Peasant Tournament - Round 2 Pairings & Match Times

Alright, Mosalla, ElShafto, I pushed you guys back exactly 24 hours. Your new match time is in the updated first post of the thread.

 

At TheShadowTitan's request, I have moved his match with SLG back 6 hours. New match time is in the first post of this thread. Hopefully this will be the last rearrangement for the round—thedoughster vs. Red Mage is in 16 hours!

 

Red Mage didn't show up for his match, and thedoughster received a win by forfeit. First post updated with result.

 

cool tournament =)

 

PIZZA no-showed, and Dave won their match by default. Next match is in 50 minutes, Tuknir vs. Tragus. Immediately after that, CT5 vs. ItsEtai.

We'll see how many of today's 5 matches will actually happen. So far it's been 0.

I'm thinking, for future tournaments, of requiring some kind of entry fee. Stexe I think proposed giving it back to players who participate in all rounds. That would be one way of ensuring that only people who will actually show up to their matches enter the tournament.

I don't particularly want to hear anything about the scheduling, because I gave people ample opportunity to reschedule match times. Some people took advantage of this, and appeared for their games. Some people didn't, and are dropping like flies. I'm not too thrilled with the turnout rates thus far and I apologize to our viewers for the poor show. The one consolation is that basically every match which has happened has been fun and interesting.

EDIT: I am delaying the ArcadianRook vs. Alfonze match, hoping to run it 25 hours after the original scheduled time. If this time does not work for Alfonze, he will be given the default victory he was owed when Rook failed to appear for the match.

 

Instead of an entry fee, what about a reward for everyone who plays all their matches? Maybe a random Rare item?

 

Well I was an hour behind (not my usual time zone/what was I thinking), but Dave and Flaxative were graciously around to get some games in.

Tournaments are fun!

 

Alright, some updates.
• Tragus didn't show, and Tuknir won by default.
• CT5 and ItsEtai did in fact play, and ItsEtai won, securing the 2+ win prize.
• Dave and PIZZA played an exhibition match, which I recorded.

Videos and results have been edited into the first post of this thread.

 

Updated with the result and video of TheShadowTitan vs. Scared Little Girl (2-1). I'm going back to bed. See you all in 7 hours for Stexe vs. Stormyknight!

 

flax, 290 days of membership? quite a nice number of pizza and 300gold?? eheh

 

You caught me, supporting the devs and all that.

 

MATCH REPORT
TheShadowTitan (2) - (1) Scared Little Girl

Match 1
Map: Haunted Crypt
Winner: Scared Little Girl
I was confident going into this match because Haunted Crypt is my favorite map and control wizards do very well in it (one of the most control wizard biased maps). I managed to WoW my guys in the center during round 1, and it was relatively easy to control things from there. WWE messed up things a bit at some point but nothing too dangerous. One of my wizards almost died but it wouldn't have made a big difference because my other two were at good positions and had good cards. Good map, good draws, I don't think my opponent had a chance.

Match 2
Map: Haunted Hall
Winner: TheShadowTitan
This is a match I should have won. Initially I was expecting a loss, but it started out really great for me, mostly because of the draw. It was looking good until the last two rounds where the one wizard who drew anything good also drew Fright, and everything came down like a house of cards. I wanted to have the first move during the next round so I made a huge error of just sitting there and letting the warrior stab me repeatedly when I could have moved away (I'm not 100% sure but I assume he couldn't have followed me). I'm not sure if that would have helped, or if I could have done anything differently during that last round, I'll have to check the video. There might have been some other things I could have done but I was almost out of time (less than 1 minute I think) so I had to rush it.

Match 3
Map: Winter Room
Winner: TheShadowTitan
I knew for a fact that I was going to lose this because Winter Room is really bad for my deck, and I saw how many Counterspells my opponent had in the previous match. I had a bad opening draw so I just decided to to rush in and see what happens, which was of course not a good idea. I would have survived a bit longer by balling up and waiting for a better draw, but it would have only delayed the inevitable. That map, that opposing build, and a skilled player like TheShadowTitan, meant pretty much an automatic loss.

Conclusion
I lost just like I predicted. I had fought TheShadowTitan before with a peasant build, and seeing how close the match was, I knew that if he has a chance to use sideboard, he would take all the Counterspells he could find, and I would be destroyed. This is exactly what happened. I think that wizard teams have a disadvantage when using sideboards, which I will talk about more below in the feedback section.

Overall the whole experience was "ok". The fun factor for me was lowered by the timer and the sideboard. I would have liked to have more options in countering my opponent, like switching classes. I had other items in my sideboard like everyone else, but I didn't have anything that I could have used to counter those Counterspells. I felt like the I was doomed from the moment I decided to go with a full-wizard team.

Lastly. TheShadowTitan played well and definitely deserved the win. Gratz.

----------------------------------------

Feedback

Timer
10 minutes was not enough for me. I had to play faster than I usually do, which resulted in a couple of extra mistakes on top of the usual mistakes I make. Everything felt rushed and I didn't have any time to talk in chat. I really think that we should have the default 20 minutes because then you would be able to think your moves a bit longer and talk to people in the chat which is always fun.

Sideboard
I predicted that sideboard would be unfair towards full-wizard teams and I was correct. I had a deck disadvantage in games 2 and 3 because TheShadowTitans was able to build an anti-spell wizard, plus take other items that had spell counters, because he knew for a fact that I would be bringing tons of spells. 1/1/1 builds are great with sideboards because you can easily pack 2-3 almost completely different builds simply by switching 10 items. Wizards don't have that luxury because they always use spells and are always vulnerable to Counterspell. After game 1 TheShadowTitan took 6 copies of Counterspell which really messed up my game and I didn't have any counter for that because Card Hunter does not have a counter for that. In other words it's not a case of ingenious sideboard strategy, it's just common sense of taking Counterspells every time you fight wizards.

I would like to point out that I don't think the concept of sideboard is flawed. Sideboards are fun, but they don't work in Card Hunter the way they work in some other games. Sideboards would make more sense if there wasn't cards like Counterspell, or if wizards had more options, like not use spells at all or use significantly less spells.

Bottom line: Sideboard is fair only if each character combination benefits equally from a sideboard. Currently I don't think that is the case. For example a team with 2 wizards and 1 warrior will beat a 3 wizard team every single time. All they need to do is take 6 Counterspells for each wizard, and they will shut down the enemy while that one warrior finishes them off. The unfair part is of course that the 3 wizards cannot do anything about it. If they also take Counterspells, then they cannot deal with the warrior. If they don't take Counterspells, they will be drained of all spells and die. Like I said before, this has nothing to do with deckbuilding skills and everything to do with how Card Hunter was designed.

I think that the best peasant team in this tournament is a team with one wizard. That one wizard can be 100% anti-wizard, or 100% anti-warrior depending on who you are facing.

Maps
I think that for a tournament like this one, the maps should be as unbiased as possible. The first map was clearly beneficial to me, and the last one to my opponent. 2nd map was a bit more balanced but I think I had a slight edge there.

Unbiased maps are not a huge deal in everyday MP, but for tournament play they are. Matches are close to begin with, and that biased map can easily give the final push needed for a win.

 

Thanks for the detailed report, SLG.

The thing here, and I've mentioned this before, is that if matches were two hours long I would basically be unable to run this by myself. If there were more of me, or if I were being paid to TD, I could do that. But neither of those is the case. The only way to get 20-minute games in this tournament would be to eliminate the best-of-3 element, which I think is crucial. It is crucial because you get the matchup across multiple maps and it is crucial because sideboarding fixes metas. I regret the timer the same way I regret that we couldn't have more players in this test tournament. Both regrets actually revolve around not having more resources to put toward the tournament

I picked a spectrum of what I thought were the best maps available. I'd be interested to hear which maps you think aren't biased. I think that the 'bias' in the maps I selected is far smaller than it is in, say, Celestial Koi or most of the Gladius rotation. I understand that Crundyup's is a bit more wizard friendly, but in general I think the maps in the rotation are less totally biased and more encouraging of a variety of tactics. You want diversity in your stages, generally speaking. So I'd like to hear how I could have done this better in more specific terms, with map examples maybe.

The concept of sideboards is that some focused builds/decks in a game can become dominant because the answers to those strategies aren't "maindeckable." Sideboards in MtG, for instance, exist primarily in order to allow people to adapt against otherwise roflstompy combo decks. Remember when draw builds were dominant in Card Hunter PvP? And some people were like, "but purge into touch of death!"? And then you (and others) were explaining how the existence of answers didn't fix the problem because people couldn't run a critical mass of the answers for meta reasons? Sideboarding could have helped rein in the draw builds (though it wouldn't have given wizards much game against them, but that's kind of like how mono red burn doesn't have many sideboard options against a turn-one combo deck—the board is only relevant in some matchups). Or heck, look at today's 3DC builds in normal PvP—they're susceptible to Counterspell, but no one can run it because sometimes you end up fighting WarWarPri. This means that no one can run a critical mass of the most effective anti-3DC card. If there were sideboarding in normal Card Hunter PvP, 3DC wouldn't be the problem that it is.

Sideboard strategy doesn't need to be ingenious to be good. Sideboards don't need to be clever. In MtG you side in cards like Relic of Progenitus to fight reanimator decks. You just do, and if you get those hate cards, your win chances increase greatly. Wizards prints hate cards for sideboards, and sideboards are for hate cards. They help balance a given meta and are generally seen as a good thing. Games that refused to allow sideboards—like Warlord—generally have fallen into a rock-paper-scissors environment.

A build like 3DC (or 3DClite) limits its options in order to capitalize on the benefits of trait-cycling and generally OP cards like Winds of War. It starts out anti-warrior and anti-priest, and doesn't need sideboard options against them. It begins in a favorable position in the meta. It is a strong build that is good at winning games. That there are obvious and strong sideboard options against the build is good in my book. And that it has limited sideboard options of its own is unfortunate from a tactical standpoint (it'd be cool if you could have a deeper strategy there), but totally reasonable from a balance standpoint.

Emphasis mine. This is a bit dramatic. If a wiz has 6 Counterspells out of 30+ cards, in an average 5-turn match he's expected to draw 11 cards, on average 2 or 3 of those should be Counterspells. Each of those is going to be a 2-for-1 (unless they get triggered as blocks...), but that's still a total of 6 spells drained over 5 turns. Meanwhile 3DC has drawn ... 33 spells? So 3DC hasn't been drained of all spells. Far from it. Sure the counterspeller has gained some card advantage... card advantage that 3DC often gains in spades by encumbering and pushing away opponents. Winds of War is almost always a 2-for-1; Toughness is always a 2-for-1; encumber effects can be a 4-for-1 or more if a warrior's sitting in a corner somewhere discarding his attack cards for two turns because he can't get close. 3DC is full of blowout plays and I think it's a bit ridiculous to say that 6 Counterspells somehow make it impossible for the wizards to win. It's a strong hate card but it doesn't close the game on its own. It can also be blocked by cards like Hit the Deck and Counterspell, which are available in the board to 3DC. As far as hate cards go, it's not obscene. It doesn't unconditionally win the game or make the opponent's strategy unviable.

We'll see what the best peasant teams are when the tournament is over. Right now the two people who are 2-0 in actual matches are ItsEtai (D Wiz, E War, E War) and TheShadowTitan (D Wiz, H War, H Pri), so you might be right. But there're some very competitive 3DC parties in the tournament and it'll be interesting to see how it goes.

I said this in the lobby chat and you disagreed, but 1/1/1 having more board options than 3/0/0 is like a five-color deck in MtG having more board options than a monocolor deck. It's not a problem, there are opportunity costs involved, etc.. I'd love to hear some other thoughts on this topic, preferably from people who have played games with sideboards and can speak to their usefulness/flaws. Everything you are saying, though, SLG, seems correct to me—correct, and good.

 

I think the concept of the sideboard is fair. If you running a 3 wiz team, its like putting all your eggs in the same basket, ofc you will be more susceptible to sideboard and have a limit choice option for your own sideboard.
I remember one time, squirrel nest full green decks where very popular, and i run a deck i did like 10min before the tournament (it was a small tournament) with millstones and pacifism and pacifism like cards. and that enchantment that i could change the creature type for what i wanted, and changing it to legend worked back than, so i pacified a squirrel and all others changed to legends.. fun fun..but the fun part was when i layed down a teferi moat and said green and he just conceded.
if you build a deck specialized in something ofc your more susceptible to sideboard cards.. you can't have the cake and eat it all..

 

I understand that. I have a suggestion related to this.

I love the enthusiasm you've had with this project and I'm sure everyone appreciates the hard work you are doing, but the problem is that the current system is not sustainable. After a couple of tournaments (I'm assuming there will be more) you will start to lose interests in dealing with all the no-shows and me whining about the rules, and then you will rage-quit the game and the forums While you might not think it will happen, I will bet all my Card Hunter legendary items that at some point it will, because I've seen similar thing happen many times. If we want community tournaments like these to be up and running for longer periods of time, there needs to be a system that is not depended on one person doing everything and being online when each individual match happens. I think you need to take a kind of executive macro management role in this whole thing, and let the participants do most of the work, while you would concentrate on everything running smoothly and making commentary videos when you can.

I was involved with another game that had community tournaments very similar to this. The way matches worked there was that people just contacted their opponents, chose match time, and fought the match between themselves. No refs needed. It worked surprisingly well, and I don't think there was ever any serious issues that couldn't be solved. And there's always screenshots and match videos people can record and use as proof. Something like that would be perfect for Peasant tournament as well, because it would let the participants pick the best time for them, instead of organizer picking the time (that may or may not actually suit the participant). I am 100% sure that if this would be implemented, we would see a lot less no-shows. And of course with a system like this, which doesn't require Flaxative to stay up until 3am, we could have those 20 minute matches.

In my opinion the most logical way to pick maps would be to take the most balanced map from each rotation. It might not be easy to find the most balanced map from the bunch, but it should be pretty easy to at least avoid the most biased ones like Celestial Koi. From the current Peasant maps I think that the most biased choices were Haunted Crypt and Ice House. For example for a wizard team that is a difference between a big advantage and a big disadvantage.

I had a quick look and here are the maps I probably would have picked from the last 4 rotations:

Woodhome Blizzard
Gladius Tripple
Haunted Cabin
Celestial Dojo

Others might disagree but I don't think any of those 4 maps have huge bias towards any specific class. They all have some open space and nice cover for warriors. Gladius is the most difficult rotation to choose from imo. I don't know which one would be better, Tripple or Wall. I was also thinking that it might be fun to not play maps in the current rotation. I'm sure many miss the good old maps, and tournaments like these would be a great way to bring them back.

I understand what you are saying (well, at least the non-MtG parts since I don't play that game) but I don't think we should look at 3DC as something evil, and sideboard as a way to counter that evil. I don't see taking a bunch of Counterspells and stomping control wizards in 2nd and 3rd match as some kind of poetic justice and payback for what has happened in regular MP. I see it as a kind of cheap trick that makes full-wizard teams incredibly weak in the current Peasant tournament. This is not only about control wizards, it affects all full-wizard teams that are forced to use spells.

If anyone is interested in testing what I'm talking about, we could have a couple of exhibition Peasant matches. I will take 2 wizards and 1 warrior (starts with any random deck, sideboard full of Counterspells), and they would take 3 wizards (any build/sideboard they like). I would be willing to bet big money that I would win at least 90% of the best-of-three matches because two anti-wizard-wizards will drain that wizard team dry. I don't see any scenario where those wizards could survive me having 6+6 Counterspells. I mean what are they going to do, go full melee and bash my skull in?

Whether or not to take Counterspells is a risk that players have to make when they play MP. But with sideboards, they do not have to take that risk because they can always pack a sideboard full of Counterspells and gain huge advantage after the first match. For wizard teams there is no such card or item. I cannot go "oh, look warriors.. let me take my Staff of Total Warrior Shutdown". I can make some small changes like choosing between encumber and damage, but I will always be vulnerable to Counterspell, even if I had a sideboard of 1000 items.

3DC is an effective build and with a bit of luck can win even when faced with tons of Counterspells, like for example my match #2 which was pretty close. But I doubt they could win consistently no matter what their build was.

I know almost nothing about MtG so I cannot comment on that, but I think that if Peasant tournament has any kind of special rules about anything, no classes should have an advantage. Simply having three wizards is not a powerful and evil "gimmick build" that deserves to be countered. I think that the participants should be allowed to play 3 wizards without being crippled by a sideboard rule.

If we have to have a sideboard, it should be considerably smaller. Many games might have a sideboard of 10 (or something like that), but those 10 are cards, and our is 10 items, which translates to a "freaking huge pile of cards". I feel that with the current rules the whole point of sideboards, which is to slightly tweak your deck, does not apply because you get to change half of your cards if you want.

I disagree. What you are talking about should happen when someone builds a deck that uses some kind of gimmick that makes it one-dimensional and vulnerable to counters, for example Firestorm wizards.

But what we are talking about here is a team of three wizards having a disadvantage if your opponent has items with Counterspells in their sideboard which every smart deckbuilder will most definitely have.

I don't think that the tournament rules should benefit 1/1/1 decks over others. Deckbuilding rules are already limiting what we can use, and now class choices are basically limited too? A person would have to be completely crazy to take a full wizard team in the next tournament.

 

30 cards out of 99 cards, only slightly higher percentage than MtG's 25% sideboard.

You're hugely overstating the power of a few Counterspells.

And I'm not talking about poetic justice. I'm talking about balance.

Anyway, we're probably talking past each other at this point. Would like more opinions from others.

 

MP character has a deck of 36 cards. A team of 3 has a total of 108 cards. With a sideboard you can change 10 items, which means you can in theory change 57 out of 108 cards (warrior team where everyone changes their weapons and one warrior changes something else) which is about 53% of total cards. With a Wizard or a Priest teams the number would be 44%. Those are a lot more than the 25% of MtG, especially when considering that all classes have items that you don't ever need to change even though you change your build, for example Electroporter Novice that works nicely in pretty much all wizard decks.

I don't think I am. Counterspell is a nightmare for Wizards. It's like Short Perplexing Ray, only much better because it has a long range and only removes your best cards (spells), leaving you with Walk. Cards where you lose one card while the opponent loses two, are insanely powerful. Counterspell has one disadvantage, which is its highly situational nature. And it's this disadvantage that the sideboard completely removes, making it the ultimate anti-wizard card for any sideboard.

Is the sideboard actually designed to balance the game by giving wizard teams a disadvantage? And if that is so, then why? I don't think wizards are overpowered in Peasant format.

Yes, me too. Join the discussion people.

 

Simple solution to this - don't play three wizard build at tournament if you find it a bad idea! No one forces you to. But on the other hand, you are almost forced to consider your opponent playing 3DC build, so you should be prepared to counter it.

 

Definitely, further tournaments will not be run in exactly the same way. This is a test run, and I have no intention of taking on a similarly administered project at a larger scale by myself immediately after this one There'll be some big changes in the next thing I do, and hopefully I'll have some extra assistance either from other members of the community or from the devs.

 

Round 2 is complete!

Standings as of round 2:
ItsEtai 2-0
Stexe 2-0
TheShadowTitan 2-0
CT5 1-1
ScaredLittleGirl 1-1
Stormyknight 1-1
Mosalla 1-1
ArcadianRook 1-1
Alfonze 1-1
thedoughster 1-1
Dave 1-1
Tuknir 1-1
ElShafto 0-2
Pizza 0-2
Red Mage 0-2

Tragus 0-2

I'll have round 3 pairings up soon, will probably resume matches after the weekend.