Author Topic: Doubles Tournament Feedback  (Read 6892 times)

The Everliving

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Re: Doubles Tournament Feedback
« Reply #30 on: July 01, 2014, 09:15:08 AM »
Holy cow, Todd getting praised for wisdom in a post and Troy agreeing with Keith. I must have woken up in a parallel universe this morning...

For future doubles events a tweak to the tactical objectives would be good. Some nice ideas already presented. A LOW cap (one per team, no more than 25% team points etc) might make them more palatable to a lot of players.

For what its worth I had a lot of fun playing against the Warhound and Baneblade.

I think singles events are a different animal though. I'd like to see a 'no alterations, by the rulebook' singles event before deciding what things should change.  If someone wants to bring 3 CADs, cool. Someone else brings a baneblade, someone a knight army etc.

keithb

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Re: Doubles Tournament Feedback
« Reply #31 on: July 01, 2014, 09:59:37 AM »
I'd agree, it is better to play everything out and make sure it is a problem before fixing it.

The biggest concerns I'd have honestly, are things that bog the game down and would require an increase in time for rounds.   An event already takes all day.  I wouldn't want it to be longer.

MM3791

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Re: Doubles Tournament Feedback
« Reply #32 on: July 01, 2014, 10:06:33 AM »
Right, it's a feedback thread.. just tossing around ideas.

Grimwulfe

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Re: Doubles Tournament Feedback
« Reply #33 on: July 01, 2014, 10:17:27 AM »
Chase while I do believe tweaks are needed I think Alex and Keith have a great idea in doing at least 1 tourny by the book to see how broken it is.  That way we will have a benchmark on how to adjust the game for the better.

However I will be hiring an assistant to keep track of all the book keeping during my games from here on out because that stuff is crazy!
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AstartesXXVI

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Re: Doubles Tournament Feedback
« Reply #34 on: July 01, 2014, 02:37:03 PM »
Todd's post obviously makes the most important point here: no matter what you do, you aren't going to please everyone, and people are going to continue to play the way they prefer regardless. In this regard, changing things to try and make people happy is a bit of a farce; for every person you make happy by nerfing invisibility, you probably make another one mad they can't use it the same way. The takeaway here is that change for change's sake just makes more work for you guys.

Ian's remarks earlier, though facetious, touch on a key theme throughout the length and breadth of 40k: people hate things that mess up their army and love things that they have already adapted to. The Necron guy is always going to feel assault is too good; the Ork guy will always feel like they don't have enough charge range; the Tau gunline guy will hate Tactical Objectives because he has to actually move to win the game; the Daemon guy will feel like FMCs and mass psychic powers are perfectly fine, etc. etc. It's often so obvious that I can guess what army a person plays by what they want changed.

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However I will be hiring an assistant to keep track of all the book keeping during my games from here on out because that stuff is crazy!
Having three cards in my hand that told me my objectives didn't seem all that different from having a tournament packet doing the same, frankly. I found this to be one of the simplest tournament mission sets I've seen in a while, actually: this is one of the big successes of this event to me -- the mission packet was nice and clean, and the cards made it very simple to keep track of what was going on turn to turn. People WITHOUT the cards probably had a harder experience for sure, but with the cards it was very easy for my team. We just kept the active ones out, and then flipped the capped ones into our box. I liked it largely because we didn't have to keep much track of them; once capped we just put them aside. I like the cards because you can do a lot of creative stuff with them as an event organizer in terms of missions. So they have some utility/novelty, at least.

Plus, the scoreboard looks to me pretty much comparable to previous events, at least the names I recognize are in the usual places (including my own near the bottom...WOO!). So they can't have changed things too much, no?

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It wasn't random, I lost the other day even after inflicting mass genocide on the other army. Either way you cut it the cards are not balanced. But I'd be interested in starting a poll and seeing what is the consensus.
I don't know. For one thing, it's equally random for all players involved. To me, this is on the player if someone ignored the objective (and presumably pushed for a tabling). I get that the game is supposed to emulate war, but it is still a game, and capping objectives of some kind is how you win the game.

I'm not saying you shouldn't get credit if you wipe the opponent, mind you. It's just not an effectivre argument against tactical objectives to say that you almost wiped someone and still lost. No version of the game has ever rewarded us for almost wiping out the enemy but getting no points along the way, after all.
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MM3791

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Re: Doubles Tournament Feedback
« Reply #35 on: July 01, 2014, 07:23:58 PM »
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say no comp. Here's why:

1) Tactical objectives; makes the game more diverse, and if you own the cards then the game actually goes just as fast as if you're not playing with objectives at all. It's when you are playing tactical objectives and don't use the cards, is when the game can go a lot slower.

2) Lords of War; one of the major changes in 7th ed is the vehicle damage chart, which makes vehicles tougher then they've ever been before. This edition looks like it's going to be a mech edition with lots of tanks anyway, so there should be enough regular armor to counter the LoW. You can only have one LoW in your army so it's not like you can spam them, and the really nasty ones can simply be cut out by restricting the points of the games.

Imperial Knights have had there D weapons nerfed in 7th, and the Imperial Knight Paladin looks like it will have a difficult time cracking open higher armored vehicles. Neither the Knight Paladin or Knight Errant can hurt fliers at all, so that is another counter.

3) Psychic powers; wow these were really over hyped and the 1st battle reports that surfaced when the new edition was released seemed to be using them wrong. I will say, now that it's no longer based on leadership tests, now all psykers have an equal chance of casting the exact same spell with the same number of Warp Charges(WC). A LD 10 psyker is no better then a LD 7 psyker anymore.. they are equal.

Regarding WCs, if a player wants to reliably get a WC1 spell off, he is going to want to roll at least 2 dice (because he needs a 4+ on one dice for it to go off, and it's too risky to just roll one dice) However, even with rolling two dice, it is still very possible to roll two 3's (or lower) and failing the cast. If I want to really get a WC1 spell off, I'm gonna throw down 3 dice.. the dice number is 3x the minimum casting value and my chances are pretty good. So by that guideline, if I want to cast a WC3 spell, I'm gonna throw down NINE DICE. See how quickly we can burn through dice when casting WC3 spells? All of a sudden daemons with 30 dice doesn't sound so high, since all the big summoning spells are WC3.

Now add in perils of the warp. If you're throwing down 9 dice to super reliably cast a WC3 spell, then there is a pretty good chance you'll get perils. That's not even including Deny the Witch, which is supposed to be used to stop the one spell that you hate, not every single spell your opponent casts.

4) Allies; I would still let all allies be available and players can take the penalty. People didn't do it in 6th so I doubt they will in 7th. In future doubles tourneys I'd recommend everyone treated as Allies of Convenience so people aren't rewarded or penalized for picking a certain partner.

That's my 2 cents
« Last Edit: July 01, 2014, 07:25:34 PM by MM3791 »

keithb

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Re: Doubles Tournament Feedback
« Reply #36 on: July 03, 2014, 10:23:06 AM »
2 things.

Troy has trouble keeping track of the mission when there is only one objective in the center of the table.

The random mission cards need work of some kind.  Drawing an objective that you can immediately score points off of, is unbalanced.

Parker781

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Re: Doubles Tournament Feedback
« Reply #37 on: July 03, 2014, 06:00:47 PM »
I will add a short bit of feedback.

First off the tournament was super fun I was welcomed and enjoyed all my games. Thanks for running this tourney battleground.

My first game I hated the tac obj thing. I didn't understand it. Game 2 I understood it and really liked it. It change the game from lets kill everything we can and take objects to let's kill the warlord or let's take these specific points. It is a bit unbalanced due to luck but I think that was most apparent because of the amount of cards we drew. I'd like to see these in the future And plan on buying the tac cards next time I'm in the store.

Other than that I think there needs to be some limitations to lords of war but not out completely. I have no suggestions to offer but it needs a tweak.

robpro

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Re: Doubles Tournament Feedback
« Reply #38 on: July 03, 2014, 08:42:27 PM »
Lots of good stuff in this thread! Great event, too! These were my first three games in 7th ed and they were pretty great. I got to play against 4 people I hadn't met before and 2 people I hadn't played in a doubles before, so three very enjoyable games.

I don't have much to comment on except the tactical objective cards. I think they're great for the most part (provided you can cycle through ones that are impossible to score), but it can be a bit much if your opponent gets a bunch of +D3 cards and keeps scoring 3, while you're just plugging away with 2 points per turn. Here are 2 things I think would help

1.  You should have to win by SOME amount more tactical objective card points to score a max victory for that category, or it's a draw. I recall when KP were the primary, you typically had to win by 2-3 more than your opponent to get full points, I think if you did the same thing with tactical objective cards it would help round things out.

2. You should always start with a hand of 6 cards and then discard down to three (and reshuffle the scorables into the deck).  It's bad if you get screwed in your opening hand, and there's no mulligan-like mechanic in the game. Now, it doesn't have to be draw 6 and discard to 3, thats just an example. I'm sure we could come up with something reasonable if people think this is a good general idea. Oh, and we should probably add something about being able to shuffle your opponent's tactical deck before the game starts. Now that there's cards that kind of matter, we should adopt the best practice to make sure it's all on the level.

Also, no more secret objectives. It's a pain to keep my die rolls a secret on the piece of paper and my opponent doesn't really know if I'm writing down the ones I actually rolled. It just adds more time to generating the objectives and they're so random it's not like my opponent can (usually) meaningful impact my ability to score my objectives during my turn right after I draw them.

As far as things that only matter for doubles, I would recommend reducing the Come the Apocalypse deployment restriction to 6" instead of 12," or removing it altogether. I only had 1 unit to deploy and it was a pain in the butt that didn't really impact how the game played out.  Previously, we just made everyone allies of convenience.  I don't think we have to do that, but doing something about the deployment restriction would be great.

So, thanks for the fun event and I'm looking forward to the next one! #TeamTD4W
« Last Edit: July 03, 2014, 08:46:05 PM by robpro »

Grimwulfe

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Re: Doubles Tournament Feedback
« Reply #39 on: July 07, 2014, 10:59:38 AM »
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As far as things that only matter for doubles, I would recommend reducing the Come the Apocalypse deployment restriction to 6" instead of 12," or removing it altogether. I only had 1 unit to deploy and it was a pain in the butt that didn't really impact how the game played out.  Previously, we just made everyone allies of convenience.  I don't think we have to do that, but doing something about the deployment restriction would be great.

This is really a point I would differ on.  It is a LD test really.  Playing the allies matrix the way it is adds the flavor and keeps the fun of the doubles.  Personally I dont see why it should be changed everyone can ally with everyone.  The only reason it was changed in the past was because that was not the case.  Now that we have rules for Come the Apoc I think they should be left alone.

Just my opinion.
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robpro

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Re: Doubles Tournament Feedback
« Reply #40 on: July 07, 2014, 11:20:09 AM »
Quote
As far as things that only matter for doubles, I would recommend reducing the Come the Apocalypse deployment restriction to 6" instead of 12," or removing it altogether. I only had 1 unit to deploy and it was a pain in the butt that didn't really impact how the game played out.  Previously, we just made everyone allies of convenience.  I don't think we have to do that, but doing something about the deployment restriction would be great.

This is really a point I would differ on.  It is a LD test really.  Playing the allies matrix the way it is adds the flavor and keeps the fun of the doubles.  Personally I dont see why it should be changed everyone can ally with everyone.  The only reason it was changed in the past was because that was not the case.  Now that we have rules for Come the Apoc I think they should be left alone.

Just my opinion.

Previously we let anyone ally with anyone as convenience instead of desperate. Desperate would have forced the animosity tests, but people didn't think they would be fun. Logistically its a pain to have to deploy 1k units 12" away from another 1k units. I'm not saying we get rid of the tests, just a very unfun deployment restriction.

Grimwulfe

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Re: Doubles Tournament Feedback
« Reply #41 on: July 07, 2014, 03:15:46 PM »
I hear ya Rob a valid point to say the least.  Doubles will always be one of those tournies that goes outside the norm and that's ok. 
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shwnlyns

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Re: Doubles Tournament Feedback
« Reply #42 on: July 07, 2014, 09:50:24 PM »
This is really a point I would differ on.  It is a LD test really.  Playing the allies matrix the way it is adds the flavor and keeps the fun of the doubles.  Personally I dont see why it should be changed everyone can ally with everyone.  The only reason it was changed in the past was because that was not the case.  Now that we have rules for Come the Apoc I think they should be left alone.

Just my opinion.

What I don't like about it is that it punishes people for playing with the models they want to have fun with and a friend who plays with different models. The doubles event isn't the most competitive event out there and many who take part in it are just there for the fun of playing 40k. And there is nothing fun about a 16% chance of a unit doing absolutely nothing for a turn in a game that might only last four turns. It only happened to me a time or two, and it won't stop me from playing in another doubles event, but I personally would get more enjoyment out the event if teams were treated as allies of convenience.   

Ian Mulligan

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Re: Doubles Tournament Feedback
« Reply #43 on: July 07, 2014, 10:20:41 PM »
Yeah, I dislike the idea of punishing people for playing with their buddies.
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lupa15

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Re: Doubles Tournament Feedback
« Reply #44 on: July 17, 2014, 05:55:50 PM »
I was not able to attend this event but I would be interested in attending a Doubles Tournament in the future.