Leave your mark post errata

[spooky_squirrel]

4 minutes ago, MCOLL81 said:

I was initially of the same opinion. Or at least skeptical with them being "beta". But there's already been resounding buy-in from players and TOs in our region.

I hope that they cool down just a little. The reason for the beta test is to open up the field for better exploit/problem discovery. The schemes and strategies might change every week, which isn't good for organized play (no stability) or player planning and practice purposes (strat/scheme scenarios announced a week or two in advance). It might be interesting to set one up that accounts for this, but the results of the tournament should be treated as just a more intense testing session.

Up here in my region there's excitement to test them too, which is great. The more of us that test them, the better the data is for Wyrd's team.

[Da Git]

On 01/08/2017 at 5:27 AM, Bengt said:

I've never found either the triggers or the "resilience" of Df 6 Wd 4 even remotely useful, but to each their own. If they can't mess with schemes/strats they'll be forever consigned to the shelf.

That mattered in the game a against me, it made me cheat when I didn't want to. They're also brilliant for denying Claim Jump, Interference or any other schemes that require no enemies nearby. 

I still think you're massively underselling them. 

[Ludvig]

10 hours ago, MCOLL81 said:

I was initially of the same opinion. Or at least skeptical with them being "beta". But there's already been resounding buy-in from players and TOs in our region.

 

What?! Are people going to be running their tournament with rules that change every week? That just sounds weird to me, how do you prep for that?How do you make sure every player has the latest printout that possiibly released a day before the tournament? The schemes you posted in the tournament description miggt be gone altogether when the tournament finally hits or they've altered two or three times. 

[WWHSD]

It seems like adding a bit to GH2017 that makes it so that immunity to conditions is ignored for conditions that are part of a scheme would make more sense than starting to use GG2018 while it's in beta.

[spooky_squirrel]

1 hour ago, Ludvig said:

What?! Are people going to be running their tournament with rules that change every week? That just sounds weird to me, how do you prep for that?How do you make sure every player has the latest printout that possiibly released a day before the tournament? The schemes you posted in the tournament description miggt be gone altogether when the tournament finally hits or they've altered two or three times. 

That's exactly my concern. Rules in test are not stable enough for a formal competition.
I do software development to pay the bills, and there's a reason we don't develop on production servers and don't ship code that's under development or in testing to customers. It's not stable, it's subject to change, and with emergent technologies, half the features might have to be pared away to bring it to something usable, functional, and maintainable. Heck, we even keep our QA efforts off of our dev environments as much as possible because we know stuff is broken or wonky, we're making tweaks under the hood that aren't going to do anything about that wonky behavior for at least a few more man-days of effort.

If I'm a TO and I'm putting together a tournament, I'm going to want to have a set of strats and schemes already planned, tables and terrain already planned, and players who are as prepared as they can be to go into timed rounds.
As a player, it can get really frustrating to lose or tie in a tournament game because you only made it to Turn 2-3 because you didn't realize how underprepared for the match your opponent was. It only gets worse when you have to confirm what the schemes actually state and how they actually score before you can move on to hiring your crews and picking your schemes based off of your opponents' crew. So on of the pitfalls that I can control as a TO is making sure that the scenarios themselves aren't wonky.

Dedicated playtest games can take as long as they need, and should.  All five turns are needed, six if the continuation flip calls for it. If both players are taking notes and those notes get to @Aaron and company, then they have useful information. They can look at how the strategy and schemes did and did not effect the game. It also allows for testing all schemes.

Tournament games are bound to a time limit. Unstable rulesets don't enable making the time limit, and the results of a game that does not at least reach Turn 5 don't describe the full impact/effect of the strategies and schemes. People defensively prepare for schemes that aren't incremental just in case they don't get to Turn 4, and this will eliminate those schemes from testing in that environment. There's even a chance that people will forget to play out a scheme because there's too much going on and too little time to plan for a scheme that they've never had a chance to practice and internalize.

[Ludvig]

Since it is a tournament rules set I think testing under time constraints is good, all games don't reach turn 5 which actually influenced the switch towards more and more incremental scoring and no schemes requiring you to reach turn 5.

A tournament is still no place for testing new stuff, I would consider it a major dealbreaker. Making a house-rule about immunity and scheme conditions is another matter, that seems fair as long as you tell players in advance.

[Bengt]

10 hours ago, Da Git said:

That mattered in the game a against me, it made me cheat when I didn't want to. They're also brilliant for denying Claim Jump, Interference or any other schemes that require no enemies nearby. 

I still think you're massively underselling them. 

Yes Raptors are currently great at affecting some schemes and strats and I hire Raptors for this reason; this has been a hypothetical discussion about them no longer affecting scoring. In many games they'll have a turn or two when their services are no longer needed for scoring, and they will then flap about getting in the way, hitting stuff or what have you, and obviously this has an effect on the game, they are still models with 2 AP etc. But I've only found this part cost effective because they are "free" (as their cost comes from the scoring budget as it were), I would not hire them for this.

3 hours ago, Ludvig said:

What?! Are people going to be running their tournament with rules that change every week? That just sounds weird to me, how do you prep for that?How do you make sure every player has the latest printout that possiibly released a day before the tournament? The schemes you posted in the tournament description miggt be gone altogether when the tournament finally hits or they've altered two or three times. 

Is this very likely to have weekly updates? The final document isn't due until January and there isn't any deadline for sending it to the printer so it could be done at a more leisurely pace with a handful of updates between now and then.

[Ludvig]

11 minutes ago, Bengt said:

Is this very likely to have weekly updates? The final document isn't due until January and there isn't any deadline for sending it to the printer so it could be done at a more leisurely pace with a handful of updates between now and then.

I'd say it's very likely yes. As far as I know all of the betas so far have had weekly updates.

[Adran]

3 hours ago, Ludvig said:

What?! Are people going to be running their tournament with rules that change every week? That just sounds weird to me, how do you prep for that?How do you make sure every player has the latest printout that possiibly released a day before the tournament? The schemes you posted in the tournament description miggt be gone altogether when the tournament finally hits or they've altered two or three times. 

Isn't that the true test of skill for list buiilding- playing with a set of schemes/ Stratergies that you have never seen before. As long as the event organiser has a copy of the rules being used for that event, then it should be fine. It doesn't even need to be the latest set. Not all events pre-warn people what they will be doing 

[madaxeman]

3 hours ago, Ludvig said:

What?! Are people going to be running their tournament with rules that change every week?

I don't think anyone is suggesting this is happening, or is even suggesting it is even maybe going to happen.

There's a beta version of GG18 doing the rounds (as is the case every year) and it sounds like those involved in the beta group appear to quite like it so far. 

That's all. 

Almost everything else on this thread appears to be baseless speculation, resting on an unsupported assumption that Wyrd will introduce a series of changes in GG18 that make buying some of their models an entirely pointless exercise.

Given that this would undermine their entire business model, and in the absence of any evidence t the contrary, I for one am kinda skeptical that this will be the case... 

 

[Ludvig]

7 minutes ago, madaxeman said:

I don't think anyone is suggesting this is happening, or is even suggesting it is even maybe going to happen.

There's a beta version of GG18 doing the rounds (as is the case every year) and it sounds like those involved in the beta group appear to quite like it so far. 

That's all. 

Almost everything else on this thread appears to be baseless speculation, resting on an unsupported assumption that Wyrd will introduce a series of changes in GG18 that make buying some of their models an entirely pointless exercise.

Given that this would undermine their entire business model, and in the absence of any evidence t the contrary, I for one am kinda skeptical that this will be the case... 

 

There's actually a post saying exactly that, that the gg18 beta changes will be effective come september because their entire meta will abandon gg17 the minute the beta hits. But you are right, I'll refrain from exclamation marks becausr like you I'm fairly confident the game won't break.

[Bengt]

13 minutes ago, Ludvig said:

I'd say it's very likely yes. As far as I know all of the betas so far have had weekly updates.

We've only had model betas though. And the unwashed masses has only been let in at the end, shortly before the book had to be finished.

[Ludvig]

9 minutes ago, Adran said:

Isn't that the true test of skill for list buiilding- playing with a set of schemes/ Stratergies that you have never seen before. As long as the event organiser has a copy of the rules being used for that event, then it should be fine. It doesn't even need to be the latest set. Not all events pre-warn people what they will be doing 

I could see borrowing a few schemes but if you're not going to use the latest beta I don't see the point at all. You woulsn't provide testing on the latest iterayion and you might be playing schemes that were deemed unplayable and.removed. To each their own I guess.

[Ludvig]

9 minutes ago, Bengt said:

We've only had model betas though. And the unwashed masses has only been let in at the end, shortly before the book had to be finished.

Well I'm sure someone somewhere knows since they have had closed betas with what I can only assume were forum users and/or staff. Might not mean they do it the same way this time around anyway, I guess we'll have to wait until the beta hits.

I'll be keeping to the current GG unless I decide to do some weird story thing and the new ones seem interedsting. In that case I wouldn't call it a gaining grounda event though and might as well alter them or write my own schemes to suit my tastes.

[Gnomezilla]

Much more buzz about open beta GG2018 now, after errata, than when it was first announced a few weeks ago. Good for GenCon extra hype, but curious nonetheless.

That the interest has spiked does say that tournament goers are not content with GG2017 which is good data in itself.

Personally I would like to see slight clarification of the wording to this year's new schemes as one is fine (Recover Evidence), one is one word away from being fine (Tail 'Em needs the same "unactivated" targeting restriction as Accusation!), and one is intriguing but unachievable in its current form (Last Stand must lose the outnumbered requirement and could probably survive losing another hurdle). This on top of the clarification of which scheme conditions, if any, that condition immunity blocks (there's an argument to say immunity never helps, but I think I would be ok with immunity blocking numbered schemes' conditions...can't rob Hamelin of a major part of his kit...always/doubles/suited schemes must be unblockable though.)

[spooky_squirrel]

11 hours ago, Ludvig said:

Since it is a tournament rules set I think testing under time constraints is good, all games don't reach turn 5 which actually influenced the switch towards more and more incremental scoring and no schemes requiring you to reach turn 5.

Agreed, some of the testing should be done under time constraints as well. Ideally when the general gist of the scheme is smooth enough where the people testing it can give the time stress an honest shake. If we're looking at two week iterations, then the second week would be when I would introduce time-constraint testing (one week iteration would be end of week), unless I've got some playtesting buddies who are willing to make a weekend of internalizing a ruleset and going ham on stress testing a scenario.

If the strategy and scheme changes are less than a day old, I would lean away from time constrained testing because I would not expect all players to internalize them at a glance, which will create an artificial slowdown in the game not unlike playing against someone who is playing their first full game at a tournament. Ideally you'll at least get through Turn 3 (6-8 point game max, depending on the schemes), if for no other reason to see how they balance out against each other in a reasonable tournament game expectation. This helps determine if that scheme should be on a suit, number, pair, or joker (if it's going to be kept).

That slowdown isn't just on the play time, it's also on the crew construction. Later on in the testing period when we're fine tuning the scenarios crew construction for announced scenarios is something that can be done, because we can be reasonably sure that those strategies and schemes will still involve similar moving parts. Crew construction being part of the round time at a tournament is why it is players who can plan (and practice) crews prior to an event can get their stuff to the board and are more likely to complete Turns 3 and 4 (if not a full game).

So one way to introduce time-constrained testing is to play a 120-minute game in 100-110 minutes with actual scenario analysis, crew hiring, and scheme selection done off the clock; docking yourself 10-20 minutes to simulate what would happen in a normal (non-playtest) tournament game: first time looking at the table and terrain, introduction to opponent, tweaking of crews based off of opposing faction and terrain on the table, revealing/review of the crews, and scheme selection. This approach would even work on strategies and schemes that were posted within the hour.

[Sybarite]

Sorry but "soulstone miner does almost the same thing" is kind of far off. They cant pop up within 6 of a deployment or enemies and cannot teleport. It's a huge difference.

Then again. Just means we're not playing easy mode leave your mark anymore.

 

Also derailing the entire thread because of a feeling that raptors will be useless in gg2018, was that a great thing to do Bengt? ^^'

[retnab]

2 hours ago, Sybarite said:

Sorry but "soulstone miner does almost the same thing" is kind of far off. They cant pop up within 6 of a deployment or enemies and cannot teleport. It's a huge difference.

Then again. Just means we're not playing easy mode leave your mark anymore.

We already have one up on the other factions with PP even with its current state, and popping up 6" of a deployment is still plenty to get LYM done, especially since you can still choose the flank least defended before putting your model down.

[Ludvig]

Derailing threads is sort of a tradition on these boards.

I still think practiced production makes leave your mark easy mode compared to doing it the normal way. Not that it's really so hard to do the normal way to begin with, your opponent just kind of gets a try to stop it.

[Bengt]

20 hours ago, Sybarite said:

Also derailing the entire thread because of a feeling that raptors will be useless in gg2018, was that a great thing to do Bengt? ^^'

Yes.

[BFOmega]

After using a raptor today to deny interference, confirm they're still useful.

Same goes for Practiced Production, did most of leave your mark and claim jump with it and off of a wind gamin, and used it to score all 3 points of a dig their graves game as well.