PvP Board Contest Discussion

I'd suggest changing the "Elves on a victory terrain square should be able to Dash to another" to "a Dwarf on a victory square should be able to use two Walks to another" -- that way you can allow difficult terrain to compensate movement speed differences and encourage Free Move / Fly. This still allows for 2 base movement cards to get to another VP as a way to reduce the chance of stalemates occurring.

 

Might as well note it, all three boards submitted up to this point are missing or have misplaced lower doodads. Doesn't taken away from the boards in general, just the creators might want to fix them for the sake of:

 

I don't think the board is missing doodas, I left them out on purpose on two sides to give the impression of raised walls..

 

Yeah I figured in your case it was intentional. The fact that it's supposed to look like a table top board-game board however, results in the raised wall effect being more a distraction than an addition in my opinion. But I have no power when it comes to board selection either so don't put too much weight in my opinion, I'm all for creativity in general! And for what it's worth I very much like the look of your board overall. One last thing while I'm responding, it looks like you don't have any upper doodads either, whatever way you choose to go with the lower doodads, the upper ones should probably be added.

 

Keep in mind that for a board to be really good, it's often helpful to post it in its own thread and get feedback from other players! You can save Blue Manchu time by doing this prior to submission. Not that I'll hold it against anyone

 

What's the stance on boards with player-specific victory terrain?

 

Not allowed for now.

 

You know, even though it doesn't quite fit the guidelines I really like the design of "Stranded" as-is.

Unlike Celestial Lions, it's really easy to stick any character's head out from behind the rock to attack. Even if all you have is Walk and a step attack, you can make it.

I would suggest moving the south victory square up one, and the north down one. Even if that still isn't in Dash range , if is within Walk +Stab or Walk + Step range. Note it isn't within two Walk distance but you could Walk + Fly 2.

//I don't think that guidelines should interfere with good game design. If there is a reason to stick to them, I'm sure we can leave this one alone and maybe discuss it elsewhere...

 

Good point, but for the sake of simplicity I'll leave it as-is for now. Restrictions may loosen when the current board design space has been more completely explored but we're far from there at this point.

I already said it's not allowed, but now that we're in the discussion thread I can answer in more detail: some of the Manor boards had player-specific victory terrain in their first draft. And it actually was great for play. BUT it's something that has only *just* been introduced, in a hidden manner, in Mauve Manticore. The mechanic hasn't been explicitly laid out by Gary at any point in the game and most players don't know what it is or how it works. Additionally there's the added confusion that the player-specific victory terrain is team-colored RED and BLUE even though the players' figurine bases are team-colored WHITE and BLACK. At some point in the future we will change the player-specific victory terrain decals to make more sense, add a player-specific victory terrain tutorial somewhere in the campaign, and then begin accepting PvP board submissions with player-specific victory terrain.

Unfortunately due to the placement of difficult terrain, your "walk+stab range" point only works unidirectionally—from the center, to the periphery. If you're on one of the isolated squares, it's 2 walks + stab, 2 walks + step, or 3 walks. If both players have only one character left, and those characters are on the isolated victory squares, you have a VERY high chance of a stalemate. (If they're both melee dwarves it's almost guaranteed.) The point of the guideline isn't to be strict for stricture's sake, of course, it's because stalemates suck and this is a very simply guideline that can drastically decrease the chances of them occurring. Celestial Lions is a fun board in my opinion but would work better as a League than a ranked rotation. Anyway I digress.

 

But it stills looks like a mistake. What does it look like if you use the other type of lower doodads on the walls?

 

Thanks for feedback, it looks like this with the doodas on the walls, you thinks its better?

 

It looks more 'normal' and thus more likely to get published. I think I'm with Kalin on this one

 

I think there should also be a rule about spawn point homogeneity. Having a spawn point for a team be too different from another spawn point on the same team would mean class imbalance, racial imbalance, and even some ridiculous situations. That being said, spawn points must also be of similar distance to the victory point(s).

 

Why?

 

I think he's referring to the time when the Streams of Blood had a spawn point in the opponent's half which resulted in complaints when said member was focus-fired on turn 1.

 

Was it my imagination or was this originally 500?

 

Not your imagination. 500 was lifted from the MM submissions thread. It's a bit high, especially when you compare ranked board work to the amount of work a successful MM module takes. Since no submissions have been accepted yet, no one's rewards are being changed.

 

Makes sense, I can definitely affirm from experience that making a good Mauve Manticore board does take more work to find the right monsters and get them properly balanced. So if you want even more pizza, start making MM entries. From what Flaxative has said we might even see new MMs more frequently if he starts to get more quality submissions. And from what I see from the multiplayer board submissions there are some good map makers out there!

 

Yeah that does make sense. 300 is still a LARGE pizza! I might have to look into this MM thing...

 

Now that players have the chance to build MP boards, it seems this would be even more valuable.