Is Key Positions slowly killing the game?

[TauntaunScout 4,276]

12 hours ago, Zrob314 said:

You're right, I should anticipate every single possible deployment zone that my opponent could get when we are setting up the table before I even know how big their army is or what side of the table they will be on, or what deployment zone options will come up in the battle cards/be chosen.    Which of course then gives my opponent even more great options of a terrain piece right over the line of their eventual deployment zone tp designate as a key position.  

 

I've said above that it is not at all a virtual certainty of being chosen, in fact it only has, at best, a 25% chance to become a certainty for the blue player.  However when you're going to justify an obvious overwhelming advantage for one side by saying that the red player has an advantage because their army has more points I think it's pretty fair to emphasize that the point difference could very well be minuscule/negligible or even non-existent.  And if that is the case, why does the blue player deserve this advantage again?

More than most games, the Blue/Red thing seems to be oddly lopsided in Legion. Like usually it's more like, "you set up the scenery, I decide which table edge I want" so it hopefully stays fair. It does seem like it's just flat out better to be blue, which, is a weird thing to leave to a coin toss.

I actually would have liked to see something new done with this and feel it was a missed opportunity: rebels should have been overpriced and underpowered, ie, outnumbered and outgunned, BUT, gotten huge "turn zero" advantages to compensate for it. I've always thought about writing an American Civil War game that used something like that.

[Crawfskeezen 370]

I have a couple thoughts here.

The last two games I played were with Key Positions as the objective. In both I was the Red Player.

In the first game we were playing Hostile Conditions which affected the early stage of the game preventing any long range shooting while also allowing me to advance significantly towards two of the three objectives which my opponent had naturally placed in a position to his advantage. That mitigated his advantage and I won, two objectives to one.

In the second game we were playing clear conditions and I was subject to a wall of fire as I advanced. It was a thoroughly enjoyable game but I lost two to one.

In both games I was "forced" in the battle card phase to work to eliminate Long March deployment as it would have hampered my effort given my choice of army (no 74-z's, Vader, Snows; a slower, less mobile army). In the future I will be more vigilant of Key Positions relative to my army choice and deployment options.

My second thought is that the advantage of being blue/red player relative to the difference of army point values and initiative bids is slightly disproportionate. I mean this due to the fact that the advantage or disadvantage of being the different colour player is the same whether the bid is won by 30 points or only 3 (or less). More often than not the difference between two players army point values is very slight. Not to say that there isn't merit to not maximizing the amount of points you put into an army to be able to have more control over the battle cards, but I sometimes feel that the advantage lost by losing a bid by 1-3 points is harsh. Solution to that: bid more? Yes, but where is the break even point between sacrificing points in favour of bid? I would say it is quite situational and also depends on the deployment and condition cards. 

Does that mean that the card is killing the game? I don't think so, however I think that that players (especially the red players) must be vigilant of the card in the selection phase knowing that it could be more difficult to overcome than other objective cards.

[Hoffburger 209]

I think people need to learn to place their objective better as the red player. Most of the key positions games are lost by the red player turn 0. You will never have to play Key Positions unless it is the furthest right card on objectives. This means you only have a 25% chance to play it. This also means that you will always get to select deployment and/or condition for the game. Deployment is the most important so that you aren't doing something crazy like Long March. You should step back, look at the table, and think about where the blue player is going to place their objectives based on the deployment and also be looking for where you can place yours (you want it towards their first objective, but not so far up that they have a good chance of winning yours). You want to go after those two objectives unless your opponent hands you their other one. Think ahead, don't let yourself get stuck with Major Offensive or Long March where the opponent can really screw you over with objective selection. That being said, if the table has a bunch of terrain that would be inside of a Long March deployment and nothing right outside and more towards the middle, then Long March might be a good choice.

tl:dr - There is only a 25% chance to have to play Key Positions as red. You will always get to select Deployment and/or Condition as red. Look at the table, select a deployment that will benefit you based on where the opponent will place their objectives.

[Zrob314 833]

11 hours ago, TauntaunScout said:

Like usually it's more like, "you set up the scenery, I decide which table edge I want" so it hopefully stays fair.

So I've gotten into the habit, before anything is set up or touches the table of telling my opponent to not tell me what faction they are playing or what their army is worth.  I also keep them in the dark about my own. 

Then we set up the table together.  This keeps everyone honest because if you build too much of an advantage on one side of the map then you're running a serious risk of finding out that you lost the bid.  

 

When I play casual full size game with friends who like to play with my extensive FFG collection and they don't feel confident to build their own lists, I'll give them a selection of lists to choose from.  If I'm insisting I play a faction for my own practice or research purposes I'll give them three lists of the other faction (one will be worth more than my list, one less than my list and one the same value as my list) to choose from and if I'm not concerned with that then I hand them three lists from each faction and have them choose first. That way when we set up the table I don't know what they're going to choose and cannot guarantee if I'll be blue or red player.  

8 hours ago, Hoffburger said:

tl:dr - There is only a 25% chance to have to play Key Positions as red. You will always get to select Deployment and/or Condition as red. Look at the table, select a deployment that will benefit you based on where the opponent will place their objectives.

tl;dr I've literally said this 4 times since Saturday in this very thread.  So, thanks for repeating me?

[Derrault 1,091]

On 10/29/2018 at 2:14 AM, Zrob314 said:

You're right, I should anticipate every single possible deployment zone that my opponent could get when we are setting up the table before I even know how big their army is or what side of the table they will be on, or what deployment zone options will come up in the battle cards/be chosen.    Which of course then gives my opponent even more great options of a terrain piece right over the line of their eventual deployment zone tp designate as a key position.  

 

I've said above that it is not at all a virtual certainty of being chosen, in fact it only has, at best, a 25% chance to become a certainty for the blue player.  However when you're going to justify an obvious overwhelming advantage for one side by saying that the red player has an advantage because their army has more points I think it's pretty fair to emphasize that the point difference could very well be minuscule/negligible or even non-existent.  And if that is the case, why does the blue player deserve this advantage again?

No, I’m going to justify it by saying that there are plenty of ways to mitigate it if it did come to pass, and having it be “guaranteed” for the blue player necessitates that the red player has control over the conditions and/or the deployment. Given that terrain and cover are placed jointly, there’s little excuse for claiming that a single objective is somehow breaking the game.

Furthermore, the obvious remedy is clearly established. If you truly believe that that one card is instant win, bid accordingly. 

To test this theory, I’d be very interested to see if tracking of game stats (ie army composition and consequent card options, what got taken, deployment of terrain/cover, and actual point outcomes). 

[ryanabt 1,188]

On 10/29/2018 at 1:50 PM, TauntaunScout said:

More than most games, the Blue/Red thing seems to be oddly lopsided in Legion. Like usually it's more like, "you set up the scenery, I decide which table edge I want" so it hopefully stays fair. It does seem like it's just flat out better to be blue, which, is a weird thing to leave to a coin toss.

I actually would have liked to see something new done with this and feel it was a missed opportunity: rebels should have been overpriced and underpowered, ie, outnumbered and outgunned, BUT, gotten huge "turn zero" advantages to compensate for it. I've always thought about writing an American Civil War game that used something like that.

ACW game like that could be fun. To make sure you could include battles where CSA had a numeric advantage, you could write one possible "turn zero" advantage as extra troops. Of course, I believe most games have leadership differentials to account, don't they? With the ability to give more orders or to a greater number of troops, etc.?

[Darth Lupine 1,556]

7 hours ago, ryanabt said:

ACW game like that could be fun. To make sure you could include battles where CSA had a numeric advantage, you could write one possible "turn zero" advantage as extra troops. Of course, I believe most games have leadership differentials to account, don't they? With the ability to give more orders or to a greater number of troops, etc.?

Most miniature games I've played have no order system, and it's you go/ I go, usually. One notable exception was Warmaster Ancients, where you had to pass a leadership check with your commander to issue an order to a given battalion. I think Bolt Action uses a system where you put both sides order dice in a bag and draw randomly what unit acts next, but I've never played that game.

[syrath 1,316]

On 10/29/2018 at 5:30 AM, Derrault said:

Considering the red player has a superior force (in points value), it makes sense that they’d have the uphill battle in this (or any other) scenario. 

Uphill battle is different from a virtually guaranteed win.Recent tournament winner won because in his mind he brought a competitive force with 780 pts when is opponents were bringing (mostly) 16 pt bid so a grand difference of 4 pts although there was a player who just went with 799. The one with 780 went unbeaten and  reckons that in competition play people will go for higher bids, the percentage rate win on other cards are closer but having a 100% win rate for blue regardless of any other circumstances on one card, says to me that card is broken for competitive play.

[crx3800 268]

It's by no means a point to the contrary, but I played against Key positions in an event this past weekend as the red player and I won. Mainly because most terrain pieces were very large and couldn't be chosen because they sat in our deployment zones. Our deployment was Disarray. I put both my speeder bikes in the opposing corner and they swept up their side of the table and started moving towards objectives after the second turn. Key positions would be very different if there was a fourth token, or if the first one just had to be placed in the center of the table (but with terrain placement as it is, there might not be a piece of terrain in the dead center). 

 

[TauntaunScout 4,276]

On 10/31/2018 at 6:30 AM, Darth Lupine said:

Most miniature games I've played have no order system, and it's you go/ I go, usually.

That IS an order system, albeit a very basic one.  To this day my favorite for shooty games is still the old D6 system. You move a unit, I move a unit, until all units are moved. Repeat with shooting... but shot models aren't removed until they get to shoot. Simultaneous casualties were a very real threat.

[TauntaunScout 4,276]

On 10/30/2018 at 11:02 PM, ryanabt said:

ACW game like that could be fun. To make sure you could include battles where CSA had a numeric advantage, you could write one possible "turn zero" advantage as extra troops. Of course, I believe most games have leadership differentials to account, don't they? With the ability to give more orders or to a greater number of troops, etc.?

The idea was, the Confederacy would have worse everything and less of it. There's been a lot of myths surrounding the forces of that war that have sprung up in the last 150 years and my rules would ignore such mythology. However, to reflect certain realities, the Confederate player, in my game, would get to deploy after seeing the opponent's deployment, and get to move first or second according to their preference.

Or something like that.

I don't like the wargame convention of "small awesome statted force vs. big sucky statted swarm". Such match-ups are the exception in human history.  Usually, whoever could afford the best stuff, also had/has the most people in a fight. This does not mean the better force always won the battles though, whereas in most games, it would. There's ways to mitigate material disadvantages that are hard to replicate on the tabletop.

[Darth Lupine 1,556]

21 minutes ago, TauntaunScout said:

That IS an order system, albeit a very basic one.  To this day my favorite for shooty games is still the old D6 system. You move a unit, I move a unit, until all units are moved. Repeat with shooting... but shot models aren't removed until they get to shoot. Simultaneous casualties were a very real threat.

No. What I mean by that is, I move and shoot with my entire army, then you do the same.

By orders system I understand something like in Legion, where you only move one unit, then the opponent moves one of his, etc.

Moving and shooting your entire army at a time gives first player a stupidly huge advantage. Back in 40K 3.5, I had a T'au army, and if I went first by the time I got done with my turn, the enemy was done...lol.

[syrath 1,316]

54 minutes ago, crx3800 said:

It's by no means a point to the contrary, but I played against Key positions in an event this past weekend as the red player and I won. Mainly because most terrain pieces were very large and couldn't be chosen because they sat in our deployment zones. Our deployment was Disarray. I put both my speeder bikes in the opposing corner and they swept up their side of the table and started moving towards objectives after the second turn. Key positions would be very different if there was a fourth token, or if the first one just had to be placed in the center of the table (but with terrain placement as it is, there might not be a piece of terrain in the dead center). 

 

That may be the case for you, but as I said in competitive play key positions is all but a blue win on every occasion. Given that the difference between the best player and the worst player is wider than many competitive games you'd think there would be more red winners . Example in a pool of 60/40 imp/rebel players it was a 40/60 win rate over all objectives, however on 10 key positions in 32 matches (I think it may have been more) matches all 10 were won by blue regardless of side.

Edited November 1, 2018 by syrath

[TauntaunScout 4,276]

4 hours ago, Darth Lupine said:

No. What I mean by that is, I move and shoot with my entire army, then you do the same.

 

I know what you meant. 40k has a very simple command system, the details of which you have illustrated above. You might not think of that as a command system but that's what it is. You don't always get to move your whole army, if units have unresolved morale effects, for example.

[Derrault 1,091]

15 hours ago, syrath said:

Uphill battle is different from a virtually guaranteed win.Recent tournament winner won because in his mind he brought a competitive force with 780 pts when is opponents were bringing (mostly) 16 pt bid so a grand difference of 4 pts although there was a player who just went with 799. The one with 780 went unbeaten and  reckons that in competition play people will go for higher bids, the percentage rate win on other cards are closer but having a 100% win rate for blue regardless of any other circumstances on one card, says to me that card is broken for competitive play.

This doesn't address my question, and it's equally weighted against crx3800's experience being the opposite.

So far that's one example of a win for blue, and one example of a win for red. Statistically, a dead heat, nowhere near 100%. (I’d also caution against relying on the mere opinion of a single players experience before making blanket pronouncements). 

It also doesn't address all the other variables; Did the opponent have a superior force? (at 4 points difference, I'd say no.) What (obvious) mistakes did each player make? Was there a better strategy easily available once the game started? Better deployment? Better terrain setup? Better force composition?

 

None of those questions are answered, even in the single example given. So, on the whole, no I can't ascribe to the theory that it's a "guaranteed win", especially in the face of the obvious counterexample: Red won in crx3800's game.

9 hours ago, syrath said:

That may be the case for you, but as I said in competitive play key positions is all but a blue win on every occasion. Given that the difference between the best player and the worst player is wider than many competitive games you'd think there would be more red winners . Example in a pool of 60/40 imp/rebel players it was a 40/60 win rate over all objectives, however on 10 key positions in 32 matches (I think it may have been more) matches all 10 were won by blue regardless of side.

 

Are those percentages for the players/rates? (I'm trying to figure out how 100 players could play only 32 matches).

 

That being said, 32 games with no replays by any given player (so everyone has exactly one chance to play the scenario, at best) is not nearly enough of a sample size to derive any kind of statistical confidence. We'd literally need hundreds of games from the same two players using the variables (i.e. the exact same armies and terrain) to make the kind of claim being advanced. And even then, it would only tell us something about the particular forces involved and the particular players, and the particular terrain.

[syrath 1,316]

Sorry I wasnt clear it was 60% imp/40% rebels with an overall win rate of 60% wins rebels /40% imperial (in matches they were opposed, so not counting mirror games on that stat) 40 games were played, 10 of which had the Key Objectives card, all won by the blue player.

So statistically not a massive pool but when a group reasonable players of varying degrees of ability play  40 matches where the rebels are shown to already have a statistical advantage , then you would expect the bias to be the same or similar across all objectives. 10 matches had key objectives all won by the blue player , 4 were mirror matches where the rebels won twice and the imps won twice, however the ONLY deciding factor that was statistically important on that objective was- who played Blue

just to put that intoo perspective. If the bias had been 60% blue / 40% red over a much larger group of battles the chances of 10 blue wins in a row are 0.6% or roughly 200 to 1. 

This is starting to show in competitive play where people are bringing along slowly larger point bids for fear of getting hosed on key positions by a much lesser player so as to ensure they are blue. It effectively removes the element of the snall difference in level of the skill of the player, or the superiority of the forces (in comparison to the other player) all you have to do to win that game is bring a smaller point force with you, removing all other variables from the game when the skill levels are good enough . Im fairly sure that Ffg didnt intend for one card choice to have such a heavy swing to the blue player .

For what its worth I dont think its "killing the game" but I play with friends who I can beat on key positions (with difficulty), but none of them can beat me on it and I have an 80%+ win rate with my friends blue or red , in casual play I now remove the card where I have the choice when Im blue just to keep it from being boring.

 

Edited November 1, 2018 by syrath

[NoShieldsAllGuts 106]

Yes, more than the balance issue, it leads to some extremely stale play. Another reason it should be changed or eliminated altogether.

[Zrob314 833]

On 10/30/2018 at 8:50 PM, Derrault said:

No, I’m going to justify it by saying that there are plenty of ways to mitigate it if it did come to pass, and having it be “guaranteed” for the blue player necessitates that the red player has control over the conditions and/or the deployment. Given that terrain and cover are placed jointly, there’s little excuse for claiming that a single objective is somehow breaking the game.

Furthermore, the obvious remedy is clearly established. If you truly believe that that one card is instant win, bid accordingly. 

To test this theory, I’d be very interested to see if tracking of game stats (ie army composition and consequent card options, what got taken, deployment of terrain/cover, and actual point outcomes). 

Are you willfully trying to misunderstand this?

1) Terrain is set up jointly, yes.  However it is set up BEFORE bids are revealed and BEFORE battle cards are revealed.  I cannot set up around Key Positions because I do not know what cards will come out, what side of the table I will be on and whether I will be red or blue when we are setting up the table.  Even then bidding specifically for key position is a fool's errand.  It's not going to come up every time, in fact as I pointed out it is only statistically likely to be an unstoppable element of the game 25% of the time.  However that 25% of the time all but secures a blue win before armies are even deployed.  This is not insignificant and pretending that it is fair or that you would see its as an acceptable outcome if you were the red player (especially when a roll of the dice can make you the red player) beggars belief.  

2) Key positions has an OVERWHELMING advantage for the blue player.  No, it  is not an absolute "I Win" button but the blue player has to intentionally set the key positions to minimize or eschew their own advantage, play very badly or have the dice go very much against them in order to lose.  Conditions and deployment do not mitigate this.  They might provide a speed bump for the blue player, but they will not negate the blue player advantage.  Even then you as the red player have to hope that the conditions and deployment that might mitigate this are even in the blue player's deck and that they come out in some combination that you can actually utilize, vs. conditions and deployment that increase the advantage.  For example (assume Key Positions is the third card objective card laid), "sure you got condition X and deployment Y which might help you win, red player, but those are each in position 3 while position 1 on deployment and objective will make it easier for blue player to capitalize on key positions and middle positions on both deployment and condition don't help you at all.  HA! HA!  Sucks to be you!

3) I have not ever said that this one card is "breaking"the game or anything else of the sort.  It is, however, a broken and fundamentally unfair card.  There are three easy fixes to this (all options score as written on the card)

Fix 1)  Place an objective token on the piece of terrain close to the center of the board.  This terrain must be at least range 2 from each long side of the board and range 3 from each short side of the board.  Then blue player selects a piece of terrain and places and objective token on that terrain.  Red player then chooses a piece of terrain and places an objective token on that piece of terrain.  Each piece of terrain selected by blue and red player must be completely outside of all deployment zones and at least range 2 from the jointly chosen terrain. (halve ranges for games played on a 3x3 table)

Fix 2) Same text as card currently, however that caveat that each player must place their objective token(s) within range 2 of an enemy deployment zone.

Fix 3) Winner of the bid chooses blue or red player and chooses which side of the map is theirs.  The red player's deck of battle cards is used to select conditions, deployment and objective.  

All of these are fair.  The first one brings key positions in line with other objective cards.  The third option is fair for all existing objectives.  

However Fixes 2 and 3 would probably make it so that Key Positions was never used in tournament play.  That's fine though, Armada has plenty of objective cards that no first player in their right mind would ever choose.  

Edited November 2, 2018 by Zrob314

[Zrob314 833]

19 hours ago, Derrault said:

Statistically, a dead heat an insignificant sample size.

Fixed that for you.

Edited November 2, 2018 by Zrob314

[Indy_com 1,144]

How about making it so the Key Positions objective tokens cannot be placed within range 2 of either players deployment zone?

[Derrault 1,091]

On 11/1/2018 at 7:07 PM, syrath said:

Sorry I wasnt clear it was 60% imp/40% rebels with an overall win rate of 60% wins rebels /40% imperial (in matches they were opposed, so not counting mirror games on that stat) 40 games were played, 10 of which had the Key Objectives card, all won by the blue player.

So statistically not a massive pool but when a group reasonable players of varying degrees of ability play  40 matches where the rebels are shown to already have a statistical advantage , then you would expect the bias to be the same or similar across all objectives. 10 matches had key objectives all won by the blue player , 4 were mirror matches where the rebels won twice and the imps won twice, however the ONLY deciding factor that was statistically important on that objective was- who played Blue

just to put that intoo perspective. If the bias had been 60% blue / 40% red over a much larger group of battles the chances of 10 blue wins in a row are 0.6% or roughly 200 to 1. 

This is starting to show in competitive play where people are bringing along slowly larger point bids for fear of getting hosed on key positions by a much lesser player so as to ensure they are blue. It effectively removes the element of the snall difference in level of the skill of the player, or the superiority of the forces (in comparison to the other player) all you have to do to win that game is bring a smaller point force with you, removing all other variables from the game when the skill levels are good enough . Im fairly sure that Ffg didnt intend for one card choice to have such a heavy swing to the blue player .

For what its worth I dont think its "killing the game" but I play with friends who I can beat on key positions (with difficulty), but none of them can beat me on it and I have an 80%+ win rate with my friends blue or red , in casual play I now remove the card where I have the choice when Im blue just to keep it from being boring.

 

Problematically, such a small sample size (10 games!) in no way establishes a trend, and even if we're agreed that this is just doing a review of case studies, we'd need distinct characterization of every battle. (i.e. Actual force composition, Rebel/Imp tells us nothing in particular; How many were close and how close? (i.e. were games turning on poor choices/good rolls? What were the play styles employed by each player in each matchup)). There are literally dozens of reasons red players are failing on such a scenario, not the least of which is simply underestimating what they need to do to win on offense. (And, of all the scenarios, Key Positions most clearly defines one side as being on offense and the other on defense).

Worse, we have no track real track record to determine what the playing ability of the players is. (It does remain an outstanding question...DO these players really understand what the critical elements for a win are on this objective, i.e. when is an action a good idea or a mistake?) On some level this is unanswerable without interviews, so a review of mere win-loss outcomes tells us nothing. (i.e. Why did a player actually win or lose? Was it knowingly making a decision to see where it went? A failed/successful gambit? Because of betting long odds and succeeding or the same and failure? Because they missed opportunities? Because they played too conservatively?)

21 hours ago, Zrob314 said:

Are you willfully trying to misunderstand this?

1) Terrain is set up jointly, yes.  However it is set up BEFORE bids are revealed and BEFORE battle cards are revealed.  I cannot set up around Key Positions because I do not know what cards will come out, what side of the table I will be on and whether I will be red or blue when we are setting up the table.  Even then bidding specifically for key position is a fool's errand.  It's not going to come up every time, in fact as I pointed out it is only statistically likely to be an unstoppable element of the game 25% of the time.  However that 25% of the time all but secures a blue win before armies are even deployed.  This is not insignificant and pretending that it is fair or that you would see its as an acceptable outcome if you were the red player (especially when a roll of the dice can make you the red player) beggars belief.  

2) Key positions has an OVERWHELMING advantage for the blue player.  No, it  is not an absolute "I Win" button but the blue player has to intentionally set the key positions to minimize or eschew their own advantage, play very badly or have the dice go very much against them in order to lose.  Conditions and deployment do not mitigate this.  They might provide a speed bump for the blue player, but they will not negate the blue player advantage.  Even then you as the red player have to hope that the conditions and deployment that might mitigate this are even in the blue player's deck and that they come out in some combination that you can actually utilize, vs. conditions and deployment that increase the advantage.  For example (assume Key Positions is the third card objective card laid), "sure you got condition X and deployment Y which might help you win, red player, but those are each in position 3 while position 1 on deployment and objective will make it easier for blue player to capitalize on key positions and middle positions on both deployment and condition don't help you at all.  HA! HA!  Sucks to be you!

3) I have not ever said that this one card is "breaking"the game or anything else of the sort.  It is, however, a broken and fundamentally unfair card.  There are three easy fixes to this (all options score as written on the card)

Fix 1)  Place an objective token on the piece of terrain close to the center of the board.  This terrain must be at least range 2 from each long side of the board and range 3 from each short side of the board.  Then blue player selects a piece of terrain and places and objective token on that terrain.  Red player then chooses a piece of terrain and places an objective token on that piece of terrain.  Each piece of terrain selected by blue and red player must be completely outside of all deployment zones and at least range 2 from the jointly chosen terrain. (halve ranges for games played on a 3x3 table)

Fix 2) Same text as card currently, however that caveat that each player must place their objective token(s) within range 2 of an enemy deployment zone.

Fix 3) Winner of the bid chooses blue or red player and chooses which side of the map is theirs.  The red player's deck of battle cards is used to select conditions, deployment and objective.  

All of these are fair.  The first one brings key positions in line with other objective cards.  The third option is fair for all existing objectives.  

However Fixes 2 and 3 would probably make it so that Key Positions was never used in tournament play.  That's fine though, Armada has plenty of objective cards that no first player in their right mind would ever choose.  

1)  If you're assuming that blue wins no matter what on key positions, then it follows that there's no reason at all to not plan the setup of terrain as if you are going to be red on any given deployment for that objective.

Telling me that it's unstoppable, I can't see why you would then refuse to act accordingly and mitigate it. And, remember, if your opponent is burning their discards to get rid of it, then they are giving you the opportunity to determine the deployment. Many of the deployment cards overlap, so the possible locations a blue player could deploy near (and thus might choose if they want to give themselves advantage) is more limited.

2) You've said it "all but secures a blue win before armies are even deployed." So, forgive me if I don't accept this doublespeak. Either it's a straight up win in your opinion, or it's open for debate and players aren't properly hedging their bets to win as red. And yes, if both players act like they think they're going to be the blue players on key positions, then the board naturally would tilt for blue, but only because the player who gets red slid the knife into their own back. And both conditions and deployments most certainly do impact this. Limited Visibility alone is a nearly perfect way for the red player to charge right into the fray for the nominally blue objective tokens by preventing any long range enemy fire for the first two rounds. In the scenario you've outlined, there's 0% chance that all three cards favor blue, and less than a 12.5% chance that 2/3 favor blue. So an 87.5% chance that red gets two favorable cards when blue needs to eliminate two if they want to play key positions. The initiative on choosing deployment/conditions in the 25% chance scenario of KP is entirely in Red's hands.

3) What's the distinction you're making between "a totally broken card" and a card breaking the game? It's either broken (the game breaks from it) or it's not (it doesn't break the game).

[Zrob314 833]

16 hours ago, Derrault said:

If you're assuming that blue wins no matter what on key positions,

Had you read what I wrote you would see that I am not.  I did, however say "Key positions has an OVERWHELMING advantage for the blue player.  No, it is not an absolute "I Win" button but the blue player has to intentionally set the key positions to minimize or eschew their own advantage, play very badly or have the dice go very much against them in order to lose.  Conditions and deployment do not mitigate this."

This is, in effect, the same concept as saying "it all but secures a blue win before armies are deployed."  This is not double speak.  These are not conflicting ideas.  They both recognize that the red player can win but the odds are highly stacked against them. Here, let me give you an analogy.  Lets say we're both in a 100 meter race.  You are permitted to start the race at meter 50.  We both start at the same time.  Yes, I MIGHT win.  However the odds are clearly stacked against me.  You would probably have to be a horrible runner, suffer an injury before the finish or wait until we are neck and next to get to your full speed for me to win.  Sure you might occasionally meet another runner who can run 100 faster than you can run 50, but that doesn't mean that the rule letting you start at 50 is fair.  (this by the way is not an exhaustive list, but I don't want you to misread this and assume that these are the only conditions I am considering). There also might be reasons to give you that sort of a handicap for the race.  But what we're dealing with here is a case where the decision to let someone start at 50 meters is made arbitrarily and randomly. 

Now back to what is, frankly, stupid advice on setup.

16 hours ago, Derrault said:

that there's no reason at all to not plan the setup of terrain as if you are going to be red on any given deployment for that objective.

 Many of the deployment cards overlap, so the possible locations a blue player could deploy near (and thus might choose if they want to give themselves advantage) is more limited.

First off, I'm looking at all the deployment cards now.  I'm not sure what you mean by overlap but what I'm really more concerned with is that you believe that it is somehow possible that one player can somehow set up the board with the assistance of another player where there are not two pieces of terrain pretty much right across the line of every single deployment area.  

Like seriously, I want to see an actual table where you have played a game where this was the case.  Also, you can't tell your opponent that's what you're trying to do. You're either playing with tables that are too sparse or you're just making stuff up.  

I just counted one of my match boxes, all the terrain (including scatter) has been measure to cover 25% of the board.  It's 84 pieces of terrain (both large terrain and scatter terrain).  How the heck are you going to keep ALL off that a significant distance away from every possible blue deployment zone.  Blue just needs to designate two pieces.  

16 hours ago, Derrault said:

In the scenario you've outlined, there's 0% chance that all three cards favor blue, and less than a 12.5% chance that 2/3 favor blue. So an 87.5% chance that red gets two favorable cards when blue needs to eliminate two if they want to play key positions. The initiative on choosing deployment/conditions in the 25% chance scenario of KP is entirely in Red's hands.

Nice try, you didn't read the scenario I outlined, but okay.  So I'm looking at all the available battle cards right now.

A blue player is probably going to have Major Offensive (1), Battle Lines(2), Long March (3) and Advanced Positions(4) in their deck.  Disarray seems to give too much chance of the enemy being close to you 2/3 objectives, so if they're hoping and bidding for KP they're gonna leave that one out.  Advanced Positions is the preferred conditions for the blue player so I should avoid that.  (it would be preferred because they can entrench around their objectives at deployment.   Of the 4 I would say that Major Offensive is probably the most advantageous for the red player because it offers the shortest distance from the blue player's area (18 inches) and where you need to knock them from their perch.  Remember, the blue payer can win by playing a wholly defensive game.  They have no reason to move any of their forces off of the objectives unless those forces have compulsory moves.  So, red has 25% Good, 50% less good and 25% worst outcome  

Now for Objectives someone hoping for key positions would probably drop Rapid Reinforcements.  Can't have the enemy air dropping anything nasty into my zone of control.  That's stupid.  Hostile Environment is also advantageous for Blue Player because they will be moving less than red player.  They can just turtle up on terrain.  They'd certainly keep minefields because they can put both of their mines to the red player's set objective (yes, I am considering the placement restrictions on minefields). So that's Limited Visibility (A), Clear Conditions (B), Hostile Environment (C) and Minefields (D).  We can call Limited Visibility Red Advantage and Clear Conditions a draw.  So, on conditions we only have 25% good for the red player, 25% neither good nor bad and 50% bad.  

For this we will assume that the objective cards have come out as X, X, KP, X with the fourth position in all rows being the hole card.  So there are 576 possible combinations of the above variables.  36 (6.25%) combinations have the two advantageous variables as the hole card.  Bad luck for red, better hope the dice like you better.  216 (37.5%) of these combinations allow the red player to get their most advantageous combinations in two flips or less (of course this means that while Blue cannot be stopped from getting Key Positions, Red can also not be stopped from getting their most advantageous outcome).  172 (29.86%) of these combinations have one of the two preferred cards for Red (but not both) buried.  

So there's already a huge problem with your math.  Your "87.5%" chance to get two advantageous cards is already off by about 50%.

Oh hey...there's 13824 combinations of any deck of 12 battle cards.  216 of those would put Key positions in the third position while simultaneously burying the two cards that could give red any sort of advantage.    

That's a 1.56% chance for that to happen.  Not 0, which was what you threw out.  

 

But hey man, I can tell you've got some vested interest in KP not changing. Your "die on this hill" defense of it would indicate that you really care about this imbalanced card not being changed.  What does that say about you?  I mean reasonable and fair edits to the card have been suggested but you keep insisting there isn't a problem.  You even used some really bad math to justify this.  

[syrath 1,316]

I know 10 matches isnt a massive stretch in the ways of statistics however 200 to 1 isnt a figure I picked from the air the chances of getting 10 straight wins where the chances of the blue player winning was set at 60 % (so im already giving the blue player a 10 % better chance to win) is 0.6% , so 6 in 1000. the win percentage to make 10 straight happen 50% of the time is 94%. Given that in my experience the only time, myself or anyone Ive spoke to that the red player has one has been when the level of player has been vastly different. Given this, I would say that across the board at a good estimate from speaking with other people that key positions gives the blue player an advantage in excess of a 95% chance of a win all other things being equal . Terrain and other factors are already factored into this.

I am however always factoring into this that both players have enough level of skill to know how to manipulate key positions to their advantage, and not be green enough to not make mistakes like putting one of the objectives on the other side of the board, which for what its worth, one of my less experienced friends did with myself, which essentially gave me the same advantage of playing blue for that game, also this is the only time Ive won red easily against my much less experienced friends. 

Now given the above figures, at least among the poeple I speak with Key positions gives Blue a 90% advantage and red about 10% from 50% ie (ie 95% blue to 5% red) or even worse (1 recorded win out of 20 for players who are a bit more tactically sound. who know to win it's better to turtle up). 

The card itself lends itself to a rather boring defensive style of play from the outset, and the majority of cards except perhaps disarray actually go on to favor blue even further. Most setups f avor blue, and tis absolutely should be the case, but this one card has such a higher significant advantage that competitive players are planning their builds around the possibility of it being played more than any other card because of the significant advantage it gives blue.

Im taking about players here who know fine well about tactics that if you place your heavy weapon trooper slightly in the wrong place that they know how to use a sniper and LOS rules to pick off the heavy weapon trooper only. 

The tabletop simulator league got similar results , although I dont know if they know exactly how many blue wins they had (stangely also out 10), I do know that no-one reported a red win for it but not everyone came back to them with that info. So thats two leagues with over 32 games and not one red win reported on Key positions. So ive just doubled the amount of key positions games. Im not going to question the TTS players skill because as far as I can see they are all pretty good. 

[Derrault 1,091]

5 hours ago, Zrob314 said:

Had you read what I wrote you would see that I am not.  I did, however say "Key positions has an OVERWHELMING advantage for the blue player.  No, it is not an absolute "I Win" button but the blue player has to intentionally set the key positions to minimize or eschew their own advantage, play very badly or have the dice go very much against them in order to lose.  Conditions and deployment do not mitigate this."

This is, in effect, the same concept as saying "it all but secures a blue win before armies are deployed."  This is not double speak.  These are not conflicting ideas.  They both recognize that the red player can win but the odds are highly stacked against them. Here, let me give you an analogy.  Lets say we're both in a 100 meter race.  You are permitted to start the race at meter 50.  We both start at the same time.  Yes, I MIGHT win.  However the odds are clearly stacked against me.  You would probably have to be a horrible runner, suffer an injury before the finish or wait until we are neck and next to get to your full speed for me to win.  Sure you might occasionally meet another runner who can run 100 faster than you can run 50, but that doesn't mean that the rule letting you start at 50 is fair.  (this by the way is not an exhaustive list, but I don't want you to misread this and assume that these are the only conditions I am considering). There also might be reasons to give you that sort of a handicap for the race.  But what we're dealing with here is a case where the decision to let someone start at 50 meters is made arbitrarily and randomly. 

Now back to what is, frankly, stupid advice on setup.

First off, I'm looking at all the deployment cards now.  I'm not sure what you mean by overlap but what I'm really more concerned with is that you believe that it is somehow possible that one player can somehow set up the board with the assistance of another player where there are not two pieces of terrain pretty much right across the line of every single deployment area.  

Like seriously, I want to see an actual table where you have played a game where this was the case.  Also, you can't tell your opponent that's what you're trying to do. You're either playing with tables that are too sparse or you're just making stuff up.  

I just counted one of my match boxes, all the terrain (including scatter) has been measure to cover 25% of the board.  It's 84 pieces of terrain (both large terrain and scatter terrain).  How the heck are you going to keep ALL off that a significant distance away from every possible blue deployment zone.  Blue just needs to designate two pieces.  

Nice try, you didn't read the scenario I outlined, but okay.  So I'm looking at all the available battle cards right now.

A blue player is probably going to have Major Offensive (1), Battle Lines(2), Long March (3) and Advanced Positions(4) in their deck.  Disarray seems to give too much chance of the enemy being close to you 2/3 objectives, so if they're hoping and bidding for KP they're gonna leave that one out.  Advanced Positions is the preferred conditions for the blue player so I should avoid that.  (it would be preferred because they can entrench around their objectives at deployment.   Of the 4 I would say that Major Offensive is probably the most advantageous for the red player because it offers the shortest distance from the blue player's area (18 inches) and where you need to knock them from their perch.  Remember, the blue payer can win by playing a wholly defensive game.  They have no reason to move any of their forces off of the objectives unless those forces have compulsory moves.  So, red has 25% Good, 50% less good and 25% worst outcome  

Now for Objectives someone hoping for key positions would probably drop Rapid Reinforcements.  Can't have the enemy air dropping anything nasty into my zone of control.  That's stupid.  Hostile Environment is also advantageous for Blue Player because they will be moving less than red player.  They can just turtle up on terrain.  They'd certainly keep minefields because they can put both of their mines to the red player's set objective (yes, I am considering the placement restrictions on minefields). So that's Limited Visibility (A), Clear Conditions (B), Hostile Environment (C) and Minefields (D).  We can call Limited Visibility Red Advantage and Clear Conditions a draw.  So, on conditions we only have 25% good for the red player, 25% neither good nor bad and 50% bad.  

For this we will assume that the objective cards have come out as X, X, KP, X with the fourth position in all rows being the hole card.  So there are 576 possible combinations of the above variables.  36 (6.25%) combinations have the two advantageous variables as the hole card.  Bad luck for red, better hope the dice like you better.  216 (37.5%) of these combinations allow the red player to get their most advantageous combinations in two flips or less (of course this means that while Blue cannot be stopped from getting Key Positions, Red can also not be stopped from getting their most advantageous outcome).  172 (29.86%) of these combinations have one of the two preferred cards for Red (but not both) buried.  

So there's already a huge problem with your math.  Your "87.5%" chance to get two advantageous cards is already off by about 50%.

Oh hey...there's 13824 combinations of any deck of 12 battle cards.  216 of those would put Key positions in the third position while simultaneously burying the two cards that could give red any sort of advantage.    

That's a 1.56% chance for that to happen.  Not 0, which was what you threw out.  

 

But hey man, I can tell you've got some vested interest in KP not changing. Your "die on this hill" defense of it would indicate that you really care about this imbalanced card not being changed.  What does that say about you?  I mean reasonable and fair edits to the card have been suggested but you keep insisting there isn't a problem.  You even used some really bad math to justify this.  

Don’t be absurd, the theory you’ve advanced repeatedly is that card is broken; you can’t have your cake and eat it too. If you actually agree that it can be mitigated then why were you even arguing with me?

Regarding terrain setup, you seem to have misunderstood what was written. The idea would be for the red player to place terrain such that there is a covered approach to the plausible areas where a blue player deploys (and is likely to place their markers).

Now, as to the overlapping deployment fields, on 4/5 existing cards blue has deployment in the bottom right, on all 5 red deploys upper left.

Bottom mid blue deploys 3/5, upper right 3/5, lower left 2/5, upper left 0/5.

Logically the blue options are going to be on terrain that’s in the lower right quadrant of the board almost regardless of which deployment cards blue has chosen to include in their deck, and red is capable of deploying in the upper left no matter what deployment happens.

As red, given that you generally have a free hand in dictating which of the 3 cards is deployment, it only makes sense to throw down cover/terrain likely to lead to that lower right corner, so that you can take advantage of it on the approach.

Incidentally, Disarray is the only card blue doesn’t deploy in the bottom right, so if we agree that’s unlikely to be included, blues start area is even more predictable. I disagree with you on advanced positions, that’s the perfect card for red, because we already know red has to storm blues position.

Blue on the other hand gains next to nothing from advanced positions, they’re already going to start with control of 2/3, being more forward means they get exposed to fire that much faster when their goal is literally just to run out the clock.

For the conditions what is good/worse is dependent on force composition (repulsors won’t detonate the mines, and vehicles simply don’t care about hostile conditions). So I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree. 

Edit: And none of this changes the fact that you could have just taken a smaller army (even by 1 point more) and guaranteed that you were blue by having the lower force point composition. 

Edited November 4, 2018 by Derrault

[Zrob314 833]

2 hours ago, Derrault said:

Don’t be absurd, the theory you’ve advanced repeatedly is that card is broken; you can’t have your cake and eat it too. If you actually agree that it can be mitigated then why were you even arguing with me?

I am arguing with you because you keep saying the card is not imbalanced at all.  You even made up some statistics to go with it, I disproved them.  Your number of 87.5% to get two "advantageous" cards for red is still out there by the way.  I'm going to take the common understanding of advantageous in this case to literally mean that it provides an actual real benefits to the red player moreso than the blue player and I don't believe that you can get to that combination.  That's 504 combinations out of a possible 576.  I don't think anyone who expected to play blue, and who seriously hoped to get KP would allow that.  I do not "agree to disagree" on your hand waving that judging the condition cards is unknowable or unquantifiable.  

Rapid Reinforcements: Disastrous for blue.  Full Stop.  If blue has this as a possibility they have built their deck wrong.  

Hostile Conditions: Advantage Blue, they don't have to move as much as red and can thus stick themselves to terrain and avoid the effect.

Clear Conditions: Draw, no advantage one way or the other.

Low Visibility: Advantage Red for the reasons you stated earlier.

Minefields: Advantage Blue.  Both parties set to minefields.  Red as to split theirs between two objectives.  Blue can concentrate their fire on the single red objective or can hinder the red advancement.  Blue not having to move is less concerned.  

Yes, you have, possibly, a 37.5% chance to mitigate (make less severe, painful or punishing) the blue advantage.  This does not, in any way shape or form overcome the inherent blue advantage.  

I have offered fair edits to the card.  You still haven't even responded to them.  

Again.....this is, in effect, the same concept as saying "it all but secures a blue win before armies are deployed."  This is not double speak.  These are not conflicting ideas.  They both recognize that the red player can win but the odds are highly stacked against them. Here, let me give you an analogy.  Lets say we're both in a 100 meter race.  You are permitted to start the race at meter 50.  We both start at the same time.  Yes, I MIGHT win.  However the odds are clearly stacked against me.  You would probably have to be a horrible runner, suffer an injury before the finish or wait until we are neck and next to get to your full speed for me to win.  Sure you might occasionally meet another runner who can run 100 faster than you can run 50, but that doesn't mean that the rule letting you start at 50 is fair.  (this by the way is not an exhaustive list, but I don't want you to misread this and assume that these are the only conditions I am considering). There also might be reasons to give you that sort of a handicap for the race.  But what we're dealing with here is a case where the decision to let someone start at 50 meters is made arbitrarily and randomly. 

So, if I somehow get it to be that you are put at 30 meters ahead of me rather than 50, I have MITIGATED your advantage.  I have not erased it.
I can explain this to you, I cannot understand this for you.

2 hours ago, Derrault said:

Bottom mid blue deploys 3/5, upper right 3/5, lower left 2/5, upper left 0/5.

Unless they choose the other side of the board (you know Blue gets to decide which side of the board they use for the card orientation and that is chosen after terrain setting, right?) So now you're secretly building two avenues toward particular sides of the board all the while not knowing if you're going to be blue or red and hoping your opponent isn't building the board in a more sane fashion. .  If you're red and your plan worked you have to hope they even have KP in their deck and if you're blue and you were successful you just mitigated your own advantage so....good job?

Again...I use 84 pieces of terrain for one board (25% coverage).  Please show me this magical board set up you claim to be able to use. 

 

2 hours ago, Derrault said:

Blue on the other hand gains next to nothing from advanced positions,

Except, ya know, being in place for a defensive position from turn one grabbing the best cover and setting up with dodges, aims and standbys.  
Also having their troops farther forward to mitigate potential suppressible fire which can cause a panic.  

 

3 hours ago, Derrault said:

Edit: And none of this changes the fact that you could have just taken a smaller army (even by 1 point more) and guaranteed that you were blue by having the lower force point composition. 

And nothing you have said changes the fact that a) you don't know the size of the opponents bid before you set up the table b) if you tie you have a 50/50 to get red or blue.