I did well in my Thurn and Taxis and Agricola leagues last time. In both I was promoted and I was feeling good about my chances this time around and hoping to put in a good showing, if not get promoted again. My feelings of confidence were unwarranted as I look likely to be bumped down a rank in both leagues.
In Thurn and Taxis my problem is kind of ridiculous. One of the players in one of my games never accepted the invitation, and then we remade it and it still didn't get accepted, and then all of the other games were done and this one game was still not complete. The game being incomplete is partly my fault as I should have gone to the moderators about it instead of just shrugging and waiting. I don't quite know how to apportion blame here because the person who simply ignored the invites and refused to acknowledge the emails is at fault, but I have some degree of fault for not getting on it and pushing it harder.
Now I may get relegated to a lower league simply because our game is never going to get done in time and so the people being bumped down will end up being selected from that group of players. I don't envy the moderators that have to sort out this crap because there are no good solutions. It sucks extra hard to get bumped down based on this kind of thing rather than just plain ole' getting beat but there aren't exactly a lot of other options available to the mods, so no blame there.
Definitely not the triumphant romp I had hoped for.
Agricola is going badly for entirely different reasons, mostly to do with the interface and me screwing it up. One game I came third 47-42-39-38 on the back of a disastrous play where I Renovated before growing with Farm Steward in play, turning the Steward from a strong power play into a total waste. Throwing away a high draft pick, an action, and a food is terrible, especially considering Church Warden was in the game so doing this cost me an extra 3 points just for fun. I would have easily gotten second place without that terrible blunder and could have threatened for first.
In another game I had a plow down that lets me plow three times when I take the plow action, and I could do this twice a game. After I plowed the second time I realized that I had only five fields - which shouldn't be possible when I get to plow three fields two times! Somehow I had managed to only click twice to plow fields so I just missed out on an absolutely free point. And of course that single point mattered in the end, and it may get me relegated.
Both of these errors are things I could have easily fixed in a live game. I realized my disastrous mistake with the renovate just seconds after hitting Confirm, but in a game in person I would simply have taken the renovate back and done it properly. Same with the fields, I would just have put the extra field on. But you can't do that online, once you hit that Confirm button it is all over.
That isn't to say I have played perfectly otherwise! Far from it, I am still learning. But it seems like I may get bumped down in both leagues and in both cases meta issues really influenced the outcome. I guess that is the struggle with a game run by the computer. You get all kinds of benefits but the rules are enforced in the strictest possible way, so you have to play right.
All my fault, no doubt. But these sorts of errors are the most annoying kind!
Showing posts with label Getting Beat. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Getting Beat. Show all posts
Friday, April 6, 2018
Thursday, September 21, 2017
I got beat
I played my Blood Bowl semi final match last week against Umbra's orc team and I lost 1-0. This wasn't surprising as I didn't particularly like my odds, but some things changed before the match that really swung it against me. Umbra fired his goblin and thrower so his team had absolute maximum armour and minimum ball moving. This was a good move against me, I think, as it trimmed his team value down and made him as tough as possible. He was left with just 11 orcs on the team, but I decided to keep an extra dwarf around and run with 12 players.
The way the game played out was I received and then we both took out a couple of each other's players in the first half, and I found myself with a good scoring opportunity. I screwed up though because I forgot that it was a blizzard so when I did a double go for it with my ball carrier to get in prime scoring position I slipped on the ice, fell down, and got stunned, and that was the end of the first half. I had a reroll back but it turns out it wasn't enough. The half ended 0-0 and we both fielded full teams for the second half of the game. I had other plays that were superior if the weather wasn't a blizzard and this was definitely a screw up on my part. Even still it was likely to work... but that is dice rolling for you.
In the second half Umbra got lucky and injured a bunch of my players out quickly. He made a terrible misplay by running his ball carrier right up next to my dudes for an assist (forgetting where the ball was...) and while I knocked the ball carrier down I did not get lucky in doing so and he easily recovered the ball. I kept making more and more desperate plays as I was down a lot in numbers but eventually he locked me out and scored to secure a 1-0 victory.
I say that Umbra got lucky but I don't want to imply I deserved the victory or anything. His team building against me was strong and he played well. I do think he got better luck on the injury dice in particular than I did, but since nobody in the league had inflicted an injury on me the entire season thus far I can't complain about my luck overall. I suppose I can complain that my bad injury luck all concentrated in my semi final game, but I lost to a good player in a tough matchup and that is just how Blood Bowl goes.
I have been thinking about what I might do to change the odds in my favour, in the event of a theoretical rematch. There are some ways I can trim team value off of my team and that might well have been enough to give me a real shot at victory. I recently levelled up a dwarf to get Leader which grants a bonus reroll and I think I should get rid of one of my regular rerolls. This would have dropped me by 50k team value and put me below Umbra's team which is a big advantage. Secondly I could fire my extra dwarf on the bench to free up another 70k of room. If I did this I would have 90k of inducement money to work with and I could have easily thrown another 60k of cash at it to get a wizard. That would definitely be enough to swing the game my way, at least potentially.
My real problem though was that my team didn't have enough gas in the tank in terms of raw power. Rather than a wizard I think what I would really want is 4 or 5 extra skills on my players to make up that 90k difference. If I take my current team and add 2 copies of Guard and 2.5 copies of Mighty Blow to make up that 90k I am much more likely to be able to just outbrawl Umbra. I still don't think it is a great matchup but at that point I have better ball handlers than him, vastly more Guard, Mighty Blow and Block. He has strength, certainly, but the game looks a lot more even.
So what I need to do this season is level up like crazy, getting good skills on all the players that need them, and be prepared to trim down my team as necessary. I need to make sure that every point of team value is absolutely maximized, and I do that by getting more Guard and Mighty Blow and cutting back in the two ways I can cut back.
In terms of play during the game I clearly need to pay attention to the weather. My play was a strong one under normal circumstances, but I made a mistake. Still, with 2 minute turns stuff like that is going to happen. There was one thing I did that generated some discussion though, which was to run a dwarf around to Umbra's backfield to pressure the ball carrier. Both Umbra and Ziggyny thought this was a terrible plan because dwarves need to be in a pile to use all their Guard and win the fight.
In general I agree with that. The Guard should be in the pile. However, one of the dwarves I sent to the backfield to harass Umbra's ball carrier was my runner. My runners don't have Guard or Mighty Blow so I don't get much from having them in the pile, and the runner caused a high strength orc to dash off to pin him down and I think that is actually good for me. I can't win the pile if all the orcs are there because I only have two more copies of Guard than Umbra does and I have way less strength. Using the runner to get rid of a powerful orc seemed good to me, or at least as good as anything else that runner was doing.
However, I also sent a blitzer to the backfield once, and that blitzer had both Guard and Mighty Blow. He did draw off two orcs, which is great, and honestly if I can consistently get two orcs to run off after a single dwarf I should do that every time! However, I could have probably found a stupid lineman to accomplish the same goal and not wasted the blitzer on it. I think it is a fine plan to send a dwarf to the back field to make protecting the ball hard, but I should have made sure the dwarf doing it was always someone who is has little else to offer.
I can't complain about my season. I got a third/fourth place result in a group of sixteen players, and I lost only two games in the entire season - one due to not being able to show up, and one to the eventual champion, Umbra. I learned a bit about how to handle that particular matchup, and I will be more ready next season to crunch the necks of whoever gets in my way.
Time for more Blood Bowl!
The way the game played out was I received and then we both took out a couple of each other's players in the first half, and I found myself with a good scoring opportunity. I screwed up though because I forgot that it was a blizzard so when I did a double go for it with my ball carrier to get in prime scoring position I slipped on the ice, fell down, and got stunned, and that was the end of the first half. I had a reroll back but it turns out it wasn't enough. The half ended 0-0 and we both fielded full teams for the second half of the game. I had other plays that were superior if the weather wasn't a blizzard and this was definitely a screw up on my part. Even still it was likely to work... but that is dice rolling for you.
In the second half Umbra got lucky and injured a bunch of my players out quickly. He made a terrible misplay by running his ball carrier right up next to my dudes for an assist (forgetting where the ball was...) and while I knocked the ball carrier down I did not get lucky in doing so and he easily recovered the ball. I kept making more and more desperate plays as I was down a lot in numbers but eventually he locked me out and scored to secure a 1-0 victory.
I say that Umbra got lucky but I don't want to imply I deserved the victory or anything. His team building against me was strong and he played well. I do think he got better luck on the injury dice in particular than I did, but since nobody in the league had inflicted an injury on me the entire season thus far I can't complain about my luck overall. I suppose I can complain that my bad injury luck all concentrated in my semi final game, but I lost to a good player in a tough matchup and that is just how Blood Bowl goes.
I have been thinking about what I might do to change the odds in my favour, in the event of a theoretical rematch. There are some ways I can trim team value off of my team and that might well have been enough to give me a real shot at victory. I recently levelled up a dwarf to get Leader which grants a bonus reroll and I think I should get rid of one of my regular rerolls. This would have dropped me by 50k team value and put me below Umbra's team which is a big advantage. Secondly I could fire my extra dwarf on the bench to free up another 70k of room. If I did this I would have 90k of inducement money to work with and I could have easily thrown another 60k of cash at it to get a wizard. That would definitely be enough to swing the game my way, at least potentially.
My real problem though was that my team didn't have enough gas in the tank in terms of raw power. Rather than a wizard I think what I would really want is 4 or 5 extra skills on my players to make up that 90k difference. If I take my current team and add 2 copies of Guard and 2.5 copies of Mighty Blow to make up that 90k I am much more likely to be able to just outbrawl Umbra. I still don't think it is a great matchup but at that point I have better ball handlers than him, vastly more Guard, Mighty Blow and Block. He has strength, certainly, but the game looks a lot more even.
So what I need to do this season is level up like crazy, getting good skills on all the players that need them, and be prepared to trim down my team as necessary. I need to make sure that every point of team value is absolutely maximized, and I do that by getting more Guard and Mighty Blow and cutting back in the two ways I can cut back.
In terms of play during the game I clearly need to pay attention to the weather. My play was a strong one under normal circumstances, but I made a mistake. Still, with 2 minute turns stuff like that is going to happen. There was one thing I did that generated some discussion though, which was to run a dwarf around to Umbra's backfield to pressure the ball carrier. Both Umbra and Ziggyny thought this was a terrible plan because dwarves need to be in a pile to use all their Guard and win the fight.
In general I agree with that. The Guard should be in the pile. However, one of the dwarves I sent to the backfield to harass Umbra's ball carrier was my runner. My runners don't have Guard or Mighty Blow so I don't get much from having them in the pile, and the runner caused a high strength orc to dash off to pin him down and I think that is actually good for me. I can't win the pile if all the orcs are there because I only have two more copies of Guard than Umbra does and I have way less strength. Using the runner to get rid of a powerful orc seemed good to me, or at least as good as anything else that runner was doing.
However, I also sent a blitzer to the backfield once, and that blitzer had both Guard and Mighty Blow. He did draw off two orcs, which is great, and honestly if I can consistently get two orcs to run off after a single dwarf I should do that every time! However, I could have probably found a stupid lineman to accomplish the same goal and not wasted the blitzer on it. I think it is a fine plan to send a dwarf to the back field to make protecting the ball hard, but I should have made sure the dwarf doing it was always someone who is has little else to offer.
I can't complain about my season. I got a third/fourth place result in a group of sixteen players, and I lost only two games in the entire season - one due to not being able to show up, and one to the eventual champion, Umbra. I learned a bit about how to handle that particular matchup, and I will be more ready next season to crunch the necks of whoever gets in my way.
Time for more Blood Bowl!
Wednesday, December 9, 2015
Finding the level
I have been doing some laddering in Hearthstone, aiming to hit Rank 5 to get my free stuff each month. Hitting Rank 5 isn't particularly challenging, but actually pushing past that to Legend has so far eluded me. Mostly it is just the time committment - getting to Rank 5 and then winning 25 more games than I lose is going to take a lot of time even if I play well and have the right deck.
And that is not to say I am playing perfectly! I still only have 30 games or so logged with my current favourite deck (Reno Handlock) and it is clear that I have a lot to learn. I have all the cards for it, so I can't blame my collection, but it is a really complicated deck and requires a lot of practice to use correctly.
My brain doesn't quite read this game right. I know that there are some matchups that I am going to struggle with massively and some I should find easy, but somehow my brain keeps suggesting that since I can reach Rank 5 I should be just steamrolling everyone at Rank 13 without any losses. After all, I am better than the Rank 13 players!
But it doesn't work that way.
If I face off against midrange Hunter all day then sure, I will crush it big time. They can't deal with a deck with a lot of big threats and 30 points of healing in it. Even face Hunter seems like a good matchup because all I have to do is find Reno, play him, and laugh all the way to the bank.
Unfortunately I get totally wrecked by the new Entomb control Priest that seems to be a huge force on the ladder. Even if I am better than the Priest player I doubt very much I can pressure them into making serious errors. Their play against me is extremely straightforward. When I face them, I just accept that I have a 66% loss rate at least.
I need to rewire my brain somehow, to make my instincts get in line with reality. Even when I am only middling on the ladder there are still terrible matchups and terrible luck that can easily hand me a bunch of losses in a row. I shouldn't expect to win each game, only expect to win enough games that I will slowly push my way up the rankings. Even though my instinct says I should win until I face people that are better than me, reality says otherwise.
Hearthstone is definitely a game of skill, though clearly luck plays a big role in individual games. Strange how I can't seem to convince myself of that emotionally, even though I understand it intellectually.
And that is not to say I am playing perfectly! I still only have 30 games or so logged with my current favourite deck (Reno Handlock) and it is clear that I have a lot to learn. I have all the cards for it, so I can't blame my collection, but it is a really complicated deck and requires a lot of practice to use correctly.
My brain doesn't quite read this game right. I know that there are some matchups that I am going to struggle with massively and some I should find easy, but somehow my brain keeps suggesting that since I can reach Rank 5 I should be just steamrolling everyone at Rank 13 without any losses. After all, I am better than the Rank 13 players!
But it doesn't work that way.
If I face off against midrange Hunter all day then sure, I will crush it big time. They can't deal with a deck with a lot of big threats and 30 points of healing in it. Even face Hunter seems like a good matchup because all I have to do is find Reno, play him, and laugh all the way to the bank.
Unfortunately I get totally wrecked by the new Entomb control Priest that seems to be a huge force on the ladder. Even if I am better than the Priest player I doubt very much I can pressure them into making serious errors. Their play against me is extremely straightforward. When I face them, I just accept that I have a 66% loss rate at least.
I need to rewire my brain somehow, to make my instincts get in line with reality. Even when I am only middling on the ladder there are still terrible matchups and terrible luck that can easily hand me a bunch of losses in a row. I shouldn't expect to win each game, only expect to win enough games that I will slowly push my way up the rankings. Even though my instinct says I should win until I face people that are better than me, reality says otherwise.
Hearthstone is definitely a game of skill, though clearly luck plays a big role in individual games. Strange how I can't seem to convince myself of that emotionally, even though I understand it intellectually.
Wednesday, October 28, 2015
One dozen
I am all growed up as an Arena player in Hearthstone - today I finally got to 12 wins, which is the maximum possible. I was so close to the perfect run, sitting at 11-0 with a super strong deck, but against my twelfth opponent I drew badly and missed my turn 2 drop. That set me back hard on tempo and it took seven turns for me to struggle back. I thought I had finally stabilized when my opponent dropped Avenging Wrath, clearing my board and dropping me to 3 health. No problem, I thought - I can just drop a couple minions into play and then never take damage again!
I'll be fine!
Then my dastardly foe windmill slammed Tirion fucking Fordring into play. (I can't see my opponent in Hearthstone, but I know they were windmill slamming it, interface be damned.)
I was not fine.
That guy is just not fair! At least I can console myself with the fact that whether I played that game perfectly or not is absolutely irrelevant. All my opponent had to do was trade well, put some pressure on, and perform said windmill slam. Good game! However, I can't be too sad. At least I got beat by the greatest paladin of all time, and I do like me my paladins.
The next game got me my twelfth win without much issue though, as I managed to leverage my own completely unfair cards. Turns out that Flamewaker x 2 plus 11 spells to trigger them leads to some pretty lopsided games.
I find comparing my deck's power score on the Hearth Arena system to my performance pretty interesting. My score was 64.9, which is pretty average if you draft the way the site recommends, or just draft well on your own. That score doesn't take into account your deck's synergies though and this deck certainly felt like by far the strongest I had ever drafted. I had everything covered - great board clears, big removal, and a solid cast of dudes with a reasonable curve. I didn't have any absurd legendaries but honestly Flamestrike fills the role of 'big cost card that just wins the game' pretty well. Especially when you have +2 Spellpower and a Flamewaker in play! PEWPEW
The thing that really put it over the top is that in addition to all the great removal and Flamewaker goodness I even had a lot of small stuff going for me. I had dragon and mech synergies that both came home a lot, a Mad Scientist / Secret combo, and three mech sources of Spare Parts to fuel Flamewaker damage spewing. It wasn't just a stack of good cards, but rather had all kinds of small things working together, and that package was *so* much more deadly than the individual card scores indicate.
Now I am back at it, hunting for yet another brutal set of cards that can let me ascend to the sky on a stairway made of shattered dreams and ragequits.
My decklist:
Zombie Chow
Clockwork Gnome
Amani Berserker
Loot Hoarder
Mad Scientist
Sorcerer's Apprentice
Haunted Creeper
Boneguard Lieutenant
Flamecannon x 2
Harvest Golem
Jungle Panther
Tinkertown Technician
Soot Spewer
Flamewaker x 2
Counterspell
Mechanical Yeti
Twilight Guardian
Dalaran Aspirant
Polymorph
Silver Hand Knight
Spectral Knight
Kvaldir Raider
Flame Lance
Blizzard
Drakonid Crusher
Flamestrike x 2
Force Tank Max
I'll be fine!
Then my dastardly foe windmill slammed Tirion fucking Fordring into play. (I can't see my opponent in Hearthstone, but I know they were windmill slamming it, interface be damned.)
I was not fine.
That guy is just not fair! At least I can console myself with the fact that whether I played that game perfectly or not is absolutely irrelevant. All my opponent had to do was trade well, put some pressure on, and perform said windmill slam. Good game! However, I can't be too sad. At least I got beat by the greatest paladin of all time, and I do like me my paladins.
The next game got me my twelfth win without much issue though, as I managed to leverage my own completely unfair cards. Turns out that Flamewaker x 2 plus 11 spells to trigger them leads to some pretty lopsided games.
I find comparing my deck's power score on the Hearth Arena system to my performance pretty interesting. My score was 64.9, which is pretty average if you draft the way the site recommends, or just draft well on your own. That score doesn't take into account your deck's synergies though and this deck certainly felt like by far the strongest I had ever drafted. I had everything covered - great board clears, big removal, and a solid cast of dudes with a reasonable curve. I didn't have any absurd legendaries but honestly Flamestrike fills the role of 'big cost card that just wins the game' pretty well. Especially when you have +2 Spellpower and a Flamewaker in play! PEWPEW
The thing that really put it over the top is that in addition to all the great removal and Flamewaker goodness I even had a lot of small stuff going for me. I had dragon and mech synergies that both came home a lot, a Mad Scientist / Secret combo, and three mech sources of Spare Parts to fuel Flamewaker damage spewing. It wasn't just a stack of good cards, but rather had all kinds of small things working together, and that package was *so* much more deadly than the individual card scores indicate.
Now I am back at it, hunting for yet another brutal set of cards that can let me ascend to the sky on a stairway made of shattered dreams and ragequits.
My decklist:
Zombie Chow
Clockwork Gnome
Amani Berserker
Loot Hoarder
Mad Scientist
Sorcerer's Apprentice
Haunted Creeper
Boneguard Lieutenant
Flamecannon x 2
Harvest Golem
Jungle Panther
Tinkertown Technician
Soot Spewer
Flamewaker x 2
Counterspell
Mechanical Yeti
Twilight Guardian
Dalaran Aspirant
Polymorph
Silver Hand Knight
Spectral Knight
Kvaldir Raider
Flame Lance
Blizzard
Drakonid Crusher
Flamestrike x 2
Force Tank Max
Tuesday, December 24, 2013
I suck
There are a lot of games in the world where I am pretty good. Given an equal practice period I would happily go up against anyone at nearly any game you can name. Holy crap do I ever suck at bowling though.
That's right, I got beat in bowling by my seven year old child. I also got beat by my dad, but that is a lot more reasonable since he actually has done some bowling in the past and is good at that sort of game. At least we don't have any worries about me getting an inflated ego this Christmas season.
That's right, I got beat in bowling by my seven year old child. I also got beat by my dad, but that is a lot more reasonable since he actually has done some bowling in the past and is good at that sort of game. At least we don't have any worries about me getting an inflated ego this Christmas season.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)