Suggestions to fix the time limit/modified win dilemma

[Sailor Vulcan]

A fact about Mage Wars Arena is that sometimes a game will take more than 75 minutes unless it is cut short, even at the competitive level. On the one hand, modified wins are good when there is a clear "this player is going to win this game no matter what if the game continues" situation. On the other hand, it is not always that clear. Sometimes the player with the lower life after damage has a huge board advantage and if given enough time would make a comeback and probably win. Other times the players are neck and neck right up until the time is called, and a modified win would just be down to initiative.

To be honest, I think if we want Arena tournaments to be more fair in regards to this, we need some combination of the following:

-more time
-more space
-use time limits on the planning phase rather than on the whole game.
-instead of waiting for everyone to finish their games before starting their next swiss round, there should be no swiss rounds. They should be able to just start their next games as soon as they're done with their prior games. That way shorter games compensate for longer ones.
-Set up the number of games in swiss play that each participant plays so that, after swiss play is done, there is no need for a tiebreaker game. If you're running a 32 player tournament and you're not using the modified wins, then the number of games played per participant will need to be a multiple of 3. If you ARE using the modified wins, then there will always be some probability that you will need to use tiebreaker games in order to narrow down the participants to the top 8.
-Get rid of the modified wins and remove the time limit on individual games! And if you can't remove the time limit, then extend it.

[gaspode77]

There I s only one good solution,using a chess clock

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[Laddinfance]

There I s only one good solution,using a chess clock

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Chess clock wouldn't be effective. Only the Action Phase is not simultaneous. So, the chess clock would be constantly eating one or the other's time.

[Sailor Vulcan]

There I s only one good solution,using a chess clock

Enviado desde mi Edison 3 mediante Tapatalk

Chess clock wouldn't be effective. Only the Action Phase is not simultaneous. So, the chess clock would be constantly eating one or the other's time.

What if you use the chess clock for the planning phases only?


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[exid]

I don't like limited time (my shorter games are 2h30, my opponent gave me the longer after 8h)... but i understand that in an official tournament there's no choice but to limite the time, because players don't want to waite to long and you want to have a winner at the end of the week-end.

Domination is a way to limite time: with a high v'tar goal you open both kill and v'tar stratttegies. i like that it lets the game follow his rythme, but it's sure not a normal arena game.
Giving each player a planning time is a solution: no chess clock but a counting down for each player, both clocks run from the begining of the planning phase and when a player is done he stops his (and can't modifie his planning after that).

[Sailor Vulcan]

I don't like limited time (my shorter games are 2h30, my opponent gave me the longer after 8h)... but i understand that in an official tournament there's no choice but to limite the time, because players don't want to waite to long and you want to have a winner at the end of the week-end.

Domination is a way to limite time: with a high v'tar goal you open both kill and v'tar stratttegies. i like that it lets the game follow his rythme, but it's sure not a normal arena game.
Giving each player a planning time is a solution: no chess clock but a counting down for each player, both clocks run from the begining of the planning phase and when a player is done he stops his (and can't modifie his planning after that).

Domination isn't an answer to the time limit problem because it's an entirely different mode of play. Standard Arena isn't going away any time soon, and organized play in that mode will still have this problem.

I'm thinking a time limit of two minutes in the planning phase might be best. Alternatively, you could have a total time limit for all planning phases in a game combined.

BTW I'm really curious about what your local meta-game is like, that your games consistently take that long. What sets does your playgroup/community use? And what mages? And how long are your planning phases?

[exid]

I don't like limited time (my shorter games are 2h30, my opponent gave me the longer after 8h)... but i understand that in an official tournament there's no choice but to limite the time, because players don't want to waite to long and you want to have a winner at the end of the week-end.

Domination is a way to limite time: with a high v'tar goal you open both kill and v'tar stratttegies. i like that it lets the game follow his rythme, but it's sure not a normal arena game.
Giving each player a planning time is a solution: no chess clock but a counting down for each player, both clocks run from the begining of the planning phase and when a player is done he stops his (and can't modifie his planning after that).

Domination isn't an answer to the time limit problem because it's an entirely different mode of play. Standard Arena isn't going away any time soon, and organized play in that mode will still have this problem.

I'm thinking a time limit of two minutes in the planning phase might be best. Alternatively, you could have a total time limit for all planning phases in a game combined.

BTW I'm really curious about what your local meta-game is like, that your games consistently take that long. What sets does your playgroup/community use? And what mages? And how long are your planning phases?

with 2 minutes plannings, players will have too much time sometime and not enough sometime! with a time that each player can manage all along the game, they can plan more naturally (in an acceptable total time for the game).

my "local meta-game" is one friend with whom we don't find much time to play (jobs, children, etc.)... we have each one of each expension, we like to play in a bar, with beers ant talks, and we like to build games with creatures and/or conjurations and/or objects and/or enchantments (we both played a rush-attack book once, both won, and both apologies afterwards for the "bad quick game"  ).
we know two other players with whom we play 2vs2 (but it's even more complicate to find time!).

[iNano78]

I don't like limited time (my shorter games are 2h30, my opponent gave me the longer after 8h)... but i understand that in an official tournament there's no choice but to limite the time, because players don't want to waite to long and you want to have a winner at the end of the week-end.

Domination is a way to limite time: with a high v'tar goal you open both kill and v'tar stratttegies. i like that it lets the game follow his rythme, but it's sure not a normal arena game.
Giving each player a planning time is a solution: no chess clock but a counting down for each player, both clocks run from the begining of the planning phase and when a player is done he stops his (and can't modifie his planning after that).

Domination isn't an answer to the time limit problem because it's an entirely different mode of play. Standard Arena isn't going away any time soon, and organized play in that mode will still have this problem.

I'm thinking a time limit of two minutes in the planning phase might be best. Alternatively, you could have a total time limit for all planning phases in a game combined.

BTW I'm really curious about what your local meta-game is like, that your games consistently take that long. What sets does your playgroup/community use? And what mages? And how long are your planning phases?

It depends on the source of the "time limit problem."  If slow players is the issue, especially during planning, then perhaps a timer might help. But if the concern is related to heal/life gain/high Armor strategies and a need for modified wins, etc, then Domination definitely helps because V'tar imposes a turn clock on the game. You can turtle all you want, but somebody is going to win on V'tar if neither Mage dies.

[Sailor Vulcan]

Huh. Still not sure why it takes THAT long for you guys though. Even if you're both running very defensive decks, the objective is still to kill the mage. I'd love to see some decklists because I know you have been a member of these forums and therefore a mage wars player for quite a while now.

Right now I'm having trouble even guessing what sort of meta you two have going.

Do you guys share your cardpool? If so, how do you determine who gets to use what cards? How often do you guys try new spellbooks? Do you know or have some clue as to what kind of strategy your opponent is probably going to use before the game, or is it a surprise? Are you guys even using custom spellbooks or are you playing preconstructed?

@iNano That only is a viable solution if they *replace* Standard Arena organized play with Domination Arena organized play rather than just supplementing it. I don't see that happening anytime soon and I don't think it's a good idea. Increasing Domination Arena organized play does not fix the problem in Standard Arena.

[exid]

Huh. Still not sure why it takes THAT long for you guys though. Even if you're both running very defensive decks, the objective is still to kill the mage. I'd love to see some decklists because I know you have been a member of these forums and therefore a mage wars player for quite a while now.

Right now I'm having trouble even guessing what sort of meta you two have going.

Do you guys share your cardpool? If so, how do you determine who gets to use what cards? How often do you guys try new spellbooks? Do you know or have some clue as to what kind of strategy your opponent is probably going to use before the game, or is it a surprise? Are you guys even using custom spellbooks or are you playing preconstructed?

Our decks are not very defensive (we never had an even game, sometime one concede but it's when he realy doesn't see on the game and in his book how he could avoid to be killed), but we prefere to cast beautifull spells befor attacking (I can imagine our way to play isn't very efficient), and we take our time to plan, choose our moves, etc. (a tense turn with a few cards on the arena can take more than 15 minutes!).
We have separate cards. We tell wich mage each of us will play before building. We build new books each time, because we think it's half the plaisir in such a game (therefor I have no decklist to show you...).

[Halewijn]

We tell wich mage each of us will play before building. We build new books each time, because we think it's half the plaisir in such a game (therefor I have no decklist to show you...).

Ah!    We used to do this in the past. It gives totally different decks than the pre-build books that try to counter everything. You can save a lot of spellbookpoints to things you will not need to that specific mage. The beauty is that you can add (& use) spells in the deck that would otherwise be cut out to save sbp. It gives the game a completely different feel!

On a competitive level this would give totally broken and unfun games (eg. 4x dragonscale hauberk vs a warlock) , but if you play casual, I believe this is the way to go.

[Sailor Vulcan]

We tell wich mage each of us will play before building. We build new books each time, because we think it's half the plaisir in such a game (therefor I have no decklist to show you...).

Ah!    We used to do this in the past. It gives totally different decks than the pre-build books that try to counter everything. You can save a lot of spellbookpoints to things you will not need to that specific mage. The beauty is that you can add (& use) spells in the deck that would otherwise be cut out to save sbp. It gives the game a completely different feel!

On a competitive level this would give totally broken and unfun games (eg. 4x dragonscale hauberk vs a warlock) , but if you play casual, I believe this is the way to go.

Are you kidding me? That actually sounds like a really good competitive drafting format!

If you want to make this a competitive format, consider adding the following:

-Restrict card pool to one copy of the core set and 1 big expansion
-before building your spellbooks, randomize the card pool and take turns picking a card until all the cards have been evenly distributed between the players. Now each player has their own personal card pool to build from.
-have a 30 minute time limit on spellbook building.

[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!

[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.

[exid]

We tell wich mage each of us will play before building. We build new books each time, because we think it's half the plaisir in such a game (therefor I have no decklist to show you...).

Ah!    We used to do this in the past. It gives totally different decks than the pre-build books that try to counter everything. You can save a lot of spellbookpoints to things you will not need to that specific mage. The beauty is that you can add (& use) spells in the deck that would otherwise be cut out to save sbp. It gives the game a completely different feel!

On a competitive level this would give totally broken and unfun games (eg. 4x dragonscale hauberk vs a warlock) , but if you play casual, I believe this is the way to go.

we like this sbp saving.
our books don't turn to be anti-oponent (we of cours put a dragonscale vs a warlock but not 4!), but we try to find a way to surprise the oponent with an unexpected book for our mage (i recently killed an adramalech warlock who tried to play without fire... that was to much unexpected for such a specialised mage  ).