War #5 - Suggestions and Feedback

[The_Mormegil]

I find it strange that Support Team rules force them to play with decks that are based more on the elements they are not supporting than on the elements they are supporting. For example, Entropy support players can use the following in-element cards:
Chaos Seed, Mutation, Fallen Elf, Shroedinger's Cat.
Not exactly what I call Entropy-based decks. Sure, some powerful decks can come out of it still, but that's not the point.

I'd rather have different rules, while not limiting the support teams to monos or almost monos for obvious balance reasons.

Lol.  Ok, so I agree that most Main Team Entropy decks don't feature the four cards you list above.  Feedback would be more useful if you explained why the Support Team deckbuilding constraint either unbalances the Event (important: if it only hurt Entropy, a historically strong team, one might argue it actually adds to balance) or makes the Event less fun.  Then importantly, propose an alternative set of rules that accomplishes those goals better than the status quo.

Fair enough. The issue is that by making it impossible to use the in-element cards your team used in the round, you're very likely not to have any good in-element cards left, but still need to use 50% of it. This has led to various matches where the only in-element cards used were pillars or pensulums! (Light, for once, fielded a rustler deck with 15 light pillars and a NT deck with 15 light pendulums). This is... not really representative of a war environment IMO. You are using the other elements much more than you are using your own... :-/ Also:

I will reiterate this and add that this round's support team battle results are quite indicative of an issue in support battles rules.

In case next War's Warmasters aren't willing to look at your post time and delve into which round's results you're describing, can you give specific examples of the "issue"?

There were no attacking wins. Some were close, but still, this is a pretty clear sign of an unbalance of rules IMO. Losing access to all your good in-element cards while other still can field decks with 2 or 3 of their best cards is not balanced. Defending is too much of an advantage.


I believe something like this would be better:

1) No rares.
2) Number of defending players determinates how many off element cards you can use in your deck while defending:
1 defender - 4 cards
2 defenders - 8 cards
3 defenders - 10 cards
4 defenders - 12 cards
5 defenders - 13 cards
6 defenders - 14 cards
7+ defenders - 15 cards
3) Same goes for attackers.

To further restrict deckbuilding and make things a bit more interesting, I'd add some extra rules not based on the main team's performance. For instance:
4) Every support team member must choose a role at the start of War. Warriors must use at least 8 creatures in all their decks. Spellcasters must use at least 5 spells in all their decks. Smiths must use at least 4 non-pillar/pendulum permanents in all their decks.

...or something.

[deuce22]

Attacking should not be easy, which it isn't. But, I agree with morm that using only pills or pends as in-element card is ridiculous. A suggestion is that maybe all attackers can use 1 card from the previous round. Possibly consider making it an in-element card too.

Now, as a team loses members, their attackers get stronger and stronger to the point where a top team with only 2 defenders is actually very vulnerable. This war seems fairly balanced so far, but this could still become an issue. I would suggest maybe teams with 100% defenders get a bonus card to defend with.

I think these are simple changes that won't drastically change support battles, but should make them more balanced and consistent with war decks.

[Onizuka]

Woo in element dimension shield and fractal! Oh wait...

[mega plini]

is there a reason why support members can't substitute for mean team members? I suggest a change in the rules. If support members could sub for main team members, I could have played my match against  Vineroz' sub (he was online but was a support team member).
Also I suggest that the scouts get a bigger role. Knowledge is power. But with only two cards per round, that knowlegde isn't much.
I suggest to change it and make a scout able to scout all cards of the scouted element. This would mean that a scout doens't hev to name cardnames, but an element. as for the result of the scouting action I would say that you get to know all the cards the opponent has on that element (including the number of cards)
As we do not want to make Scout OP, I suggest that the scout would not be  able to scout the element of which the opponent is a member. Any comments on this idea?

[xdude]

is there a reason why support members can't substitute for mean team members? I suggest a change in the rules. If support members could sub for main team members, I could have played my match against  Vineroz' sub (he was online but was a support team member).
Also I suggest that the scouts get a bigger role. Knowledge is power. But with only two cards per round, that knowlegde isn't much.
I suggest to change it and make a scout able to scout all cards of the scouted element. This would mean that a scout doens't hev to name cardnames, but an element. as for the result of the scouting action I would say that you get to know all the cards the opponent has on that element (including the number of cards)
As we do not want to make Scout OP, I suggest that the scout would not be  able to scout the element of which the opponent is a member. Any comments on this idea?

Them not having access to the main team's section is one. They don't get access to that because other teams can recruit them in case one of their members goes AWOL.

[majofa]

We, , had two opponents that were changed, and there was zero notification that they were changed. If you're gonna change them, please let us know.

I'll repost this, since the WMs didn't seem to understand it the first time....

[Anthraxx]

Could use a rule exception to handle cases of war matches between players 8+ time zones apart. Currently at least one of them has to do something like staying up until very late or getting up super early and still one can never be sure your salvage is safe (see my match w/ pikachu).

Solutions: subs w/o or AT VERY LEAST smaller penalty perhaps?

I understand dedication and shit, but it's just a game. I'm pretty frustrated (AND SLEEPY) all day after I got up @ 5 to make the match schedule and still got no salvage cause 1hr is apparently not enough to play bo5 with desynchs :<

[deuce22]

If support teams are kept for future wars, which I hope they aren't, I would like to suggest that they play their duels during the duel phase. During this phase, nothing is going on except waiting for opponents to play. This down time would be much better utilized prepping for support battles. Having to prep for 10+ battles in 4 days should never happen.

[Jenkar]

Could use a rule exception to handle cases of war matches between players 8+ time zones apart. Currently at least one of them has to do something like staying up until very late or getting up super early and still one can never be sure your salvage is safe (see my match w/ pikachu).

Solutions: subs w/o or AT VERY LEAST smaller penalty perhaps?

I understand dedication and shit, but it's just a game. I'm pretty frustrated (AND SLEEPY) all day after I got up @ 5 to make the match schedule and still got no salvage cause 1hr is apparently not enough to play bo5 with desynchs :<

You mean like this? http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,40596.0.html

[PlayerOa]

Could use a rule exception to handle cases of war matches between players 8+ time zones apart. Currently at least one of them has to do something like staying up until very late or getting up super early and still one can never be sure your salvage is safe (see my match w/ pikachu).

Solutions: subs w/o or AT VERY LEAST smaller penalty perhaps?

I understand dedication and shit, but it's just a game. I'm pretty frustrated (AND SLEEPY) all day after I got up @ 5 to make the match schedule and still got no salvage cause 1hr is apparently not enough to play bo5 with desynchs :<

You mean like this? http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,40596.0.html

Not sure if that is what Anth means, but I like 3 card salvage. I even did it in a match vs QuantumT, where warmasters allowed it.

[dragonsdemesne]

Now that entropy has been eliminated, I can say whatever I want without consequence!  Yay! :p

Support Teams: In general, I liked the idea of having separate battles over relics.  However, I didn't like the specific rules for deckbuilding.  It wasn't really a lot of fun trying to figure out how to make a deck with schrodinger's cat as the only creature, for example.  Due to the rules, the support decks were more often about using everyone else's elements and not your own.  Also, the defender's advantage was probably too much.  I think they should have an advantage, but being able to use more in-element cards was too much of one.

Substitution and salvage penalty: This sucks :p  In two rounds I had opponents who lived in Europe and it was in one case impossible and in the other case almost impossible to schedule the matches.  I propose that we can substitute players either at will, or at least have one free one per round, or something like that, to account for different time zones.

Also, RNG can suck my twelve inch di..... yeah.  But that wasn't anybody's fault :p

[10 men]

Could use a rule exception to handle cases of war matches between players 8+ time zones apart. Currently at least one of them has to do something like staying up until very late or getting up super early and still one can never be sure your salvage is safe (see my match w/ pikachu).

Solutions: subs w/o or AT VERY LEAST smaller penalty perhaps?

I understand dedication and shit, but it's just a game. I'm pretty frustrated (AND SLEEPY) all day after I got up @ 5 to make the match schedule and still got no salvage cause 1hr is apparently not enough to play bo5 with desynchs :<

You mean like this? http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,40596.0.html

Possibly like that except that Warmaster needs to not nosir you when you request salvage...

This War match scheduling got a little more complicated than in previous Wars due to blind matchups, and I guess it doesn't help that no match day is on a weekend either.

I think the goal of subbing rules should be:
Primarily enable all matches to be played in a swift and uncomplicated fashion.
Secondarily reward teams whose players are active.
(not the other way round).

I'd propose the following substitution rules:
- Matches can be subbed at any time, by anyone, without penalty
- However if at the end of any round a player has played 2 less matches than he was assigned for, his team gets penalized.

And while we're at it also change the way penalties work. No salvage or chosen discard are way too often no setback at all and sometimes even profitable for the team. Better possibilities would be random discard or negative modifier on upgrades for one round.