Is there any interest in a Codex pbf tournament with Map cards?

Personally I’m itching to try them out! I know they aren’t necessarily balanced for competitive play, but I think they would make for some interesting games, play patterns, and stories. There are 12 Map cards, so ideally at least 24 people so each round there is a match using each Map. You would still need to choose your deck/specs before the tournament started, but it might make some ‘weaker’ specs see more play. Here are some of the ones that stand out to me:

  1. Daggerfall Prison Camp - Hiring Workers doesn’t cost a card.
    Wow, so this would mean you can’t thin your deck at all! I think this would influence a lot of games to have a more ‘highlander’ feel to them. In Magic ‘Highlander’ is a format where you can only play with 1 of each card and games tend to play out in a much more chaotic fashion because consistency mostly gets thrown out the window.

  2. Lost Temple - Players ignore all tech building requirements and don’t need heroes to cast spells.
    Haha, this is just silly! Do whatever you want, it’s ALL good. I think this would lead to some really weird combos and I’m already nervous thinking about what someone could do in Purple.

  3. Burial Grounds - Whenever a hero dies, it’s gone forever this game.
    Wow, this one is brutal. As if killing heroes isn’t just generally a good move, this makes it even better. It would also force people to be very careful using them, and therefore more careful using spells. Of course, it also means you would be incentivized to throw caution to the wind and go all-out to kill a hero if you could!

Anyway those are just 3 that caught my eye. The full list is here:

http://codexcarddb.com/maps

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@YoungBuck and @Frozenstorm played a round of games using the map cards and random decks. The results were quite entertaining.

E.g. on Lost Temple, YoungBuck ended up conceding when Frozenstorm used Feral Strike to pull in Zarramonde and Moss Ancient on T3.

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“Highly Entertaining” in so much as:

  • Most of the maps seemed to give P1 pretty massive advantages
  • I would not recommend using random decks
  • Crazy shit like Turn 3 Zzara + Ancient happened pretty consistently (also, I LOST THAT GAME??!?! check it out)

I’d be up for doing it again though, if you want to try it out @NikoBolas. Start a thread up and decide on a format for how we pick / are assigned decks and P1/2 :slight_smile:

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I’d be interested in seeing this! What caught my eye long before I thought about using multicolor was Green with Bloodbowl or either of the ones that affect workers.

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Oh wow I completely misread the thread and missed that you lost that game. I think that one is the bonkeriest of the bonkers maps.

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Yea, I forgot too! LMAO! It was just too insane to be upset about, b/c WHAT THE HELL HASTY GUARGUM AHHHHH!!???

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Ah, I appreciate the offer and I will be able to take you up on it, but not today! Tomorrow I will have some time for games :wink:

That game was crazy. Also - you didn’t actually win?! Insanity.

I didn’t notice the thread topic was for a tournament, I don’t see why not. We can get an official sign-up going and start the tourney in a few weeks (after the CAPS field gets thinned out?)

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Yeah, I was thinking of not starting it until after CAPS has wound down. Just wanted to see if there would be anyone interested in this format. I like the idea of picking your deck/specs rather than random decks so you can try and build a deck that is good with multiple maps or a deck that is good at hosing other decks on multiple maps, or just play your favorite deck :grinning:

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I’d be interested in all random if the pool of decks were mono only, I think that’d level things out a bit

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Some of those sound too broken to be fun. Oh wow a pirate ship on t3. How fun for everyone.

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I would be down! They are so ridiculous and broken, but ended up being a fun time just seeing what we could come up with!

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I considered running such a thing in the past, but have been far too busy of late.

My plan was going to be a “Grand Tour” theme - pick a constructed deck for the whole tournament (so no tuning for every map) and then just run it swiss or something. Don’t eliminate anyone until after 3 or 4 losses and each round is a (new) random map, then switch to elimination for final 4.

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I would like to see a monocolor only setup for this. Putting in my two cents.

Also note that as CAPS winds down, RACE will be starting, probably.

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Maybe if you choose just 1 particular map card that everybody knows and that doesn’t completely throw the game off (workers don’t cost cards, or something) it would make sense.

I think it’s not great to make the entirety of the game about your turn 3 draw. That’s literally the most random thing in the whole game. In a tournament setting, games would be completely decided by the thing in the game least governed by strategy/skill/whatever, pretty much.

Just seeing what kinds of ridiculous combos you can pull off is great, I just don’t think it’s meant for tournament play.

Well it would be a very casual “tournament”. We could ban the worst maps so they wouldn’t be a problem.

I was thinking it would be fun if the loser of a match had the ability to pick the map for the winner’s next match.

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I totally hear that many of the more ridiculous maps aren’t really suited for tournament play, but I like the idea of doing a Grand tour and just seeing what some of the match-ups end up lloking like with the odd rules.

Take @FrozenStorm and my series, despite being really ridiculous, there were actually quite a few strategies that I completely missed, only seeing them from observers later on.

It might not be real competitive play, but its damn fun to watch isn’t it? haha

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@FrozenStorm and I also batted around the idea of a pick/ban phase once the map is selected to try to take out some of the more problematic Specs a la League of Legends. Porbably better to do Monocolors instead, but I’d be down to try a pick/ban as well

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pick ban in general would be super interesting. Also some of the tournament formats hearthstone has used- like “Conquest” where you bring 3 decks, and to win you have to win a match with all 3.

Not sure about monocolor… Some of the maps favor specific mono-decks more than others. Red is the most poised to take advantage of Fury Road early, and my experience playing No Rush 15 with a friend using monogreen had him building up a crippling economy during that peaceful four turns to basically autowin. It sounds more involving and less unbalanced to announce the map card used for a given round in advance, and have players choose their own deck to use in the match.

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