VC and NHSD (2014)

[Xotli]

Originally Posted by MegaSilver

... you can just ask how the army plays anyway, even during the match.

Well, sure you could ... although your opponent wouldn't be obliged to tell you. In a competitive tourney environment, I can imagine offering helpful advice to the guy trying to whip your butt could be problematic.

Originally Posted by dok

Yeah, there's certainly that issue lurking. One advantage of the original version of "bring 2" is that a player can always fall back on one of the two armies they brought. Especially for younger or less experienced players, this is nice.

Well, that's a fair point.

Originally Posted by dok

Well, the draft does have to play out before the game starts. Online, people routinely take two or three days to make a choice. But in live events, I've never seen the draft part take longer than about 5 minutes.

That's not what I meant ... I meant that, if you end up playing an army you've never played before, and are therefore unfamiliar with how it plays, you might take longer to play that game. Obviously the games are time-limited, so it doesn't make the tourney actually take any longer, but, still, could be somewhat frustrating.

Originally Posted by dok

But anyways, a few points here:

• Choosing first is not always an advantage. In the Online Season 16 semfinals I just played, my opponent won the dice-off... and deferred first pick to me. It was the right decision!
  
  If you really want to drill into it, there are basically two strategic situations that can exist with the four armies in "bring 2". Either one army has an advantage over all the other armies, or every army of the four has at least one bad matchup among the other three armies, creating some variety of a rock-paper-scissors relationships.
  • If one army is dominant, you want to pick first.
  • If there's a RPS relationship, you want to pick second.
  The latter situation is more common than you might think.
  
  
• Even when first choice is an advantage, and you are stuck trying to pick the best army of three others to oppose the monster, the resultant matchup is often more balanced than the matchup you get in a regular double blind prebuilt format.

Well, good points all. Perhaps this simpler variant isn't quite as unbalanced as I'd first thought.

Originally Posted by dok

[*]Another variant of bring 2 we've played around with a little is the "first crack" variant. In this version, if you win the dice-off and choose to pick first, you can't choose one of your own armies. You are allowed to pick your own army if you want, but if you win the dice-off and want one of your own armies, you have to defer first pick to your opponent. This further reduces the incentive to bring super-strong, cheesy armies, and it also dulls the advantage of winning the dice-off.

Ooh, that's a good one. Yeah, I think I'll recommend that, for our next tourney, we do either this variant or Cut the Cake. Thanx for the explanations guys!

Originally Posted by Tornado

As I watch the snow fall and sip my Long Island I am imagining the SoCal tournament being played at the beach in the glorious warmth of the sun.

Well, it wasn't exactly on the beach, but, yeah, it was fairly warm.


Since some folks have expressed some appreciation for the fact that I chose Beakfaces over rats, I thought I'd share with you guys my thoughts on that decision. Basically, I had 150 points left over and I needed a good screen. There were really only 4 choices I considered:

• Beakface Sneaks x5
• Rats x3 + 30pts (Guilty?)
• Eilan Sidhe x3 + 30pts (ditto)
• Phantom Knights x2 + 10pts (Isamu)

Rats are certainly not a bad choice. The issue with rats, I find, is how fast you can get them into position. On some maps, they only ever require a single OM and then you're set. If it's going to require more than that, though, the whole situation becomes problematic: their attack is so crappy that it's hardly ever worth putting OMs on them for anything other than positioning, but then of course you're limited by your opponent's strategies. If your opponent is kind enough to attack them constantly, then you can position them pretty much as you like. But if they just go around them (say, if they have flying, disengaging, or phantom walking figures), then you're sort of hosed. Also, if they have someone with a good SA (in this case "good" meaning worth putting OMs on), they can always just beat up your rats with that and you never to get to reposition them at all. Then there's the fact that rats just slow the game down. No one likes that. I've never particularly cared for rats even when I'm playing them, for that reason.

The ES are a pretty great choice too: a 3 attack is nothing to sneeze at (and makes them worth putting an OM per round on), they've got great maneuverability, and they're practically impossible to kill ... if there's sufficient trees on the map. Unfortunately, the possibility of getting stuck with a treeless (or tree-light) map makes them a daunting prospect.

The PKs also make a great screen: again, the 3 attack, good maneuverability, and an anti-ranged power to help keep them alive when going against enemy artillery. The downside here is the price. At this number of points, I can only field 6 ghosts, compared to 12 rats or 10 birds. 6 figures are just not enough to cover my monkeys.

So it really comes down to sneaks vs rats. The Beakfaces have the major disadvantage of being a 2-man squad: only 2 attacks per OM instead of 4, and only 2 figures moved by Flocking as opposed to 4 moved by Scatter. And, let's face it: rare is the BoV map where Glide ever comes into play at all. But their 6 move is just as good as the rats', plus their 3 attack is significantly better. The rats have an edge with Disengage, and their standard defense is double the birds', but the Sneaks can put up 5 defense against ranged attacks--even ranged SAs. And, just as little added bonuses, if I go with the Sneaks, I have an all-VC army, and no filler. That, plus all the downsides of rats I mentioned above, and the Beakfaces were the ones for me. And, honestly, I never really regretted it. The army played fairly fast, despite having lots of options with the Gorillitroopers, and it was a ton of fun. And it won a few games, too.

Anyhow, that's how I arrived at my choice. Hopefully other folks will see some value in the Sneaks as a screen for their armies as well.

[caps]

FWIW, although I'm a pretty competitive guy, I think it's only fair to explain the basics of an army and answer any questions fully and honestly. Even at a tourney; even in the championship match. This is especially true when the other player is newer to Heroscape (as almost all of my most local players typically are). I'm okay with having an edge because I have more experience than them, but if they don't understand the way an army cars works until it is too late I don't feel so great about it.

[MegaSilver]

Originally Posted by capsocrates

FWIW, although I'm a pretty competitive guy, I think it's only fair to explain the basics of an army and answer any questions fully and honestly. Even at a tourney; even in the championship match. This is especially true when the other player is newer to Heroscape (as almost all of my most local players typically are). I'm okay with having an edge because I have more experience than them, but if they don't understand the way an army cars works until it is too late I don't feel so great about it.

Same. If they ask, I'll tell them how it plays, especially if they're new. If they don't ask how to play it, well, then I'll have the advantage, more than likely.