War #4 - Round 3

[Onizuka]

Suspense ended: 11 teams will be using Rush.  Team Fire will be using Stall.

Hmm, I predicted wrong.  I thought all twelve would use rush

You would be correct had we not forgotten to send kev a pm

Thanks to this though, we now know kev loves firestalls!

[TStar]

Even more restrictive deckbuilding rules for UW?  Eeeh that seems kinda harsh.  I can attest to how incredibly difficult it is trying to build decks with any consistency at all under the current rules.  I can't even imagine how bad it would be with even more restrictions.

Also, less activity is expected but as SG mentioned at some point you just need to pull the plug when the team itself obviously doesn't even care to try.  One member of UW never played a single match in the UW tournament but somehow made it only the team.  Another member hasn't been on the forums for a week.  A team that can't even meet bare minimal expectations of playing matches or logging into the forum really doesn't deserve to join War.  I was hoping some players would show more enthusiasm and drive and excitement for being in War on UW but so far that's not been the case unfortunately.

[kev]

Thanks to this though, we now know kev loves firestalls!

Don't tell PuppyChow.

Team Fire and Team Aether Event Cards were randomized and each team was given a 3-card penalty for failing to meet the deadline.

[TheonlyrealBeef]

With everyone who got to choose choosing Rush I definitely think this card needs some tweaking if it ever saw use again :P
Either more reward for deck-outs or less ttw for rushing (probably a combination of the two). Winning by deck-out isn't easy, especially if your opponent were to try the same.

[The_Mormegil]

With everyone who got to choose choosing Rush I definitely think this card needs some tweaking if it ever saw use again :P
Either more reward for deck-outs or less ttw for rushing (probably a combination of the two). Winning by deck-out isn't easy, especially if your opponent were to try the same.

Also, every deck and their mother can win in 13 turns, given a good hand. If you start playing creatures on the third turn, you need an AVERAGE of 10 damages per turn. It's not a rush deck's speed, it's a dragon spamming deck's speed. Although, if you reduce ttw too much you'll see whining from the stallier elements and stallier Vaults.

Maybe the best would be to change the second card from deckout to something else. Maybe either ONE win with ttw 10 or less or ALL wins with ttw 20 or more. You need a stall deck to consistently win in more than 20 turns...

[Zeru]

I was hoping some players would show more enthusiasm and drive and excitement for being in War on UW but so far that's not been the case unfortunately.

If the current UW is a disaster, it's not a problem of the rules but because almost all good players were fetched by the main teams. Those few spare players that were left were not enough to make UW war a real competition. Don't try to put give UW an unfair advantage just because the current one is in serious trouble. The quality of UW depends on how many good players are left out of the auction. Even 1-2 good players and 6 minimally active are more than enough to make the team dangerous.

[TStar]

I'm not sure how my argument was for somehow giving UW an advantage.  I was just stating that in cases like the current one where the team is clearly not active and/or motivated to participate it may be best to skip having an UW entirely.  How exactly is that arguing for them to have an unfair advantage based on the current team?  If anything I've been very honest in my belief that the current UW teams lack of activity and motivation should be enough reason to disqualify us from War #4 entirely.  I've never asked for nor expected any special treatment or advantages because of it, nor do I feel a team who should be rewarded with any because of lack of effort.  This isn't a Team Gravity War #3 situation where players who had no control over what they were on got stuck with a horrible situation and in essence punished for the mistakes someone else made.  Team UW is completely voluntary so people know ahead of time exactly what team they would be on and what would be expected of them so there really is no excuse for not participating.

[MatrimKK]

If we look at the standings @ the start of round 3 vs the # of matches played as well...

Team	Vault	# of Matches	Avg Deck Size
Earth	378	8	47.2500
Time	375	8	46.8750
Entropy	372	8	46.5000
Air	321	8	40.1250
Aether	299	8	37.3750
Death	293	8	36.6250
Light	289	8	36.1250
UW	264	0	-------
Life	253	7	36.1428
Water	240	7	34.2857
Darkness	217	6	36.1667
Gravity	205	6	34.1667
Fire	177	4*	44.25

*Fire received a bye this round playing 4 matches while still being in the 5 player range.

The only teams that look like they can field stall decks are earth, time, entropy, and fire.  Fire has suffered a lot of discards, I doubt they can make 4 workable stalls.  For the top 3 spots lets consider the starting vault, and consider if they can build 8 deck outs.  The average for all teams in auction was 37.3333, for these 3 teams it was 27 (we'll use this # since none of these teams won propaganda.)  That's a starting vault of 373.  I imagine most teams make more than 8 decks.  Let us assume 10 with an average card size of 35.  That leaves 23 extra cards which likely goes into utility cards and backup replacements of important decks.  Quite simply no vault had the room to include many stalls that don't include eternity (which is quite risky without enchant artifact, and many other things that could go horribly wrong.)  Many stalls don't go for deckout, that is actually quite a difficult goal.  With 13 being the goal ttw and the way vaults were build and their current condition rushing gives a higher chance of success of winning and receiving the bonus salvage.  While deck out does give a better bonus, a much bigger issue is how likely you are to win.  A 24 card discard is just not worth the gamble of getting a 12 card salvage when you could most times have a higher win percent with a "rush."  If Stall was win in over x turns I could see more teams doing this, but the chance to deck out is just too harsh imo. 

[TStar]

If anything, calling 13 ttw a "rush" is a real stretch.  Maybe dropping that down to 10 ttw or less for "Rush" and making a "stall" anything that wins in 17 ttw (or 2o ttw) or more could work.  The problem with the deckout condition is that it eliminates most "stall" decks since many of them win via bolts and/or OTK and not deckout.

[Sevs]

i love how majofa hit the sub 13 with a fire "Stall"

[The_Mormegil]

i love how majofa hit the sub 13 with a fire "Stall"

Yeah, at least you beat me with a rush. It would be pretty humiliating if my stall counter was beaten that hard by a stall, hey?

[Sevs]

i love how majofa hit the sub 13 with a fire "Stall"

Yeah, at least you beat me with a rush. It would be pretty humiliating if my stall counter was beaten that hard by a stall, hey?

lol I almost rushed a deckout against you.