Gencon 2016 Feedback

[lefton4ya]

There is some good discussion on planeswalker-arena on Gencon. Here is some highlights of talking points:

On the winning army:

• @lefton4ya @capsocrates won the tournament and... It was not the Ruiner, but Jace with his high attack and range and great blue spell deck that won the games...
• @gamjuven I played in the tournament as well. I would have liked to have played the winner, I think I might have had a chance. I ran Sorin and the Ruiner and focused on tons of healing.
• @lefton4ya I also would have liked to see Gamjuven play caps , and with our 4-round swiss match-ups and only 11 players, I don't know how it got missed.
• @capsocrates Jace's ability to summon a unit, then move up to his speed, then move that summoned unit to a space within 6 spaces, then teleport next to that unit made him really really fast and good at getting close to the other player or taking the important high ground. From there Jace's (totally broken; what were they thinking?) 7 range and 6 attack* can take out the other Planeswalker very effectively.

On kill the planeswalker vs. kill-em-all:

• @coyote81 The main goal of standard AotP is kill the planeswalker, changing the rules to kill every model total changed the game, this made that jace/ruiner combo better then it should have been and honestly totally changed how that game is played.
• @gamjuven I, too, was expecting to just kill the planeswalker and be done with it. I built my army around that and to find out that wasn't the case was annoying. Probably my fault, lol.
• @yawgmoth I hear that killing the opposing planeswalker didn't grant a win. I know some scenarios dictate this, but walker kills seem to have become a default win condition. Shame.
• @capsocrates Regarding the scenario, kill 'em all is the default rule. Kill the Planeswalker is a scenario rule, just as the own the most points by the glyph victory condition in one of the original scenarios is a scenario rule.
• @lefton4ya Scenario was the generic rulebook default (Kill the entire army) which honestly I like better than kill the planeswalker only, as both in home games and at this tournament whoever kills the planeswalker first only wins about 2/3 of the time in my experience, and I think the strategy is different in that you plan for the long game in both the spells you bring and how you actually play, especially when you choose to summon.

On reverse the whip:

• @lefton4ya Also, I would like to take up the way Heroscape (and now X-wing minis) has been running tournaments and have what we dubbed "Reverse-the-whip" where for the final round or two each match players switch armies to play with what their opponent that match brought to the tourney. It really opens up more variety in army and deck builds and instead of trying to bring the best army & deck, people bring a generally hard-to-play army but what you know how to play well.
• @yawgmoth It would be thematically appropriate. MtG players have been doing this for many years. The idea in mtg was based on an old unglued set card called "mirror mirror" [and] turned into informal tourneys for the same reasons as you state, where the edge goes to the more complex and obtuse builds for the meta rather than the most obvious cut throat builds. Its a good format to mix it up.
• @lefton4ya Next year we should definitely have a 600 point army limit and at that level you definitely need to do a kill-em all. Maybe if we have 2 events, we should do a 500 point kill the planeswalker and a 600 point kill-em-all, and I think at least one of them should be "reverse-the-whip" AKA "mirror mirror", where the last two games you swap armies/decks with your opponent and then swap back after the game before going to the next match and doing again. I would also hope to see at least 16 players, if not 24-32, and maybe have some official support.

On playing AotP on Heroscape maps:

• @gamjuven I think playing on Heroscape maps also really changed the game and not for the better. The game is designed for limited terrain and height. Having Heroscape maps not only made for weird rule changes like Nahiri's terrain placement, and places where the Ruiner did not fit, but more importantly it made ranged units much, much better. This obviously made blue even better, especially the illusions. I understand there is limited space but I like AotP by its own merits and wished I could have played that game, instead of the amalgamation.
• @yawgmoth I can see that, for a tourney setting to at least use an official scenario. I don't share the sentiment about ranged units being overpowered by heroscape terrain, though they do become better. But I agree that a tourney, especially on the scale of Gencon, should use official scenarios. Or at least use heroscape terrain to reconstruct the actual scenario maps to play on if heroscape terrain must be used on that scale.
• @capsocrates I don't think Heroscape maps *in general* are more broken for Planeswalkers than they are for Heroscape figures. Unfortunately the GenCon map pool included a map, Wendigo, that was super biased for fast range, but it was that way for Heroscape figures as well. In my game with Lefton4ya, as I remember it, there was no incredible height difference going on. It could just as easily have been local height.
• @lefton4ya I agree with caps that Heroscape maps in general aren't overpowered in AotP, but one of the maps at this tournament was (although games can take about 5 min longer). If I have any say at Gencon next year (and I may try to run it at October 1 CinCityCon, Origins next year, and other events too) I will mix Magic:Arena and Heroscape maps, but again Gencon space is limited by past ticket sales and the time constraint of moving a Heroscape map off a table and setting up an AotP map (and then swapping back again) is hard unless there is time between tournaments and people willing to do it.
• @lefton4ya It would be nice to get some Magic players involved in running and maybe do events in the Magic CCG area, but honestly there is more overlap with heroscape players at this point so that is why Heroscapers ran the events and used our Gencon hall space and had to share with Heroscape events.

[TechToaster]

Originally Posted by Kajoq

While I did not enter the GenCon tourney, about 90% of the my matches have been played on competitive 2p heroscape maps and I -much- prefer that to playing on the AOTP style scenarios with a completely barren map. I tend to use maps that include good road paths which helps to keep Melee in the game, also there's enough cards and such in AoTP that let you move your figures to really close the distance and collapse in on ranged units.

As the guy who runs the Heroscape/AotP tournaments at AnimeFest (and soon AKon) in Dallas, Texas, I have to agree with this statement. While OP is right that utilizing Scape pieces gives Ranged units a natural buff due to vantage points, it then falls to the Level Designer to take that (and every other Pro/Con that each unit has) into account and create a Map that easily affords every unit the chance to play to their strengths and weaknesses.

Source: I'm a Game Design major in College, Junior Year, with Level Design as my Focus.