand this jumps to 64%.  You acknowledged that it causes blitz to dominate (I believe that it goes further than that) but you're suggesting that a 64% isn't consistent enough to make it an issue.  How high would that percentage have to be in order for the card to be an issue?

    This is of course ignoring the assertion that the card damages the design process.

  24. Posted

    Longbeards: Hmmm.  I think that I'd rather have Mountain Brigade if I'm paying 4R and have the flexibility as to where the unit can go.  Gurni's Elite are 3R which fit slightly better into the Dwarves' economy.  Longbeards feel like they're missing something.

    Hewn From the Mountain: Not good.

    Rune of Hearth and Home: Good players don't leave zones with 6+ damage on them for long.  There is a cpotential build with Sigmar's Intervention, Contested Fortress, Keystone Forge and Master Rune of Valaya but in the end you'll wonder why you bothered.

     

    Helblaster Crew: Has a tiny amount of potential right now but not great.  In the future however it could be a conerstone.  Sleeper at best.

    Protect the Empire: Golden.  It's cards like this that Order need to deeal with blitz.

    Sigmar's Brilliance: I can see a use for it in a defensive switch deck when combined with For Ulthuan!, but I suspect that it will be the first card cut from your deck.

    Charge of the Silver Helms: Solid offensive card or lets you transfer resources across turns.

    Ellyrian Reavers: Lacklustre.  No real excitement in the stats and the forced effect is very tame.

    Morvael's Legacy:  Could be amazing.  It's proabably worth playing a copy or two.

     

    Blessings of Tzeentch: If you can fetch one unit then it's not bad.  If it's all units and then one at random it's terrible.

    Beast of Chaos: Why would you play this over Bloodsworn, Chaos Knights etc?  Terribad.

    Cacophonic Scream: I can maybe see a use for this in my control deck but it would have been far more playable if it burnt the zone.

     

    Witch Hag's Curse: 3R for other Destruction decks and so might be pricey, but for any Dark Elf deck this is amazing.

    Slave Driver:  Another great card for Dark Elves.  2R to remove a unit for a turn is well worth the price.

    Your Will Is Mine: Kill card for Dark Elf control against aggro.  One of the epic tactics that will see actually play.

     

    Snotling Saboteurs: Not quite good enough for blitz but likely to see play if the environment slows down.  Orc aggro-control is almost there.

    Easy Pickin's: See above.  Orcs have no reason to give up their cheap units yet.

    Da Brainbusta!: Not good.  You can either dodge your opponent's units or corrupt the few important defenders.  10R is just laughable.

     

    Greyseer's Lair: In theory very good but probably too slow (which says a lot aboutt he environment).

    Plague Monk: Skaven decks won't play it but Chaos control will.

  25. Posted

    I said that you did well considering that you got the deck on the way to the tournament, lets not get too corazon.gif here. gui%C3%B1o.gif

    I think that the deck is strong, but missing that one piece to give it consistency against blitz.  That might tip it over the edge against slower aggro decks however.  City Gates can go for some terribad High Elf Building but I think that an extra fog is also needed.  Radiant Gaze isn't amazing, but like the Contrested Fortress it might give you enough time to for the Keystone Forge to kick in.  Buying even a single extra turn is massive.

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