This year on my annual trek to Thunder Bay I got in a couple games of Castles of Mad King Ludwig and they had one odd thing in common with one another - in both games the bonus point favour pucks had the bonus for number of corridors and also square footage of corridors. When you have both of these in play it warps the game quite substantially as everyone rushes to build hallways instead of ignoring them as is usual. Also the 350 corridor rooms which are normally the worst cards in the deck end up being quite powerful and often sat in the 15,000 spot because people were terrified of others getting all that corridor space.
My feeling is that when the corridor favours are both out the game really favours experienced players. Most of the favours aren't that difficult to sort out - if purple rooms are the bonus, then you think of each purple room as being worth +2 points. Not exactly complicated, and at the end of the game you can math out their exact values to you fairly easily. Corridor rooms cause a lot more consternation though because you have to figure out how to sequence your plays to get lots of them at just the right time.
In the second game my second last turn was simply playing the second last Stairs. Not what you want to do with your second last turn most of the time! However, my last turn was playing a basement room to finish those stairs, getting a bonus stairs up out of the basement room, using that basement room completion to take another turn, building a yellow room on the end of the stairs going up, using my free bonus hallway (emptying the hallways) to finish the yellow room, getting another turn, and using that final turn to by the 350 corridor to snatch both most corridors and most square footage of corridors. Five tiles laid in a single turn was enough to absolutely blow out the game in my favour.
Setting that up and realizing that you will get to do it is not something a starting player is going to do, even if they are good at games in general. It takes time to get used to how best to use extra turns and extra Hallways/Stairs and if you have that all sorted you can do some nutty things. Beginners at the table found themselves cut out of Stairs and Hallways unexpectedly and that can be really key if you have been building your game around getting a specific amount of those things on the board.
This has made me like Castles even more than before. The changing favours really keep you thinking and make new playthroughs different. You can't just develop a simple metric for how good each room is so you have to recalculate everything each time through. While eventually you would get used to the favours that come out something is always going to be a bit different in the game to keep it fresh and new.
Note to self: In a game with all the Corridor favours out, Hall of Mirrors is *really* good, even if you get it halfway through.
Friday, December 29, 2017
Wednesday, December 20, 2017
Serving the man
In my current Agricola league games I am doing really well. I have 1 first place finish already, another game that is going to end with me in first unless something crazy happens, and a third game where I am coming in third place. The fourth game is only in round 10 of 14 so far so I don't know for sure, but at a glance I appear to be in a strong position. At the very least I am secure on food and have lots of ways to generate points, so I can't complain too much.
In the both the game I won and the game I am coming in third I played the Manservant on turn 8. That netted me 17 food for a single action, when a normal food gathering action is about 4 food.
This card is crazy powerful, but also has a steep cost. 3 food per turn is monstrous, particularly if you can get it out early, but the problem is that renovating to stone early means you give up the ability to continue to expand your house and you have to compete for the necessary resources and renovate spots. It means giving up other important things, essentially.
Getting it out as early as I did in both of these games is a coup. 17 food for a single action is bonkers, and when I managed that I figured I had the game in the bag. Not that you always win when you do this of course, but in both cases I had 3 family members and my opponents didn't seem to have taken advantage of my focus on renovating to do something scary. My position looked solid.
In the game I won it certainly seemed like an amazing play. I ended with 48 points and my farm looked very pretty indeed. That massive glut of food let me spend all of the late game setting up max fields and pastures and grain and veggies and even get 8 points from animals and 3 from stables. I didn't do anything interesting in terms of other cards - I just made a food engine and then built all the things.
In the game where I am coming in third I think I must have boned it up somewhere but I don't really know where. If I get a 17 food action I feel like I should have a dominant in the endgame, but I will end up either at 39 or 41 depending on how the last couple actions go. I know I gave up something to get the Manservant out so quickly but I really thought it wasn't so bad as all that.
This card is a bit of a newbie trap I think. Much like the Animal Pen it is really strong but if you decide you are just going all in on it from the start of the game you rate to get wrecked, I think. The trouble with these cards is that they require a massive investment of stuff that you are competing for. There are certainly games where the Manservant just happens to work out great, but if you decide you are doing a renovate early strategy and people block your stone or Renovate comes out late you could end up completely screwed.
Both of these strike me as middling draft picks. You don't want to commit to taking them first off because you will find them unplayable a lot of the time. However, you don't want them sitting in your opponent's hands because if they happen to be able to use them you rate to get blown out. Take them middling, I would say, somewhere between 3rd and 5th pick. They are great to have in your arsenal if you happen to be able to work them in, but you don't want to commit to them until you see the lay of the land.
In any case I am pretty happy with my results this season. Last season I came 2nd, 2nd, 2nd, 3rd in my games which is by no means a disaster but also isn't great. The 3rd only happened because I misread a card - I am confident I come second in every game if I realize what my cards actually do!
Clearly this season is going better, especially if I do manage to score up a three 1st place finishes. That almost certainly puts me at the top of my group and on the way to a higher ranked group next season. I expect to lose there, but it will definitely educate me and that is a big part of the fun.
In the both the game I won and the game I am coming in third I played the Manservant on turn 8. That netted me 17 food for a single action, when a normal food gathering action is about 4 food.
This card is crazy powerful, but also has a steep cost. 3 food per turn is monstrous, particularly if you can get it out early, but the problem is that renovating to stone early means you give up the ability to continue to expand your house and you have to compete for the necessary resources and renovate spots. It means giving up other important things, essentially.
Getting it out as early as I did in both of these games is a coup. 17 food for a single action is bonkers, and when I managed that I figured I had the game in the bag. Not that you always win when you do this of course, but in both cases I had 3 family members and my opponents didn't seem to have taken advantage of my focus on renovating to do something scary. My position looked solid.
In the game I won it certainly seemed like an amazing play. I ended with 48 points and my farm looked very pretty indeed. That massive glut of food let me spend all of the late game setting up max fields and pastures and grain and veggies and even get 8 points from animals and 3 from stables. I didn't do anything interesting in terms of other cards - I just made a food engine and then built all the things.
In the game where I am coming in third I think I must have boned it up somewhere but I don't really know where. If I get a 17 food action I feel like I should have a dominant in the endgame, but I will end up either at 39 or 41 depending on how the last couple actions go. I know I gave up something to get the Manservant out so quickly but I really thought it wasn't so bad as all that.
This card is a bit of a newbie trap I think. Much like the Animal Pen it is really strong but if you decide you are just going all in on it from the start of the game you rate to get wrecked, I think. The trouble with these cards is that they require a massive investment of stuff that you are competing for. There are certainly games where the Manservant just happens to work out great, but if you decide you are doing a renovate early strategy and people block your stone or Renovate comes out late you could end up completely screwed.
Both of these strike me as middling draft picks. You don't want to commit to taking them first off because you will find them unplayable a lot of the time. However, you don't want them sitting in your opponent's hands because if they happen to be able to use them you rate to get blown out. Take them middling, I would say, somewhere between 3rd and 5th pick. They are great to have in your arsenal if you happen to be able to work them in, but you don't want to commit to them until you see the lay of the land.
In any case I am pretty happy with my results this season. Last season I came 2nd, 2nd, 2nd, 3rd in my games which is by no means a disaster but also isn't great. The 3rd only happened because I misread a card - I am confident I come second in every game if I realize what my cards actually do!
Clearly this season is going better, especially if I do manage to score up a three 1st place finishes. That almost certainly puts me at the top of my group and on the way to a higher ranked group next season. I expect to lose there, but it will definitely educate me and that is a big part of the fun.
Monday, December 18, 2017
Enter Cave, Fight
The latest Hearthstone expansion brought with it some fantastic single player content - Dungeon Runs. I think people would agree generally that it is by far the best single player content the game has ever had, and has far more replay value than anything before it.
The idea is that you start off with a tiny deck of cards standardized for your class. You then fight a series of 8 bosses which start off completely trivial and get harder as you go. If you ever lose a game, the run ends. After every boss you get 3 new cards to add to your deck, chosen from 3 stacks of 3 cards each. Each stack is themed, so you can try to build a deck around a specific mechanic or card if you like. The trick is that there are lots of themes so if you try to build a Jade Shaman deck you might not get offered any Jade cards... or worse, you take Jade cards early and then never get any more and they end up being terrible.
You also get 4 special items as the run progresses. After boss 1 and boss 5 you get a choice of a passive item that buffs you, and after boss 3 and 7 you get an active item that is a card in your deck. All of the items have powerful effects, some moreso than others. The combination of passive and active effects with the variable sets of cards and random boss selection means that the games play out in all kinds of interesting ways and things change each time you do a run.
The biggest problem with previous single player content in Hearthstone was that it got repetitive super fast. Any boss that was a serious challenge would have ludicrous abilities and would destroy you effortlessly, so you simply build a deck that has some possible combination that beats the boss and then play over and over until RNG favoured you. You might be simply restarting until you got 2 Molten Giants in your hand by turn 2 on Lich King - Hunter, or maybe you were trying to land Innervate / AlarmoBot on Chromaggus. In any case these old fights were often tedious to beat because even once you figured it out you just played the optimal deck over and over until you hit just the right combination of cards.
Dungeon Runs don't suffer from this. While there is definitely RNG in terms of what cards and items you get on your runs the games are different each time and there are many ways to succeed. Even if it is frustrating to lose to a particular combination you can try again and build a new deck and face new bosses. The sense of pointless grinding isn't the same at all, and I am enjoying playing Dungeon Runs still despite having beat a full 8 boss run on every class.
One thing I did notice is that my intuition about what cards are good wasn't correct when I started out. I remember the first choice I had between various passive items and one of them was the Potion of Vitality, which doubles your health. Instead I took a Crystal Gem, which gives you 1 extra mana crystal. I liked the idea of having more mana for better tempo far more than I liked a bunch of health. Who wants to be tough when you can just steamroll your opponents?
That was a mistake. In the first few encounters where the bosses are easy that extra mana crystal is huge. It lets you quickly overpower them. However, when you get to the later stages the bosses often have board wipes and have a ton of health so you can't just stick a couple early minions and win - that tempo advantage isn't nearly enough to let you win the game. Since you have 40-50 health in the harder matches the health doubler is giving you a *huge* health increase, which is really important against bosses that try to burn you out with spells or if you try to fatigue opponents out.
If we look at the effect of having one more mana crystal we can compare it to a spell that does that - Wild Growth. This effect is better than Wild Growth because it works on turn 1 and 2 and doesn't cost 2 mana to cast, but we can safely say it is a similar effect that gives about 4 additional mana. Roughly speaking, it is worth a card and 4 mana. The health boost is a much larger effect, when considering cards, because best card to compare it to is Greater Healing Potion, which restores 12 health for 4 mana. That card isn't all that exciting though, so perhaps we should only give the Vitality Potion credit for being as good as 12 mana and 4 cards. 12 mana and 4 cards is a *lot* better than 4 mana and 1 card!
The Vitality Potion is even better when you can usefully leverage that extra health. Classes with weapons can safely chop away at enemy minions without worry when they have Vitality Potion, and if you manage to get a full heal card it is even better.
The decks you end up with at the end vary quite a bit in power. Certain classes have a much higher peak than others, particularly any class that has the Jade mechanic "Summon a Jade Golem. The first Jade Golem is 1/1, and each subsequent Jade Golem is +1/+1 bigger." The treasure that doubles Battlecries means that the first Jade card you play summons a 1/1 and a 2/2, the second one summons a 3/3 and a 4/4, etc. With a bunch of Jade cards and doubled battlecries you can steamroll anything. Classes that don't have Jade as an option can't highroll the same way, although there are two treasures called the Hilt of Quel'Delar and the Blade of Quel'Delar, and if you get both they turn into a weapon that basically instantly wins you the game. You can only get it for the 8th fight of the run and you have to pick the first half of Quel'Delar before knowing if you will even get offered the second half, but when it works you just win.
I have found it super interesting that people have wildly differing ideas of the power level of various items. Some are obvious, such as the Captured Flag which gives your minions +1/+1. It is excellent, one of the best for every class and strategy. However, there is one in particular, the Cloak of Invisibility, that seems to have some serious disagreement on its strength. It makes all of your minions permanently have stealth so your opponent cannot trade into your minions and they cannot target them. You can dictate all trades and protect your minions with special effects, but you do have the real problem that you lose access to Taunt. If you need to protect your face from enemy minions you are screwed because your dorks are all hiding.
I love the Cloak of Invisibility. One of the huge benefits of it is hard to see, but is really important. Some enemy decks have a truckload of removal in them and it can end up clogging their hand badly when they can't target your minions. The first time I beat Vustrasz he played 2 little minions and then just sat there beating on me with them doing nothing, eventually discarding a card each turn. Clearly he drew all targetted removal spells and other minions he couldn't play and my invisible minions happily beat him to death. Things don't always go to that extreme of course, but oftentimes bosses will end games with 5 cards in hand that they haven't played and it is clear that the Cloak of Invisibility was responsible for stranding all that removal in their hand.
On a somewhat lighter note I must say I really like the feel of the Dungeon Runs too. The monsters are varied and there are some rare fights with fun rewards. You actually have to use a lot of different strategies depending on what you are facing and they really stuck the feel of delving into an old school dungeon. Giant Rats as your first opponent, and dragons, demons, and The Darkness at the end (with a Lava Filled Chamber in the middle, naturally) hit all the right notes.
If you haven't played Hearthstone in awhile this is a plenty good reason to pick it up again. The solo content is free, and you get a bunch of free stuff for logging in during the expansion.
The idea is that you start off with a tiny deck of cards standardized for your class. You then fight a series of 8 bosses which start off completely trivial and get harder as you go. If you ever lose a game, the run ends. After every boss you get 3 new cards to add to your deck, chosen from 3 stacks of 3 cards each. Each stack is themed, so you can try to build a deck around a specific mechanic or card if you like. The trick is that there are lots of themes so if you try to build a Jade Shaman deck you might not get offered any Jade cards... or worse, you take Jade cards early and then never get any more and they end up being terrible.
You also get 4 special items as the run progresses. After boss 1 and boss 5 you get a choice of a passive item that buffs you, and after boss 3 and 7 you get an active item that is a card in your deck. All of the items have powerful effects, some moreso than others. The combination of passive and active effects with the variable sets of cards and random boss selection means that the games play out in all kinds of interesting ways and things change each time you do a run.
The biggest problem with previous single player content in Hearthstone was that it got repetitive super fast. Any boss that was a serious challenge would have ludicrous abilities and would destroy you effortlessly, so you simply build a deck that has some possible combination that beats the boss and then play over and over until RNG favoured you. You might be simply restarting until you got 2 Molten Giants in your hand by turn 2 on Lich King - Hunter, or maybe you were trying to land Innervate / AlarmoBot on Chromaggus. In any case these old fights were often tedious to beat because even once you figured it out you just played the optimal deck over and over until you hit just the right combination of cards.
Dungeon Runs don't suffer from this. While there is definitely RNG in terms of what cards and items you get on your runs the games are different each time and there are many ways to succeed. Even if it is frustrating to lose to a particular combination you can try again and build a new deck and face new bosses. The sense of pointless grinding isn't the same at all, and I am enjoying playing Dungeon Runs still despite having beat a full 8 boss run on every class.
One thing I did notice is that my intuition about what cards are good wasn't correct when I started out. I remember the first choice I had between various passive items and one of them was the Potion of Vitality, which doubles your health. Instead I took a Crystal Gem, which gives you 1 extra mana crystal. I liked the idea of having more mana for better tempo far more than I liked a bunch of health. Who wants to be tough when you can just steamroll your opponents?
That was a mistake. In the first few encounters where the bosses are easy that extra mana crystal is huge. It lets you quickly overpower them. However, when you get to the later stages the bosses often have board wipes and have a ton of health so you can't just stick a couple early minions and win - that tempo advantage isn't nearly enough to let you win the game. Since you have 40-50 health in the harder matches the health doubler is giving you a *huge* health increase, which is really important against bosses that try to burn you out with spells or if you try to fatigue opponents out.
If we look at the effect of having one more mana crystal we can compare it to a spell that does that - Wild Growth. This effect is better than Wild Growth because it works on turn 1 and 2 and doesn't cost 2 mana to cast, but we can safely say it is a similar effect that gives about 4 additional mana. Roughly speaking, it is worth a card and 4 mana. The health boost is a much larger effect, when considering cards, because best card to compare it to is Greater Healing Potion, which restores 12 health for 4 mana. That card isn't all that exciting though, so perhaps we should only give the Vitality Potion credit for being as good as 12 mana and 4 cards. 12 mana and 4 cards is a *lot* better than 4 mana and 1 card!
The Vitality Potion is even better when you can usefully leverage that extra health. Classes with weapons can safely chop away at enemy minions without worry when they have Vitality Potion, and if you manage to get a full heal card it is even better.
The decks you end up with at the end vary quite a bit in power. Certain classes have a much higher peak than others, particularly any class that has the Jade mechanic "Summon a Jade Golem. The first Jade Golem is 1/1, and each subsequent Jade Golem is +1/+1 bigger." The treasure that doubles Battlecries means that the first Jade card you play summons a 1/1 and a 2/2, the second one summons a 3/3 and a 4/4, etc. With a bunch of Jade cards and doubled battlecries you can steamroll anything. Classes that don't have Jade as an option can't highroll the same way, although there are two treasures called the Hilt of Quel'Delar and the Blade of Quel'Delar, and if you get both they turn into a weapon that basically instantly wins you the game. You can only get it for the 8th fight of the run and you have to pick the first half of Quel'Delar before knowing if you will even get offered the second half, but when it works you just win.
I have found it super interesting that people have wildly differing ideas of the power level of various items. Some are obvious, such as the Captured Flag which gives your minions +1/+1. It is excellent, one of the best for every class and strategy. However, there is one in particular, the Cloak of Invisibility, that seems to have some serious disagreement on its strength. It makes all of your minions permanently have stealth so your opponent cannot trade into your minions and they cannot target them. You can dictate all trades and protect your minions with special effects, but you do have the real problem that you lose access to Taunt. If you need to protect your face from enemy minions you are screwed because your dorks are all hiding.
I love the Cloak of Invisibility. One of the huge benefits of it is hard to see, but is really important. Some enemy decks have a truckload of removal in them and it can end up clogging their hand badly when they can't target your minions. The first time I beat Vustrasz he played 2 little minions and then just sat there beating on me with them doing nothing, eventually discarding a card each turn. Clearly he drew all targetted removal spells and other minions he couldn't play and my invisible minions happily beat him to death. Things don't always go to that extreme of course, but oftentimes bosses will end games with 5 cards in hand that they haven't played and it is clear that the Cloak of Invisibility was responsible for stranding all that removal in their hand.
On a somewhat lighter note I must say I really like the feel of the Dungeon Runs too. The monsters are varied and there are some rare fights with fun rewards. You actually have to use a lot of different strategies depending on what you are facing and they really stuck the feel of delving into an old school dungeon. Giant Rats as your first opponent, and dragons, demons, and The Darkness at the end (with a Lava Filled Chamber in the middle, naturally) hit all the right notes.
If you haven't played Hearthstone in awhile this is a plenty good reason to pick it up again. The solo content is free, and you get a bunch of free stuff for logging in during the expansion.
Monday, December 11, 2017
Greenery
I played Terraforming Mars for the first time a little while ago and I have been mulling over my feelings on the game. It is a competitive board game with a vaguely cooperative theme in that everyone is trying to terraform Mars as quickly as possible and the ones who do that the best win the game.
The game combines a grid of hexes representing Mars upon which everyone makes cities, lakes, and forests with a system of drafting and playing cards. The cards have a lot going on, in that they can cost temporary resources or reduce your income, and they can generate temporary resources or permanently increase income. There are lots of kinds of resources and income too, and also the cards have lots of symbols on them that interact with other cards. Thankfully the design of the cards is really well done and with minimal practice you can easily figure out what each card does.
The cards seem largely well built, both in graphic design and balance. I am not anywhere good enough at the game to make proper evaluations but my first pass was a favourable one for sure. You can play a balanced game looking for all the best deals at a given moment or you can really go all in on one strategy and hope to cash in on the cards that reward the particular thing you are doing.
One thing I found really odd was that the main way of getting points was linked to income. If you get a point, you also get a buck every round. This worried me initially because it seemed like anyone who did well at the beginning would just steamroll their way to victory but there are ways to score points that don't increase income and ways to raise or lower your income without getting points, so it didn't end up being a problem. In most games you end up either building your engine or generating points and you have to figure out when it is time to stop creating infrastructure and just start making points as the game closes down, but in Terraforming Mars you often end up just doing both at the same time.
The game does have other ways of generating tipping points though because there are three good ways to score points that have a fixed number of them that can be cashed in. When there are ten temperature bumps left to go nobody cares much but when you get down to the last few suddenly everyone scrambles to get their temperature bumps in before the opportunity to score off of them vanishes.
The theme of the game is well done. For example, as terraforming proceeds the oxygen % goes up, and that means that eventually you can build cities without domes. However, once the oxygen gets high enough you can't build a city with a dome anymore because nobody wants to live in a domed city when the air outside is breathable. The cards reflect these sorts of things effectively and the themes feel like they tie into the mechanics in immersive and enjoyable ways.
There is one thing about the game that I don't much like though, and that is the number of cards that punish a player of your choice when you play them. Throughout the game people would draw cards that could do something bad and then they would have to pick which person to hurt. I don't like that mechanic in Lords of Waterdeep and it isn't any better here. I like mechanics where you can play against another person's strategy, but cards that simply say "Pick who gets screwed" are not fun for me. This is pretty much the only catch up mechanism in the game so I imagine with excellent players it would usually mean that the player in the lead gets beat up, but that kind of mechanic usually means that the players in last place end up kingmaking (when people are good) or people end up punishing the person they don't like (when people are bad at the game). Neither is fun.
Overall I think the designers of the game did a great job. The game looks slick, the information is presented effectively, and the theme is well integrated into the mechanics. I like the way new players can be handed a faction that gives them a simple starting situation that is balanced, and I the replayability looks good. But that card mechanic of "Pick who gets screwed" .... I don't like it. I will play the game more times for sure to figure out what I think of it, but overall I expect it is a game I will continue to enjoy despite that one significant drawback.
The game combines a grid of hexes representing Mars upon which everyone makes cities, lakes, and forests with a system of drafting and playing cards. The cards have a lot going on, in that they can cost temporary resources or reduce your income, and they can generate temporary resources or permanently increase income. There are lots of kinds of resources and income too, and also the cards have lots of symbols on them that interact with other cards. Thankfully the design of the cards is really well done and with minimal practice you can easily figure out what each card does.
The cards seem largely well built, both in graphic design and balance. I am not anywhere good enough at the game to make proper evaluations but my first pass was a favourable one for sure. You can play a balanced game looking for all the best deals at a given moment or you can really go all in on one strategy and hope to cash in on the cards that reward the particular thing you are doing.
One thing I found really odd was that the main way of getting points was linked to income. If you get a point, you also get a buck every round. This worried me initially because it seemed like anyone who did well at the beginning would just steamroll their way to victory but there are ways to score points that don't increase income and ways to raise or lower your income without getting points, so it didn't end up being a problem. In most games you end up either building your engine or generating points and you have to figure out when it is time to stop creating infrastructure and just start making points as the game closes down, but in Terraforming Mars you often end up just doing both at the same time.
The game does have other ways of generating tipping points though because there are three good ways to score points that have a fixed number of them that can be cashed in. When there are ten temperature bumps left to go nobody cares much but when you get down to the last few suddenly everyone scrambles to get their temperature bumps in before the opportunity to score off of them vanishes.
The theme of the game is well done. For example, as terraforming proceeds the oxygen % goes up, and that means that eventually you can build cities without domes. However, once the oxygen gets high enough you can't build a city with a dome anymore because nobody wants to live in a domed city when the air outside is breathable. The cards reflect these sorts of things effectively and the themes feel like they tie into the mechanics in immersive and enjoyable ways.
There is one thing about the game that I don't much like though, and that is the number of cards that punish a player of your choice when you play them. Throughout the game people would draw cards that could do something bad and then they would have to pick which person to hurt. I don't like that mechanic in Lords of Waterdeep and it isn't any better here. I like mechanics where you can play against another person's strategy, but cards that simply say "Pick who gets screwed" are not fun for me. This is pretty much the only catch up mechanism in the game so I imagine with excellent players it would usually mean that the player in the lead gets beat up, but that kind of mechanic usually means that the players in last place end up kingmaking (when people are good) or people end up punishing the person they don't like (when people are bad at the game). Neither is fun.
Overall I think the designers of the game did a great job. The game looks slick, the information is presented effectively, and the theme is well integrated into the mechanics. I like the way new players can be handed a faction that gives them a simple starting situation that is balanced, and I the replayability looks good. But that card mechanic of "Pick who gets screwed" .... I don't like it. I will play the game more times for sure to figure out what I think of it, but overall I expect it is a game I will continue to enjoy despite that one significant drawback.
Friday, December 8, 2017
A shiny new 7
In the old days of hearthstone Dr. Boom reigned supreme in the 7 slot. He dropped 9/9 worth of stats onto the board and his boom bots would randomly blow up enemies for 1-4 damage when they died, so he combined a massive pile of stats with extra effect. Dr. 7 saw play in every kind of deck because he was a great finisher for an aggressive deck and a great stabilizer for a controlling deck. In fact this was one of the real problems with Boom - everyone wanted to play him.
A neutral card with immense value and which was good in all kinds of decks - many people saw the good doctor as a real problem. Fast foward to 2017, and there is a new doctor in town, with many similar issues.
Bonemare is a neutral 7 drop that puts 9/9 worth of stats on the board. Those stats also have extra goodness because 4/4 of those stats can attack right away. Very similar to Dr. Boom in many ways. The thing that makes Bonemare just not as good as Dr. Boom is that it requires a minion in play to work. That isn't a big ask, but it is something. Dr. Boom can be slammed down in almost any situation and be good while Bonemare can be a weak draw if there is a clear boardstate. Pretty much the only time you draw Dr. Boom and sigh is when you are going to be killed before your next turn.
I got a couple of Bonemares in a draft deck I was playing and it was an absurdity. If I got to turn 7 with anything in play I just won by slamming Bonemare after Bonemare. In talking to people about it there was a clear sentiment that Bonemare is a problem. I think Bonemare's problem is different than Boom's, though, simply because of rarity.
In Constructed play both cards saw a lot of use, but Bonemare wasn't unfair, just really good. It is actually a good thing to my mind to have a common that is a powerful late game card. Beginners often feel shoehorned into aggressive decks because they simply don't have access to the expensive legendary minions required for a late game and Bonemare gives them an out. Bonemare is common and provides a thing for people with limited collections to do in the late game, and I like that.
When drafting Arena decks though Bonemare is a disaster. Dr. Boom was absurd in Arena but at least you hardly ever saw him so it wasn't such an issue. Having Bonemare in the common slot often means that you may have to face down multiples of them and there is often nothing you can do to play around that raw power. They just make too much stuff too efficiently and leave no realistic counterplay. When you have a deck with normal late game cards in it and you go up against one that has multiple Bonemares you simply have to win by turn 6 or accept that you are getting blown out. I am not a fan of that as a common thing, and right now it is a common thing.
Well, up until this week it was a common thing. Now that the new Kobolds and Catacombs expansion is out the extra appearance bonus for Bonemare is gone and it should go back to being something you see on occasion instead of something you see constantly. That is better for Arena, certainly, as Bonemare is just too far above the power curve. However, Bonemare is going to continue to let people with few resources have a power play in the late game in Constructed, which is a thing I like.
Overall I think Bonemare will be a positive contribution to the game. It mucked up Arena drafting a lot for 4 months but it will be in Standard Constructed for 16 months and I like what it has done for deck building. It surprised me honestly to see just how powerful Bonemare was, and I think it surprised a lot of other people too. Now we know - 9/9 for 7 mana with extras is superb. I should write that down somewhere.
A neutral card with immense value and which was good in all kinds of decks - many people saw the good doctor as a real problem. Fast foward to 2017, and there is a new doctor in town, with many similar issues.
Bonemare is a neutral 7 drop that puts 9/9 worth of stats on the board. Those stats also have extra goodness because 4/4 of those stats can attack right away. Very similar to Dr. Boom in many ways. The thing that makes Bonemare just not as good as Dr. Boom is that it requires a minion in play to work. That isn't a big ask, but it is something. Dr. Boom can be slammed down in almost any situation and be good while Bonemare can be a weak draw if there is a clear boardstate. Pretty much the only time you draw Dr. Boom and sigh is when you are going to be killed before your next turn.
I got a couple of Bonemares in a draft deck I was playing and it was an absurdity. If I got to turn 7 with anything in play I just won by slamming Bonemare after Bonemare. In talking to people about it there was a clear sentiment that Bonemare is a problem. I think Bonemare's problem is different than Boom's, though, simply because of rarity.
In Constructed play both cards saw a lot of use, but Bonemare wasn't unfair, just really good. It is actually a good thing to my mind to have a common that is a powerful late game card. Beginners often feel shoehorned into aggressive decks because they simply don't have access to the expensive legendary minions required for a late game and Bonemare gives them an out. Bonemare is common and provides a thing for people with limited collections to do in the late game, and I like that.
When drafting Arena decks though Bonemare is a disaster. Dr. Boom was absurd in Arena but at least you hardly ever saw him so it wasn't such an issue. Having Bonemare in the common slot often means that you may have to face down multiples of them and there is often nothing you can do to play around that raw power. They just make too much stuff too efficiently and leave no realistic counterplay. When you have a deck with normal late game cards in it and you go up against one that has multiple Bonemares you simply have to win by turn 6 or accept that you are getting blown out. I am not a fan of that as a common thing, and right now it is a common thing.
Well, up until this week it was a common thing. Now that the new Kobolds and Catacombs expansion is out the extra appearance bonus for Bonemare is gone and it should go back to being something you see on occasion instead of something you see constantly. That is better for Arena, certainly, as Bonemare is just too far above the power curve. However, Bonemare is going to continue to let people with few resources have a power play in the late game in Constructed, which is a thing I like.
Overall I think Bonemare will be a positive contribution to the game. It mucked up Arena drafting a lot for 4 months but it will be in Standard Constructed for 16 months and I like what it has done for deck building. It surprised me honestly to see just how powerful Bonemare was, and I think it surprised a lot of other people too. Now we know - 9/9 for 7 mana with extras is superb. I should write that down somewhere.
Monday, December 4, 2017
Once again, here I am
This season of Blood Bowl ended very much like the previous season did. I went up against Umbra's orcs with my dwarves in the semi final, and I lost. In both cases my dwarf team was reasonably developed but the orcs had a far higher team value and could clearly beat my team up and down the field quite effortlessly.
I find bash on bash matchups like this where one team is vastly ahead not much fun honestly. When you are a dodgy team you have a lot more options to try to make plays against a more powerful bash team but when the opponent has just as much Guard and Mighty Blow as you do but also has seven more Strength... it just feels absurd.
Still, I gave it a go. I was feeling really off before the game, distracted mightily by things outside Blood Bowl. It showed in my play and I didn't give Umbra the run for his money that I had hoped.
With my giant pile of inducement money I bought a chainsaw and a bombardier Star Player and also a wizard. I hoped that I could chop his team down to size in the early going. I did injure a dude with the bombardier but the enemy apothecary fixed him. I must say, throwing bombs at the enemies each turn is a hell of a lot of fun, even if it isn't necessarily that good.
In any case I tried to leverage my start players to inflict some hurt but the orcs managed to score early and clear them both off of the field. I had a plan to stop the TD but the loner dwarf I was forced to bring to the match rolled snake eyes and knocked himself down at a critical moment. In fact this happened twice that the first roll I made on a turn was a 2 die block and my dude fell down - even if the teams had been even that would be enough to lose me the game.
I tried to answer with a touchdown of my own in the first half but couldn't make it happen. That same loner dwarf who screwed up the defence also managed to fumble the ball and cost me my touchdown on the backswing - that guy is not getting hired by my team!
The second half went even worse than the first. The orcs pounded my team to bits, and I made a desperate attempt to run around them to score but got stymied, my blocks amounting to nothing. By turn 12 I had only four dwarves left on the field and three of those were down. Frustrated, I conceded the match to get out of it without anyone else getting injured.
That concession was wrong. With three dwarves down I should have just passed the turn, let Umbra foul me brutally, and hope that my dudes wouldn't accrue any lasting injuries. I would only have to cope with 3 fouls and a knockdown, I think, and even though I could easily get dudes killed that way it would have been worth the risk to get the cash and experience from finishing off the match.
In any case Umbra bashed the hell out of my team and ended my playoff run. Funnily enough I think I actually have a better shot at winning the finals than he does, because he goes on to face an elf team. I have better ball carrying, way more Tackle, and a much lower team value than Umbra does. The elves will get a wizard and all kinds of other goodies against him and I think he rates to lose in the finals. I don't know that I am favoured to win by any means but I think I rate to do better.
Next season I am starting with a 10 dwarf roster and only 20k in the bank. I need 70k just to get my full team, never mind needing to get a 12th player to have a bench. Plus I have to fire and replace my blitzer who has a niggling injury once I accumulate enough cash to do that. Next year will definitely be a rebuilding year. Maybe I can reverse my fortunes - last season I kept setting fire to all my cash because the dwarves were so healthy and then hit a massive rash of injuries and deaths near the end that ruined me. Perhaps the coming year can begin with money problems and an injured lineup and end with me flush and sporting a bunch of dwarves ready to rumble.
We can only hope that the dice will provide.
I find bash on bash matchups like this where one team is vastly ahead not much fun honestly. When you are a dodgy team you have a lot more options to try to make plays against a more powerful bash team but when the opponent has just as much Guard and Mighty Blow as you do but also has seven more Strength... it just feels absurd.
Still, I gave it a go. I was feeling really off before the game, distracted mightily by things outside Blood Bowl. It showed in my play and I didn't give Umbra the run for his money that I had hoped.
With my giant pile of inducement money I bought a chainsaw and a bombardier Star Player and also a wizard. I hoped that I could chop his team down to size in the early going. I did injure a dude with the bombardier but the enemy apothecary fixed him. I must say, throwing bombs at the enemies each turn is a hell of a lot of fun, even if it isn't necessarily that good.
In any case I tried to leverage my start players to inflict some hurt but the orcs managed to score early and clear them both off of the field. I had a plan to stop the TD but the loner dwarf I was forced to bring to the match rolled snake eyes and knocked himself down at a critical moment. In fact this happened twice that the first roll I made on a turn was a 2 die block and my dude fell down - even if the teams had been even that would be enough to lose me the game.
I tried to answer with a touchdown of my own in the first half but couldn't make it happen. That same loner dwarf who screwed up the defence also managed to fumble the ball and cost me my touchdown on the backswing - that guy is not getting hired by my team!
The second half went even worse than the first. The orcs pounded my team to bits, and I made a desperate attempt to run around them to score but got stymied, my blocks amounting to nothing. By turn 12 I had only four dwarves left on the field and three of those were down. Frustrated, I conceded the match to get out of it without anyone else getting injured.
That concession was wrong. With three dwarves down I should have just passed the turn, let Umbra foul me brutally, and hope that my dudes wouldn't accrue any lasting injuries. I would only have to cope with 3 fouls and a knockdown, I think, and even though I could easily get dudes killed that way it would have been worth the risk to get the cash and experience from finishing off the match.
In any case Umbra bashed the hell out of my team and ended my playoff run. Funnily enough I think I actually have a better shot at winning the finals than he does, because he goes on to face an elf team. I have better ball carrying, way more Tackle, and a much lower team value than Umbra does. The elves will get a wizard and all kinds of other goodies against him and I think he rates to lose in the finals. I don't know that I am favoured to win by any means but I think I rate to do better.
Next season I am starting with a 10 dwarf roster and only 20k in the bank. I need 70k just to get my full team, never mind needing to get a 12th player to have a bench. Plus I have to fire and replace my blitzer who has a niggling injury once I accumulate enough cash to do that. Next year will definitely be a rebuilding year. Maybe I can reverse my fortunes - last season I kept setting fire to all my cash because the dwarves were so healthy and then hit a massive rash of injuries and deaths near the end that ruined me. Perhaps the coming year can begin with money problems and an injured lineup and end with me flush and sporting a bunch of dwarves ready to rumble.
We can only hope that the dice will provide.
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