every mage knight to date, I must have them!!!








[ag] boing

Tony,

I agree about the Draft being a true test of skill with only the truly extreme in bad/good luck coming into play and even that can be balanced out by a reasonable draw from a good player.

Draft tests your building & playing skills with a range of figures and doesn't benefit the "Mr Suitcases" against those with a limited budget.

I think the Nationals/Championships should be Sealed Draft with an aggressive non-turtle scenario with multiple scenario point gain possibilities. Perhaps, something like (assuming a 300pt. army): x2 survivor points for figures located in a take & hold central location (or alternatively you only gain survivor points for those figs at the end in a central 10"/1 foot area) & +50 pts. for killing/capturing a nominated leader fig in each players army.

The more the tournament requires the players to think on their feet the better the winning players will have to be and the less luck will have a foothold. The winner of a tournament at this level should be not the player who duplicated a tried & practiced single startegy but the player who is the best and most creative strategist & tactician and who knows each figures playability the best (not just the figures he brought).

Just the opinion of a Loon-

He hit the nail in your eyes.

Malleus: Why is that the true measure of skill? Each game you have to improvise your actions based on your opponents army and the way he plays it. There is plenty of improvisation and innovation in H2H. This is a War game where you are pretending to be a general of an army. In real life the measure of a general is not only his adaptability but his knowledge of and trust of the troops below him. Why should improvisation be any more important than flawless play with your army of choice, or ability to out manuver your opponet because of exacting knowledge of proper terrain placement based on your army.

Just because you feel the field is boring and stagnant, doesnt mean it is.

Tony has admitted his views are based on playing too many games. He is at the top level of playing skill and has won numerous major events. If it seems boring for him, I really doubt that adding a few minor rules changes are going to bring back the excitement. I saw some of the armies from Wizworld and believe they were pretty terrible. Besides his finals opponent, Im not sure that he had any real competition so I would agree that it would be boring. (Note to readers: If you were there, don't be offended, I haven't seen all the armies, nor know all the players that were present. If you are offended by this then Im not talking about you, you played great and should have won)

I don't believe Nationals will be the same. You will have the best players from all areas bringing their best armies. Each army will be shaped by local environments and players views. Not every player agrees on what the best army is let alone the best build is for it. Now they can step up to the bat rather than go back and forth discussing it. This is what a war game is to me. Will you see a lot of ML/ram, or GA or swarm or some other archetype? maybe, but I doubt that ALL the people will be playing the ALL the same version. If so than all the better for you because you can play an army to beat what ever you think there will be a lot of, and take the prize.

Everyone should know what Im playing(barring any rule changes or scenerios). I win pretty much every tournament I enter with it. Does that make it the best army in the format? A lot of players dont agree and are happy to challenge me over it, and create inovative designs trying to tackle it. My "boring, stagnant design" encourages creativity.


Tony: I too, am a big fan of Booster draft. I dont agree with your opinion of less luck than constructed, but it is 10 steps less luck than sealed box (and should be the format of all sealed events in the future) My only problem with making it the format of choice is that you are admitting that the whole constructed army format is too flawed for use. While I have my views about the brokenness of certain figures, I dont want to go that far.

also you are right that less skilled players will not do as well in unusual formats, but they are also not going to win as tough a tournament as nationals. They may be able to pilot there ML/ram army to a win at there store in Podunk or Wooster(HA!) but put them against the best of the best and the lack of skill will show.

There would be no less stagnation in single faction armies then there is in multiple faction ones. It would just be a different type of stagnation. There would be a few top armies, and the rest would have even less options to counter them, also whole factions would never see the light of day in serious competive events (at least in the winners bracket)

I like the preconstructed idea, but how many of those would you want to play before it got boring? The appeal for me and a lot of others is army construction. Take that away and you might as well go play chess.


Finally:
my only regret for a H2H nationals is not everyone has equal access to figures. I know how critical anunub is for the success of my army and wish everyone has equal access to him. He really is that good. He is worth every penny of the 250$ he is going for as long as you are playing to win.

I'm not really sure if that was meant to be insulting (or really intended to mean anything), so I will choose not to dignify it with a response.

I feel that a good example of evidence for this would be the Border Wars Mini-Con in February. As you may recall, in the team event that we played it was the local, "Friday Nighters" (including myself) against the visiting players, most of which were from Michigan.

Most of the Friday Nighters are not present on these boards, and were playing interesting and creative armies with figures that are not often seen competitively. We were utterly crushed. And you know what was interesting? With 3 or 4 exceptions, the entire Michigan group were playing indistinguishable armies. That is not to say that they were exactly the same- many of them differed with one or two different pieces, but the broad majority of them represented the exact same tactics and the exact same approach to every game. Of the five constructed rounds that I played in the Con, 4 of my opponents' used AG armies that played exactly the same and featured almost entirely the same pieces.

I did not play you at that event, but after some difficulty due to the extreme similarity to all of the others, I managed to remember exactly *which* of the "AG Gunner" armies was yours. On the other hand, I had a relatively easy time recalling Sothis' Orc force, and By-Tor's Mountain King/Wyvern army. Sadly armies like those were exceptions to the rule and did not make it very far in the tournaments.

This is what I am talking about when I say that the field is growing stagnant.

It was not meant as in insult, Malleus, and you did dignify it with a response including taking the time to draw attention to it by quoting it and responding pompously. I only intended it as an intro stating that you agreed but that I did not

Your example is skewed by the fact that our play group all decided to play the same armies. I am the only one of the four who is very active in the game so the other 3 just follow my lead in army design.
You are right that there were a lot of similar armies at border wars. 4 in fact. All 4 players were from kalamazoo, Michigan and played an army designed by myself. The only one that was different was mine as I had anunub and they did not. Our record over the 6 or so rounds of constructed were 5-0-1(myself spliting in the finals with peacemaker), 5-1, 4-2 and 4-2. All the top tables seemed to have one player playing the same army because we were all at the top tables. However also at the top was peacemaker playing a mortis/lev army, Gargamel playing a mortis/lev/ram , and Betrayer of Hope playing KI swarm. You must of had unfortunate luck with pairings because I faced a multitude of different armies with the only similar match being with my friend Levi.

I took the time to examine all the other armies being played, and while a lot of out of staters WERE playing Lev, the armies were very different. Saying we were all playing gunners isnt true.


we should probably stop pirating this thread since our responses have nothing to do with the original post. Feel free to respond, and if you still want to discuss it, then PM me or we can start another thread.

Random Scenarios, Booster draft, same armies, etc. etc. This destroys the skill of army contruction. Analyzation of a field and building an army tuned to beat it is as much of a skill as winning on the field.

Having random scenarios would be nothing but another shot of luck into a game with a more than enough already.

Booster Draft is quite far from luck free, and we are talking rochester draft correct? If so, I will comment a touch more on rochester draft ;).

Same armies!?! This is the worst of all. Now for just a small local tourney, this would be all right, but for nationals!?! Just remember, wizkids is out to make a little money and have 5 cookie cutter armies is not going to happen for pretty much the same reason wizards does not use it precontructed decks for any sacntioned tournaments.


H2H is stable and healthy. All I have to say is give time for competition to solidify in MK, then we will see how boring things are.

hmm u guys seem to be arguing about whether gambling should be fixed or up to the player to react to changing situations during a game. MK is essentially gambling on whether or not ur army can handle all sorts of different armies thrown against it plus the dice factor. do u guys play alot of poker or boo ray? man i tell u the situation changes like crazy and its a real test of a player's skills to be able to pull out of suddenly worsening situations. so i play MK like i would poker or boo ray and i like the fact that things can turn on me quickly if i cant react quickly enough to it. the fact that u want to rig the deck so that everything comes out stacked in ur favor and requires no more thought to adapting to a changing situation saddens me. after all, MK is a game and so is gambling. ppl who gamble know that its a math game and sometimes u are just on the short end of the stick. they also know that wild card situations vary ur chances of winning by so many points statistically speaking but it is worth the risk cause the rewards are so great if the math is on ur side.(plus gambling is fun if u keep focus on the fun part) its all on u whether or not u can take the heat or have to go cry on the message board about how wizkids jacked u out of ur rightful prizes. another thing thats gettin me is how all these ppl are now talkin about nationals competetively like "oh my god!!! i must win cause the prizes are worth so much money and if wizkids makes it that much more difficult for me to win then they suck" OMFG! its a game and we started playin this stuff cause of recreational purposes. its not the freakin NBA or NFL and those things are already riddiculous enough. cant we all just goto a big gathering of players and really PLAY for fun instead of gettin bent out of shape about who is gonna win what?

if u guys enjoy playing in constant bland formats and no real army adaptability, call me. ill write u a comp program that does the same thing for a small fee.

As a matter of fact I did not dignify it with a response as it appeared to me to be an effort at an insult in the same vein of belligerance as "your mom ____." It is fairly difficult to not "respond pompously" when you are faced with something like that. ;) I am still not entirely clear what you meant by that (and I doubt that you are either), but if it was my misunderstanding than I apologize.

It is possible that you are correct in that I could have simply had bad pairings, but several of the other Pastimes players expressed similar experiences.

I freely admit that my own experience in major tournaments is limited, and that I am basing my opinions on what I have read here and other places online. I will be going to 3 different Cons this summer to correct that. I can only hope that I am wrong regarding where the competitive environment is at, but I maintain my opinion that a special scenario would be preferable to 200 point H2H.

I think it is pretty clear that neither of us are going to sway each other on this matter, and you are right that we are "pirating" this thread, so I will close here. [ag]

Ah, another ingnorant remark claiming booster drafts and scenarios increase luck. Please see my previous post on this topic.

ah, another ingnorant remark claiming they do not.

IM GONNA WIN, MUHAHAHAHAHA the mounted elf general mine i tell u, nobody can take it away, muhahahaha!
:cool: ;)

I, in three rounds, went 2 and 1... my loss was sustained playing with a techun, which I knew how to use, and troll artillerists, which I did not. My other two rounds were virtual shutouts.... first round, lost an imp, possibly 2, and third round, shut out the immensely well-known Peacemaker himself.... he lost his Mortis earlier, is the current running excuse.

But malleus is correct. The two battles where I had near shut-outs involved me first playing the KI swarm army from michigan, and then the Peacemaker battle. I was lucky. I knew how to handle KI swarm (and had some shades to help), and to give him credit, Peacemaker WAS at a loss of units, even still, having a Magus, Ananub, and some shamans/red gunners. Without his Mortis, he would have done much better, as Border Wars was before Unlimited's anti-maglev-sneak attack ruling. To be even fairer, Peace and I squared off AGAIN later that night, When I decided to be a bit different and use a Thanatoss Reaper with a red war hatchetkrugg and a red war impaler. I lost ram before I could get to Ananub, and esentially gave up by placing my thanatoss in base with ananub, allowing him to lev my 'Toss into b2b with Mortis, who attacked for eight damage. ( He went on to shut me out =) I didn't even chase his badly wounded red amotep ::grin::)

Upon speaking to the rest of the friday-nighters, however, the trains of thought were all the same..... too much levitation goin on =)

I also think that this first place prize is WAY too much and maybe a 1/3 should go to first and the rest be spread as well as possible among as many as possible, seeing that many people will come a long way and only one will win.

At 1/3 of that hoard first place would still be one of the best going and the rest could spread between 2-6 with a couple of minor prizes for stuff like: best sport, best army theme (popular vote) & maybe a couple of other door prizes. I would rather take a long trip for lots of prizes going to lots of people.

When I heard the prize for first at Wiz World and then heard what second & third got I nearly choked, with only 16 people there half the people could have walked out with LEs and happy with Tony still going home with a hoard and a smile.

>>They may be able to pilot there ML/ram army to a win at there store in Podunk or Wooster(HA!) but put them against the best of the best and the lack of skill will show.<<

lol, that's so true.

I can't untill some blowhard who thinks his ML ram army is the best, gets shut down at a major event with real opponents.