Yes, I understand your position. Neutralizing the initial advantage is your aim. All I'm saying is 'don't place the burden wrt cards on the board designer'. It is difficult to realistically design starting zones taking a multitude of 'swingy' cards into account and still maintain enough screen real estate to cater to a variety of screen sizes (compare tuknir's ss and yours), barring other design challenges. Shift that burden to the items and cards. That's where the design space is and its easier to neutralize first turn advantage here than on the board design. Realistically from the standpoint of the designer, he/she isn't going to take loner into account cos it exists on 6 items. If it were on 600 high level mp items, then the devs/playerbase would act to ensure boards did not penalize the usage of 600 items. Makes sense ? Don't agree but this is just difference of opinions, not going to digress.
Yes, but I think there are only a few problem area cards that should be addressed. Loner can be hugely swingy and almost determine the match simply due to starting areas on the map. Nothing else based simply on map configuration will result in 6+ damage due solely to the map start. However, I don't mention starting line of sight to your own people that can be problematic from Impetuous Blast, because it is only on a single item (Whorl).
If I can stir the pot a little more, I would note first that Loner causes max 4 damage from your teammates w/o other cards coming into play (Vulnerable, etc.), but then I would add that though Loner is on 6 times as many items as Impetuous Blast, the blast has 3 times the max damage so its effect on an opening turn actually is much stronger. However, both of them combined still are on less than one half of one percent of all the items.
Yeah, I meant 4+ damage. I still think moving characters apart is good rule of thumb so they can't also be easily blocked in.
Okay, I cleaned up Zen_Diagonal a bit more and it should be ready for testing purposes if anyone is interested. I tested it once or twice already, but would like to get some more feedback on it.
I like the idea, but I think the side VP's are so hard to get to that if the game ends with 1 person from each team on opposite sides it would devolve into a pass fest. I'd move the VP on the sides up so they are within 4 movement squares from another VP -- so that doesn't occur. And I'd move start points slightly away from each other so Loner doesn't hit... :-P
Still problematic unless people run NS... but you know that. :-P I think all VPs should be within 4 squares of each other so you don't run into pass fests like on Celestial Lions.
Celestial Lions is one of my favorite ranked boards of all time, both to play on and to observe. Very fun and unobvious strategies.
Until both players have Dwarves alive and on opposite sides of the map and it becomes a pass fest as no one wants to save up movement cards to go and attack the other person.
Here, a map i just did. it didnt start so big, but had to give some room so no char would reach vp's in a normal movement. ImO it ended up with a interesting layout
I'm thinking of reviving this idea as the maps are getting a bit stale in my eyes. Would love to see some new things to mix it up.
Technically not a submission to anything as I'm on the team and we're probably just going to use these at some point, but I figured I'd link here in case anyone wanted inspiration/examples of what not to do http://forums.cardhunter.com/threads/ranked-batfords-manor-double-burglary.6859/
Official Ranked PvP board submission thread finally live http://forums.cardhunter.com/threads/pvp-map-contest-constant-submission-thread.7206/
Non-fixed deck league maps I'd assume will come in the future if this contest is successful. Fixed deck league maps are a lot more work because they need to specifically make cards/monsters with cards. I have no inside knowledge of future contests, but I can only guess that they wouldn't be opposed to non-fixed league maps eventually.