Suggestions to fix the time limit/modified win dilemma

[wtcannonjr]

Another technique to the time limit issue is to include the duration of the match as a performance measure in the tournament. For example, both players can be rewarded tournament points for finishing first, second, third, etc. as long as they finish early. In essence you reward both players in each match to finish early and let the players decide whether to earn those points or not. Players who play faster will have a better chance of advancing since they earn more points than if they don't complete the match in the time limit.

I think scoring systems like this are the best we can do.

[iNano78]

@iNano That only is a viable solution if they *replace* Standard Arena organized play with Domination Arena organized play rather than just supplementing it.

That sounds like a great idea!

That sounds like a terrible idea. I like both Standard Arena and Domination, and would hate it if they took away organized play for Standard Arena.

I'm not suggesting that Arcane Wonders should stop supporting Arena organized play.  I'm suggesting that if you care about match duration, especially for a tournament where you want matches to wrap up in ~75 minutes (as per your original post), then Domination achieves that.  No need for any strange house rules or alternate formats (like block formats or drafting) beyond the official formats that already exist (Arena and Domination).  Why invent a new format when an existing official format meets your criteria?

I find it inconsistent (and strange) that you'd propose and promote both a block format and a "competitive draft format" and in the same thread state that competitive Domination is a "terrible idea."  Block format may or may not have some merit in general, but I don't see how it reduces match times.  And I don't see how a drafting format would reduce match time.  The time required to draft and build a spell book, plus the resulting play time with each player piloting an unfamiliar spell book they just built on the spot, would be tough to cram into a tournament, especially if you have to wrap it up before your venue closes, etc - but it's hard to get one's head around a draft format at all since Mage Wars isn't really compatible with drafting given the asymmetric spell book building restrictions (I see your idea is to draft the card pool, then legally build a book for your choice of mage.  Still seems it would take a long time... like half a day just for the draft and book building, then another day to clumsily play out the tournament with sub-optimal spell books). 

[Drefan]

This whole competetive draft format seems like a bad idea to me.

Mage Wars is about creating your own deck, were the only restrictions are Spellbook points and cards you have aviable to you.

If the goal is to make sure games will be faster, I suggest having tournament specific rules.
Perhaps lowering the spellbook points in decks, having lower life on Mages is something worth considering.
Becayse this could create a tournament meta, where fast paced books are more common than the long game books.

[Brian VanAlstyne]

Then you might as well just ban the Priestess and other defensive, long-game mages from tournaments. Modified wins are a viable part of tournaments and anything done to totally focus on aggressive mages really hurts the game to me. I, personally, am not a very good aggressive player but I want to be competitive in matches and modified wins help me achieve that by playing a style I enjoy but not changing the game too much. It still allows my opponents to go aggressive against me and try to kill me or force me out of my style so I can't build up defensively. Both viable strategies and neither which make it mandatory for me to totally change my playstyle. Knockout wins > modified wins but modified wins have a place.

[Sailor Vulcan]

@iNano That only is a viable solution if they *replace* Standard Arena organized play with Domination Arena organized play rather than just supplementing it.

That sounds like a great idea!

That sounds like a terrible idea. I like both Standard Arena and Domination, and would hate it if they took away organized play for Standard Arena.

I'm not suggesting that Arcane Wonders should stop supporting Arena organized play.  I'm suggesting that if you care about match duration, especially for a tournament where you want matches to wrap up in ~75 minutes (as per your original post), then Domination achieves that.  No need for any strange house rules or alternate formats (like block formats or drafting) beyond the official formats that already exist (Arena and Domination).  Why invent a new format when an existing official format meets your criteria?

I find it inconsistent (and strange) that you'd propose and promote both a block format and a "competitive draft format" and in the same thread state that competitive Domination is a "terrible idea."  Block format may or may not have some merit in general, but I don't see how it reduces match times.  And I don't see how a drafting format would reduce match time.  The time required to draft and build a spell book, plus the resulting play time with each player piloting an unfamiliar spell book they just built on the spot, would be tough to cram into a tournament, especially if you have to wrap it up before your venue closes, etc - but it's hard to get one's head around a draft format at all since Mage Wars isn't really compatible with drafting given the asymmetric spell book building restrictions (I see your idea is to draft the card pool, then legally build a book for your choice of mage.  Still seems it would take a long time... like half a day just for the draft and book building, then another day to clumsily play out the tournament with sub-optimal spell books).

Please don't put words in my mouth. I didn't say domination was a terrible idea. I said that having it completely replace standard arena is a terrible idea. Alternate variants are good to spice things up with variety, but they should be able to coexist, not replace each other. I like both domination and standard arena, and I like to talk about alternate variants as well as standard. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

[exid]

I understand nobody like to fight a turtle.
I never met one, but if it's goal is to wait untill the oponent proposes an even game, it's not a good strateggy.

but...
It would be sad to create rules that eliminate a win-strattegy that needs time to develope.

if the goal is to exterminate turtles, a rule could be:
if a mage made 0 damages to opponent's objects in X rounds, he looses.

[Sailor Vulcan]

I understand nobody like to fight a turtle.
I never met one, but if it's goal is to wait untill the oponent proposes an even game, it's not a good strateggy.

but...
It would be sad to create rules that eliminate a win-strattegy that needs time to develope.

if the goal is to exterminate turtles, a rule could be:
if a mage made 0 damages to opponent's objects in X rounds, he looses.

Why do people want to "exterminate" turtles? Turtles are fun to play and fun to play against. And in any case, turtles are not the only defensive strategy that suffers from the time limit. It wouldn't be that much of a stretch to say that most if not all priestesses suffer from it. And even in domination, priestesses aren't exactly aggro mages most of the time.

[exid]

i like turtles (i just never built a good one), but only if there goal is to kill the opponent mage in the end.

[zot]

perhaps the issue is casual versus tournament play. tourneys usually have a time limit, and if you cannot win in that time, then you essentially loose. whether that is a die, or tie. dying should be worth no points, and a tie should be worth less than an outright win. and 2 ties should not be more valuable than 1 win.

turtling is a viable strategy for mw. some can be quite fun. however, tourneys have constraints that are outside of the game. like the physical space where the event is taking place. they may have limits on when people are allowed to occupy that space, costs for that space, volunteers, aw folks running the event have things they have to do, etc. so there are parameters affecting the length for a whole tournament. which when broken down means a time limit per match. that limit is generally much less than what a turtle strategy needs to build enough to win.

[Sailor Vulcan]

perhaps the issue is casual versus tournament play. tourneys usually have a time limit, and if you cannot win in that time, then you essentially loose. whether that is a die, or tie. dying should be worth no points, and a tie should be worth less than an outright win. and 2 ties should not be more valuable than 1 win.

turtling is a viable strategy for mw. some can be quite fun. however, tourneys have constraints that are outside of the game. like the physical space where the event is taking place. they may have limits on when people are allowed to occupy that space, costs for that space, volunteers, aw folks running the event have things they have to do, etc. so there are parameters affecting the length for a whole tournament. which when broken down means a time limit per match. that limit is generally much less than what a turtle strategy needs to build enough to win.

Yes, and that is a serious problem for MW organized play. When the official tournaments run by arcane wonders are artificially made less balanced than unofficial or casual tournaments run by players, it is a problem. Plus, I'm pretty sure that arcane wonders does not intend to make half the playstyles of this game less playable in tournaments. If a priestess is much more likely to get a modified win and a warlock is much more likely to get a full win, who do you think will have a better chance of winning official tournaments?

Either we need more space or more time at conventions, or we need some way to make due with the space and time we have, without it interfering with the balance of the game.

It is a fact about mage wars arena that the time it takes to play a full game varies drastically. Something I noticed the last time I was at an official Mage Wars tournament is that some people would finish their games very early, and some people would still be going right up to the time limit while the early birds had to wait for them to finish before they could start another game. That time is valuable time that could have been used for more games. I suspect the obstacle to that is that it's harder to keep track of things if everyone's starting games at different times. We would need more judges.

Maybe convention halls are not the optimal space for a full Mage Wars Arena tournament. Maybe you could have the swiss rounds elsewhere, and the single elimination rounds for the top 8 would be located in a convention hall.

Maybe once Arena is up on Tabletopia, we could have the swiss rounds for some of the busier conventions on there. That way there won't be the risk of not having enough time or space.

Considering that they take TWO DAYS for the single elimination rounds (top , it's pretty silly to think that they can run all the swiss rounds in the same amount of time the way they're doing it right now, without messing with the gameplay. They probably either need more space or time, more judges so they can better use the time they have, or they need to somehow convince the convention hosts to be a bit less ridiculous.

I mean really, it's not rocket science--the amount of space and time that a gaming tournament ACTUALLY NEEDS per game varies with the game, not with how expensive or successful the game is. convention hosts should be willing to distribute space and time at their conventions proportional to how much each game actually needs. Otherwise new games that aren't super quick to play will need more money backing them than new games that are shorter, lest the longer games face artificial balancing issues in their official tournaments like MW Arena currently is. And some prospective new players would SEE the balancing issues at these conventions, and decide they'd rather play something else.

And if a convention is unwilling to allow a gaming tournament into its event schedule without crippling it, then what's the point of even having that tournament on the schedule?

I kinda suspect that this is part of what happened with origins--that Arcane Wonders needed more time/space for a tournament than the convention hosts were willing to give them, and so they had to go back to just doing demos. Especially since the last origins tournament, which was a couple years ago, only had 6 people in it!

[zot]

I too wish more time was allowed for rounds. that would be great. It would allow for turtle, or simply slow builds have enough time to compete. I would like to see 2 hour match qualifier rounds, and either the same or 2.5-3 hour rounds for tournament. and if all matches are complete, move on to next round earlier. just seems really unlikely to happen.

[wtcannonjr]

I too wish more time was allowed for rounds. that would be great. It would allow for turtle, or simply slow builds have enough time to compete. I would like to see 2 hour match qualifier rounds, and either the same or 2.5-3 hour rounds for tournament. and if all matches are complete, move on to next round earlier. just seems really unlikely to happen.

This format is easy to use at the World Boardgaming Championships convention. The convention is organized by player volunteers so the rules are very player friendly. The current tournament format I am using is 1.5 hour rounds to encourage new players to learn and play Mage Wars Arena. However, if another GM wants to run an expert only tournament it can use whatever time limit is desired. Some events already use 4 or 6 hour rounds to handle their specific game and player needs. In addition pre-registration is not required for individual events so you can accommodate everyone who shows up. Several events have grown to handle over 100 players in a single round.