WAR - Suggestions and Feedback

[Dragoon]

I agree with plastiqe on the sideboard issue.  The problem with trying to create a deck that can handle multiple situations is that they tend to be bloated (and therefore slow or unreliable) and/or can handle multiple situations, but poorly.  True it adds some time in the match and means not everyone gets 2 decks, but at least there's a little more strategy than hoping you got all the bases covered only to find out there's no possible way to win any game because you picked the wrong strategy/ies.

But I guess we can always try it the current way and then add sideboards in the future once we see how this War goes.

[Zeru]

Why are we having a "best of 5" match if we are not allowed to change our decks? That might be simply boring.
I suggest "best of 3" with that kind of rules.

[Antagon]

i like the best of 5 rule, cause bad draws could always happen, and it just makes it better to deal with.

[Xinef]

If your opponent has a great counter deck then it will be 3 quick battles anyway... or if he has a great and slow counter deck (eg. a deck-outer) you can always surrender after you see he didn't have a bad draw or something.

Anyway, I'd like to suggest a slight modification of the rules. With the rules as they are right now it's obviously recommended to make 30 card decks, so you lose less cards in case of defeat. It's not very harmful for most elements, as and rainbow are the only ones that often benefit from larger decks...

Ok, we can make 30 card decks or make bigger decks and keep to the rule "Don't lose" ;P

But my solution would be to simply lose 30 randomly chosen cards from the losers deck, rather than the whole deck. This way the amount of cards lost in each round would be the same as with the current rules, but it would make slightly larger decks (eg. some stall decks) more useful in this war.

Yes, this is something I though about. Time with its extra drawing power is definitely at a disadvantage because of reasons you describe there.

However the randomly choosing which cards to lose would bring a new time-consuming step to this whole project which is not that great.

Maybe we could have a rule which says you lose non-Pillars first, or maybe you lose cards depending on their cost, high cost cards first.

I'll have to think about it.

The rule to lose 30 high-cost cards first is definitely better for big decks than losing all of the cards, but still in almost all cases after losing you would keep only pillars and you could only choose which pillars to keep. Thus with the current rules losing with a bigger deck is not worse in terms of 'army's hp' but it is still more painful in terms of cards lost, because you lose more non-pillars than you would if playing a 30 card deck.

Eg. 2 armies start with 360 cards.
Both armies have 120 pillars and 240 other cards.

Army 1 loses 6 battles with 30 card decks, it loses 6*30 cards and is left with 180 cards.
Army 1 is left with 60 pillars and 120 other cards.

Army 2 loses 6 battles with 60 card decks, it loses 6*30 cards and is left with 180 cards.
So far no difference
But, army 2 lost 180 non-pillar cards, so it is left with:
120 pillars, 60 other cards.

Army 1 can afford to lose 6 more times before it is eliminated.
Army 2 would be eliminated after losing with 2 more 60 card decks because it would be left with pillars only.



I'm only trying to prove that the solution to remove 30 most expensive cards solves the problem only partially, and I would still prefer a removal of 30 random cards.

And... to prove that it wouldn't take much much time to do, I've written a simple Java applet (took ma about half an hour) that does exactly that
Given a deck code and a number of cards to remove, it returns a deck code with that many cards randomly removed.
If it's not going to be used in this war, maybe it can be used in some other event.

DeckKillerApplet.zip contains a .jar file and .jnlp file needed to embed it in a web page and an example web page for anyone who wants to try it.
DeckKiller.jar is a stand alone executable jar.

[Demagog]

Xinef, if that works the way you say it does, then I agree that you should only lose 30 random cards.

[Xinef]

It's as simple as:

Generate a random number between 0 and the amount of cards still left.
Remove that card.
Repeat 30 times.

The application does not even know it's working on card codes or what cards these are (so it cannot cheat, but for obvious reasons it would still need to be used by Warmaster )
It simply takes a string of characters, splits it into whitespace separated tokens and operates on those.
It gives funny results if you give it some other text (eg. a fragment of a book or a fragment of source code).

[Scaredgirl]

You are 100% correct about that discarding rule, Xinef. It needs to change.

That applet is pretty cool.

BUT there's one big problem with it: it requires a third party (like Warmaster) to use it to prevent cheating. This is WAY too much work, given there are dozens of matches.

I'd like a system where the player who lost, does all the work and cannot cheat.


I guess we could make a system where the losing players just picks 30 cards, but then he would of course never lose cards he didn't want to lose.

Maybe like this:

1. Winner salvages 6 cards
2. Loser discards 24 cards
3. Rest of the cards go to Vault

[Antagon]

to stay realistic, i dont exspect a single 60-card-deck (maybe except your deck-out variations, maybe), but 30-34 card-decks should be much more common.

so, IF your rule becomes true, it will be much more easier to random generate the card numbers of the cards, you dont lose then.

i still like the idea.

[Xinef]

BUT there's one big problem with it: it requires a third party (like Warmaster) to use it to prevent cheating. This is WAY too much work, given there are dozens of matches.

I wonder how many >30 card decks will be among this dozen of matches.
Maybe a third of all? Maybe less?
Still, warmaster needs to check if players returned the correct decks to the vault and did not return the ones that lost etc.

[Dragoon]

I like Xinef's idea as well.  In fact, I've been trying to avoid making 30+ card decks for the exact reason that Xinef mentioned.

[Scaredgirl]

BUT there's one big problem with it: it requires a third party (like Warmaster) to use it to prevent cheating. This is WAY too much work, given there are dozens of matches.

I wonder how many >30 card decks will be among this dozen of matches.
Maybe a third of all? Maybe less?
Still, warmaster needs to check if players returned the correct decks to the vault and did not return the ones that lost etc.

Yes, but that's easy because all he has to do is observe. Using this randomizer would require Warmaster to copy-paste and post every time a person with 31+ cards loses. That's going to be a problem unless the Warmaster is online 24/7.

I think many people were designing 30 card decks because of the old rules where you lose the whole deck. Now that rules change, it's a different story. If you look at for example Master Trials decks, maybe half of them were 31+. Defense heavy 31 card deck is great because chances are the opponent has only 30 cards and you can deck him out.

I don't see any major flaws with the simple system I proposed in my last post. If someone finds a flaw, let me know.

I like Xinef's idea as well.  In fact, I've been trying to avoid making 30+ card decks for the exact reason that Xinef mentioned.

It would be a great system if it didn't require one person to do it.

[Dragoon]

What if the Masters did it for their team mates?  Surely we can trust the Masters to play fairly.  But then again, you have to be careful of those darker more evil Elemental Masters.