Peasant Tournament - Round 2 Pairings & Match Times

Just a suggestion from a neutral observer. Perhaps consider a different sideboard rule for future tourneys:

Participants are allowed to enter their party of choice and an additional 2 reserve characters with all items declared. During sideboarding, players are allowed to swap 1 character max. Players are not allowed to swap items between party chars.

a) This would resolve item count based sideboard rules. Mono wizards or mono <race/class> won't be so harshly affected by sideboards.
b) And hopefully, this is easier to port into code.

Basically, its like a substitution in any rl sport. Bringing in a striker for a defender or a point guard for a forward etc...

 

Why would you want to make it easier for 3DC build? I don't follow that logic. The most common build should be 1/1/1.

If I meet an opponent on the battlefield then I would know his preferable strategy and he would know mine. We can even change every item between the battles - without any restrictions. Let better tactician win, not someone who got lucky fighting an unprepared rival. So if I know that my team of 1/1/1 faces 3DC I would put some stuff to counter that build. But at the same time wizards will know that we can only have very limited amount of counterspells (1 wizard) and there is only one warrior, so no need for so many Short Perplex rays etc. If a team of warriors meets wizards they can remove parries and get more step attacks or spell blocks etc . And wizards can get more WWE, frost spells, jump-backs and dodges. It works for both sides.
I am not so sure that with such rules 1/1/1 build would win the tournament. Maybe it would be the most common choice. And that is good, because it would mean that all classes are well balanced. If the common choice is 3DC or any other 3/0/0 build then something is wrong. I would even say that choice of dwarves suggests this class superiority.

PS. Actually it would be very strange if 3DC build would work in such environment. It is made to counter melee teams. So almost only way to win with it is to bring a wizard specialized in such fight. But no, you want to limit even such option. So there is not other choice - all players would play 3DC so they could have a chance against such build. Boring.

 

Phaselock-Cool idea but I think it wouldn't help with the problem SLG perceives; people would just have the one anti wizard wizard.

 

Yh and SLG can substitute a wiz for a war/priest in game 2/3 ? Or rotate out 1 WoW build for a Counterspell/Smoke Bomb wiz ? Basically, more build options for sideboard...

Not trying to make it easier for any build. Its like playing mono elves vs mono dwarves (eg: elvish insight vs DBC), and allowing a single char swap as a sideboard to open up the tactical game a little. Essentially, its not different from the current rule, just giving the option for race/class as well. Atm, card pool is only about 300+ and peasant is like, what 600+ items to choose from ? Build options are limited...

Shrugs, just a suggestion.

 

In a nutshell:

* Allowing sideboard will tend to disproportionately penalize any deck with a "specialized" strategy, and favor any "generic" deck such as 1-1-1 (which is generally harder to sideboard against).

* The bigger the sideboard permitted, the more you end up penalizing "specialized" decks such as 3-wizard or 3-warrior.

* If you don't permit *any* sideboard, then you run the risk that the "specialized" decks such as 3DWC will be strong enough that everyone will be forced to play them to be competitive, and it becomes a tournament of who has the best 3DWC deck.

So it seems we need to find a balance, and allow a sideboard that is small enough to allow a variety of decks to be viable, but big enough so that one specialized deck does not dominate the metagame.

 

Seems accurate.

 

[link] I have posted Round 3 pairings and match times in a new thread.

 

Agreed. We also need to consider
a) tournament formats. What works in rl doesn't often work the same way online. The longer a format is, the higher the chance of no-shows and complex sideboarding doesn't make sense. It wouldn't be no different from usual mp chain.
b) new classes. Limited cards/builds when a new class is introduced. What is the card/item threshold until a class is considered acceptable for tournament and sideboard?
c) ease of porting to code. Duh!
d) type of sideboard and/or banlist. Unlike mtg, card hunter has other options like race/class/map.

 

Not build, more like full wizard teams. This situation is unique to all full wizard teams (not just 3DC like 90% of people posting here seem to think) because no other class gets owned by sideboards quite like wizards. While there are ways to counter full warrior teams, an anti-Warrior card that is as effective as Counterspell does not exist in the game. For example if I'm fighting a full warrior team and take all the encumber cards I can find, they could still win using Arrogant Armor, Team Run, etc. But wizards cannot counter Counterspells or Smoke Bombs, they just have to live with them.

So it's not only a problem that some the cards become more powerful (this we could live with), the problem is that you can counter wizards with Counterspell or Smokebomb, but wizards cannot counter you countering them. They are basically sitting ducks because no matter what their sideboard is, they are forced to used spells and the opponent knows it. Problem would be solved instantly if Wizards somehow had an option to go full melee, in which case it would be a huge risk for the opponent to build that highly specialized Counterspell/Smoke Bomb wizard because it could turn out to be useless. But since that it not an option, and wizards will always have spells, there is no risk involved.

Yes. Current sideboards let you change half of your cards or change one character completely, which I think is both against the philosophy of sideboards, and makes it too easy to adapt (you need to make less compromises with the starting build). Smaller sideboard wouldn't remove the problem completely (Counterspells and Smoke Bombs would still be insanely powerful), but it would be much less event-breaking.

Like I said earlier, there's not way to completely remove the problem unless BM changes how anti-Wizards spells work (for example make them less powerful but less situational). Like I talked about earlier, I think the best way would be to limit the sideboard changes to 9 cards per character (weapon/staff + item, or 3 x items). This would mean a maximum card change of 25%, and it would make it impossible to build those highly specialized characters after the first match.

If 25% is not enough, then I think there should be a way to chance one or more of your characters. It's kind of weird how we have so much adaptability in terms of cards, but absolutely zero adaptability in terms of characters. Having fixed characters only works if no combination of characters is at a disadvantage by default, which wizards are because of Counterspells and Smoke Bombs.

Yes, but that's how control works. Sure it would be more fun for the opponent to be able to use his cards and kill all the wizards, but that would mean that the wizards lose, right?

Are we really going to start deciding which builds are "fun" and which are "hated", then design the rules so that the "hated" builds get a disadvantage? Sounds pretty terrible to me.

How much time a player needs depends on many variables.

I have more experience with 3DC than most people and I can safely say that 10 minutes is not enough for me to play at my full potential. I can easily finish the match in 10 minutes, but that means I have to do a lot of quick moves at the end to avoid timeout. This actually happened in both of my tournament matches that went the distance, and it resulted in at least one major mistake that I probably wouldn't have made if I had some more time.

It's just common sense that if you halve the time on the clock, it will have a major effect on some players. I can accept the argument that less time is a challenge that is a part of the tournament, but to suggest that whether or not you have 20 or 10 minutes is somehow irrelevant, is just silly.

Parry is nothing like Counterspell or Smoke Bomb because you can easily bypass it using attacks that are difficult to block, or simply attack from behind. Also you would pretty much have to give Parries to all your characters. Against wizards you really need only 1 wizard, or maybe 2 if you want to make sure that almost no spells are cast.

Purge against Nimbus is not a big deal because you don't get a card advantage like you do with Counterspell. You lose a card, they lose a card. It's like nothing happened.

That is one ingenious way of fixing the problem. Just don't use the build. Wow. So if for example Priests were the weakest class in Card Hunter, is the answer to that problem not to play Priests? Or maybe it would make more sense to fix Priests so that people could play them and not lose?

The things I read on these forums..

This is a really interesting suggestion and it might actually work. I think that 3 reserve characters would make a bit more sense though because you would then basically have one reserve character for each character. It would make more sense to me math wise, and would also give some more options.

If we were to have different kinds of tournaments, I'd like to see this one instead of sideboard.

Yes, that is indeed the problem.

We are talking about Wizards here, not just 3DC. And it's not about making it easier, it's about reducing the disadvantage that Wizards have using the current sideboard rules. If you don't understand the disadvantage, maybe we could have 10 Peasant matches where you play wizards (any build you like with a bonus of 1000 card sideboard) and I will win every match after we use the sideboard.

Is this written down in the rules somewhere? Are the rules supposed to favor 1/1/1?

I don't think you understand what the concept of balanced team actually means. Tip: it does not mean better. What it means that that the team is basically jack-of-all-trades and king of none. It lacks the power of highly specialized gimmick builds but also lacks their weaknesses. The power of balanced teams is that they can adapt to different situations and potentially beat all other builds out there. The cost of this adaptability is the fact that they have to take all kinds of cards that they might not even need, for example taking Counterspell without knowing if the opponent has any spells.

This works nicely with regular MP because you never know who you will face, but in this tournament you do know who you will face after the first game. If you faced 3 wizards in game 1, you will definitely face those same 3 wizards in game 2 as well, only with maybe slightly different cards. And here lies the problem: by knowing for a fact you will fight wizards, balanced teams lose their only disadvantage of having to be a balanced team. They can now tweak their build from balanced to anti-wizard, and enjoy their wins of game 2 and 3.

I don't know how I could explain this more clearly. If you still fail to see the logic, then I have to give up and just accept that we look at things very differently.

So what? Would the tournament be a failure if 1/1/1 did not win? Maybe next time when Peasant tournament is held, someone could tell me beforehand what the "right" team composition is?

It would help actually (like I talked about there above). The issue is that the lone anti wizard wizard is powerful because he knows he will be facing 3 wizards. But if I was able to change one wizard to a warrior, that enemy anti wizard wizard would be much less powerful because I would now have a character that would completely destroy that wizard in 1 vs. 1. I could for example take a couple of WW/WWE and look for an opening to rush that wizard with my warrior.

Yes! And the team that suffers the most is full wizard team.

Yes! The more adaptation options you give to 1/1/1 teams, the more specialized they become after that first game.

Um.. yes.. kind of. This would be true if 3DC was as powerful in Peasant as people like to assume it is. I don't think it is, based on me playing it and losing games even without sideboard. 3DC is just the current target of the mindless nerf bandwagon, therefore its automatically OP and evil in all possible scenarios, even though there is no real proof that it would dominate Peasant.

Yes!

 

Worth noting that neither of those cards is in the format. Also, I would posit that Winds of War is effectively a 2-for-1 or more against warriors. There are ways to play around it (mostly, drawing Immovable, or using only one dude at a time, the former being lucky since max per deck in this format is 3 if you're a dwarf and 1 if you're not a dwarf and the latter being good strategy but often awkward to pull off), but in a lot of cases you're effectively removing your opponent's move cards the same way Counterspell removes magic cards. Worse, if you remove your opponent's moves and leave them stuck somewhere, you kill all the attack cards still in their hand. Step attacks and "Move, Team!" cards help against this in a way that I guess wizards can't struggle against Counterspell, so I see the analogy fall away there to an extent, but really, Winds of War is a lot of cards for one vs. warriors.

My 2¢ on that particular subject.

 

SLG, you allow a thought that a way to beat anti-mage team is to change 3 wizards team into two wizards and one warrior. Then why don't you play this setup from the beginning? I somehow do not see three priests team in this tournament. Even three warriors are absent I think. But somehow you want three wizards to work. My point is, that any 3/0/0 team is weaker and very situational. The build uses the kind of logic that is just not good for tournaments like this - with sideboard. Why don't you ask why three warriors or priests are not chosen by people instead? Compare wizards to these classes and you will see similarities. Any of these can be countered with a very simple strategy of prepared team. Priests can be stopped by wizards because they will have neither enough step attacks to reach them or damage power to kill them in time. So you can see WoW and frost spells as unmatched threat to them. Warriors are a bit tricky, but having no purge they rely on movement against freezing. And again WoW and frost spells would kill them together with WWE and perplexing ray. Alright it is not one card strategy (compared to smoke and counterspell), but it is enough not to pick these teams at all.
Arrogant armor does not exist in uncommon quality, so you cannot stop encumbering. So we could simply say priests and warriors teams are killed by one type of attack - frost spells. Look here: both setups counter are frost mages! Priests are no threat to any kind of team, so you should be asking to buff them before asking to buff wizards I think.
If we agree on nerfing frost spells, then we could agree on nerfing smoke bomb. Counterspell is not direct threat because it can be... removed. By any spell or your own counterspell. It can be blocked too. Plus it needs line of sight, so could be tricked in a few ways.
So if warriors and priests could run more freely to a team of wizards, then sure, ask for whatever you want.

Replacing one class with another is silly. Why? Because it is gambling. Exactly like bringing 3 wizards the first time.
Lets assume you can do it. What happens? Rules changed so people will change their approach too. Now we would expect the following setup:
1. First game - three wizards
2. Second game - depending on rules - let's say 2 wiz, 1 warrior
How do we build our team then? Simple:
1. First game - one wizard, 2 warriors, Smoke bombs, counterspells, step attacks
2. Second game - wizard, priest, warrior, smoke bombs, counterspells, parry (!), nimbuses, purge

So it still would not work. You would still be looking for optimal format so your preferred 3/0/0 build could be played and valid. There might be no easy way to do that unless you change the rules into one game per duel. This way gambling works. Or rather statistics which team is expected to win most of the time. And I would expect to see two builds only: three wizard build and its counter-build with smoke and counterspells. So we can go one step further and even predict what build would win such tournament. It would be a counter-wizard build with some kind of anti warriors twist (balance between parry and attack).
Oh, and still three priests team would be absent!

I want to play three priests! Nerf frost spells!

 

I think SLG is focusing on the non-key points here. My previous post quoted here has not really been addressed and still stands as a overarching reason why 3DC needs to take a hit, regardless of other interesting points made. Mosalla has expanded very well on the part about 3 characters of any one class in a post just above just above.
The fact that tri-wizard, which is often control and is thus often unfun for the opponents, becomes only a good as opposed to a dominant strategy, makes the game more "fun" as a whole.

Minor sideboard size reduction is still the best solution to find the right balance between making 3 wizards viable and stopping 3DC being dominant, and a great "middle-ground" solution When it's a tough choice between builds, then things are balanced.

Couldn't have said it better myself So if for example Wizards were the strongest class in Card Hunter, is the answer to that problem always to play Wizards? Or maybe it would make more sense to nerf Wizards so that people could play other classes and not lose?
A (slight) sideboard reduction keeps or increases the strategic depth, and the power of having counterspell as an option reduces wizard effectiveness slightly, which is great for overall game balance.

 

Hi, I made a simple figure to illustrate sideboarding options and its impact... yeah, well...I'm a sucker for these. Disclaimer: I have no idea if the explanation is accurate/correct. I was asking myself what's the difference between item/char sideboarding and made these at a whim. Feel free to disagree or ignore. Not everyone likes theory crafting. =)



Let a party of chars be represented as 3 points in 2d space where axes X and Y represent some multiplayer variable. X and Y could be playing experience, playing skill, time, difficulty... literally anything to describe the party. There could be other axes, but for simplicity's sake, I distilled it down to 2. Figure 1 shows two parties represented by red dots and green dots. The triangular configuration of each party represent the range of X and Y to describe them. Each configuration is different for individual players. So two players can have same identical parties/items/cards and still end up with different configurations.

Figure 2 represents the configuration change after item sideboard changes. The larger transparent circles represent the possible 'shifts' in the position of the party's chars. There can be no shift, shifts in X, shifts in Y or shifts in both X and Y. The net result is that the configurations will change slightly due to item sideboards. The more items are allowed to change, the larger the shifts and the larger the configuration changes. Now if we take the same idea and incorporate 'reserve party chars' instead. Then naturally, char based sideboards will always have larger configuration changes. More race/classes options mean even more variety.

Pros of item-based sideboards: If the item/card pool is large, item sideboarding makes sense because even smaller configuration changes would still be large shifts due to larger variety of cards.
Cons: If the item/card pool is small, some party builds get shafted and there is little allowance for the configuration space to change while other party builds won't suffer as much.

Pros of char-based sideboards: More variety. Benefits small item/card pools.
Cons: Too much variety is not always a good thing, especially when the item/card pools are too large... too many items/cards to guard against. Broken combos, banlist etc. Ever changing party makeup, harder to succeed in such formats.