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« on: November 25, 2013, 09:45:17 PM »
Glad to see such a thread. I've played around 15 team games, mostly thru octgn. We used a 4x4 board... Basically went into paint and copy/pasted one of the columns to make it an even 16 zones. You have to do a bit of setup on everyone's machine by changing the background image to accomplish this, but its not too difficult once you find the file. We actually made about 5-6 differently themed maps to try out, but we've only done two.
At first we would have both mages start in same zone, but we've found it more challenging to have them start in opposite corners and NOT speak/plan attacks. What made us do this wasnt that one guy would be Alpha player, it would be more that one guy would be weaker(minute difference, but there is one) and it became that the weaker teammate would just ask what he should do.
Not being able to speak to partner does make the game take a lot longer but it has definitely stepped everyone's game up. So much more challenging to have to try to anticipate what your partner AND opponents will do. We are all friends so we basically roll dice at start of game and the best roll pairs with third, and 2nd pairs with 4th. That's also the order of initiative that we use, and we don't share HP between partners. It's much more independent and as I said, games can take a while, but we enjoy the challenge of it. Anyone who likes this game isn't really going to be shying away from challenges...
Longest game was near 6 hours, and one of the mages on winning team was dead two hours before the end. The winner happened to be a beastmaster with a lair that basically made sure to bring out two creatures every turn while his partner kept the opposing mages busy in first few rounds. Some mistakes were made by both sides but nothing so major that you could say the losing team was clearly less skilled. A lot of it boils down to both mages having same cards in hand to do the same thing in a round when you only needed one.
I do like your proposed method... Should definitely speed up games. I'll bring it up to the guys. Here's hoping we get a DvN update sometime soon for octgn.