Guest posts by kirchj33

1

Earth / Thats all folks!

« on: December 20, 2011, 06:46:25 pm »

Gentlemen,

I appreciate how hard each and every one of you worked to help us achieve success this war.  I feel we won in a way, based upon how well we did given the format.  Only the rules of war and event cards could hold us back in what should have been a three-horse race between ourselves, time, and entropy turned out much differently.  I can't tell you how much it meant to have each and every one of you on our side.

Mith -  I feel like saying goodbye to you in this post is not even doing justice to how much I appreciated your intelligence, companionship and the efforts you gave in War 4 and beyond.  You pushed me and inspired me to achieve greatness.  Your ideas were awesome and your propaganda surely was the best, it just happened to fall short in a popularity contest.  It was so fun sticking pulvies up people's asses with you.  I wish you luck in future gaming and beyond.

Sevs - Your brainpower and understanding of the game is incredible.  We would not have performed anywhere nearly as well without you and I appreciate all of your efforts.  Our late night chats and brainstorming sessions were awesome.  I know if you get placed on the right team someday it will help lead your team to victory in war.

Ave - I am so glad that you joined team earth again for a second time.  Your testing and constant questioning, retesting, and ideas were awesome.

CCC - Crazy deck guy.  You led us to create a lot of decks that were both surprising and powerful.  I knew grabbing you for a low cost was going to be one of the best steals of the auction and you didn't let me down.

bogtro - I am sorry your schedule didn't allow you to play more, I felt you were truly one of the top duelests on our team and would have liked to place you in more battles.  Your morale building and efforts outside of war did not go unnoticed.  It was a pleasure.

Marty -  You are the man.  I would probably vote you team MVP based upon your match record, morale building quotes, and ability to embrace your decks and play the shit out of them.  BOHICA for life.

Maul - I cannot say enough about how much your company meant to all of us.  It was a pleasure seeing you develop as a player throughout war and I hope you have continued success throughout your elements career.  You did a great job of keeping our spirits up and encouraging us all to push on in the fight, even when you were not involved.

I had some great memories with all of you individually and as a team.  I cannot believe it is over, and it hurts a bit how it ended for us, considering the efforts I know we all put in.  At least we know, in a sense, we were winners even if we don't have a forum icon to show or reigning the forums.    It was a pleasure to work with and serve you all as master and general.

2

War Archive / Re: War #4 - Feedback

« on: December 20, 2011, 06:31:51 pm »

Ah war.

This war was quite a bit different than the ones before, as expected, and I will post my thoughts here.  First of all, war is a lengthy event, but as a master & through trials it becomes much much lengthier because of preparation.  Some masters might totally wing it coming in, others might put too much effort (as I believe I did).  I felt that I could gain a significant strategic advantage for Team Earth if I did much preparation beforehand and between myself and my teammates, 100's of hours were spent in preparation.

"Its just a game!"

Was this stupid?  In retrospect, yes.  Earth has several key deficiencies that needed to be accounted for and covered up.  I had no clue going in, how to do this initially, so the time was necessary to get to know my element.  Testing all hypothetical decks vs. other hypothetical decks helped me to get familiar with what worked and what didn't, while having an idea of how strong certain decks were overall.  I was sad to see that after the 4th or 5th round, all of this testing was not even useful.  At the time, I had no job, and by the end of war, I had two, so it made sense at the time to me.

All of this testing "paid off" in the sense that it helped us gain an early lead and a position of power in the standings throughout the first 7 or 8 rounds.  Unfortunately for us, the rules were crafted this war so that taking an early lead may not have actually been as nifty as it seemed.  I admit, I was slightly disheartened by the way several things played out. Disclaimer: skip if not wanting to read bitching and moaning.

1.  Leading early on was actually somewhat detrimental over the course of a long event.  All of the surprise decks led to a nice lead that was evened out by the fact that many of the discards and event cards were built to help others stay alive.  Harsh penalties for losing were softened early on and midway through by allowing teams to rebuild against those that led (and UW).  Towards the end, those experienced teams/generals adjusted best due to their skill at managing vaults.  Ultimately, it led to ourselves, entropy & time having to battle more matches vs. upped card advantages & with cards that were better suited to help teams counter others.  It was no mistake that all three of these teams that jumped out to large leads in the standings and in their vaults fell hard, the format of this war meant this was going to happen.  It was a great way to keep all teams' spirits up, but was difficult to be on the receiving end of this situation.  I poured some liquor out for my homies 10 men and MatrimKK and their cronies as I saw this happening to them as well.  I saw firsthand, how we affected the final outcome of war because of harsh discard/salvage rules, just simply based upon where we placed decks.  Had we decided to place them elsewhere, we still would not have won, but other teams probably would have had final success.  Leading early on in this format means a team will have to play a higher percentage of their vault spread throughout more decks vs. a higher percentage of officers with upped card advantages with these teams gunning to beat them.  This isn't really a complaint, its a product of the rules, just merely an observation that led to ours, time's, and entropy's demise.

2.  Again, Event cards and discards were crafted to help keep the downtrodden teams alive.  We kicked so many teams while they were down early on, but the event cards kept helping them get back up in an even stronger and less predictable form.  I'm guessing this is how the WM's wanted things, but it sucked for us.

3.  RNG in matchups absolutely destroyed us and finished us off.  We made a fatal mistake vs. NotP in miscalculating our counter by one card.  The result was us being matched with them repeatedly, each round afterwards.  We created more desperate and weaker counters each round until darkness crushed us into oblivion.  Being matched with darkness round after round at the end of war was quite boring and killed what little morale we had left at the end.
War in a shorter (less rounds) format was not a success in my opinion.  The event cards such as adding 60 cards to a vault meant much more time actually had to be spent on war itself.  Things played out much less straightforward than expected, and the investment of time spent on war itself per round was much larger than in war 3.  Ultimately, the 60 card event meant UW had no chance whatsoever when you combined that event with their activity level.  I believe adding UW was a pointless exercise in tradition this war.

In the end, I had a great time.  I came to appreciate each and every participant in war, especially my teammates.  War wore me out this time, but I attribute most of this to the fact that I was trying to stay engaged to my fiance and work 70 hours a week simultaneously.  This event truly is the glue that binds this community together.

3

Round 10 / Re: [Round 2] (Darkness) Gen. TheonlyrealBeef 3 - (Earth) Gen. kirchj 1

« on: December 16, 2011, 04:04:41 pm »

Alas, Earth was slain by the mighty TorB and kevkev's RNG spamming matchup machine.

We figured out of our vault this one was the best at a 25-30% win chance, but it was not meant to be.

by kirchj33

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5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5f6 5f6 5f6 5f6 5fb 5fb 5fb 5fc 77a 77a 77a 77a 77a 77a 7ds 7ds 7ds 8po

Game 1:  TorB drew plenty of quanta, I lose (doing this 5/10 rounds of war sucks btw).

Game 2:  TorB draws poor quanta, I blow up what he has left, I win.

Games 3 & 4: See Game 1, more depression sets in.

Good luck to Darkness, I am your biggest fanboi now, sign my boobies!

4

Earth / Final Stand Thread

« on: December 16, 2011, 03:30:10 pm »

S/D/C/P initially yields the following 42 cards:

RD2 vs. TorB:

by kirchj33

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58r 58r 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5f6 5f6 5f6 5f6 5fb 5fb 5fb 5fc 5oi 5oi 5ol 5ol 5ol 5oo 5oo 5oo 5oo 5oo 77a 77a 77a 77a 77a 77a 7ds 7ds 7ds 8po

RD2 deck:

by kirchj33

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5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5f6 5f6 5f6 5f6 5fb 5fb 5fb 5fc 77a 77a 77a 77a 77a 77a 7ds 7ds 7ds 8po

5

Round 9 / Re: (Darkness) Gen. TheonlyrealBeef (Sub) 0 - (Earth) Gen. kirchj33 0

« on: December 10, 2011, 11:29:44 pm »

Herpa derp.

by kirchj33

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58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 778 778 778 778 778 78q 78q 78q 78q 8pm

6

Three-man Team PvP - Battle Results / Re: [LB15] RainBros 1 vs. Carebears 1

« on: December 07, 2011, 05:39:52 am »

Surprise!  I was a secret spy for the rainbros all along!

Game 1

by kirchj33

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4vg 4vg 4vl 4vl 4vn 4vn 4vn 4vn 4vn 4vn 4vp 4vp 4vp 4vp 4vp 4vp 5i8 5i8 5i8 5i8 5i8 5i8 5i9 5i9 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 8pj

Game 2

by kirchj33

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4vn 4vn 4vo 4vo 4vo 50u 50u 50u 50u 50u 50u 50u 5i4 5i4 5i4 5i9 5i9 5ib 5ib 5ib 5id 5id 5id 5ie 5ie 5ie 5ie 5jm 5jm 5jm 8pp

Game 3

by kirchj33

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4vg 4vg 4vl 4vl 4vn 4vn 4vn 4vn 4vn 4vn 4vp 4vp 4vp 4vp 4vp 4vp 5i8 5i8 5i8 5i8 5i8 5i8 5i9 5i9 5ia 5ia 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 5jm 8pj

All seriousness though, good luck in the rest of the event fellas, go get 'em.

Sorry to the Carebears for totally sucking in this event.  I single-handedly lost this event for us

7

War Archive / Re: War #4 - Round 8

« on: December 06, 2011, 06:56:35 pm »

A team leading late in war is initially put in a tough position when they have to spread themselves thinly over a vault to come up with decks to counter officers with soldiers to start with.  I believe time was the first out of the three early leaders (time, entropy, earth), to start to crumble under this pressure a bit.  The event cards did a good job of keeping the downtrodden teams involved by giving them hope and a few new tweaks to stay alive.  The pressure of us (earth) having to come up with enough creatures and quanta to field multiple decks finally broke us this past round.  I believe entropy faced a similar situation as us.  Admittedly, some of this may have been my own inexperience from being in a leadership position for the first time.

Ultimately though, I felt the combination of facing an increased number of officers (who not only have an upped card advantage along with other factors was our largest stumbling block.  Other factors such as: staying in a range where we would have to strain to field 6 decks instead of being a few cards less and only having to field 5 decks, increased discards, and increased unpredictability and officer power in conjunction with the round 8 event card made things very tough on us.  I told my team before the round, I would consider a 3-3 record a success.  I had the opportunity to create a much more versatile and powerful officer deck vs. TorB, but the situation presented meant I needed to bring a more specific counter deck this round (which lost anyways).  The justification for not suiciding was that a loss was just the same as a suicide at this point, so we went forward with what we thought was 6 competitive decks.  All of this has led to a 32-21 team being behind a 17-17 team (darkness) and fairly weak decks remaining going forward.

I hope my team understands all of the hard work wasn't for nothing and hopefully we showed some people what a strong and united team can do against the odds.  I am proud of what a strong opponent we proved to be throughout up until this point.

8

Round 8 / Re: (Time) (sub) dragonsdemesne 3 - (Earth) MartyrX 0

« on: December 05, 2011, 04:41:30 pm »

This substitution was well within the rules, but it just feels dirty !

9

Round 8 / Re: (Darkness) Gen. TheonlyrealBeef 3 - (Earth) Gen. kirchj33 2

« on: December 05, 2011, 04:09:19 pm »

I believe it was the 7th creature that threw the balance of this counter off.  I truly feel I still had a large deck advantage, but having to counter NotP with a creature-based deck is not fun, or easy.  I can remember all throughout war, other earth members saying that the tough thing about NotP is even if you design a great deck and play it perfectly, you still have a chance to lose.  In regards to the BB's, I only drew them twice, once I discarded early, a second time it was inconsequential.  I had considered adding wardens instead, but was afraid of those being rewind fodder.

Good luck to darkness and the TorBsters in the rest of war.

10

Round 8 / Re: (Darkness) Gen. TheonlyrealBeef 3 - (Earth) Gen. kirchj33 2

« on: December 05, 2011, 12:08:06 am »

by kirchj33

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4sa 4sa 4vj 58o 58o 58o 58o 595 595 5aa 5aa 5aa 5f6 5f6 5f6 5fb 5fb 5fb 5fb 5fb 61q 6qq 77g 77g 77g 77g 77g 77g 80a 80a 8po

RNG hates me lately....

11

League Archive / Re: Championship League 3/2011

« on: December 04, 2011, 11:10:52 pm »

kirchj33: 2
Vineroz: 1

12

League Archive / Re: Championship League 3/2011

« on: December 04, 2011, 06:44:00 am »

kirchj33: 2
DrunkDestroyer: 0