Brawl #6 - Round 2 - Voting

[Espithel]

Play order
> Play Basalt
> Wait a turn
> All your permanents are Basalt Shapers if the Shaper is still in play (Can it survive RT?)
> When you end a turn, they revert to permanents after attacking (No quanta generation)
> Nothing special happens next turn

-Snip-

Turn order:
> Play Vinegrabber, Steal a permanent for free.
> If the permanent has an ability, ready the ability and change the quanta cost of the ability to darkness. (Eternity becomes 3 darkness - spend 3 to RT a pesky pharaoh!)
> At the end of turn, return everything to normal; stealing is not permanent

I honestly want to photoshop my elements cards to have smaller text so I can fit in details like readying the permanent.
Both cards have enter play as their triggers.

Zanz why do you hate fun

[theelkspeaks]

Royalty – PC and TG completely dominated this task. TG had a very clever way of using a song to visualize the landscape rather than a traditional image, and it worked fantastically! PC has an image clearly better than the other two images and showing a distinct landscape with mountains and clouds, while S7 and FROGS had landscapes that didn’t feel especially distinct, even with the touches of the animation and the story.
(PC – 5, TG – 5)
Bard – TG has an extremely clever submission with excellent art, a fun concept, and a great sense of humor, securing an easy 5 points from me.  None of the other submissions especially appealed to me in this task, but I will give S7 3 points for executing on their concept by showing a person in fear in the backround, and FROGS the remaining 2 points for sheer quality of art.
(TG – 5, S7 – 3, FROGS – 2)
Crusader – PC dominated this task, with an excellent and fairly unique deck backed up with a well-explained story.  This is truly amazing work, well done!  Of the remaining three decks, I like all three, but TG’s deck and explanation are good enough to give it an edge on the other two.
(PC – 5, TG – 3, FROGS – 1, S7 – 1)
Scribe/Enchanter – As far as the stories are concerned, all four teams had excellent stories, but TG had a story that was above the other three by a wide enough margin to secure 5 points of the total 20 just for story alone.  The remaining 15 points will be distributed based on the card ideas, as the stories were all very good.  FROGS earns several points for both the shapeshifter and the pelican, which both work extremely well as interesting creatures, and while Basalt Shaper seems concerning to play against, it seems like an exciting enough mechanic to be worthy of merit.  Mud Lurker and Scavenging Spider are also excellent designs, so I’ll award each of those 5 designs an additional 3 points.
(TG – 8, FROGS – 6, S7 – 3, PC – 3)
Wizard – S7 have a very simple game, but executed on the idea very well and will receive a clean 5 points.  While I found the FROGS’s game idea to be a little too heavily luck-based for my liking, I still found it a compelling choice, and a game that would be fun to play, so it receives 4 points. TG receive the final point available for a clever party-game style game, but the rules were somewhat confusing and the game itself seemed a little too formulaic.
(S7 – 5, FROGS – 4, TG – 1)
Bonus – FROGS and PC have my personal favorites and receive 5 points each.
(FROGS – 5, PC – 5)
Totals for round: TG – 22, PC – 18, FROGS – 18, S7 - 12

[theelkspeaks]

(Sorry for waiting until the last day to vote and comment, I've had a rather long week involving missed flights, misplaced baggage, and the sudden resignation of a coworker, so I've had less time than usual to write up my thoughts)

[Linkcat]

Elk, I think you mixed up FROGS and PC in your Bard voting.

Royalty

Tentacles had great descriptions of their landscape and their journey in a well put together song. Easy 5 voints. Frogs didn't have anything unique in their landscape except for a mushroom and whatever is behind it. I don't judge heavily on the actual quality of the artwork, but this is pretty badly drawn. Pyrocloaks don't have any actual traveling in their submission and there is nothing unique about mountains. I like S7's choice of showing how their landscape is unique with a large area that has it's own history and climate. The record of their travel is also well done. When compared to the other submissions, I feel comfortable giving the rest of the 5 voints here.

Tentacle's Grip - 5
S7 - 5
F.R.O.G.S. - 0
Pyrocloaks - 0

Bard

While the Frogs submission does look fairly spooky, a boggart splitting into 13 different entities doesn't make much sense. Overall it's a lazy design. Pyrocloaks have a well designed and presented giant spider. I could definitely see this being someone's worst fear. Looking at S7's design, a bloody Medusa Scissorhands Cockroach Queen is pretty f***ing sketchy. While it doesn't count for anything, the person running away is adorable. Although a clown is one of the most cliché things to be scared of, I really can't view the Tentaclown as frightening, let alone the most frightening.

Pyrocloaks - 5
S7 - 4
Tentacle's Grip - 1
F.R.O.G.S. - 0

Crusader

S7 and Frogs did the best job of accounting for the goblins' needs, followed by Tentacles, while the Pyrocloak's strategy is ridiculous. S7 gets a deduction for being too low on Entropy.

F.R.O.G.S. - 4
S7 - 3
Tentacle's Grip - 3
Pyrocloaks - 0

Enchanter/Scribe

I'd like to give detailed criticisms on each card and maybe story, but I don't feel like doing that for this many cards right now. I'll go over a specific card if requested. Cards and stories separated by commas. Brawlmasters, 2-3 cards + Writer is too much for one task.

FROGS: Decent, Bad, Decent, Unfinished story. Creatures are just kind of there.
Tentacles: Bad card text, Good, Nice history of the Shaper.
S7: Bad, Good, Meh, story ties in nicely with the spooky forest. Blackwings.
Pyrocloaks: Bad, Meh, Meh, Second story mentions a few dozen men -- that's not really an army, Third story is good. Upgraded Manticore not being Scorpicore makes me sad.

F.R.O.G.S. - 4
Tentacle's Grip - 7
S7 - 7
Pyrocloaks - 2

Wizard

Frogs: Based entirely on RNG.
S7: A complicated weighted RPS. Ruling out information exchange prevents the game from becoming interesting.
Pyrocloaks: Interesting but would get stale after a while.
Tentacles: Can't be done while walking but has a lot of entertainment and replay value.

Tentacle's Grip - 5
Pyrocloaks - 4
S7 - 1
F.R.O.G.S. - 0

Bonus Task

Frogs: I can't tell what it's supposed to be but the 6 is noticeable and it's not ugly, so it automatically earns 5 voints.
S7: 6 is not noticeable.
Pyrocloaks: Ugly.
Tentacles: Coolest looking and fits the theme. 6 is not as clear as I would have liked but you'll see it since you'll know it's a Brawl trophy.

Tentacle's Grip - 5
F.R.O.G.S. - 5
Pyrocloaks - 0
S7 - 0

Total
Tentacle's Grip - 26
S7 - 20
F.R.O.G.S. - 13
Pyrocloaks - 11

Best submission overall: Tentacles Royalty task. One suggestion, replacing "nothing" in the chorus with "nought" would make it flow better.

Props to S7 for tying together their Royalty, Crusader, and Enchanter/Scribe tasks. I feel like this represents the idea of Brawl well. I wish I could give bonus points or something.

[Fippe94]

Brawlmasters, 2-3 cards + Writer is too much for one task.

Good thing it's not really one task then; it's two.

[JonathanCrazyJ]

Best submission overall: Tentacles Royalty task. One suggestion, replacing "nothing" in the chorus with "nought" would make it flow better.

Oh DAMN! you just reminded me! I had it as naught, but when I was writing the chorus (first) i wanted to save naught for a lyric like "naught for the naughty nautical something something". That lyric never happened, and i forgot to go back and change nothing to naught!

Although a clown is one of the most cliché things to be scared of, I really can't view the Tentaclown as frightening, let alone the most frightening.

you don't find it frightning because you aren't a tentacle.
Believe me, it's a scary bloody tentaclown. *shivers*

[ARTHANASIOS]

About FROGS' Wizard Task, it is interesting to see how people are pissed off RNG so much. The very same people who have no problem to play EtG (an 99% RNG-based card game).

[Fippe94]

In PvP matches I usually find that far less than 99% is RNG. And that only counts ingame decisions. A large part of Elements (and any CCG/TCG really) is deckbuilding, which is most definitey not random.

[kaempfer13]

EtG is heavily based on deck choice; actual counters counter hard and soft counters can loose but usually wont. You can thus heavily change the outcome with choices you make, a feature that is absent in that game safe for teleports. Personally, i see some rng as necessary evil to not have a single winning strategy, allowing some unusual -in that situation suddenly good- decisions. If there are no decisions to begin with, that positive aspect is lost.

[Aves]

Even a purely RNG dependent game that has little to no input from your choices can be fun-- I'm sure many people here remember playing War (the card game) as a kid, or something like ludo. It's pretty clear that you put a lot of effort into your game, but with that much text it can be easy to get lost in it. Imo, a visual example of your board would've strengthened your submission greatly. That's my  on it, anyways.

[ARTHANASIOS]

Yes, but deckbuilding (a non-random factor) is based on mindgating (a random factor and I will explain why), which is, if not in its outer appearance, deep within its heart luck-based. There is no way to be known what deck your opponent will bring. Sure, he/she possibly bring skeleton deck A or skeleton deck B or C, but in the end it is just a rock-paper-scissors choice. Because of this, I put the game at a 99% RNG factor.

Note: I did not made the above post to cry for more votes, I made it to try to understand how the community thinks. Playing EtG in spite of being such an RNG-based game is a good thing imho.

[Aves]

Nobody denies that EtG is RNG based. But it's RNG+two levels of choices that determine the outcome in EtG, versus your game which appears to be based almost 100% on the RNG. There is much less input from the player in your game. Of course, that's not a fair comparison, since the task wasn't calling on you to make a game to compare to EtG, but you're the one who brought the comparison up, I believe.