Which means that starter swaps won’t help, because starters don’t answer upgrades.
If you don’t have Versatile Style, Nature Reclaims, or Assimilate, you have to prevent them getting to Tech II (very difficult if they play conservatively) or kill off all their attackers (very difficult if they have haste in Starter/Tech I and/or Birds). Peace engine is the same, but I think a bit slower than MoLaC simply because it has more necessary pieces. So does every deck need Grave, Mid, or Vir?
I guess in Blue, D.Alpha is a soft answer, since you can keep Mad Man and Rambaster from generating runes. But with the boosts available to Growth/Blood, that’s not a guarantee. Art of War works a bit better, but ye have to get Oni to max first, and it only lasts a turn. In Black, you have Carriorn Curse, but you have to get lucky and have your draw match up with theirs.
In Red, the cards that should be answers (Chaos Mirror, Kidnapping) don’t work because one hits printed values and the other steals the unit but not the bonus. If anyone has suggestions for me for when I go up against MoLaC (and the threat of Earthquake, and Gunship), I’m welcome to them!
Similar to previous comments on Vandy, small changes to the card would be a better answer than changing the way tournaments are run. eg MoLaC needs 6 or 7 runes to activate.
Yeah, you’re kind of getting at the crux of my concern. A major tenant of Codex as a game is that you don’t go into a game and realize you don’t have an answer available for what your opponent is doing.
Peace engine is a different animal because everyone can attack buildings. Similarly, Earthquake and Gunship are strong cards that it’s more feasible to play around.
Anyways, sorry for derailing the thread (and whining so much).
Maybe it’s not on-topic for the thread, but I don’t think it’s whining. Worth having discussion about (and MOLAC has proven to be a very influential card!)
The game isn’t designed to make sure every multicolor is balanced vs every other multicolor. It seems to me that most monocolors have reasonable answers for molac. Black is probably in the worst position vs molac, but not so unbalanced.
@Barrelfish@EricF I’m going to be out of town for the next week, and I don’t know what my internet connectivity is going to be like (probably none), so I won’t be able to start my next game/take any more turn in mine and Barrelfish’s game until next Thursday.
@Barrelfish is getting a bit of an extension to finish his games against @Shax and @Shadow_Night_Black. If he wins one or both of them, he’ll have a BYE in round 4.
So, I can see how the three-loss elimination is probably easier on the tournament organizer, and makes it obvious who’s still got a chance… but I’m realizing why I don’t like this format nearly as much as normal Swiss.
In standard Swiss, you never get eliminated, which means you get more games in. Moreover, the further you go, the more likely you are to be matched up against a player of your skill level (or at least your win-loss record). For those of us on the bottom half, the result is that it’s pretty disheartening. We lose several times against better players, then we’re out.
@EricF, if you’d be willing to consider running full Swiss for future tournaments, I think it would make for a lot more fun for those of us in the bottom half (especially new players) as we’d get additional games in with our chosen deck (rather than just playing and losing 3, then giving up on the deck) and have some of those games feel like we have more of a chance. (:
I’m not a particularly “play to win” kinda guy, and I tend to enjoy even the matches I lose, but I notice a fair bit of pessimism in some of the comments in other games that didn’t go so well, and there are folks I never got to play against whom I think I’d enjoy a game with.
I am not super familiar with the pairing structure being used, but it seems like anyone that lost in round 1 should play against somebody else that lost in round 1. If that happens, to play against all experts, the experts would have to continuously lose.
I see the whole thing about it being nice to be able to 0 and 10 if you want and keep playing, but the organizers have an annoying and unpaid job anyway. I would just ask somebody to play casual with the same tournament decks after I was eliminated to get around this restriction if it were me.
There are three main reasons for the “must-drop at 3 losses” rule:
Avoiding non-games. Anyone still playing has the ability to win the entire event; in regular Swiss, a player who is mathematically eliminated could be paired against a player who still has a chance, which incentivises collusion/concessions.
Ease of spectating. By reducing the number of ongoing games in later rounds, spectators can focus on the “hype” matches. Also, the field naturally narrows to a “top few” without making an arbitrary (and tiebreaker dependent) cutoff to single elimination.
Logistics. Fewer matches in later rounds means less chance of a match going over the time limit, and delaying the whole tournament.
I’m with @EricF and @Raiddinn on this, it’s best for the tourney to cut at three strikes, and there’s nothing stopping players from starting casual games outside the tourney with other eliminated members w/ the same deck(s), or tweaks on the deck if situations like this CAPS occur where your deck was a little “off-meta” (e.g. doesn’t answer MoLaC + Sharks well).
For boards with similar records, the one with more games played is listed first.
Peace = 6 and 3
Balance = 4 and 2
Demon = 2 and 1
Future = 2 and 1
Strength = 12 and 7
Anarchy = 12 and 9
Blood = 8 and 6
Feral = 4 and 3
Growth = 7 and 6
Finesse = 7 and 6
Present = 2 and 2
Necro = 5 and 7
Truth = 3 and 5
Law = 2 and 4
Ninjitsu = 2 and 5
Discipline = 2 and 8
Fire = 1 and 6
