Reverse the Whip Army Archetypes

[Grey Waves]

@vegietarian18 my bad for not properly clarifying what I meant with respect to people bringing bad units. There were plenty of bad units brought this year, that's right, but HoundsRule's army isn't based around his 2 blastless glads, Earl of Sandwich's army isn't based around 1x Capuans and Crixus, and OEAO's army isn't based around his Ice Trolls. Unfortunately, my subjective opinions about what I like to see in RTW seems to have overshadowed my main and most important point, which is that many players really don't enjoy playing "incoherent OM chaos" armies such as Chris Perkins', Major Q23's, and Johnny Frisbee's, due to factors such as how punishing these armies can be if you make even a small mistake, a lack of time to work out how these builds are actually meant to be played, and how dissimilar they are to 'normal' Heroscape armies. I do agree with the other things you're saying re: other skills you can use to your advantage in RTW and how the championship kind of outshines the other formats at the event though.

[OEAO]

Thanks to everyone who has posted so far- this is certainly an interesting discussion to follow.

I think the big thing Vegie and Chris missed (for me, anyways) is how much we enjoy PLAYING these armies. Yes, when I started seriously getting into splash builds in 2018 (I had dabbled as early as 2013 with the army I went 3-2 with and missed Day 2 on a roll-off), some of it had to do with the difficulty of piloting these armies. But my continued fascination with these armies has meant that these are really the only armies I truly enjoy playing now. I know they're not for everyone, but for me personally, this is the way I enjoy the game. I hate Q9 Rats. I dislike 4th. Heavies are fun I guess, but that's just because they're good and easy. I enjoy the tension that accompanies trying to pilot an incredibly difficult army.

Can it feel like a nightmare? Absolutely. But I've also learned more in games with splash armies than probably all the other one or two thousand games of HeroScape I've played. There's a reason I only test Main Event (beyond it being the big event- more on it later): it's what I enjoy. Sure, Betrayal is neat. Reverse Draft is fine. New General Wars is kinda cool (except all you bastards not bringing Rats and bringing Grimnak instead- I'm looking at you Chris!). But none of these other formats excite me nearly as much.

I think it's hard to discuss it when so many different armies are being lumped together- armies that share almost nothing in common outside of the number of army cards they have. If we're talking really complex order markers, only a handful of builds truly had those.

My build- despite having 8 distinct cards- basically had three places for order markers: Arrows, Blades, and Ornak. Knowing when, and how, to use each option was usually the key to mine (or my opponents') success with the build. Really, my build married tight tactical play on the board with auras and adjacency bonuses with order marker strategy- a combo I love to play.

My build was actually, believe it or not, very similar in feel to the other build I heavily tested and that Infected Sloth brought to Top 8. The main difference, and the reason I went with the Gruts, was that the Scout hybrid army felt a little too "Dr. Seussian" for my tastes- the first wave goes out, then the second (followed by the red wave and the blue wave...).

I will say that my army was actually specifically built around double Ice Troll. The whole point of Ornak in this build is for big double Ice Troll (or single Ice Troll and Marcu) turns. The Arrow Grut turns are just more Ice Troll turns with a supporting range force. The Blades and Nerak are just a screen.

I don't want to talk too much about HoundsRule's build that we spent 2-3 days designing (testing all different combinations of figures) in case he wants to run it again in the future- I'll let him disclose it if he so chooses.

I guess the big thing I'd push back on is the notion that these armies are "incoherent crap." I don't think they're incoherent, and I don't think they're crap. Are they dissimilar from 5x 4th Mass and Sgt Drake, or 3x Rats Raelin Q9? Of course. However, HoundsRule, Vegie, Son of Chompy, myself, Infected Sloth, and a number of 3-3s who bubbled out of cut (Dragon Ruler, Boromir, Samuel Frost, Megasilver, ISB3, Vydar, Mr Wookiee), just to name some, showed that you don't need 7 real order marker spots to make Day 2 or have a very real chance of taking down the whole event. If Dok and Matthias had been there, they would have made cut with two very different armies. I don't think it's really the Splashocalypse, but I also am biased towards enjoying a Splashocalypse.

We're probably going to make a slight tweak to the format to hopefully push the meta back up some so that people feel a bit more comfortable bringing non-splash armies. I actually think the meta went UP, not down, this year (fwiw), but that's beside the point.

I also agree with Vegie (and this is something we've talked about privately): it's a bit odd that there is so much focus on one event. I don't know the correct answer moving forward. I think we'll see if we can rectify the meta this next year to make it more enjoyable for more people, but who knows after that. I've heard some other suggestions floated, but I'm not sold on anything else yet.

[NecroBlade]

These armies seem less like Incoherent Piles™ (IP) to the people who have been getting good at them for 10 years of RtW (yes I know a lot of the armies and players of them are newer than that), and more like IP to anyone else who gets handed them and has less than 5 minutes to try to figure out some kind of OM strategy. The matchup was a good one for me, but seeing the army I would be handed in Round of 13 the night before was a massive difference in strategizing compared to getting Mike's 8 cards and immediately trying to play a match, and IMO those armies were similar levels of "different from the norm" without being complete IP.

I fully understand there are plenty of players who enjoy playing IP, but there are at least as many who don't find the struggle fun. I look forward to finding out if tweaking the format can strike a better balance with everyone getting what they want. The fact that RtW is billed as the Main Event™ means it does have more weight in the mind of the community, and also that it should be inviting for most of said community to participate in. The best, most representative format shouldn't be so just because it's called the Main Event, but rather because everyone and anyone who's a Heroscaper wants to play.

[Chris Perkins]

I completely agree with @OEAO about enjoying playing these type of armies; for me, they're a blast to think about and utilize.

I also agree with @NecroBlade that having a main event that most people look forward to playing is important. But I also think having a main event that rewards the various skills found in 'Scape to be important as well (I'd hate having 4x400 as the main event, for example). And I think keeping both in mind is important.

I have a few questions for those who went to ScapeCon and dislike seeing these types of armies (@Sir Heroscape;, @NecroBlade , and anyone else).

1) What armies would you categorize as "order marker hell"? I'd love it if you could both list the ones from ScapeCon and provide what you think of as a definition, since it seems there's some disagreement about what armies would "count" in this category and I think explicit-ness will help this discussion.

2) Is it "order marker hell" or "weak armies" that you dislike (or both)? I'm asking because I could construct an "order market hell" army that ranks as a B+ overall build (Raelin, Rats x1, Knights x1, Greenscales x1, Krav, Nilfheim is an army that would require a lot of OM juggling but is genuinely strong into most non-A builds).

3) How many reverse games did you play on day 1 with an army you view as "order marker hell"? I suspect the expected value is 1 and that 2-3 would be especially bad variance. If the expected value is 1, then I genuinely wonder what the comparative loss in enjoyment is over that 1 round compared to the increased enjoyment from the person playing that army in 3 rounds. I don't mean for this to come across as "what about my enjoyment" (although admittedly to some extend it is; it's probably not possible for me to be as objective as I'd want to be here), but rather an argument that a format that lets someone play the army / army type of their choosing in the majority of rounds has some value that might be being lost in some of this discussion.

4) What would you change if given complete power over next years schedule? Would you change the event for main? Would you keep it RtW but ban armies with more than 6 cards? Would you run a side event at the same time as main? Would you remove a main event entirely? Would you run multiple different types of main events? Something else?

[Dysole]

I will fully admit that I enjoy playing with weird crap (as y'all have fully realized by now). I had 5 army cards but really only 2-3 places to put OMs a round so my army wasn't quite the extreme that some others were but there was definitely a mishmash of stuff (although I think MegaSilver said he minded it less because I had 2xmonks instead of 1x and 1xrats don't need a bunch of OMs). I do feel like I've been kinda of the delineator for a number of people with complaints as mine is kind of on the edge of what people "like" from these splash builds.

I could talk about the testing for that army but truth be told the first time I ran the full build was Round 1 of the Main Event (maybe if I playtested more I could actually make it farther than top 8 :P) but I have noticed that with my builds there's always a hidden gimmick to my alternating builds that makes them work/how you should play against them (straight Blasts in 2017: take every shot you can get, every shot you'd be surprised what you can kill; Templar/4th in 2018: you will be using Templar as a screen way more than you think you will, leading 4th here is not often a good idea; Dividers/Nakitas/Roman Archers in 2019: let the Nakitas do their thing; you will probably lose if they can't; Yari/Laglor/Murphy in 2020: Play for the Laglor endgame; this build here: You want this battle to happen outside Raelin's aura or you want to kill her quickly; conversely if you can kill Molty quickly that usually works too).

I'm not sure how much into the splash archetype this all really fits though, but my armies are not designed to be easy to play both by using unusual "crappy" units and by figures who require finesse to use. I do think they're probably a different flavor from the other builds that are getting some flak but I'm not sure if that's because mine "looks more coherent" or something else.

~Dysole, who is kinda empathetic to a lot of sides right now

[NecroBlade]

1) Looking at the Day 2 armies:

It probably takes me longer to formulate a plan than actually play a game:

• Crixus, 1x Capuans, 2x PKs, Syvarris, Kyntella, Theracus, Tarn (bye)
• Raelin, 1x WoA, 1x Mezzos, Kozuke, Johnny Shotgun, Guilty, Rhoghar, Otonashi
• Theracus, Tandros, Skahen, 2x Cutters, 1x Heavies, Nerak, Otonashi
• 2x Cutters, 1x Mezzos, 1x HSBs, 1x PKs, Raelin, Syvarris, Marcu
• 2x Glads, Molty, 1x Hounds, Sam Brown, Eldgrim

Borderline, but I feel like I have some idea how to approach it:

• 3x Spiders, Wyvern, 2x Mohicans, Brave Arrow, Theracus, Darrak (bye)
• 2x Heavies, Nerak, Ornak, MFM, Iskra, MBS, Marcu (bye)
• 2x Roman Archers, 2x Roman Legos, NGS, Marcus, Valguard
• 2x Dwarves, Migol, Zetacron, Theracus, Finn, Erevan Sunshadow
• 2x Dwarves, Darrak, Tandros, 1x Rats, 1x PKs, Concan
• 2x Arrows, 1x Blades, 2x Swog, Nerak, Ornak, Marcu, 2x Ice Troll
• Raelin, 2x Monks, Moltenclaw, 1x Greenscales, 1x Rats

A relatively normal army:

• Raelin SotM, 3x Arrows, Krug, Mimring (mine)

Based on this off-the-cuff breakdown, there's a 40% chance of being handed IP Round 1 of Day 2, which to some people feels like an immediate loss. I don't think anyone wants to feel like they've lost before (or the moment) they sit down. On a related note, the lowest point for me was being 1-2 and having the prospect of being handed IP in the next round.

2) I think it's a bit of both. The example army you've given probably falls more in the Borderline category for me. The pieces are more familiar, and it's not as "OM hell" when the pieces are sturdy (Nilf, Krav, everything backed by Raelin). I think that's an important part of what makes "OM hell" frustrating for people: wrong OM in the wrong place at the wrong time can equate to lost turns quickly snowballing into a loss. I understand that's an important skill in Heroscape, but it can feel like you've done everything else right yet the game hinges on one small error (maybe whatever the OM was on should have survived, but suddenly there was a massive swing of dice variance). My game against veggie could've gone the other way on an initiative win, but that's not quite the same since initiative is always (barring some glyphs and powers) a 50/50 shot anyway.

3) One if you count Mike's Borderline Grut build. That was as much the map (Jabberwock, to no one's surprise) and Mimring's consistent Fireline kills as it was playing the army, though. See also my point about being 1-2 in #1.

4) I think the first step is tweaking the RtW format. It does showcase some important Heroscape skills (army building, OM management, etc.). More games With your army than Against (WWAWWA, AWAW) may be all that's needed for people to feel like they can play armies skewed toward the more "standard" and still have a chance. And the players who can win with IP just play slightly stronger variations of what they're already doing well with.
Banning card count doesn't solve anything because it's not consistent across armies. IP tends to have more cards, but that doesn't mean there's no overlap with more "traditional" armies. Would anyone categorize Elf Wizards as IP?
A side event is probably almost never a bad idea. I would hate to encourage people not to play in the Main or drop early, though.
I don't think the Main Event/Championship should be removed, either. I do think changing up the format each year could have merit (again, first seeing how tweaked RtW goes). Multiple main events is an idea, but starts to make you wonder why some events are "main" and others aren't, though.
Another idea: Mixed Format Championship. Say Day 1 is all format X and Day 2 keeps the AWAW structure. Does that do anything interesting?

Final thoughts:
I appreciate everyone having this discussion. I think it's an important one that can only be good for the future of Heroscape.
And let me try another way to articulate my position (I don't think this has necessarily happened yet, but will if enough people choose not to participate): the Championship should feel like it's crowning the champion of Heroscape, not the champion of a subset of players who enjoy a specific thing.

[Dragon Ruler]

This is an outstanding discussion guys. The beauty of ScapeCon is that we can structure the "Main Event" any way that people want. It can be one day or two days with any format that makes the most sense for the majority of players. We don't have specific time limitations or other restrictions like GenCon has. We can also run a side tournament for those who prefer not to play in the Main Event.
I would love to see people propose specific Main Event formats. Also, we are looking to extend first round games to 75 minutes to reduce the number of games that go to time.

[Sir Heroscape]

^I really appreciate NecroBlade's insights above. I feel very much on the same with his evaluations. Here are a few additional thoughts of my own for Chris Perkins questions (which I think are really good, valid questions to ask of those of us "on the other side")

1) I agree with NecroBlades list above^. It's true that not all armies were a bunch of IP (as NecroBlade categorizes it :P ) BUT, it definitely felt like if you were in Day 2 or you wanted to get to Day 2, that's how you needed to construct your army. Additionally, there was a pretty good chance you'd have to play with one of those armies if you made it to Day 2.

2) I 100% agree with NecroBlade. So much of the "nightmare" of these armies is the X1 or X2 of everything. I get it, when you take weaker heroes and X1 or X2 of stuff you force the player to have to be incredibly meticulous with placement and OM'ers...but that's also what is so frustrating. It exacerbates the power of a couple bad dice rolls. For those less familiar or less meticulous, all it takes is a couple kills on your thin number of units for everything to fall apart. It can be maddening.

3) I think you're right. I didn't have to play WITH that many, but that's also because I was on the "losing side" of the event and so I got to play with and against more "normal" armies. The issue is that you have a higher chance of seeing these armies the more you win. And that compounds if you make it to Day 2. In Day 1 there's 6 games you're guarenteed, so you can get away with losing a couple games where you're dealt an IP army (assuming you win all your other games), but you don't have that luxury on Day 2. If you're fortunate enough to make it to Day 2, you then find yourself having to play the IP armies in a knockout round where you can't afford to make a single mistake.

4) I'm not sure, but I like a lot of the ideas/suggestions from NecroBlade above. I think experimenting with a few different formats in the Main couldn't hurt and I agree with his final statement that "the Championship should feel like it's crowning the champion of Heroscape, not the champion of a subset of players who enjoy a specific thing," which, is kinda what it felt like with so many IP armies in Day 2.

Final Thought:
Another part of my biggest issue with these armies is time. IP armies slow down the game AT LEAST twice as much. When I watched players play, they spent an incredible amount of time counting spaces 10x over before making a move, all the while trying to do math in their head on odds or just trying to count spaces of all the possible moves their opponent could also do. Again, to avoid a mistake you almost HAVE to play that way, and I think that's also why it frustrates people having to play these armies, because they just want to play the game and not do the "mathing" every turn. So many of the IP games went to time, and that can't be fun for people to play a game and not finish it. I can only think of 1 of my games that went to time, and I was quite proud of that. At the end of the day I'd rather play a game of Heroscape than spend all my time thinking about playing a game of Heroscape.

[dok]

I've hashed this out privately with several of you, but since not everyone has been privy to that and this discussion is pretty interesting I'll do a quick thought dump.

• Reverse the whip has always been, and remains, a super super weird way to decide the most prestigious event in the game.
  
  Imagine you meet someone who is familiar with competitive gaming in general, and who is familiar with Heroscape in a I've-played-some-home-games sort of way. Imagine you told them there was a competitive HS scene with a championship and everything. Then they asked you how the championship worked. If you described RTW, or especially alternating RTW, you would get some very weird looks. In the larger world of card games and skirmish games and battle games, basically nobody else does it this way, and there's probably a good reason for that. That doesn't mean we can't continue to use RTW in some capacity, but we shouldn't be surprised there are issues.
  
  
• It's completely reasonable to not like the pile-of-OM-spots armies. They are essentially everything we learn to not do when we first learn to make competitive armies (1x commons, lots of moving parts, little ability to continue to produce from a given card if a couple bad rolls happen). They also just don't feel as aesthetically pleasing as a coherent army of a certain type, which many people strongly prefer.
  
  That said, I totally get that over the course of the last 10 years (really the last 5 or 6, but anyway) several people have come to enjoy the challenges of playing this sort of army. That's cool, and there's no reason we can't continue to have events (RTW, or reverse draft for that matter) that reward the ability to be successful with this style of build. But it 1000% does not follow that it should be the championship format, and frankly I think it's not great that being able to handle this very very peculiar style has become such an important part of main event success.
  
  
• For multiple reasons, but mostly due to a sort of perceived momentum at this point, the meta of the main event seems to get progressively weaker through the years. When I won in 2011, My TKN/grubsx3/Raelin/Krav was probably one of the two weakest armies in day 2, and arguably the weakest. In 2017, my Romansx2/MBS/Raelin/7 wyrms army, which is probably weaker, was one of the stronger armies in top 16. Similar armies would have definitely been near the top this year, if not the absolute strongest day 2 builds in the field.
  
  The above point means people feel like they need to make their armies really weak, and this has a couple problems:
  
  
  1. An entire set of coherent mid-tier builds are now above the curve. I'm not talking about massed 4th Mass here. Spamming a B-level common with reasonable support figures is generally going to be too good in the current meta. So the meta has dropped low enough that it's severely restricting army choices of those who want to be competitive, far beyond just shutting out cheese. That's pretty objectively a bad thing.
     
     
  2. People who are reaching for weak-enough builds are now naturally going to gravitate to trashy card-spam builds. Because... drum roll... they are not actually that difficult to craft. You just pick stuff with different good matchups and trust that the whole will be weak because you don't have the robustness of multiple squads. Plus, people see a growing number of the top players having success that way and assume it's the way to compete (outliers who have success other ways like Ken or myself notwithstanding). As a result, the splashy trashy builds are getting more and more common.

TL;DR I think the direction the main event has evolved is weird and probably not the best for a championship. We can keep experimenting with tweaks but in the long run I think the community is better served by a different main event format.

[NecroBlade]

Lots of good stuff here, dok. Adding some more comments (not necessarily to agree or disagree with anything, just for discussion's sake).

Originally Posted by dok

Imagine you meet someone who is familiar with competitive gaming in general, and who is familiar with Heroscape...you told them there was a competitive HS scene with a championship...RTW...you would get some very weird looks.

RtW championship players are a subset of competitive players. Who are a subset of Heroscapers. Who are a subset of people who play Heroscape. Do they largely make up those likely to attend? Yes (with 1 year of data, lol). But inherently making the event seem exclusive to a specific group of people alienates a much larger player base. A bit hyperbolic, but the point remains that it's in opposition to the purpose of conventions and competitions to grow and continue the community.

Originally Posted by dok

That doesn't mean we can't continue to use RTW in some capacity, but we shouldn't be surprised there are issues.

It's great that many people enjoy it as a format. That doesn't mean it's the competitive format and certainly not just because it has been for 10 years.

Originally Posted by dok

They are essentially everything we learn to not do when we first learn to make competitive armies

Saying something some of us have been trying to say, but saying it better I think, lol.

Originally Posted by dok

That said, I totally get that over the course of the last...years...several people have come to enjoy the challenges of playing this sort of army.

I've said as recently as our practice event before ScapeCon that I do enjoy playing armies with more difficult OM decisions. There is something Heroscape-y about it (whether the nostalgia of pre-competition whatever-you-happened-to-own, the mix-n-match that goes along with Heroscape's mix-n-match theme, or something else). However our practice armies didn't quite fall to the level of what was at the Con, and usually when I'm playing something non-standard (see above quote about how we learn to build armies) it's in a different context; restricted to just certain sets (RotV + AotV testing for example), or a draft-style format. In both cases there are both a limiting constraint everyone has to abide by, and everyone has more control over what they're playing (which is only half true in RtW).

Originally Posted by dok

For multiple reasons, but mostly due to a sort of perceived momentum at this point, the meta of the main event seems to get progressively weaker through the years.

This was always inevitable with RtW (and sort of the point of the format, to drive armies away from cheese), but it has certainly accelerated (faster than I would have guessed) with alternating RtW.

Originally Posted by dok

An entire set of coherent mid-tier builds are now above the curve. That's pretty objectively a bad thing.

It always makes me sad when cards are effectively banned. I want as much stuff to be viable as possible. Obviously different formats have different strengths and weaknesses that make some units less than a good idea, but the Championship should not be one of those. I think if anything should be, the Main Event should be "anything is possible" territory.

Originally Posted by dok

TL;DR I think the direction the main event has evolved is weird and probably not the best for a championship. We can keep experimenting with tweaks but in the long run I think the community is better served by a different main event format.

I'm still of the opinion that it's worth tweaking in the short term. Enough people enjoy it that a little rebalancing could really open it up for everyone else as well. If that doesn't pan out (maybe even if it does), I don't think mixing it up is a bad way to go.

[vegietarian18]

Great posts in here everyone. I think this a great discussion to have.

One thing I do disagree with is the idea that coherent builds are "over the curve" to the point of being unplayable. You can play anything and float some points. If you think that you're the best 4th Mass player in the world, you could have showed up to this event with 3x 4th Mass Concan and given it your best shot with that. If you want to do TKN, you can play TKN light on points by 70. MegaSilver played Romans and 10th light by 100. Playing light is a very viable strategy to make any army appropriate for the curve.

[S1R_ART0R1US]

Originally Posted by vegietarian18

Great posts in here everyone. I think this a great discussion to have.

One thing I do disagree with is the idea that coherent builds are "over the curve" to the point of being unplayable. You can play anything and float some points. If you think that you're the best 4th Mass player in the world, you could have showed up to this event with 3x 4th Mass Concan and given it your best shot with that. If you want to do TKN, you can play TKN light on points by 70. MegaSilver played Romans and 10th light by 100. Playing light is a very viable strategy to make any army appropriate for the curve.

And if people don't like playing light we could just artificially make certain figures cost more...which would be Delta. I'm curious what people's take on that event at ScapeCon was (but maybe that's outside this thread).