And yet I have seen games where the initiative roll essentially decided who the winner would be. The rest of the game was just going through the motions. To some, that is not playing the game either.

Yeah, I don't think those guys have figured that out. Or they're choosing to not see it. I liked all the earlier posts that boiled this down to competitive players finding the glove is on the other foot for once...

And it's not as if the optimum version of this team on the basic level does anything that many regular pro-teams don't: score any kind of points at all early, and then do your level best to not have anything else happen for the rest of the game.

This is why I would never play at any high level event. It would not be fun for me. I'm the guy who makes teams like Silver Surfer vol 2 #15. I only ever use my Infinity Gauntlet on people who wore it in the books.
If I went to a tournament I'd end up like mopedkid at the Smash Bros tournament.


Not to mention my inability to roll higher than 5 most of the time.

I can miss an attack with IC Thanos on click 3.

It's like the 2 turn win MTG decks my friend used to build. That's no fun to play against.

A thought just came to me:

If I could get a piece with good range far enough across the board to throw a barrier around Sandman would he then not have the ability to either Sidestep or throw down a Smoke Cloud/Barrier because of LoF?

I think he could still throw one smokecloud underneath himself and jump off the map.

I think a lot of misconceptions about high-end play are leaking in here. Though I've only played two games competitively ever (and both have been listed in this thread, SSB and Heroclix) It's enough to make references happen.

Like Heroclix, almost any game is made without extensive knowledge of how players will use and break things. Smash Bros Melee had a few characters that were common staples at the top of the meta, a few that could compete by countering one or two of the meta characters, and one lethal joke "all or nothing" character. The rest of the roster was for chumps who didn't know what they were doing (like me!) and players who could make a specific character work via their playstyle (me after I switched from Adult Link to Young/Toon Link, who had the same basic moveset, but was more balanced and didn't have some of the critical weaknesses.)

Even with a bad matchup though, it's possible to outplay your opponent or flat out get lucky. Heroclix story time.

Recently, I played at a ROC against a nice gentleman who was running the new "GreedyFather" thing via the Omega Drive. I was using an Orange Battery and had Outwit, so if I had won initiative, it would have been an easy enough match. By my "Greeding" Outwit on loop, he'd be unable to change Greed into Takion, making my Tentpole vastly more powerful than his force as a whole. I didn't. Even so, it was still somewhat favorable for me if I could land one of two opening attacks. Once more, I didn't.

The match continued to go from bad to worse. My dice failed me at every opportunity they could except a single attack that landed for scratch damage. What initially looked like a relatively easy matchup for me became a flat out curbstomp. In part, it was my dice being angry with me for some reason. In part, he managed a maneuver I didn't expect and landed a strong hit as a result. I thought up two ways to play it out of the gate, and I'm convinced that regardless of what I chose, those dice were going to screw me anyway. One was to hang back and take two shots before I needed to clear, the other was to rush in and PW on turn two and clear while the opponent had a chance to whack me. I chose the former.

The thing about "going through the motions" is that stuff like this happens all the time. This matchup was at one of the top tables at the time, and I had flattened my prior two opponents because one was weak to my build, and the other just plain underestimated it. "The motions" can be heavily influenced by either player making a mistake no matter how seemingly trivial, or dice just not cooperating. It's a lot more tense than it looks, and it's a lot more engaging than a 2d6 roll. The player who's "destined" to win because he won map roll can easily forget an Outwit or miss an otherwise easy roll, and that may just be enough for the "losing" player to make a comeback or put up a stronger fight.
Again though, this sort of play is not for everyone, and I understand that.



This is correct. I can think of no way to play to stop this Sandman build from ending the game immediately.

" I don't know what we're yelling about!!"

It still isn't playing when you have to rely upon someone's dice to consistently fail them and for them to make bad choices in order to overcome a "curbstomp" team.

When I said going through the motions, I meant the games played out as the odds indicated they should, which is what happens more often than not on those occasions.

I have also played in sealed events where I could tell you who the top two players were going to be based on what they pulled and before the first round started.

For some, it can be. It's not fun if you have to do it every time, but it does add dramatic tension to some of the final matches of the day if you're playing a competitive event.

Playing classic GotG against a build like that sucks, no question. Playing your hardened meta-build against that sort of thing tends to be fun once in a while.


I understand that. Seeing upsets can make things more interesting, of course. The chance of seeing an upset or a massive shift in a game makes it worth playing most times, in my opinion. Like I said before, I lost a game where I had a decided advantage because of a minor goof and horrific dice rolls. It was my first 0 point loss in years. I still prefer having lost that match as badly as I did over letting it go to a roll off, or having my opponent declare a double loss without my being able to participate at all. I got my ass handed to me, but I got to play.


Sealed can do that, particularly when one player pulls that SR or chase that can pretty much play itself. It was especially prevalent in TW and AvAs sealed, where the SRs and Chases were generally much more powerful than the rest of the set.

We are talking about high level events not home games right?

Even my "home game" level teams don't see the kind of curb stomping people are talking about when paired with straight up direct copy proxies of ROC winners from the stronger players I play with. Yes I lose games in matches like this, but that doesn't mean I have no chance at all or that the game wasn't played. I also frequently win these games even from behind. Simply put, the players running them are good but are not the same caliber player as the ROC winners (neither am I).

While it's true that sealed is a terrible format where you know that nothing you pulled can ever touch the Sentry/Void the other guy pulled, we are talking about constructed. If anyone is "going through the motions" and playing out the match "as the odds indicate" from the losing side, I can easily point out that they are following a course of actions that indicate a loss instead of looking for another play. The optimal play in a vacuum is frequently the wrong play against a good player.

I am specifically talking about the grasshopper/sandman team being in the same "league" as top tier teams whether those types of players want to accept it or not.

To me, the team is no different than a perfect hand Magic game where you are lucky to get past turn three.

MTG has no equivalent to this even in perfect hand scenarios (exception: 60 rocket powered turbo slug). The closest it ever got would be "Unrestricted Hulk Flash" vs "bad even for a precon deck". That game could potentially end on turn 0.5 with no meaningful decisions. However, some of the most interesting games I've ever played were against Hulk Flash and Worldgorger Dragon combos because, if you showed up to play at that level, every single decision you make can be game changing and there is far more happening than in the longer games (by turn count) where nothing happens for 10 turns and then someone loses.

Sandman puts a player in the same league as Kenny in the same manner unplugging the machine puts them in the same league as top street fighter players.

Do you know any organizers that would allow you to unplug the machine and declare yourself the winner by roll off?

*Basically playing this team is the same as yelling "NUCLEAR MISSLE" and flipping a risk board to call yourself the winner, except it's supported by Wizkids for whatever reason.

Magic has in the past had such things, but they realized that wasn't the way people wanted to play and started fixing things. Heroclix is now at that point and really needs the overhaul that Magic got to fix the competitive game.

That is a terrible analogy, Heroclix has rules that allow what is being discussed, Street Fighter does not, therefore it should be allowed by all organizers as long as it is allowed by the game.