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Solo Faction Tournament Inquiry


Jesy Blue

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So in watching the results of the big tournies in the last few months, they are still following the set up of 2nd edition, being solo faction. 

However, third edition specifically mentions declaring factions after seeing the scheme pool, so why are we not leaving that open?  Everyone declaring factions simultaneously, then masters, then build crews. 

The only thing I can think of is for every strategy and pool, there may be a perfect keyword, so it would always end up being mirror matches with the top players as logic would dictate X crew for this build.  I don't play logically so I wouldn't know if this was even possible.

 

Is there a reason we stick to the mono-faction ruling or do you think it's time for a change?

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4 hours ago, Jesy Blue said:

The only thing I can think of is for every strategy and pool, there may be a perfect keyword, so it would always end up being mirror matches with the top players as logic would dictate X crew for this build.  I don't play logically so I wouldn't know if this was even possible.

Unless the other player also knows this and pick the counter of that perfect crew... but, maybe that other player already thought on that!

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But it’s so simple. All I have to do is divine from what I know of you. Are you the sort of man who would pick the perfect crew, or its counter? Now, a clever man would get the counter, because he would know that only a great fool would reach for what he was given. I’m not a great fool, so I can clearly not choose the perfect crew for that pool. But you must have known I was not a great fool; you would have counted on it, so I can clearly not choose the counter for that crew...

 

Jokes aside. It's probably better as a mono-faction thing. I don't think that many option would be needed to play competitively and it would be very unconfortable carrying that ammount of models for the players who own more than one faction. And it also help to see the balance of the factions and the masters more easily as each faction should be able to be competitive in all pools. That will also help to detect outliers and swing the nerf bat or give a small buff when it's needed.

However It could be great changing the format sometimes to allow X number of masters from 2 or 3 factions to give some tournaments a different flavour, but always keeping the options more or less limited. My opinion tho.

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As someone who is split over Ressers/Neverborn, I would love this!

However, at the competitive level, I imagine it would break the game a bit/result in some crews never seeing play. Crew X might be the best in their faction at Y, but if another faction has a better option, why take X?

So even if it didn't make it all the same few crews, it'd definitely push out some of the crews from competitive play I reckon.

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7 hours ago, Jesy Blue said:

 

Is there a reason we stick to the mono-faction ruling or do you think it's time for a change?

If you read any edition then declare faction happens far later in the game set up, so it's not new for this edition. There has never been a rule for single faction for tournament, but rather its convention. Faction has been popular because as a general rule it's easier to own multiple masters of the same faction.  We're also quite tribal so like to have our group. 

The UK has done events as fixed master, fixed faction, trinity ( 3 masters of your choice), fixed master but not faction, fixed pool and open at various times over m2, but fixed faction is by far the most common. 

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12 hours ago, Adran said:

The UK has done events as fixed master, fixed faction, trinity ( 3 masters of your choice), fixed master but not faction, fixed pool and open at various times over m2, but fixed faction is by far the most common. 

Great initiatives! Those kind of changes help to keep the game fresh and shake up the meta a bit...

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21 minutes ago, Ogid said:

Great initiatives! Those kind of changes help to keep the game fresh and shake up the meta a bit...

As a general rule I don't think they were widely considered as good options by people, and fell by the wayside. I'm not sure that enough people were finding the game stale enough to make this sort of change last.  But every meta is different, and they often get stuck in different loops, so its something to consider if you want to run events.

 

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The ideal is that a meta game exist for less time than it takes to solve, and that you change the game regularly to force the meta to evolve and keep things fresh.  MX's randomized objectives and large keyword pool already create a lot of game to solve, coupled with;  new strategies & schemes via gaining grounds in January, and new models released at GenCon in August the game tends to stay fairly fresh.

So I suspect there's been limited uptake / longevity in alternate tournament formats is there's already more than enough for players to chew on.

On why fixed faction is the standard; 

  1. Most events publish their objectives in advance, so players are already fixing factions after seeing the objectives.
  2. Fixing at the it's the first decision players make each round makes sense.
  3. It makes sense from a player identity perspective;  I can have Arcanist themed tokens and an Arcanist tee-shirt on.
  4. Factions are something that has played into game balance and design.

Letting players pick from any keyword each round would seem to just end up with competitive players playing the best three keywords, and a more stagnant meta, IMHO.

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1 hour ago, Adran said:

As a general rule I don't think they were widely considered as good options by people, and fell by the wayside. I'm not sure that enough people were finding the game stale enough to make this sort of change last.  But every meta is different, and they often get stuck in different loops, so its something to consider if you want to run events.

I agree most tournaments should be standard, but from time to time trying some quirky modes aren't bad; but this is 100% personal taste tho. I'm talking about modes that force the players to make or play with non-standard crews. 2 Ideas as example:

  • Swap tournament: As usual but before deployment a coin is flipped or something like that: 50% probabilities to swap crews for that game.
  • Double or nothing: The player chooses 2 leaders, one of which must be a henchman (no free effigy unless both leaders are Henchmans, 45 SS game, players can hire from both leader's keywords)
1 hour ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

Trinity in particular would be great for my group. Lots of new people with only 1-3 masters, and often spread over two factions.

For cases like that one (in casual games). I wouldn't see a problem in that player being able to choose any of his 3 masters versus a player who owns 3 or more masters from the same faction... specialy is that player is less experienced.

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1 hour ago, Ogid said:

Swap tournament: As usual but before deployment a coin is flipped or something like that: 50% probabilities to swap crews for that game.

That's the worst tournament idea I've ever heard. People get really attached to their models and generally don't want other people touching them. Plus imagine someone else accidentally breaking one of YOUR models during a game. Also a solid hoser is just to take a summoning master and hope they don't own the models that master can summon, and since summoners are already always precariously positioned to be the best masters because of the extra model advantage I think that these tournaments would heavily favor players who regularly play Dreamer, Asami or Kirai. Those three need their summons more than the other summoners and it would just be a slog since that's always what you'd find yourself playing into, as soon as the meta got solved in 1 or 2 tournaments. And again, people REALLY don't like having other people handle their minis.

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Well, you still need to declare faction before master, even in a fixed faction tournament, because its relevant information to what master you pick. Arcanists for example have a lot of constructs with armor, and nearly all their versitile models have armor. So if your opponent declares Arcanists maybe you pick a worse keyword for the pool, but a keyword with more access to armor piercing. The reverse it true too. If you declare Arcanists and your opponent declares Thunders, maybe you dont pick Colette even if its a great pool for the showgirls.

TL,DR even in a fixed faction setting declaring faction first is relevant to decision making.

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1 hour ago, Thedeadclaw said:

That's the worst tournament idea I've ever heard. People get really attached to their models and generally don't want other people touching them. Plus imagine someone else accidentally breaking one of YOUR models during a game. Also a solid hoser is just to take a summoning master and hope they don't own the models that master can summon, and since summoners are already always precariously positioned to be the best masters because of the extra model advantage I think that these tournaments would heavily favor players who regularly play Dreamer, Asami or Kirai. Those three need their summons more than the other summoners and it would just be a slog since that's always what you'd find yourself playing into, as soon as the meta got solved in 1 or 2 tournaments. And again, people REALLY don't like having other people handle their minis.

Haha, I think you are overeacting a bit. How many models do you break each game? People who play this kind of games are careful enough to not let that kind of things happen; I've played with other people's model and they with mines just fine. It can understand that concern, but I don't think it's that problematic.

About the summoning part, the above is a sketch so I've not covered all the cases; but obviously the idea is that both players have the same chances with the same crew. Each player have to put in the table all the models he owns that could participate in that game, including summonables, alternative forms and the like. If you bring The Dreamer without summons it's ok, but you have 50% probabilities to get stuck playing that.

But as I said, it was just an idea for some minor tournament to try something different after 20 with standard rules; I know not everyone like those alternative formats... and it's fine.

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9 minutes ago, Ogid said:

Haha, I think you are overeacting a bit. How many models do you break each game?

That's very disingenous tbh. I don't break models every game, and most people don't. But Wyrd models are notably spindly at times and some models are just prone to snapping. One of my Stitched Together breaks at the attachment points crazy easy and it's only because it's broken a few times that I know exactly how to handle it so it doesn't break. Some people don't pin models either, and I know for a fact someone not being careful could snap off my unpinned pale rider. It's not about people not trying to be thoughtful, it's that we know our mod ls better. And frankly I've seen other people have MUCH more frequent breakage so again, yeah no. And that doesn't even begin to touch on how much people don't like other people touching their minis, even without then being broken.

I think even with that information it's absolutely possible to within a few tournaments figure out a niche crew that no one  else is going to know how to run so that you have an edge. (ex: running a mix of out of faction models and ook models in something like Outcast Barbados or Neverborn Hinamatsu to have a weird mix that aren't intuitively synergistic) I think if you wanna sit down with a buddy and play like this that's one thing. But this is a terrible idea for a tournament where you're trying to be competetively viable and you're going to be playing with strangers who will be using your minis.

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1 hour ago, Thedeadclaw said:

That's very disingenous tbh. I don't break models every game, and most people don't. But Wyrd models are notably spindly at times and some models are just prone to snapping. One of my Stitched Together breaks at the attachment points crazy easy and it's only because it's broken a few times that I know exactly how to handle it so it doesn't break. Some people don't pin models either, and I know for a fact someone not being careful could snap off my unpinned pale rider. It's not about people not trying to be thoughtful, it's that we know our mod ls better. And frankly I've seen other people have MUCH more frequent breakage so again, yeah no. And that doesn't even begin to touch on how much people don't like other people touching their minis, even without then being broken.

I don't have that many experience with Wyrd's models. In other games I had no problem doing that, but maybe you got a point there. Gotcha! I'll keep my (smashy) hands away from your models :P

I guess the format could be adapted so each one touch and move their own models if this were a problem for most of the players tho.

1 hour ago, Thedeadclaw said:

I think even with that information it's absolutely possible to within a few tournaments figure out a niche crew that no one  else is going to know how to run so that you have an edge. (ex: running a mix of out of faction models and ook models in something like Outcast Barbados or Neverborn Hinamatsu to have a weird mix that aren't intuitively synergistic) I think if you wanna sit down with a buddy and play like this that's one thing. But this is a terrible idea for a tournament where you're trying to be competetively viable and you're going to be playing with strangers who will be using your minis.

Strangers and models aside, that's exactly the point! Weird stuff all around! If both players make standard crews, then you got to play some new crew that you might like. Or you can try to cheese and make a weird crossbred crew (but a good player should know how to adapt after reading the cards anyway) or even if you know you are playing versus a much better player than smashed you the last 10 games, then you can try to make the crapiest crew you can think off (and then get destroyed again by that player even when he got the crappy crew XD).

However, the idea of these formats isn't creating a new standard for a highly competitive enviroment and run it 10 times, but to create one crazy one-shot event to run once and try something new at the same time. I think we have different kind of tournaments in mind.

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If you want to do a crew swap tournament then go ahead, I wouldn't sign up for something like that because games would take forever. I can play my own crews because I've practiced with them, I can't keep track of how I would want to play every last crew in the game.

Fun alt formats for me would be: a master triad, a single master per player and of course a single master for the event that everyone must play in every game. :) 

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5 hours ago, Ludvig said:

If you want to do a crew swap tournament then go ahead, I wouldn't sign up for something like that because games would take forever. I can play my own crews because I've practiced with them, I can't keep track of how I would want to play every last crew in the game.

Fun alt formats for me would be: a master triad, a single master per player and of course a single master for the event that everyone must play in every game. :) 

I want to see a "battle of the best" tournament, where each player picks one of two master that use a shared gimmick (attacker gets to choose their master first). So Euripidies vs Raspy, Sonnia vs Kaeris, Mcmorning vs Brewmaster, etc. to see which master is the best of their gimmick. 

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23 hours ago, Ogid said:

I don't have that many experience with Wyrd's models. In other games I had no problem doing that, but maybe you got a point there. Gotcha! I'll keep my (smashy) hands away from your models :P

I guess the format could be adapted so each one touch and move their own models if this were a problem for most of the players tho.

I hope part of the issue is that you're conflating "fun idea for something to do when you know most (if not all) of the people involved" and "fun idea for something to do at a tournament with people you've never met before."

23 hours ago, Ogid said:

However, the idea of these formats isn't creating a new standard for a highly competitive enviroment and run it 10 times, but to create one crazy one-shot event to run once and try something new at the same time. I think we have different kind of tournaments in mind.

You can force yourself to play a "non-standard" crew every single game you play.  If you feel that you need a non-standard format to allow yourself to play a "non-standard" crew, you would be better off examining why you feel that to be the case.

A lot of what I see about same lists in a "competitive" environment sounds an awful lot like people being afraid to take the risk of trying something new to see if it might work better than what they're used to, or what everyone else has said they should do.

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1 hour ago, solkan said:

I hope part of the issue is that you're conflating "fun idea for something to do when you know most (if not all) of the people involved" and "fun idea for something to do at a tournament with people you've never met before."

I think that I have had better experience with players. A friend of mine for example make a lot of introductory games using his models and so far so good... I don't think anyone is going to mistreat models, specialy when those are borrowed (and you are right there)

1 hour ago, solkan said:

You can force yourself to play a "non-standard" crew every single game you play.  If you feel that you need a non-standard format to allow yourself to play a "non-standard" crew, you would be better off examining why you feel that to be the case.

A lot of what I see about same lists in a "competitive" environment sounds an awful lot like people being afraid to take the risk of trying something new to see if it might work better than what they're used to, or what everyone else has said they should do.

I rarely play twice with the same crew, and try a lot of unconventional picks; I don't need excuses to do that XD

And that's one big advantage of those kind of formats, it forces people to go out of their confort zones, think outside of the box and use different lists.

But in the end is all about having fun; If someone doesn't like these formats, then there is no need for that player to go to these... as I said before these should be the exception, not the norm.

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