War #6 - Suggestions and Feedback

[Onizuka]

Finally, out. Finally time to give overall feedback. May be subject to additions later in the thread.

Event cards
R1: Alright card. Feels weird to reward and punish basically RNG decks in the scouting round.
R2: Bad event card along side with the ability to control who gets what role. Fine event card if Sab was RNG'd like general.
R3: A good event card if elements were balanced. Sadly they aren't, thus this event card doesn't work.
R4: Fine event card.
R5: Fine event card (Maybe even a great event card, since it killed Strat and didn't substitute it).
R6: Holy shit how did you even think this was a good idea.
R8: Better for earlier rounds where you can actually make the most of this card for all teams.

Roles
General: No complaint.
Lt. : No complaint.
Strategist: Repeating myself from before war started. Still completely OP and forces stalls to be over 36 cards. Should have had at least some kind of negative, like if you lose you discard the maximum amount of cards you can swap between rounds. Even with this, still wouldn't want in war, though.
Berserker: Good. Essentially a second Lt. for cards.
Quartermaster: Alright. A better role than it looks at first.
Standard Bearer: A flat +/- cards role is boring but it is better to be boring than be like Strategist. Would rather have 4 standard bearers than 1 strategist.
Support: No need to beat a dead horse, but I'll do it anyway. No one likes support, no one thinks it is a significant part of war. Not to mention when your support members will inevitably be your members that aren't as active as your other members which leads to substitutions which ultimately makes support battle a chore instead of something you can actually gain from.

General rules
-Changing conversion to unlimited with a 50% or so forcing of non in element pillar/pend for suicides is a good change (forced limit is to allow teams that you suicide against have a chance to actually gain cards they can use).
-27 card rule absolutely sucks for elements with cards that beat the element (IE: Dims). Not being able to remove the last 3 cards in a 30 card deck is ultimately a large negative for any team that falls prey to cards like dim shields.
-I still don't see a problem with blind bidding, but this is ultimately preference.
-18/9 is a good amount for in/off vault startoffs.
-Marks definitely need to either be removed from war or have a rule that allows you to convert them to the elemental pillar they respond to.
-I didn't enjoy always having to possibly prepare for a round of gens+all strats/lts. Would be less of a problem with more vanilla roles that don't directly affect the match (Ex: SB/QM) there are in war.
-The killing of the Grandmaster vs war winner challenger battles? Boo.
-Matchup RNG is bad. Idk what a fair step between forcing WMs to do hat randoms and the RNG we currently have is.
-I agree with upping the amount of cards needed to stay in war.
-The fact that team life was given a leeway for reporting a deck wrong is absolutely silly.
-Please, for the love of god, instate a formal desync rule.
-Adding where the top team at the end of each round gains a relic isn't a bad idea.

Other notes
The WMs besides Jenkar seemed to be generally out of it this war. Large amounts of standings derp and the death of the betting system are two examples.
I liked the Scouting idea from last war.If we want relics again Pillager isn't that bad.
Application: Unupped cards lets Gens sniff out people who have 30 unupped cards.

3/21 edit (Post acsabii quote):
-I'd prefer lower amount of people per team. Helps alleviate inactives, cuts down the needed amount of people for war, less roles needed, less work all around. As of now I don't find the amount of work to correspond with the amount of fun i have.
3/24 edit
-R9 event card is fine, wish it didn't include support.
-I think the static build/playing time is good.

[Acsabi44]

basically, "what Acs thinks" * -1. (except formal desynch rule)

Not picking on you, just pointing out since this is interesting.

[hainkarga]

-Changing conversion to unlimited with a 50% or so forcing of non in element pillar/pend for suicides is a good change (forced limit is to allow teams that you suicide against have a chance to actually gain cards they can use).

What if i field a deck with 31 pillars and say "no i'm not suiciding, i wanted to deck him out" or maybe with 24 pillars and 6 phase dragons to make my claim more plausible. ? With unlimited conversions, there will be no more suicides. Why does the winner have to salvage 'awesome' cards anyway ? It is not like they really won the match, they keep their dec, gain 6 of their own quanta sources, gain player role benefits (QM, SB, event card etc) make the opponent lose 27 cards.

[Onizuka]

Unlimited conversions doesn't mean no more suicides. There can still be suiciding to focus two decks into one, or to shed cards.

And I believe that every game should present the option of gaining usable cards. If you go 1-x one round and you are down to 1 deck, and your win was against a 30 card quanta suicide, I don't think that is fair to the team that will now have less maneuverability in the upcoming rounds.

And wordings and necessary qualifications can be changed. The main point of it is that a suicide should not be able to ultimately limit the options a team can take next round.

[hainkarga]

If you give unlimited quanta conversion, nope there won't be any suicides. Choosing to merge decks and throw some away does not automatically mean suicide. It needs to be illegal too.

But with unlimited quanta, suicide is just not possible since you can always have as much pillar as you like. You call 30 card pillar deck a suicide but it is not. It is a totally legal deck that has no chance to win. What you are doing is to judge the composition of a fully legal deck (30 card pillar).

How about 40 card pillar deck ? it can and will beat 35 card earth-light stall (even with 1 morning star) A deck with 1 photon and an eternity is a legal deck that has chances to win. Who will be the judge ? Where do you draw the line ?  Even if you assign someone for the job, people can use semi-suicides (with 2-3 useless creatures) and just throw you into an impossible debate. And all 50% rule will do is complicate things and make people reserve sacrifice cards in their vaults (hello 18 antlions).

I like unlimited quanta conversion idea, but i don't get why the winner must get a juicy salvage. The salvage quality is usually RNG and often gets converted anyway. Winning team gets what the losing one can provide. They get it for free too along with all the benefits of the winner. So what if the winning team also fielded a terrible deck that has very little chance to win but still wins because the other team fields a suicide(?). They still deserved awesome salvage ? Salvage is rng.

[eaglgenes101]

Possible roles:

Strongman:
The opponent must have a 2-win lead to win the match. So strongman keeps going after 2-3, which would ordinarily cause others to lose the match.

Tacticalist:
Before each game, Tacticalist chooses whether to go first or second. If two tacticalists go against each other, they can decide among one another who will go first, or their effects cancel out.

Seer:
Seer is sent the opponent's deck right before the match begins, after seer is assigned a deck (so Seer can't bring in a counter after seeing the opponent deck). Sending a late deck for seer will probably deserve the 12-card penalty reserved for major screwups.

[Annele]

Possible roles:

Strongman:
The opponent must have a 2-win lead to win the match. So strongman keeps going after 2-3, which would ordinarily cause others to lose the match.

Tacticalist:
Before each game, Tacticalist chooses whether to go first or second. If two tacticalists go against each other, they can decide among one another who will go first, or their effects cancel out.

Seer:
Seer is sent the opponent's deck right before the match begins, after seer is assigned a deck (so Seer can't bring in a counter after seeing the opponent deck). Sending a late deck for seer will probably deserve the 12-card penalty reserved for major screwups.

I don't really get how the first two would be beneficial to war (I don't even fully get what their abilities do), but the Seer ability may be a suitable change to Strategist.

[Absol]

*Tactician

Strongman will draw out games unnecessarily longer if the two decks are on par.
Tactician seems somewhat... weak. Expect denials used with this to maximize its power.
Seer... interesting.

[Onizuka]

Going first is pretty strong when it's rush vs rush (non grabbow double nova 2nd turn) and decides the game on same deck size stall vs stall that can't win through damage.

It also opens up the can of worms known as 'Opponent accidentally plays out hand, instant loss'.

[eaglgenes101]

Strongman wins Opponent's wins	0	1	2	3	4
0	keep going	keep going	keep going	strongman wins
1	keep going	keep going	keep going	strongman wins
2	keep going	keep going	keep going	strongman wins
3	opponent wins	opponent wins	keep going	strongman wins
4			opponent wins

And as for tacticalist, going second can help in a few cases. Suppose that team entropy had 100 cards and planned to go against team earth, which has 200 cards. An entropy tactician could equip a versatile deck, go second, and watch what the opponent poured out on the board. Then the tactician could go second if that observation wasn't enough, or go first in later games.

Tactician procedure (as I think of it now): For each game, tactician chooses first or second in chat, and the players start a game. If the opponent accidentally spills his hand, tactician can ask for a restart. No penalty.

And as for strongman vs strongman? How about their effects cancel out?

[Onizuka]

Any ability that lets you win 3-3 is bad.
And asking for a restart basically means there is basically no penalty for ignoring the role until the opponent wins the coinflip.

[eaglgenes101]

The opponent can win 4-2. 3-2 leads to another game. Nothing else is affected against strongman.

And for messup vs tactician, it's a balance between letting through mistakes (with warnings to be more careful next time) and penalizing griefers. How about: Opponent is allowed 1 mistake. After that, 3 card penalty for every additional mistake.