Escape (First Crack Variant) Format Discussion

[Ixe]

Rules for the Escape (First Crack Variant) taken from the Online Season 16 thread.

Spoiler Alert!

Army Selection (First Crack variant)

• Before each game, there will be a dice-off, done by the tournament organizers. The winner of the dice-off chooses first army choice or second army choice.
• If the dice-off winner chooses to pick second, then the player with the first army choice can choose any of the four armies. If the dice-off winner chooses first army choice, they must pick one of their opponent's armies (not one of their own).
• After the first pick is made, the other player may then choose from any of the other three armies. Note: If you win the dice-off and want to pick your own army, you must defer first pick to your opponent.
• The player who lost the dice-off decides who places their (entire) army first.

Escape Rules

• For this scenario you cannot leave a figure from your army unplaced if it would fit in your startzone.
• At the end of your turn, if you have a figure unengaged in your opponent's startzone, you may remove that figure from the game. That figure "escapes" the game.
• You score points based on full card scoring of escaped heroes, and partial card scoring for escaped squads.
• The game ends when one player has no figures left on the battlefield. The player with the most escaped points wins. If there is a tie for escaped points then the player who still has figures on the battlefield wins.
• Clarification on order of end-of-turn effects - they are completed in this order:
  1. Any card-related effects (returning control of Marcu, rolling for Thunder Step wounds, etc)
  2. Deciding whether to Escape with any eligible figures
  3. Evaluating victory conditions

A recent game in this format made me aware of a possible ways to quickly play and win the game without any interaction with your opponent. In that particular game, a player was able to quickly rush Cyprien and Nicholas Esenwein to the other player's start zone and then killed off their own units through Deathstrike Thralls. I don't want to dwell on the details of this match particularly more and would rather just use it to demonstrate that such a feat is possible with an opponent having relatively minimal recourse to answer outside of some more narrow army builds

I think that being able to do that is really outside of the core of a battle game and I would like to discuss ways of tweaking the rules to maintain both the spirit of the format and the tactical interaction inherent to Heroscape.

I have previously proposed that the game would instead end when a player's final figure escapes or that player's opponent destroys their last figure, preventing the game from ending by killing your own units. However, I must acknowledge that nothing is stopping you from destroying your units first before escaping.

Spoiler Alert!

We could imagine a scenario where Deathwalker 7000 goes the first round and rather reliably explodes to wipe out your additional forces. You then proceed to have units like Cyprien and Nicky escape, probably within the first turn of the 2nd round. The opponent would be hard pressed to race 290 pts and, even if they could kill one of the vampires, they likely would not be matching the score of the other if they dedicated themselves to that.

I have seen other proposals as well, including not being able to attack your own figures, having the destroyed figure count against your total, and having half of the remaining figures count towards the end score. However, I don't believe that any of these proposed solutions necessarily solve this particular problem or potentially cause other issues.

Spoiler Alert!

Not being able to attack your own figures is particularly strange for special attacks that affect adjacent figures, or for powers like Self Destruct. In any case, it may be overly punitive to certain army constructions if not failing to solve the problem through things that technically aren't attacks.

The "count against" point total runs into similar semantic and punitive issues, and in some cases it may not even help. In the Cyprien and Nicholas case, you'd still win the match as long as they were a sufficient portion of the points in your army.

The "half remaining" also fails, in the Cyprien and Nicholas example, if the escaped points is greater than 50% of the army total.

I have been avoiding the fact that a "bring 2" format should at the very least somewhat discourage these kind of games (or at least build to do so subtly so your opponent doesn't necessarily see it). I'll also acknowledge that other formats like Treasure Quest can also have the game conduct in a non-interactive way, but I feel that traps, having to stop on treasure, and the amount of treasure needed to collect to end the game all get in the way of these being the dominant strategies that people are encouraged in to.

In any case, I'd like to open it up and discuss it here. I don't have a real answer for what to do about the format, but I do believe that the potential for this level of non-interaction within Heroscape needs to be addressed in some way. Again, I'd like to keep the discussion away from the particulars of the match that alerted me of this and more into the realm of what is reasonably possible within this format.

[dok]

I'm inclined to avoid discussing the specifics of that game or tactics around it until at least the round is over.

"Bring 2" actually helps a lot here. What "bring 2" does is make it so you can't just bring a build that is broken-good in a particular format and expect to be able to use it every time. In fact, this round of Escape was played with the "first crack" variant, which makes it so your opponent can reliably take a broken-good build away from you. Basically, that game only happened because someone made an insanely good army for the format by accident. Which is going to be a kind of rare event, obviously.

Now, allow me to address your critiques of the proposed tweaks of the format point-by-point.

Originally Posted by Ixe

Not being able to attack your own figures is particularly strange for special attacks that affect adjacent figures

I said target, not attack. You can still attack enemies even if this splashes your figures.

Originally Posted by Ixe

or for powers like Self Destruct.

Not an attack.

Originally Posted by Ixe

In any case, it may be overly punitive to certain army constructions

What is it punitive to? What army attacks itself in a normal setting? All I can come up with are vampires, Krug, and Evar Scarcarver. Those figures have plenty going for them in this format; I don't think a slight nerf is a problem at all.

Originally Posted by Ixe

if not failing to solve the problem through things that technically aren't attacks.

Sure. Internally, I tossed out "... and special powers that cause wounds" as an additional clause in that rule. You can't just say "destroy" because then you do hurt some legitimate tactics (stuff like Circuitry Replacement or Expendable Rabble or Hivelord Life Bonding).

Yes, there are still some holes if you really want to work it, but nothing that leads to a dominant strategy.

Originally Posted by Ixe

The "count against" point total runs into similar semantic and punitive issues

None of which seem significant to me, as I just said.

Originally Posted by Ixe

... and in some cases it may not even help. In the Cyprien and Nicholas case, you'd still win the match as long as they were a sufficient portion of the points in your army.

In a 465 point game? Killing all your figures is going to give you an escaped total of 115 after Nicky and Cyprien leave. If you can't escape 120 points while your opponent is pounding themself, you deserve to lose...

Originally Posted by Ixe

The "half remaining" also fails, in the Cyprien and Nicholas example, if the escaped points is greater than 50% of the army total.

Again, you seem to be assuming that the opponent just picks daisies while you are killing your army. Escape with some points and win.

[awesomeunleashed]

I will say that I think the format would need to be modified significantly if it weren't Bring 2.

[superfrog]

Also significant is that this is only one round of a tournament that uses four different formats. If that wasn't the case, the armies would look a lot different than they do. Armies in this tournament have to be versatile. I think running an Escape tournament would be a bad idea. Having it as one round is just another way to bring interesting armies. I rather liked it.

[Ixe]

I did indeed misunderstand dok with the difference of targeting a figure with an attack and attacking it, however you want to call it. While you sometimes do want to self wound (I went 4-0 on self wounding Alastair for the Gencon online season), I admit that it only punishes a few niche builds (which you then just wouldn't play, or play differently). However, my concern remains that it wouldn't solve certain non-attack options and different corner cases.

Some of these solutions will work if the opponent can put some scoring on the board in that time, but if they somewhat reasonably went in to the first round with a less aggressive scoring strategy, it may just be too late by round 2.

I think the most extreme example I can think of would be Cyprien and Nicky, Deathwalker 7000, and a bunch of gravestrike thralls. On a noticeable portion of maps, Nicky could escape in a single overextend turn and Cyprien could leave in two. That just leaves a maybe a single turn of the next round to try to change your strategy before the deathwalker blows up the surrounding thralls (85% of the time, with redundancy with the thralls themselves in killing each other (if still allowed)). This army isn't even necessarily that unreasonable in some other formats, but I must confess that bring 2 would likely stop me from rolling it in (not to mention not wanting to play the game that way).

It's possible that multiple of the proposed solutions may be needed to address this, but I think I feel most favorably to still counting some of the points remaining on the field afterwards. Particularly if this format were relegated to slightly larger point total games, the points accrued from rapidly diving a few heroes in may be insufficient for outright winning, not to mention making it probably take a little longer to knock off your remaining forces. Note that I'm not trying to just argue about how some strategy happens to be dominant, but that there is a powerful strategy that involves not interacting with your opponent to win.

[weebaer]

I personally think a lot of hell is being raised for a very rare circumstance. I dont feel that the game mode is "broken" at all. This is the FIRST TIME ITS EVER BEEN RUN. The error is NOT in the format. The error is in the army building of those that do NOT UNDERSTAND the format.

I don't think it is fair to make Vegie look bad because he used HIS OPPONENTS ARMY...These things will not happen in the future because people will know what the various strategies are for the format, just like any other format.

[dok]

I won my first three games of Treasure Quest at Gencon in 2012 without any of those games lasting into the third round. In the first two games my opponents barely understood what was going on until it was too late and Cyprien was grabbing the last treasure. But then, those were two really bad players who aren't good at the game at all and are totally not in the top 5 of our rankings.

I don't think that Ixe is completely wrong about these issues; I personally find the self-attacking to end the game distasteful and I'd like to discourage it one way or another. But yes, a decent amount of this is just people wrapping their head around the format for the first time.

[Ixe]

Originally Posted by weebaer

I personally think a lot of hell is being raised for a very rare circumstance. I dont feel that the game mode is "broken" at all. This is the FIRST TIME ITS EVER BEEN RUN. The error is NOT in the format. The error is in the army building of those that do NOT UNDERSTAND the format.

I don't think it is fair to make Vegie look bad because he used HIS OPPONENTS ARMY...These things will not happen in the future because people will know what the various strategies are for the format, just like any other format.

@weebaer , forgive me if this seems that I'm "raising hell" over this format. I tried to move a discussion of this format over here to avoid clogging up the online season thread with essentially unrelated chatter. I do not necessarily believe that it is a problem in general,and I do not intend to dwell on nor even remotely blame vegie for that particular match. I am just trying to talk about what can currently be done in this format in general and some concerns I have regarding that.

I also think that it should bear noting that there will probably be newer and less experienced players coming in to each tournament (or at least I hope so) so any metagame that develops for the regulars will not necessarily always apply across the board.

Originally Posted by dok

I won my first three games of Treasure Quest at Gencon in 2012 without reaching the third round. In the first two games my opponents barely understood what was going on until it was too late and Cyprien was grabbing the last treasure. But then, those were two really bad players who aren't good at the game at all and are totally not in the top 5 of our rankings. [/wink]

@dok , while you did rapidly beat your opponents in those matches, it seems that you at the very least interacted with them during it to some degree. You had to utilize your figures to make a few attacks and claim open glyphs while they attacked you back. I agree that you're glyph focused strategy was dominant and caught them unprepared, but I'm not even arguing against dominant strategies that are different from typical Heroscape. I'm only advising caution when those strategies turn to the point where you can play and win the game without even interacting with your opponent.

I see and appreciate that there are a lot of tools in the metagame to guide us away from these non-interactive armies and conditions (more than I have been giving credit for), but I also wouldn't mind seeing some rules applied to the format itself in the future to further discourage these situations.

[awesomeunleashed]

Another thing to consider is the unengaged restriction. On most maps, you don't need many figures to make it so your opponent can't escape without killing somebody. On this round's map, you can do it with 5 single-spaced figures. I'd say more than 90% of the armies in this event can afford to leave five guys in the startzone for at least the first round or two.

Originally Posted by Ixe

I also think that it should bear noting that there will probably be newer and less experienced players coming in to each tournament (or at least I hope so) so any metagame that develops for the regulars will not necessarily always apply across the board.

A good concern for sure, although the metagame for this particular format wasn't developed for anybody; it was purely theoretical. And there's a line to walk; one of the coolest parts (at least to me) about Season 13's HoB/CoB format was the hugely different metagame without any arbitrary restrictions.

[weebaer]

Im sorry @Ixe,
I was up very late last night and apparently my attitude toward multiple things has been affected (my wife helped remind me today I am super grumpy). I can see your view point on wanting changes. I may have read into some of your posts as ranting and I became the person ranting...I apologize. I am really a nice guy. I just need more sleep...

[kevindola]

So to be honest I think an easy fix to improve the format is a change to the 'escape' timing:

Originally Posted by Escape

At the end of your turn, if you have a figure unengaged in your opponent's startzone, you may remove that figure from the game. That figure "escapes" the game.

change to:

After revealing an order marker and before taking a turn, if you have a figure unengaged in your opponent's startzone, you may remove that figure from the game. That figure "escapes" the game.

Basically you can't fly into the opponent's SZ and escape, you have to wait at least one more turn, and except in the cases of an initiative switch, your opponent will have the opportunity to engage.

It in no way eliminates the self killing, but it makes it much more difficult to gain that critical points lead that leads to the self destruction strategy.

An alternative would be to say only figures from the card where you revealed the OM can escape.....

I also like the penalty points or 1/2 points back for figures on the field, but I worry about adding complexity to an already mildly complex format.

[Ixe]

It is admittedly a tough balance to strike. If escaping becomes too hard, the game will just devolve into a kill 'em all and kind of defeat the point of the format. I must agree that escaping at the start of your turn certainly makes matters harder and will make those non-interactive approaches much easier to interact with.

You don't believe units that are using some form of bonding should escape? That certainly hurts some builds (like my ninja army), but it may not be the worst thing.

In any case, if we playtest maps and we playtest figures, I don't see why we shouldn't playtest formats. Any proposed change should probably get a few probing games to see how it shakes out and if it's something to roll in to another tournament. Again, the First Crack aspect and the metagame should stop these things from happening, I'd just personally like to have a little more insurance with the game rules that removes non-interaction as a viable strategy.