100% Theoryscape

[Kinseth]

Originally Posted by nyys

Waiting for my oppoenet to come to me is turtling IMO, a valid tactic, especially (like Kinseth said) if you have the high ground, makes no sense to leave it.

With any good tournament map, the height should be in the middle, forcing each to make a play for the high ground. If you win that battle, I don't think it is turtling to use what you have gained. Now if you have Guys all set in the back line and you never move, and you just let your ranged guys sit around Taelord, that is Turtling.

[dok]

Originally Posted by Mombo101

Every once in awhile I believe we all find ourselves in a position where we hold our line and wait for our opponent to come to us. This is a term known as "turtling", a term coined (I believe) from World of Warcraft's battlegrounds

The term has been around in various games, since long before WoW ever existed. I used the term when playing boardgames 15 years ago. It's a fairly obvious metaphor.

Anyway, like the others, I agree that it is a viable tactic. If nobody wants to move, it's a draw, or a win on points. (This is one of the reasons I think point differential is so much better than winning points - a player with 400 points left shouldn't get credit for a 400 point win over a player with 390 points left. A 10 point win accurately reflects what they accomplished.)

Originally Posted by ollie

Taelord (Taelord at 120pts? That's A+ territory or beyond)

Well, not in a 120 point game.

That's the thing with Taelord - there's no right point value for him unless you set the point total in stone. At 180 points, he's a bit of a niche unit at 500 points, but competitive if you go up above 640 or so. Drop him down to 150 or so, and he starts showing up in competitive armies other than snipers at the 500 point level. But then he becomes a superduperstar at higher point totals.

ETA:

Originally Posted by Kinseth

With any good tournament map, the height should be in the middle, forcing each to make a play for the high ground.

Not my favorite BoV map, really.

[clancampbell]

Turtling or whatever its called is perfectly ok with me. There is a difference between turtling and stalling. If I sit back with the Q brothers on high ground and blast away, while your making your way to me, is that turtling? To me the answer is yes, and thats ok. If I sit back and stare at my order markers and think about where to put them for 10 minutes, thats stalling, and not ok with me.

As to Sarpedon's original query, the unit that I think could use a bump, Agent Carr. Just one more life point, from 4 to 5, makes him tourny worthy, to me anyhow. I loved Carr in the early days of the game, now hes been reduced to an afterthought, if a thought at all.

[IAmBatman]

There are plenty of fine BoV and other tourney worthy maps that don't just have all the height in the middle. There are other ways to keep maps balanced, competitive, and fun, than just the "king of the hill" approach (which tends to favor range heavy armies anyway, for obvious reasons).
In fact, the one tourney I've been to didn't really have any maps like that and I got torn up by a bunch of melee heavy armies.

[killercactus]

Turtling = Good Strategy
Stalling = Bad Sportsmanship

I get pretty bitter about stalling when a player is knowingly doing it. You have to be carefull though that the player isn't just taking his time to consider the options. I do this a lot, especially when I'm playing Deathreavers.

Still though, if you're going to take your time, try not to take too much. Players still need to be courteous to one another. 500-550 point, 24 hex games should be able to be finished in an hour if both players know how to play.

[Elf_Archer]

I hve a very good theory, I believe.

If a 30 hex peice was to be released with the next master sets, would the tournament army size jump to 30?

I think it would.

[IAmBatman]

I don't think it would, because tourney runners:
a) wouldn't have as many of those 30-hexers as they would 24-hexers,
and
b) would be aware that increasing the starting zone spaces that much would necessarily increase the average time for each game.

[Eirikr]

Originally Posted by Elf_Archer

I hve a very good theory, I believe.

If a 30 hex peice was to be released with the next master sets, would the tournament army size jump to 30?

I think it would.

I would highly doubt it. You're right in your assumption that the 24 hex start zone came about as a result of the convenience of using a single terrain piece as the start zone. That being said however, the survival of that standard is based on the effect that this restricted start zone has on the nature of army building at various points levels. More importantly it seems to lead to consistantly timed games assuming a single master set map.
Increasing the size of the start zone increases the value of cheap squad figures which does not appear to be the goal of most tournament organizers. While I think most of us would like to maintain the competitive violability of squads, I don't think we want to further increase their dominance in the game. If anything the trend is towards raising points and maintaining the start zone size, thereby increasing the viability of heros and expensive squads.
Besides which there is virtually no chance that they will release a 30 hex piece.

[nyys]

Originally Posted by Kinseth

With any good tournament map, the height should be in the middle, forcing each to make a play for the high ground. If you win that battle, I don't think it is turtling to use what you have gained. Now if you have Guys all set in the back line and you never move, and you just let your ranged guys sit around Taelord, that is Turtling.

Good point, if you've reach your objective, then you obviously didn't 'turtle' to get there. Staying there and wating for your opponent to come to you at that point only makes sense whether it's considered turtling or not.

The only type of turtling that annoys me (though it is a perfectly valid tactic), is when an opponent has me out ranged (like AE R8, vs Stingers R5) and continually retreats, get his attacks in, and forces me to move to areas I otherwise would not if not for the short range.

Disclaimer: When I say I become annoyed, it's not about the tactic really, but more the frustration, having allowed myself to get outplayed that time around.

[Chimpy]

To address Sparedon's question-

There are a couple of units I wish I could tweak just a little.

One of them is the Gorillanators. I really like the G'nators stats, and feel that they are in essence a really good unit. However, their points are a wee bit too high for competitive play. If they dropped 15 points or so, I think the would be a much more viable (and higher ranked) unit.

When I first played with the G'nators, I did not read the card closely enough, and applied Tough on all attacks, including the special kind. Try playing them this way once and you realize just how well a 3 squad team of G'nators does at taking down some of the heavy-weights like Nilfheim. I feel that if Tough were to work with special attacks as well normal attacks, their cost would be justified.

Along the normal-special attack line of thought, I have always regretted that Gurei-Oni could not counterstrike on special attacks. While this makes sense thematically (his deathly stare works on grenades, eh?), this has hurt him quite a bit, I think. I concur with Sparedon that a bonding squad would help the big Oni quite a bit. (Can anybody say 3-man Oni squad?)

The Tagawa Archers would be helped quite a bit by the addition of a single attack skull. With this modification, the Tagawa Samurai would essentially be Stingers with counterstrike. An additional ten points or so would balance the unit sufficiently to warrant the addition.

[Toad Rocket]

Just a quick comment on stalling. Though it doesnt ever happen in my games because we play casual with no time limit. In a tourney enviroment I would see it as very poor sportsmanship and in the gray area of cheating.

Quick way to stop that is put time limits per turn. Or a total time limit allowed per player for their turns. Much like they do in serious chess matches.

As for tweaking units.....I would think anything that rates C or less in the power ranking could use a small tweak of some sort to be more competitive in the tourney world.

[nyys]

Originally Posted by Toad Rocket

As for tweaking units.....I would think anything that rates C or less in the power ranking could use a small tweak of some sort to be more competitive in the tourney world.

I don't know, no matter what you're always going to have good and bad units. Making one better (or more competitive) will make another less so. As one unit becomes a B, another drops to a C and so on... now you have Power Creep... possibly.