War #4 - Feedback

[kev]

*snip

Nap hit me up in chat to ask me for my thoughts on this post.  I haven't read through the S&F threads in over a month but I offered to comment on the post in a vacuum without looking at anything else.  My comment was that the goal of simplifying and making the event more fund was commendable but that I wasn't sure this would do so and needed to investigate further.

After giving it some more thought this sounds like an interesting idea for an Event, it's just not War.  Unless significant constraints were put on the proposed system (making War much more complicated than it has been), the ability to make predictions about an opponent using their previous actions is crippled.  And without that let's just build preset decks and face off against each other, first to 100 wins is winner!  There are other problems (many are mentioned in and following willng3's well thought out post here (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,23298.msg365216#msg365216)) including the difficulty of limiting copies per card and the possibility of it not really simplifying vault management.

The problems with War 3 were well documented:
-It was too long,
-Vault management was friggin exhausting,
-Event Cards were problematic,
-And the rules for determining the number of opponents needed tweaking.

So here's what Organizers did:
-We put a bunch of rules in effect to shorten the War including decreased vault sizes, increased discards, and Event Cards,
-We asked some of our genius forum members to develop software that dramatically reduced the "homework effect",
-We renewed our focus on Event Cards that made sense and added to fun,
-And we tweaked the rule for determining number of opponents.

Notice the cause/effect relationship?     That's not a coincidence.  We're all very fortunate that the previous S&F thread was 33-pages crammed full of specific problems and well thought out solutions.

As I said I haven't read through this thread yet, but when I do I hope I see some posts in the following format: The biggest problems with War #4 were ... and ... because ... and ...  Here's what could be done to solve these problems and make the Event more fun and fair: ...  I'm hearing a lot of people saying that War is broken or something.  Unless you offer specifics on how it's broken and what should be done to fix it, you leave problem solving to two yahoos who are looking in from the outside.  That ddevans96 guy is crazy.  I saw him bite a balloon once because it was "giving him a look."

[majofa]

In the past, SG has split these comments into two threads: War Feedback and War Planning.

[~Napalm]

Alrighty then. Let's see what I can do.

The biggest problems with War #4 were...

1. Somebody (refrains from using more choice words) decided it had to end in 10 rounds. No more, no less.
2. Initial vault destruction was too demoralizing. (Discarding entire decks that never saw the battlefield is not what I'd call fun)
3. War is still about losing less instead of winning more.
4. Certain Event Cards were too influential. (Rounds 4, 8, and 10 come to mind)

We might fix this by...

1. Simply not having a predetermined limit. This was the WORST part of War #4 because it governed all the other rules.
2. Go back to starting at lower discards for a few rounds to allow everyone to get in some good playtime before things get super competitive.
3. Find a way to allow leaders to play less matches, though this will surely lengthen War.
4. Not really too much you can do about this except live and learn.

All in all, I think the shortening of War went WAY too far. The problem wasn't that War took too long, it was the the final rounds dragged on foreeeeeeeeeeever. The initial rounds are generally going to be the most fun. Everyone is playing, all options are on the table, and things are just getting going. Instead of hammering the beginning of War, it might be better to make the final rounds where only a few teams are playing go faster instead, though I'm not entirely sure how to do that. In both of the last Wars, the Event Cards that allow teams to gain new cards of their choice in some manner are a huge influence on the rest of the War. Perhaps it would be best to get all of these out of the way early.

[majofa]

Before I start, while most of this is constructive, some of it will be very pointed. I mean no hate at kevkev60614, ddevans96 or Scaredgirl, War is hard to run and you can't make everyone happy, but feedback is feedback, right?

EVENT CARDS:
Round 1: (Scouting)
[Two teammates are seeded against other Scouts. Winners view 3 random cards from the loser's Vault.]
Thematically, I can see this 'fitting' with War, but overall I find this to be a bad card. In a War that was already limited to 10 rounds, it was now reduced to 9. Also, 75% of people didn't get to battle, that's no fun.

Round 2: (General's Orders)
[Battle pairings are done using elements only. Generals assign a player from their team to each of the 8 battles.]
This is an example of a good Event card. It adds to the dynamic of War, while not adding extra cards. The only downside to this is that more 'feared' teams like Entropy and Fire will get targeted by more Generals/Lieutenants. Though if you're on one of those teams, you should expect this the whole War.

Round 3: (Rush/Stall)
[Players who win one or more duels before the 13th turn, may salvage 3 additional cards if they win the battle. // Players who win one or more duels by opponent decking out, may salvage 6 additional cards if they win the battle.]
Good Event cards that were completely unbalanced, as seen by the selections.. no one chose Stall and for good reason. Rush needed to be at the most 10-11 turns. I got a 13 turn victory with a Fire Stall. For Stall, decking is a tough tasking with all the stall breakers going around. This card should have a Nth turn condition also. The only other downfall of these cards is that they 'add' more cards to the vault. Although if it's made difficult to get, it would be balanced.

Round 4: (Reinforcements)
[Each team adds 24 Pillars, 18 Creatures, 9 Spells and 9 Permanents to their Vault. Does not apply to team UW.]
I guess this was your big 'UW controversy' equalizer. I call it the UW nullifier. Just give everyone the cards at the beginning. One of the 'bad 3' Event cards.

Round 5: (Honor/Betrayal)
[If both players fight with honor 6/24, If both players betray 0/30, If the honarble player wins 3/21, If the Betrayer wins 9/27]
Interesting card, but most people just went with Betrayal. Making your opponent discard their entire deck is just too good to pass up. And if they happened to fight honorably then you get 9/21.

Round 6: (Tortoise Formation/Enchanted Sword)
[Players may take any number of Shields/Short Swords in their deck, and upgrade 2 cards for each Shield/Short Sword taken.]
This was another good card. Though it would have been nice to be able to upgrade the Shield or Sword.

Round 7: (Secret Negotiations)
[Teams may secretly negotiate with other teams and trade one of their battles with a battle of some other team.]
I like this card, although it might be unfair late to the top teams.

Round 8: ("United We Stand!"/"Marked For Glory"/"Victory to the Pure")
[Teams may convert cards to any cards of their element./Players who use the mark of their element may use double the amount of upgraded cards that they would normally use./Players who use mono-decks may use 4 times the upgraded cards that they would normally use.]
United We Stand, this late in War, may be the single worst Event card ever. Light and Death made it to the finals based solely on the strength of this card. Is that good for War? Absolutely not. Anyone who used the other two cards were pretty much guaranteed defeat. Adding cards from outside War should always be frowned upon as it has more of an effect on War than any of the previous rounds. Oh, and the other two cards are good.

Round 9: (Total War)
[Each deck must be exactly 36 cards. Between duels, use those cards to build any deck. Discard is 36, no salvage.]
This card is based entirely on the 'dream' of War lasting 10 rounds, am I correct? This card was made to force cards out of War in preparation of the 'final round', while disguising it as 'fun deckbuilding'. This turn the avalanche of War fail into the whole freaking mountain blowing up.

Round 10: (Final Stand)
[Remaining cards are divided between players who fight to the death in a final epic tournament.]
Epic? Absolutely not.
I remember being at the store and getting 2 texts from my brothers stating how absolutly bad the final Event card was. I thought in my mind: 'How bad could it be?' My worst assumptions weren't even close....
Hmmm... where to start..?
First, this 'dream' of a 10 round War, was now made into a 13 round War... guess they failed there.
Next, the Vault splitting was a poor way of dealing with a team that had two players.
Why was it bad?
Well, Team Light was in 1st place with 76 cards. After the split, they would have either 46/30 or 38/38. What's the problem with this, well it moves them to either last/last or last/6th.
'But they get the benefit of having 2 chances at winning War.'
This logic is also flawed for several reasons...
Anyone who's played in War knows that your power comes in your flexibility. With these nerfed vaults Team Light would somehow have to turn 3 decks of flexibilty into 1.5 and 1.5... or 2 and 1?
'That shouldn't be too much of a problem, right?'
Wellll.. remember that Zeru would have had to play his match BEFORE 6 other teams, so AFTER his match all the other teams would know EXACTLY what I had.
There were so many different options that were proposed to the WMs, who also agreed that it wasn't fair... but there's a difference between agreeing and doing something about, which they failed to do in the latter case. I was willing to nerf my Vault down to the amount for 1 player, and if I lost, my team lost. I was also willing to go on with 2 players, as long as we could still share the Vault.
[/rant]

I'll be back later with the rest of my War feedback. Also, I still think if would be good if we started a War #5 Planning Thread for our suggestions.

[Helston]

Disclaimer: I have never participated in War. This is the only War I have been around for and I have not researched previous Wars. As such, I am far from a fountain of knowledge about War. For example, until earlier today, I thought that Salvage/Discard was decided randomly (found out otherwise thanks having a little look at one of the War Archives). That being said, I hope that my feedback is in some way useful. I kept a fairly good eye on War #4, checking out most battle results, and finishing fifth in War betting (not that that really counts for much). What's more, my opinion will probably less biased than most, being an outsider, and not particularly favouring any specific team (Despite the fact that entropy is my favourite element, I didn't really care if they won or not, I just found the whole event good to watch).

Event cards:
Round 1 - Scouting: A nice idea, and worked with the theme of War, but probably started War a little too slowly. Starting with 4 matches per team and reduced discard may have worked better.

Round 2 - General's Orders: A great event card. Mixes things up, perhaps allows a newer player an "easy" match to start with. This has the four features I believe all event cards should have:
1. An addition to the metagame.
2. The opportunity to gain a moderate advantage through exploiting the event. Without large amounts of luck it won't significantly change the outcome of the round, but if a team puts it all together just right they could gain an advantage with an extra win or two.
3. A solid risk/reward ratio. At worst you might lose one or two extra matches. At best you might win one or two extra matches.
4. Affects all teams equally, or in a fair manner.

Round 3 - Rush/Stall: A great idea, but it doesn't take a genius to point out that no team chose Stall. It simply needed to be balanced better. Has all four of General's Orders features.

Round 4 - Reinforcements: I have very little idea of what effect this had on War, not enough to comment on it.

Round 5 - Prisoner's Dilemma: There were 34 honours and 36 betrayals, so people obviously disagreed about which card they'd be better off with, which is exactly what you want. What's more, the event was designed so that choosing what your opponent did not gave you both the greatest salvage and smallest discard, but being the betrayer in the betray/honor combo was significantly better.  Has all four of General's Orders features.

Round 6 - Tortoise Formation/Enchanted Sword: A very well done card. For the cost of taking fairly weak cards, one can add extra upgrades to their decks. Very few decks normally contain those cards. Has all four of General's Orders features. The fact the two cards are almost identical doesn't matter, because it managed to add a little flavour and choice in regards to what might be "dead" cards. Has all four of General's Orders features.

Round 7 - Secret Negotiations: I would argue that this is an excellent event card. Whilst it definitely does not affect all teams equally, there was not enough of an advantage to be gained for it to become a significant point. Entropy, Earth and Time had 8, 7 and 6 players left respectively, so each of them would be a valid target for everyone else ganging up (assuming enough people could be convinced to call it that), significantly diluting any affects that might have. It was also obvious that teams that were struggling would try to get out of their match in any way possible. Whilst this leaves those who were facing lone generals an unknown opponent, they do know that they'll be better off taking a more general deck instead of a counter. Has all four of General's Orders features.

Round 8 - United We Stand!/Marked For Glory/Victory to the Pure: Marked For Glory and Victory to the Pure are well thought out cards. They may not be entirely balanced, as seen by the fact that no one took Marked For Glory, but their strength here works with the slow ramping up of the effect of event cards. That and DrunkDestroyer's fully upped mono-air was a thing of utter beauty in War. They definitely have three of Genera's Orders features, with the only question being are all teams treated fairly. Teams with fewer players are far more likely to take Victory to the Pure, however that's where Marked For Glory should have come into play, giving teams with more players much more flexibility. The two cards seem to treat all teams fairly, at least as far as I can tell.

However, if the general consensus is right, United We Stand had far too great an impact on the remainder of War. I would say this is primarily because a team with a small vault will be able to convert a much larger percentage of their vault than other teams. This means that teams with only two or three decks suddenly have 50% or 33% more playable decks, as opposed to teams with a larger vault, which might simply have and extra 20% or 16%. One surprise deck won't have that much effect when you're already fairly flexible, but it could make a world of difference for a team struggling to get by. The event card only has two of Genera's Orders four features. The advantage to be gained was too large, with big echos in the last two rounds if pulled off well, and it favoured smaller teams significantly more than larger teams. It did add to the metagame and had a good risk/reward ratio, however.

Round 9 - Total War: The 36 discard/0 salvage was too harsh. Discarding a full deck plus extras is too large a penalty to try to fit war into 10 rounds. On the other hand, the option to having spare cards that you can swap out between matches worked very well, the best example being dragonsdemesne spontaneously using Pharaohs to try to counter RoL/Hope (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,34657.0.html).

Round 10 - I don't believe ending War in a tournament is a bad idea, but I do believe it was forced too early. Light probably would've won if it didn't have to split its vault, and round 9's larger discard was designed to try to reduce the impact of a winner-takes-all tournament, but the impact was still too large.

Problems with War #4:
1. War was forced to last exactly 10 rounds.
2. Some event cards had too great an impact on War.
3. Underworld's deck restrictions seem to have led them to be too vulnerable to Black Hole and Earthquake. In their first round (round 4, when other teams were given additional cards), five of their eight opponents had either BHs or EQs. They lost to all three BH decks, and lost to one of the two EQ decks. I'm not sure how well UW has gone in previous wars (I might be biased here, I'm more or less expecting to be a part of the UW tournament next War). Additionally, rainbow decks often have four, five or six of card X simply as their focus, which stops all these from ever appearing.
4. Losses in rounds 9 and 10 were vastly more costly than any other round. Whilst this makes sense (losing 30 cards when you have 60 remaining is a loss of 50% of your vault, as opposed to losing 30 when you have 300 remaining), it was amplified to a jarring extent by the round 9 event card.
5. Not losing is far more important than winning.

Proposed Solutions
1. Be flexible. Aim for 10 rounds, but let it last a little longer if it needs to. A tournament might be the way to go to finish off the last four or five teams, but wait a little longer before using it.
2. See feedback on event cards.
3. I have two solutions, but I believe they would work better individually:
       a) Reduce the restriction to allow 4 or 5 copies of one card, but this almost makes it redundant in the first place.
       b) Remove the restriction. Underworld decks must now be able to produce and use at least N (e.g. 3) types of quanta (to allow for the odd and unexpected non-rainbow), and decks must be less than 50% mono.

e.g.

by Helston

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58t 58t 58t 58t 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5f9 5f9 5f9 5f9 5f9 5f9 5fa 5fa 5fa 5fa 5fa 5fa 5fc 5fc 5l9 5l9 5l9 5l9 5l9 5l9 8po

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5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5f9 5f9 5f9 5f9 5f9 5f9 5fa 5fa 5fa 5fa 5fa 5fa 5fc 5fc 5fc 5l9 5l9 5l9 5l9 5l9 5l9 5ur 8po

by Helston

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5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5aa 5f9 5f9 5f9 5f9 5f9 5f9 5fa 5fa 5fa 5fa 5fa 5fa 5fc 5fc 5l9 5l9 5l9 5l9 5l9 5l9 5ur 8po

On the other hand the whole Underworld thing mightn't be a problem at all.

4 and 5. Again, I have two different solutions. These might work well in conjunction with each other.
       a)Whilst leaving some event cards to adjust it (such as this War's Prisoner's Dilemma), have the base discard rate increase as vault size decreases.

e.g.

0-29 cards	Team is eliminated
30-65 cards	Discard 30 cards
66-98 cards	Discard 28 cards
99-131 cards	Discard 26 cards
132-164 cards	Discard 24 cards
165-197 cards	Discard 22 cards
198-230 cards	Discard 20 cards
231-263 cards	Discard 18 cards
264+ cards	Discard 16 cards

Although war still retains the "not losing is more important than winning" factor, a team with a large vault late in war will still retain a lot of its advantage after a bad round. This all around increases the margin of error early on, but might lengthen the start of war a little bit (subject to how all the discards are sorted out).

       b) This is going to sound a little crazy, but force winners to discard a small number of cards all throughout War. This reduces the penalty of losing a match, because one way or another you're going to have to discard something. This might also significantly reduce the penalty of large discards.

For the sake of argument, suppose you were building the vault for team . You might decide that you want one Ghostmare (22 cards/6 nightmares/2 steals), but instead of having six nightmares in the vault, you decide to have ten. As your ghostmare wins you can choose to discard the nightmares and start using your spare ones. If your Ghostmare loses with a discard of 24, you might discard 20 cards, four nightmares and still have access to exactly the same deck (assuming you have enough time cards).

The problems with this idea is that it reduces the rewards from winning, which is never fun, and you might see an increase in the number of suicides if the team doesn't bring enough spares for a deck.

Edit: Tidied it up slightly.
Edit 2: Added last sentence of the disclaimer.

[hainkarga]

Since there is no poll around, I'd like to state here that i think ~Napalm's idea is just brilliant and practical. Building decks is way more fun than choking in vaults. Not sure about the 24 card limits tho. The only limitation could just be 50% of your element rule where a team can build the same deck 8 times in a round if they choose to do so. This limitation increases variety but reduces strategy -or everyone would use stuff like graboidbow and it would suck lol-

Edit: With the current rules, if you lose some of your "hero" decks due to bad luck, it will haunt you till the end of WAR, hence increasing the impact of that RNG. Losing your key decks and never be able to get them back again is also one of the reasons that makes "losing" more important than "winning".
I believe doing it in Napalm's way also reduces RNG factor and balances winning / losing importance issue because you can simply come up with your strong decks again.

[~Napalm]

Couple things here.

1. TStar and I discussed this idea together, I just posted it. This isn't pertinent to the discussion at hand, I'm just giving credit where credit is due.

2. The single biggest problem with our idea is that there isn't sufficient limits on simply spamming "cookie cutter" decks every round. Things like NovaGrabby and Firestall and Ghostmare which are generally considered extremely effective would be very difficult to eliminate entirely and would constantly have a strong presence in War. Elements with more access to these types of decks would gain an increased advantage over those Elements which have less. A war in which the same exact decks get used the entire time could potentially be less fun for some teams if not everyone altogether.

3. I personally don't see how vault management would be harder with this. There are 13 numbers to keep track of. True, some of our forum geniuses would have to re-work the vault tool (oh no ) but I think it'd be much simpler than keeping track of every card. As for preparing for a round, again there are only 13 numbers. Double check the 13 and you're good. Why would this be any harder? Now. It WOULD be much much much harder to anticipate your opponents deck. I have mixed feelings about that.

Overall I think this system would indeed be simpler, but there is a point where it becomes too simple and is no longer fit to be called "War." As kev already mentioned, you'd have to restrict certain things which could potentially be even more complicated. The key here is finding the right restrictions. I'm trying to think through everything and come up with suitable countermeasures that are not too complicated. We'll see if I can further streamline the proposed system to something usable.

[kev]

Just wanted to clarify a couple misconceptions in this thread.

If you really don't want to play anymore, and I know it happens, maybe war wasn't as fun as you thought it would be, rather than suiciding, why not have some of those who didn't make the initial bidding take your places instead and give them a shot?

There were 0 suicides due to boredom; all were either strategic or forced due to card counts.

1. Somebody (refrains from using more choice words) decided it had to end in 10 rounds. No more, no less.

If you feel you have to use these threads to point fingers I just want to make sure you're pointing the right direction.  It has sounded like some people (not just nap) are blaming SG for War 4 decisions, and that's just wrong.  I'm uncomfortable with how comfortable some people are in throwing her under the bus.  If you search the War 3 S&F thread you'll find I'm the one who targets a 10-round War.  In fact all negative feedback for Wars 4 and 5 you can go ahead and send my way.

There were so many different options that were proposed to the WMs, who also agreed that it wasn't fair... but there's a difference between agreeing and doing something about, which they failed to do in the latter case.

maj I disagree with everything you've ever said about Round 10.  I'm not going to comment on any of it except the above line.  I'm pretty positive I never agreed Round 10 wasn't fair because a) I don't, and b) I would've done something about it if I did.

A number of players have said that in War "not losing" is more important than winning.  I think the crux of it is this: in a three-player game of play rock-paper-scissors, two people play and then the third plays the winner.  That third player has a significant advantage because he only has to win one match whereas the other players have to win two.  It's also technically the right strategy to hide in the bushes during dodgeball until there's only one other player standing.  This isn't a "problem" with games involving more than two players, it's just the way these games are played.  The only thing I, as an organizer, can do is let as few people hide in the bushes as possible.  More on that later.

Obviously once you're in the battle, because a draw is impossible "not losing" and winning are the same.  So what we're really talking about is the difference in number of matches played, which is a result of two things: outsurviving other teams and byes.  Outsurviving other teams really shouldn't be regarded as a bad thing.  For one thing because your vault is bigger you have more versatility against opponents.  For another you're not in a win-or-go-home position, unlike everyone else.  In a situation where you win six cards or lose 30, you breakeven at a 83% winrate, so obviously every match is a net loser.  But that doesn't change the fact the largest team is in the best position to win until it's no longer the largest team.  To eliminate 12 opponents the numbers should be stacked against you.  Any team that feels it's truly an advantage to have only one match per round is free to suicide every match starting Round 1.  Best of luck winning it all.

A couple Wars back the decision was made to give byes to the lowest ranked teams first, which was updated to be the lowest ranked teams that could field more than one deck.  I'd like to see the rule go the other way.  The highest ranked team should get a bye first.  Or even better, the highest ranked team should get the bye always, regardless of whether they've had a bye before.  That will make it harder to usurp the top team (which most players won't want), but it will also shift the advantage from "not losing" to winning, and may also assist teams who choose to salvage late in War rather than hiding under the cap.  I raise this issue here rather than just implementing it because it's been a hot-button issue for several Wars now.  Feedback appreciated.

[~Napalm]

I wasn't trying to target anyone in particular with that comment. I was merely saying I could've used more descriptive words than "Somebody." Though in retrospect, those parenthesis were out of line.

As for the Bye thing... That's a really simple idea and I like it a lot. Why didn't you suggest that sooner?!

[Sevs]

EVENT CARDS:

Even though i might sound a little negative, These were some of the best event cards made in War.

Round 1: (Scouting)
[Two teammates are seeded against other Scouts. Winners view 3 random cards from the loser's Vault.]
I liked this one a lot, it gives a glimpse but not everything. I think the rewards might be a little higher(I think it was #of a single card) doesn't really help that much. but anywhere from 2-4 people is a good # to start it out with. well done.

Round 2: (General's Orders)
[Battle pairings are done using elements only. Generals assign a player from their team to each of the 8 battles.]
Another great event card. not a huge influence but certainly fun and adds to the strategy.

Round 3: (Rush/Stall)
[Players who win one or more duels before the 13th turn, may salvage 3 additional cards if they win the battle. // Players who win one or more duels by opponent decking out, may salvage 6 additional cards if they win the battle.]
13 turns is a little long and deckout out is a little extreme maybe under 10 turns and over 17 turns? both for 3 extra cards. either way great event card idea.

Round 4: (Reinforcements)
[Each team adds 24 Pillars, 18 Creatures, 9 Spells and 9 Permanents to their Vault. Does not apply to team UW.]
As a believer that not a lot of outside cards should come from war. this was not the best way to solve the UW starting vault size problem, I will admit if UW used a bit of variety with a few monos and duos instead of all rainbows they would have fared much much better, but still incredibly hard to overcome.

Round 5: (Honor/Betrayal)
[If both players fight with honor 6/24, If both players betray 0/30, If the honarble player wins 3/21, If the Betrayer wins 9/27]
I think the numbers were scewed a bit, which is why people chose betrayer. the average win/lose of cards is+4.5/-28.5 for betrayer. and +4.5/-22.5 for honor. This means betrayer will also inflict more damage. while keeping the same card gain average. 

Round 6: (Tortoise Formation/Enchanted Sword)
[Players may take any number of Shields/Short Swords in their deck, and upgrade 2 cards for each Shield/Short Sword taken.]
like majofa said good card. kinda wish we could have upped the swords/shields we put in the deck.

Round 7: (Secret Negotiations)
[Teams may secretly negotiate with other teams and trade one of their battles with a battle of some other team.]
I have mixed feeling about this card. i liked the idea of it, and although it was a disadvantage to the top teams, we for the most part knew who was going to switch and who wasnt. (1 match teams wanted to switch). Provided a bit more strategy. good card.

Round 8: ("United We Stand!"/"Marked For Glory"/"Victory to the Pure")
[Teams may convert cards to any cards of their element./Players who use the mark of their element may use double the amount of upgraded cards that they would normally use./Players who use mono-decks may use 4 times the upgraded cards that they would normally use.]
I dont know what to say about this one. And I am sorry to whoever made this but terrible cards on all fronts. The problem with the first 2 is some teams are better suited for mono or at least same mark(entropy, fire) that entropy rainbow was devastating and with 2x upgrades would have been impossible to beat. And for the most part if you are using the a mark of your own element, you can probably just go mono because unless you have nova/immolation, you require pends which require a different mark.

The # of upgrade increase. x4 x2 ? when there are only generals left for some teams and a team has to fight them all. even a LT. with x4 upgrades is 24 upped card. if a team is left with normal soldiers, you can get max 12 upgrades, a huge difference. If you wanted to make it fair, it should be a set +amount of cards like 3 or 6. multiplying just gave a huge advantage to smaller vaults.

Lastly that united we stand. it gave smaller teams a chance to essentially add a new deck, which is pretty significant. the only advantage of having a larger vault over a smaller vault is your variety, but if you get rid of that advantage by giving every small team a new vault, large vaults are screwed. If we were ever going to put a card like this in at least make it scale to the size of your vault so smaller teams are not getting ~40% new cards while, large teams at most are getting ~8-10%. This is also compounded by the fact that the max converting also included your normal pillar pend conversion. In the middle of war you are pretty much converting the max 24 pillars and pends to compensate for your loses, smaller teams dont have to worry about that because they only field 1-2 deck.

This card was not well thought out.

Round 9: (Total War)
[Each deck must be exactly 36 cards. Between duels, use those cards to build any deck. Discard is 36, no salvage.]
The salvage needs to be there. the 36 card deck is a great idea and should be used again.

Round 10: (Final Stand)
[Remaining cards are divided between players who fight to the death in a final epic tournament.]
"Epic? Absolutely not."
I think i posted my feelings either in earth chat or the event thread cant remember. but as soon as it became a tournament, it felt like a weekly tournament, the value of winning war dropped a few notches. It didn't hold the same war feeling and just became a masters tourney with limited cards.

A number of players have said that in War "not losing" is more important than winning.  I think the crux of it is this: in a three-player game of play rock-paper-scissors, two people play and then the third plays the winner.  That third player has a significant advantage because he only has to win one match whereas the other players have to win two.  It's also technically the right strategy to hide in the bushes during dodgeball until there's only one other player standing.  This isn't a "problem" with games involving more than two players, it's just the way these games are played.  The only thing I, as an organizer, can do is let as few people hide in the bushes as possible.  More on that later.

Obviously once you're in the battle, because a draw is impossible "not losing" and winning are the same.  So what we're really talking about is the difference in number of matches played, which is a result of two things: outsurviving other teams and byes.  Outsurviving other teams really shouldn't be regarded as a bad thing.  For one thing because your vault is bigger you have more versatility against opponents.  For another you're not in a win-or-go-home position, unlike everyone else.  In a situation where you win six cards or lose 30, you breakeven at a 83% winrate, so obviously every match is a net loser.  But that doesn't change the fact the largest team is in the best position to win until it's no longer the largest team.  To eliminate 12 opponents the numbers should be stacked against you.  Any team that feels it's truly an advantage to have only one match per round is free to suicide every match starting Round 1.  Best of luck winning it all.

A couple Wars back the decision was made to give byes to the lowest ranked teams first, which was updated to be the lowest ranked teams that could field more than one deck.  I'd like to see the rule go the other way.  The highest ranked team should get a bye first.  Or even better, the highest ranked team should get the bye always, regardless of whether they've had a bye before.  That will make it harder to usurp the top team (which most players won't want), but it will also shift the advantage from "not losing" to winning, and may also assist teams who choose to salvage late in War rather than hiding under the cap.  I raise this issue here rather than just implementing it because it's been a hot-button issue for several Wars now.  Feedback appreciated.

This contains a few good things. I kinda wonder how the top team gets a bye. actually sounds like a good thing.

As for your larger vaults have the advantage, you are not taking into consideration the negativity of vault strain. As soon as you hit the point where you field exactly 8 players, you are at a disadvantage all the way till you get back down to 2 players. That slide is witnessed in both wars I've participated in. I think it is because of the salvage and trying to keep on element cards. with that many cards, your vault is bound to start piling up junk cards. at least for us wings was one of them, but you just start running out of earth cards to spread through so many decks.

Also from that rock paper scissors parallel, I had the thought a "round robin" event card would be really cool. it might take a little longer, but would be fun, each person brings 1 deck and you play against everyone in your group of 3-4. the winner salvages 6 cards from any opponents deck, person in the middle loses 6 cards, loser discards 24? something like that

[YoungSot]

A number of players have said that in War "not losing" is more important than winning.  I think the crux of it is this: in a three-player game of play rock-paper-scissors, two people play and then the third plays the winner.  That third player has a significant advantage because he only has to win one match whereas the other players have to win two.  It's also technically the right strategy to hide in the bushes during dodgeball until there's only one other player standing.  This isn't a "problem" with games involving more than two players, it's just the way these games are played.  The only thing I, as an organizer, can do is let as few people hide in the bushes as possible.  More on that later.
However it's also possible to change rules for those sort of games so that it becomes more about winning than not losing. For example if in dodge ball the winner was determined by whoever got the most enemy players out. Suddenly hiding in the bushes doesn't have to be discouraged, because it is no longer a winning strategy.


Obviously once you're in the battle, because a draw is impossible "not losing" and winning are the same.  So what we're really talking about is the difference in number of matches played, which is a result of two things: outsurviving other teams and byes.  Outsurviving other teams really shouldn't be regarded as a bad thing.  For one thing because your vault is bigger you have more versatility against opponents.  For another you're not in a win-or-go-home position, unlike everyone else.  In a situation where you win six cards or lose 30, you breakeven at a 83% winrate, so obviously every match is a net loser.  But that doesn't change the fact the largest team is in the best position to win until it's no longer the largest team.  To eliminate 12 opponents the numbers should be stacked against you.  Any team that feels it's truly an advantage to have only one match per round is free to suicide every match starting Round 1.  Best of luck winning it all.
We're not saying being smaller is always better (though with byes and sweetspots it sometimes is). I'm saying bigger vaults (which result from proportionately more wins) should be a big advantage, but in truth you gain little advantage relative to smaller teams. Having twice as many Hit points isn't an advantage if your enemies get to  do twice as much damage as part of the deal.  Now, naturally a team that wins more is probably more skilled and thus will still stand a good chance to win the overall event, but atm they get little to no benefit from previous wins, and the downward pressure of playing additional matches will generally bring them back to the same general level as teams with a more mediocre win percentage.


A couple Wars back the decision was made to give byes to the lowest ranked teams first, which was updated to be the lowest ranked teams that could field more than one deck.  I'd like to see the rule go the other way.  The highest ranked team should get a bye first.  Or even better, the highest ranked team should get the bye always, regardless of whether they've had a bye before.  That will make it harder to usurp the top team (which most players won't want), but it will also shift the advantage from "not losing" to winning, and may also assist teams who choose to salvage late in War rather than hiding under the cap.  I raise this issue here rather than just implementing it because it's been a hot-button issue for several Wars now.  Feedback appreciated.
I would support this. While I'd prefer to make bigger changes to address what I see as fundamental flaws with the War concept, this is an easy fix that would help.

Some issues with the current system:

The frontrunners are given proportionately higher risk of loss, extending the duration of War by preventing those with good win percentages from pulling ahead. Suicides are encouraged, because having cards in your vault is not strictly a positive thing. Some poor salvage could actually do more harm than good, by requiring more decks be fielded without actually providing strong decks to field, resulting in losing the cards you just salvaged + others needed to form a deck. This leads to... The infamous "Sweet Spots".

Here's an attempt at a solution that I proposed a while back. I thought I'd dredge it up again since I still feel it would help:

At the start of each round a Warmaster checks to see how many matches each team can play and finds the average. Subtract one from this average number, and you have the number of matches that each team will be required to complete in that round. The Warmaster then assigns those matches normally. If your team has more cards than is required, it will make deckbuilding easier. If a team has less decks than necessary to complete all their assigned matches, (so any team more than one deck under average) they are eliminated. This solution is promising imo, because it doesn't remove any of the key concepts of the War experience, it doesn't hold back teams that have large vaults (which are large due to skilled play after all), nor does it reward them so much that a middle-of-the-pack team has no chance to overtake them. It should hopefully be more intuitive in it's results.

Something like the above solution would:

Speed up War without requiring forced measures like a tourney.  Confer advantages to teams in proportion with how consistently they win their matches. Remove the idea of sweet spots.  Reduce suicide deck occurances by making it always preferable to have more cards in your vault rather than less.

[dragonsdemesne]

Just wanted to clarify a couple misconceptions in this thread.

If you really don't want to play anymore, and I know it happens, maybe war wasn't as fun as you thought it would be, rather than suiciding, why not have some of those who didn't make the initial bidding take your places instead and give them a shot?

There were 0 suicides due to boredom; all were either strategic or forced due to card counts.

That's good to know, considering you could see everyone's vaults.  All I know is it really looked to me like teams life and underworld (I didn't want to name them, but I kind of have to now) gave up prematurely, especially as life, if I recall, fielded two suicide decks on their last round, but if you say they had to do it, I believe it.

In regards to the event cards:
1 = Scouting: I actually liked this one.  It might've been better with 3 or 4 scouts, though, so more people got to play, while still maintaining the scout feel to it.  Also, it might be nicer if we found out more information, or maybe slightly more useful information.  As a member of team time, I remember that we beat aether in round 1, and our scout told us that they had 24 dimensional shields.  Thank you, captain obvious :p  A more useful scouting tool might be something like getting to ask a question about a particular card, like 'how many discords does aether have in their vault' or 'how many steals does aether have in their vault'.
2 = General's Orders: I didn't like this one because it required more headaches in coordinating for the teams, rather than just finding out who we played.
3 = Rush/Stall: Good in theory, but the numbers picked were bad, and as a result everyone picked rush.  With more thought into the numbers, this would be a good one.
4 = Reinforcements: I didn't have a problem with this one.  It might've been too many cards to give out, though.
5 = Honor/Betrayal: This one was alright.  I didn't do the math to figure out if one choice was statistically better or not; we just picked one at random :p  As long as the numbers make it statistically even either way, I'm okay with this one.
6 = Sword/Shield: I really liked this idea.
7 = Secret Negotiations: I didn't like this one; same issue as round 2
8 = UWS/MFG/VTTP: I liked the idea of this one, but the numbers needed balancing; 4x upgrades was a lot, and nobody picked MFG, so some changes would be needed on that one.
9 = Total War: I liked this one a lot; it let people use variety and actually tweak their decks a bit between rounds.
10 = Final Stand: I didn't like this one.  As soon as the tournament brackets were posted, I predicted (and was right, except for one round) the results of every match up to the end.  The only one I didn't get right was the finals, and that was because Light did not use the deck I expected them to.