|
BJPaskoff posted:I've played a few games of it, I don't know if you have. It's the standard rip-off of Magic's mechanics because they wanted to put a card game out there, but didn't want to risk going outside the expected mechanics. You play characters, but in addition to tapping backup characters (lands), you can discard cards from your hand to get "mana". Then you can turn your guys sideways to attack, and your opponent can block with their characters, and you compare numbers to see which character dies. But you can't attack on the first turn. What a novel game mechanic, where did they come up with that? The turn sequence is exactly Magic's, also, it's just lazy. Then there's the awkward translation from Japanese, but at least it doesn't have the tiny text problem that other Japanese import games have. It's clearly in the Magic family, but I don't think you're being fair here. Burning cards for resources is a massive difference in how the actual game plays, even if design-wise it's just a tweak. There's also the quite significant difference that your character's fighting prowess doesn't matter when they hit the opponent, only in combat: each player can take seven hits from individual attacking cards, regardless of power. That changes a lot about how aggression works, as do some more minor changes (gang attacks, not gang blocks). Sure, you can express the design as "magic, but", but that doesn't mean the changes aren't intentional and don't create different and interesting gameplay. It's impossible to get so I have no idea how the top-level competitive game is, but I got the starters and a few boosters to learn it, and I've enjoyed the dozen or so games I've played so far.
|
#
¿
Dec 20, 2016 23:53
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 12:19 |
|
|
Merauder posted:SWCCG System/Site Locations were perhaps my single favorite part about that game. I've wanted to see a game utilize something similar, but have yet to see it (except the generic spin-off of the engine when SW went away). Did Conquest (RIP) do something similar? I know I read it had location cards you fought over, but not sure if it was really the same thing. Our second wave stuff is trickling in this week, but radically less than we hoped for. Alliance says they only got 100 boxes total for the entire country, for example. We're barely going to be able to cover our advance orders, let alone have any to put on the shelves, sigh.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 21, 2016 10:14
|
|
|
Merauder posted:Do you know how Alliance's allocation compared against GTS/ACD/the rest? Nope. Those things aren't public record or anything, that's just what our rep told our ordering manager. Like Dr. Clockwork we are getting more of our request as a percentage from other distributors, but that's likely just because Alliance is the biggest distributor and so has more clients to split the wave up among. Though we're also getting two boxes from them, which seems kind of like a lot of they only got 100; maybe I misunderstood and our rep got that many? But in any case, given our store alone probably wants close to 100 boxes in an ideal world, it seems unlikely this wave is going to seriously address the lack of supply.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 21, 2016 17:49
|
|
|
ShowTime posted:That does suck. Did you keep the piece that fell off? You could potentially repair it and maybe at least do a serviceable job with a black sharpie. I realize its not perfect, but maybe its something. Whatever you put on it you should be able to seal up with some kind of matte varnish, like they use for miniature models. Some people on reddit were talking about doing that anyway, to help their dice stay pretty. Unfortunately fair weighting on dice is so important that I'd expect things like that to make them illegal for tournament play. I'd hold off if you care about that.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 22, 2016 22:35
|
|
|
FFG has a long history of doing stupid tournament setups for no reason I can determine other than wanting to reinvent the wheel. I'd hoped that they'd avoid that for Destiny, since it's not got any of the issues that sort of justified the weirdness of their other systems, but nope, they apparently decided it was critical that people not be able to get draws, so now there's all sorts of arcane end-of-time stuff that favors certain deck types, and no need for it. One of the big advantages of Swiss is that it's okay for people to get draws! Welp. Not that it's going to stop me from playing in tournaments if I get the chance, I really enjoy the game. And I'd still play Armada tournaments, where the scoring system is just a catastrophe. I just really wish they'd start doing sensible things with their organized play.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 30, 2016 17:35
|
|
|
Bottom Liner posted:Thank you for explaining more of what I was complaining about with their choice of bo1. FFG could have a legit MtG competitor here but not if they don't build and support a tournament scene appropriately. I actually disagree on that point and think BO1 is largely fine for a game without sideboards. The lack of draws (apparently based on wanting to avoid "collusion") is a much bigger deal because it influences how you have to think about playing any game that looks like it has a chance of going to time, and biases some strategies over others. It also makes me just shudder as a judge, because policing slow play is one of the most difficult and obnoxious things to do, and this system frequently rewards it. I also think 35 minutes is too short for the round. Insofar as there's a problem with BO1, it is that usually people want to do it with more Swiss rounds (the MLPCCG, which bizarrely has a small but dedicated competitive scene, does it this way) which seems rational on the surface but doesn't really work for smaller events. It's fine for larger ones, though. It also does increase variance, of course, but Swiss already reduces that since you've got a few losses to give, more if you do more rounds, and the elimination rounds are BO3. So I think that aspect is mostly fine. That said, at the end of the day, if you want to have a competitive scene for your CCG, the more you diverge from Magic, the more likely it is you alienate some of those players, as you point out, even if their objections might not be entirely fair. So all things being equal, you probably just want to crib from the DCI. It's certainly a problem that, all things being equal, FFG seems to want to actively avoid doing anything anyone else has ever done before, sometimes including themselves: the Game of Thrones LCG, for example, uses completely different points and things than Destiny for no (to me) apparent reason, including their "modified win" nonsense.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 30, 2016 18:06
|
|
|
canyonero posted:I'm not sure why you're putting scare quotes around collusion. FFG semi-recently changed X-Wing's tournament rules to get rid of draws specifically because of collusion. Maybe they're just gun-shy at the moment and they'll adjust as time goes on. It seems reasonable to give them the benefit for now. The argument that intentionally drawing when it is in both players' interest to do so is collusion is what I was calling out. Actual collusion is certainly worth fighting but isn't addressed by removing draw as a possible outcome. Edit: and even if you decide you do want to say the ID is collusion, you still have very similar situations come up without it, and still have to police collusion. Ultiville fucked around with this message at 20:17 on Dec 30, 2016 |
|
#
¿
Dec 30, 2016 20:15
|
|
|
stoko posted:I'm going to a local event tonight hoping to trade off a bunch of my stock for whatever's missing from my 2x playset. I'll probably also play a round or two with my far too expensive eVader/Raider and my cheap-rear end eVeers/eJango decks. I'd like to set up a nice fun control or mill deck, but damned if wrecking opponents on turn two isn't satisfying. I've been working on using Padme and my conclusion is that control might be good, but dedicated mill currently isn't. Right now I'm on EPadme/Trooper/Padawan to let me play all the colors and have no mill other than Padme, just control elements. So I have a ton of stall and 2x Launch Bay 1x Falcon (though that could be one too many expensive supports since if Kylo is around you don't want one stuck in your hand). It's been far better than my experiments in dedicated mill; the problem with mill is that it's generally more expensive than damage, and it takes way more to kill the opponent. It's a good add-in to a control deck, though, since if you're not super focused on damage it's not going to be particularly feasible to kill your opponent that way, and discard is a good fit with it and a good control method in general. It might be that you don't actually need mill at all, of course, but a yellow character is your best choice to be your lynchpin defender because Second Chance and Cunning are both great, and I don't think there's a better yellow hero than Padme. In general though I expect it'll be a while longer before we start seeing really good control decks even if they potentially exist, because by definition a deck like that relies a lot on meta knowledge both to build and to play, and the game is so new it's hard to sort out. I do think three-color Padme might be a reasonable choice, but it feels like Jango decks are some of the better ones against it because his activation trigger is so powerful. You can play around it to a certain extent with supports since activating one doesn't trigger him, but that obviously takes a little while to set up.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 4, 2017 06:52
|
|
|
Bottom Liner posted:Anyone have success or fun with eKylo/Darth? I have it put together and it's fun insofar as blue villain has some cool stuff but they really do not get along in terms of their abilities: if you use Vader to force them to discard, they can ditch whatever thing is going to wreck them if you activate Kylo. Kind of a flavor win IMO - for all Kylo idolizes Vader one suspects Vader would not be a huge fan.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 4, 2017 06:54
|
|
|
KO Derf posted:The only one I've seen do any good was an eLuke/Ackbar list that used Focus results to get max damage. I've faced two thus far but didn't get the list composition either time. I imagine just going through cardgamedb or swdestinydb you can find one and adapt it to your style. It's a super dangerous list for sure. Only time's going to tell if it's as good as it seems now, or if it's more a case of being the easiest deck to excel with when people are still really new. It certainly could prove to just be above the curve, but it also is kind of a classic "everyone is new" deck: it is relatively forgiving to play, and very unforgiving to play against, because if you don't manage Jango's burst well, it will absolutely destroy you. That said, my experience is that it's also a deck that looks unbeatable in some games, but totally beatable in others. The variance on the Jango rolls is very important - if you get high damage rolls on his free activation, there are very few ways to interact with you meaningfully. But if you get a bad roll and have to fix it, or just a medium roll that can't get a big hit off, it's night and day, and medium to bad rolls are not that uncommon.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 5, 2017 07:24
|
|
|
Finster Dexter posted:You guys really think there's a this massive number of people that are sitting there going "welp, couldn't buy the game in December, guess I give up and just won't play for ~reasons~ when it's available in January." lol It won't kill the game or anything, and if it does take off it'll be no big deal long-term, but it's a real fumble and will hurt overall sales. It's been out and spoiled long enough that plenty of people who wanted to be in on the ground floor won't be in a way that has real impact on the experience, for one thing. They also missed the Christmas season, and gift sales are often get-it-or-lose-it. And collectible games are jealous - if someone gets into a different one in the mean time, they might just fail to ever get into Destiny. Though FFG got lucky here - the other major new collectible game, the Final Fantasy CCG, launched earlier and bungled their launch even more hilariously, so it's more likely Destiny will poach people who might have played that instead, rather than vice versa. Finally, people who can't buy more product are more likely to finish decks via trading or secondary market whereas otherwise they'd potentially just buy more packs. In the long-term the secondary market might get fluid enough that this doesn't represent lost sales for FFG, but in the short term it definitely does, and even something like Magic with a very developed secondary market doesn't have anything like efficient distribution of rare cards. Again, it's already sold well enough that they'll do another set and support it, and beyond that point the quality of the meta now and with future sets, plus peoples' ability to find games, will determine the future of the game, and those things for now look like they'll be okay. But it doesn't make any sense to say that a fumbled launch is meaningless; it will hurt FFG's bottom line, and might or might not delay the growth of the game in the medium-term, depending in large part on whether this next wave is enough to stabilize stock.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 6, 2017 21:14
|
|
|
Finster Dexter posted:The only reason anything was a fumble is because it sold ridiculously well overall. Overall sales will be just fine. My understanding is that this is untrue, and they had a significant rejection rate in quality control, ie, they wanted to have more product available. Also, underestimating your market and running out of product is better than overestimating it and having tons of dead inventory, but it's still a mistake, and underestimating it this significantly is certainly a fumble. I even said in my post it's not a long-term worry for the game, but it's absolutely reasonable to call it a mistake on their part.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 6, 2017 21:57
|
|
|
Finster Dexter posted:Ok, I get that. I don't know what to tell you, then. In my store alone there are at least significant double digit boxes of sales we would have made over the holidays that did not occur because of a lack of supply. For all the reasons I already outlined, some of those sales are lost. If you disagree with that, you just don't understand how the industry works. On the other hand, if by "hurt" you mean the very narrow definition "makes it more likely the game ceases production in the near future" then no, it wasn't hurt - no one ever stops production because of too much demand. But the way I meant hurt - that it worked to the detriment of the development of the game and community in the short term - it absolutely did. No one should take this as a reason not to get into it or anything like that, it's a great game that all indications are will continue to get support for a long time unless they screw up something more critical or keep screwing this up, which I don't think FFG will do. And they have the bankroll to fund production in the future, so I expect once the initial supply issues get resolved it'll be in fine shape for future releases and long-term availability of Awakenings as long as they want to keep it in print. But there's no reason not to call it an error that did some harm.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 7, 2017 07:04
|
|
|
For the supply issues the big question will be how long they persist. One of our reps just told me today that they got in less for this wave than the last, which seems bad. But that was GTS, so it might just be that alliance/ACD went way up in orders and sucked up most of FFG's stock. We will just have to see. On the subject of control decks, my EPadme/Trooper/Padawan build has been doing really well lately, but it leans on Launch Bay and Falcon a lot. Not only are supports good against Jango, hitting the opponent's hand with big discard effects is really efficient at closing out a game. I'm still glad to have the two Padme dice because her focus 2 side is great, she tends to surivie best because she can take Second Chance, and the incidental mill certainly adds up, but it doesn't feel like it works as well to rely on it as opposed to going heavily defensive and discard based and letting the Padme specials do some chip exhaustion when they come up.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 8, 2017 08:24
|
|
|
Bottom Liner posted:Doubt there will be starters, since it says specifically booster packs. e/Palp is balls awesome. I like the idea of going full glass cannon with him. It will be really interesting to see how it fares against various archetypes. This game is only going to get faster with a wider card pool. FFG will have to be really good about balancing things like aggro vs control or they'll end up in a Hearthstone situation. It's certainly possible to increase the card pool such that the game slows down, it's a matter of what specific cards they print and push. But I suspect it'll be set 3 or 4 before we see them really able to respond to what's actually happening. Right now we've got probably zero developed meta information about Destiny, the burst damage decks right now are certainly powerful but to me it feels more like the "early front runners" stage.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 12, 2017 16:55
|
|
|
ShowTime posted:That's different. Those acrylic tokens are available in tournament kits, which are only available to stores and are meant to be used for events. That's a little different than opening up boxes and selling singles. They are much, much rarer and FFG only sells them to stores with the intent to distribute them at events, not to sell them. It's not obvious to me that the seller is a store, though. If someone won the thing at an event there's no real way of stopping them from ebaying it if they want.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 16, 2017 07:20
|
|
|
Helion posted:Do Vader and Ren have anti-synergy? I assume that people will throw the most expensive card to Vader if they can't play it, weakening Ren's special die. Now of course, there can be benefits to this too, it may have been a card they wanted to keep, but just a thought. Vader/Kylo certainly seems awkward. Of course, you can always just choose not to use Vader's ability, but it feels like losing value. Vader seems really awkward to fit into lists, especially if you only have one die, which is too bad since he's so hard to get. I think eDooku eKylo or eVader Nightsister are what I'd try for mono-blue villain (though sadly I can't build either as I have only one die each for Vader and Dooku). I'm also not convinced one color is all that reasonable with just one set, though. You gain so much from getting a character of another color in there and while blue loses the most by potentially losing its blue character it still seems like probably getting a trooper or grievous or something in there opens up a lot.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 16, 2017 07:30
|
|
|
Helion posted:One list I am liking Vader in so far is my Elite Jabba/ Vader deck. It's mill focused, and you are more or less guaranteed a minimum of 3 forced discards a turn, maybe more depending on your draw. 30 points exactly. Between Hunker Down and Immobilization you have a lot of defense to break through, and quite a few HP considering it's only two characters. Haha, right after making that post I was digging through and doing some brewing and built a deck with those two as well. It does seem good at grinding. I didn't make it as mill focused as my Padme control deck but it is certainly nice to have the inevitability. I think ultimately it's going to be non-great against the Jango lists because it's got so much dice control that's disadvantaged against Jango compared to my hero control deck which has a lot more shields (and of course Second Chance), but it's probably better against Luke/Ackbar so there's that. Certainly it's neat, Jabba is a great support character for someone with powerful dice like Vader, and you get a lot of discard and resource denial. I agree it's a combo with some good potential.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 16, 2017 17:57
|
|
|
Benthalus posted:From what I can tell, there are only a few specific situations where the damage type really makes a difference, and having characters with different types isn't a handicap: I think this is generally right, but for a Jango deck specifically mixing damage is annoying, since the power of the deck is based on resolving a truckload of dice in one action.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 16, 2017 18:01
|
|
|
guts and bolts posted:eKylo and Vader have surface-level competing interests but I feel like they create another devil's choice; if you're running expensive cards it's... probably because they're good? (Launch Bay?) so yeah you could kill them off to avoid Kylo damage when Vader activates, but that's still not great for you because now you can't use your cool expensive toy, and if you decide to risk it, Vader scraps something else from your hand and it increases the chances that Kylo will see the expensive thing that could hurt you; but also Kylo's ability just straight up lets me look at your hand and see what you've got, which to me is useful in and of itself, even if it's a 0/1/2 cost card - the damage he can deal is just icing Sure, I'd only characterize it as a minor conflict, it's not crippling or anything. That said, if I'm going to play something like Launch Bay against a Kylo deck, I'm not going to be planning to hold it in hand between turns to build up. Either I'm dropping it immediately because I've banked in case of drawing it, or I'm wanting to ditch it to avoid having it burn me. The only case where Vader is going to cause me a dilemma is if I need to resolve some resource dice to play it or Smuggle a bit or otherwise use some actions, and in those cases you'd be better served by just rolling Kylo and resolving any specials you roll before even rolling Vader just because it minimizes the actions I have to clear the thing one way or another. (And of course you don't know if I've drawn it this turn either way). I only did a dozen or so games with my Vader/Kylo deck so not a huge sample, but several were against a deck with multiple 5's, usually with me piloting the non-Vader deck, and I found that the interaction was almost always neutral or helpful for me as the opponent. Again, I don't think it makes it unplayably bad or anything, but I do think one could do better assuming access to all the cards. It's not crippling in a "I want to make mono-blue and this is the character spread I have" sense.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 16, 2017 18:15
|
|
|
Benthalus posted:Agreed, but from what I've experienced playing my Vader/Jango deck casually is that Jango is the first character or support to be activated on your side most rounds. It is very often irrelevant what your other character or supports are rolling, since you're probably going to be resolving only his character and upgrade dice. Interesting, I find the Jango play pattern I most often use is activating the other character very early in the round in the hopes of getting to do it all at once. In any case though, it's certainly more important for upgrades than characters in that deck (or in general) since you'll rapidly have more upgrade dice than especially non-epic character dice. So I'd say something like Greivous eJango is probably fine, since Grevious himself has melee dice, but the red guns are great on Jango.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 16, 2017 18:19
|
|
|
Helion posted:So brainstorming: One good way is to force him not to use his ability, or make it awkward for him not to. Best way to do this is through dice supports, since activating a support doesn't trigger his ability. I've got a Falcon and a Launch Bay in my control deck and they are great against Jango decks, but you can also do something similar with durdle activations like Take Cover, Underworld Connections, etc., though there it's harder to make sure you actually benefit from nothing happening. Other than hoping he rolls badly, that's been my plan. But even with a Jetpack, he can roll badly, and putting pressure on him often works too. If your activation that triggers him is just brutal enough that they have to deal with it rather than resolving his dice, you benefit a lot, and a lot of those decks don't have a ton of great defense options. Anyway that's what I've found. Which is not to say he isn't great and scary, of course.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 16, 2017 18:55
|
|
|
Helion posted:The durdle activations thing assumes that he doesn't likewise have stuff to do with his time, which may be so, but it seems a tough thing to rely on. After all, Jango's partners can activate all they want, but you can't activate anyone in response.... If you're going to benefit from durdle activations your deck needs to be built on it, yep. That's why even minor support dice are so good, they give you something to do at the time, and in my experience tend to over perform for just being one die since the Jango decks often lack a whole lot of ability to control the opponent's dice. But it's not a silver bullet of course, just a useful thing to think about. As for Disarm, every time I think about making a yellow deck it ends up in my consideration pile, but my feeling for now is that they've done the common starting-out-CCG thing and really underpowered removal like that. A whole lot has to go right to make it playable, and even then you need to spend a resource you'd need to use to set up and you have to give up on some damage that could contribute to just killing Jango which, unless you're the mill deck, you need to do eventually anyway. It'd be one thing if it were narrow but a blowout when it works, like Intimidate or Feel Your Anger, but its not even that powerful when it does work - spending a card, a resource, and a 2+ damage die to get rid of an opponent's two cost card isn't exciting, and against Jango it's very likely they already got to use the card, since unless you're getting the damage off a support, turning on Disarm by definition triggered Jango.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 16, 2017 23:18
|
|
|
Helion posted:Yes, upon further reflection I think you're right. I might try a singleton just to see if practice maps out differently, but yeah, it isn't great removal. But eh, I respect how they're handling removal and resource generation conservatively, you know? You can certainly always power things up, but I do think if they want it to be playable they need to, and that at least plausible removal is probably important in the long term.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 17, 2017 08:13
|
|
|
Deviant posted:A) I have 1. Edit: I have 2 apparently The ability is good but also a lot of the good blue stuff requires you to have a blue character alive to work. It makes it way less clear that the opponent should just shoot the nightsister.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 18, 2017 05:26
|
|
|
stoko posted:That's pretty much my entire reason. It also screws with someone playing Dodge against you. I've also been pretty impressed with some of the things that require you to have a blue character overall and being able to run more of them might be an advantage. Enrage especially feels like a good fit with a deck that has a bunch of kind of garbage characters serving as HP bags - it's unlikely you'll want to buff up both Nightsisters, so Enrage on the one that's doing reroll duty reduces your overall health pool, but probably doesn't contribute to bringing down a priority target for the opponent.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 18, 2017 19:49
|
|
|
canyoneer posted:Yussss ordered some, finally getting stuff at a decent price. The big factor is how long they keep reprinting it and how much. You're right that current prices aren't sustainable if product supply ceases to be an issue, but we don't know if that will actually ever happen. I hope it does, but that'd require FFG to go back to print and also keep the set in print until it rotates (or the game stops growing, but if it's well managed that shouldn't happen before they need to start rotating a standard format). I'm not sure they have the printing capacity to do that given they also need to make new products and presumably the custom dice related sorting make it hard to just add new facilities. If they can't reach the point of new magic sets where product availability becomes effectively unlimited at MSRP, all bets are off. If the prices do go down, I'd expect most of the loss to be in the marginal cards - most expensive rares, and the minimally played legendaries. Holdout Blaster might maintain $10+ because it's a highly playable card that is true neutral, and the chase legendaries will likely remain $30+.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 19, 2017 17:19
|
|
|
evenworse username posted:That seems like a suicidal idea for continuing to add players. There are still plenty of people at the FLGS I work at (including me!) who are interested in picking up the game but you gotta be able to get cards! It's not good but also not avoidable, you can only set up a factory and ship product so quickly. Getting a major run reprinted in 3-6 months is the best anyone can generally do. Hopefully the last wave is bigger and will be enough to keep stuff going.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 19, 2017 17:22
|
|
|
My understanding was that unlike WOTC, FFG doesn't own the factories they use. That means they don't set production schedules. Not making enough Awakenings in the first place was certainly a punt, but it's quite possible they were already on the print schedule for set 2 and they have to scramble to get an Awakenings reprint in. Still bad news of course but I'm not sure it's a decision exactly. That said, set 2 coming out will help at least some. If they print enough (probably they are soliciting pseudo-preorders to try to determine how much that should be), it'll at least let people make decks with available product and might reduce costs on some of the singles.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 19, 2017 19:46
|
|
|
canyoneer posted:It's weird what's a starter and included as starter-only, and what shows up in a starter deck as a rare that can be pulled in a pack. Yeah it's kind of strange. At least those two are neutral and better than Infantry Grenades so maybe if you have a bunch of decks you want more than two someday?
|
|
#
¿
Jan 20, 2017 03:19
|
|
|
ShowTime posted:Directly by Amazon. Amazon is one of the only places FFG allows to sell online. I'm not exactly sure if they had a partnership or if Amazon purchased product to sell online and it was there mistake. If it was Amazons mistake, I imagine they repaid FFG, but Amazon is so huge you don't really want to ruin a relationship with them. I have no idea how it was fixed, I just know a bunch of people got shipped the boxes instead of packs. It's hard to tell exactly how widespread the issue was. Of course, given that most people buying from LGSes were not able to get even as many as 3 boxes total over several waves, however widespread it was or wasn't it certainly mattered.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 20, 2017 23:08
|
|
|
Trip report! Went to my first kit tournament last night at Zombie Planet in Albany. (Well, my second kit tournament, but I judged the first rather than playing, so my first as a player.) I had a eRey/Padme/Trooper deck, and a eJabba/Vader deck, and wasn't sure which I'd run. It seemed like the crowd was pretty up on the meta, and heard several people talking about Jango/Veers, so I went with the heroes because I felt like Second Chance was really important for a slower deck against Jango. Unfortunately, round 1 I got paired against someone running a deck that planned to use Millennium Falcon with Emperor's Throne Room and Hyperspace Jump to end every turn on their second action and just time out the round if they were ahead on life. Shockingly my deck that doesn't want to do any damage wasn't ahead on life, so I scooped. I hadn't aggressively read all the online stuff about the meta because I wanted to do some brewing without being too biased, so I'd had no idea that was a combo, so it was a really frustrating way to open up the tournament. I personally think it's not something that should be doable and hope FFG does something to address it. Of course, it doesn't seem unbeatable or anything - my other deck at least wouldn't have been vulnerable to the pure combo kill, since Vader's discard ability means they can't just end the turn on the second activation and nothing changes. But it's a real turn-off and feels to me like the kind of combo that one doesn't want in their game. Game 2 was a fun game against Vader and I think Raider? I don't really remember. I ended up winning after my opponent had some rough rolls, but I felt like I was in pretty good shape overall, and they didn't seem to have enough burst to get through my nonsense fast enough. As usual the Rebel Trooper died after being annoying, and everyone else soldiered on. My opponent discarded a ton of cards for rerolls, which was justifiable, but did accelerate my clock a lot. Game 3 I played against Ackbar/Trooper/Trooper with just lots of cheap weapons to put on the Troopers. I felt like I was in pretty good shape - that kind of deck relies a lot on bonuses and I was doing a good job cutting out the bonus dice - but then my Trooper rolled a ranged result on a tanking activation into It's a Trap, which I'd forgotten had Ambush. That let him one-shot Padme out of nowhere. I limped on for a while but with Second Chance (and the option to re-use it with Falcon/Scavenge) the deck doesn't hold up super well if she dies unexpectedly. I'm not sure I could have won it if I'd played around IAT better, but it was certainly a mistake not to. All my opponents were really nice, even the round 1 dude. I certainly don't blame anyone for playing a legal deck in a tournament. But facing it r1 did kind of color my night, so I only played those three rounds because I was frustrated and it was a long drive home. If it had been 4 rounds of Swiss I might have tried to grind it out and finish top 16 (out of 22 or so) to get the TIE promo, but I decided I didn't care enough. Zombie Planet also seemed like a nice shop (first time there) and their TO seemed good overall. The event started about half an hour late which is a pet peeve of mine, but they had it running after an x-wing event and it was nearly twice as big as they expected, so the delay was due to lack of space rather than ineptitude, and they apologized for it, so I'm willing to believe it was the kind of isolated issue that comes up from time to time. Still mulling over whether I want to drive the hour and change out there for a casual play night, but I might, and neither the community nor the staff I met are a reason not to. Retrospective: Obviously having picked the deck that I thought was best against Jango and then not having to play Jango was rough. I'm also missing some of the cards I might want for the Vader/Jabba deck: I certainly want a second Force Choke, and I don't own any Crime Lords, so I haven't even thought about whether to run them. Here's the deck I did run for reference: eRey Padme Rebel Trooper Echo Base 2 Jedi Robes 2 Logistics 2 Defensive Stance 2 Electroshock 2 Draw Attention 2 Datapad 2 Field Medic 2 Hunker Down 2 Unpredictable 2 Cunning 2 Second Chance 1 Diplomatic Immunity 1 Force Protection 1 Force Training 1 BB-8 1 Millennium Falcon 1 Launch Bay 1 Daring Escape 1 Scavenge Some of the 1's are experimental cards (like Escape), and some are just things you really want in the late game, like Scavenge, which I tend to not want to play until my deck is empty but can be a valuable endgame tool with the Falcon special. I don't think it's an ideal list by any means, but I also didn't really learn as much as I'd hoped to about it - G1 I couldn't win on a strategic level, and G3 I got gotten by It's a Trap. In both cases more dice removal would be useful, but unfortunately the hero side just doesn't seem as good at it as the villain side is. I had Negotiate for a while and it didn't impress me, as you have to remove specific dice on your side and it often hits blanks or questionably useful dice on the opponent's, but it might be worth another look. It's better against decks with fewer, better dice, which seem to be in some supply, so it's maybe better than it seemed playing with weaker decks early on. Mind Trick is also worth considering, as are the humble Dodge and Block. Force Throw might also be good enough that it's worth including despite the damage not being wildly useful, though taking out a character with chip damage can certainly be nice. I was hoping Daring Escape would be good because I like it having Ambush, but it just felt really risky - the natural use is to reroll almost all their dice to try to winnow down the pool, but in play it's felt like it's only good against amazing or terrible rolls, which is more niche than I like. Rerolling the opponent's middling results feels scary since there's a significant chance you help them out. That said, I suspect it just won't be a tournament viable deck if any significant number of people are running the Hyperspace thing, which, until or unless FFG fixes one of the cards or their tournament rules, it seems like a fair number of people should. It's not really a combo deck per se because of the cards in it only Hyperspace Jump isn't a good card on its own. So you can have a completely competent Poe-based deck that just gets to end the game if it's ahead. The tiebreaker rules in general don't favor a deck like this because it's so heavily in the opponent's interest to stall out the game, and even on the Regional level my experience is that FFG events often don't have judges seasoned enough to pick up on that sort of thing. Not that I think many people would do it at a kit tournament, but it's common enough at bigger Magic events that I expect someone might at a Regional or Store Champ or whatever. The other big issue is that Padme frankly sucks. Comparing her to Jabba just makes it really obvious - she's balanced as if her special is some powerful ability, but it's in fact worse than discard 1 and significantly worse than Jabba's discard 2, and none of the other sides are any good either. I ran her because it was the way I could figure out to get all three colors in and spend the points, but I think if a grindy control deck like this is going to work, it might be wiser to base it on Finn and unlock AT-ST to potentially get problematic supports off the table on the opponent's side. Rey/Finn/Trooper is 30, and since you don't want damage, not having many base character dice is tolerable, though it sucks for the initiative bid. I'll probably put that version together at some point, but I lack AT-STs, so that's kind of a problem, and I'm still not sure it'd have any chance against someone running the Hyperspace Jump combo. I'm certainly going to keep brewing on the Vader/Jabba deck. One thing that's very cool about it is that it can run either an exhaustion or a damage kill, which seems like the kind of flexibility I like a lot. I don't have a list for it I like yet, but will post it when I do if there's interest.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 23, 2017 01:39
|
|
|
canyoneer posted:My local facebook group just had an argument about whether when a card instructs you to reroll an opponent's die, whether you're allowed to physically touch it. I mean, it's a silly thing to fight about, but it does seem more polite to me to ask them to reroll their own die, or at least ask which they'd prefer. Most people ask before picking up an opponent's card to read it or w/e as well.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 23, 2017 02:06
|
|
|
Bottom Liner posted:The problem with any limited format for this game is that it would have to include some type of character base, since you can open an entire case and not have enough characters/die to build a full deck. The LCG's use something similar with "draft starter packs" but that makes the whole thing prohibitively expensive. Just making and selling a draft character pack with one of each color would be cheap and you'd only ever need to buy one.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 23, 2017 07:14
|
|
|
guts and bolts posted:Having gone from jank eKylo/Vader to eLuke/Ackbar, Hero is definitely worse at die removal than Villain, at least in blue. I prefer the die faces in Hero blue - so many loving Focus results - that seem to be absent in Villain blue entirely, and there's enough stuff in Neutral blue to give you a good dice-control suite, but it takes a significant card investment to do so. If you're running rainbow I assume there's a really good reason for it, so you probably don't have the space to fit Force Throws, Use The Forces, Deflects, Force Misdirections, etc. in addition to whatever else you're trying to accomplish? Defensive Position is nice, but I don't like that it can't get specials; you're already running Electroshock, remarked that you didn't like Negotiate, and Reversal is 3 resources; I dunno. So, first: I'm going to say a bunch of stuff as if I know what I'm talking about, because inserting weasel words all the time is annoying, but I don't intend to be lecturing or condescending; I suspect and hope everyone's understanding of the game will evolve, including mine. I'm just explaining my reasoning. The origin of this deck was that I wanted to mess with milling as a victory condition. First it was because, for my very first Destiny deck ever, I was more amused than I should have been by teaming Luke up with his mom, so I ran Luke/ePadme. Then I just kept tweaking around Padme, because I always like coming at things from weird angles - it's cool if it works, and I find I always learn some neat tricks along the way even if it doesn't. My conclusion was that turbo-mill made no sense. Cards like Patience seem like a pure trap in the context of this set of cards - not only is milling less efficient than damage, it's less efficient than discard (compare Padme's die to Jabba's). But it's still an interesting thing to explore, because you blank a lot of the opponent's cards, and Echo Base has a claim ability that's good for you and worthless for the opponent. In that context, basically two things matter: survival, and discard symbols (and Padme's special to a lesser extent). That means most character dice are pretty bad. Padme's is bad because it just isn't powerful - only Focus 2 is at all exciting. Other characters have worse dice than usual because the damage is so rarely relevant. Rey has three effective blanks, Trooper has four, for example. On the hero side, only Ackbar and Padme have more than three sides that contribute anything you much care about. So thus far I kind of disagree with you: since the deck is all about the support cards, I'd need a specific reason not to build three color. Running elites doesn't make a whole lot of sense in the context of a deck where your character dice are much less important than your upgrade dice, and you want to have a big pool of health for the opponent to chew through. And having access to all the colors gives you way more options for important draw deck cards. Electroshock, Defensive Stance, and Field Medic are all great cards, for example, and the Rebel Trooper is by far the best of the random chumps for the deck since Guardian lets you force the opponent to chew through one of your bad characters early, and unlike blue and yellow, basically none of the red cards you're excited about have a spot requirement. (Logistics is the exception, though I'm still not sure how good it is overall regardless. Trading a card for a resource is generally an upgrade, but a pretty marginal one and it does junk up draws and dilute the power of the draw deck.) So while I think you could probably cut one of the colors, I think I'd want a pretty compelling reason to do so, and I'm not sure any of the character abilities or synergies you can't fit in to a three color deck really pass the bar. eAckbar might, but he's in red, and I think I'd rather run yellow/blue than yellow/red. Yellow seems like a requirement, primarily for Diplomatic Immunity and Second Chance. That said, it could also be that I could do more with the current build than I am; I'm not really leveraging Rey that well right now. It's kind of tricky to do because most of the stuff with Ambush isn't great in this deck, but it's possible I could focus a bit more on yellow and run Infamous; being able to net actions with Rey would be really nice, and Jetpack, Black Market, and Infiltrate are all pretty reasonable cards in this deck, as well as the value of being able to get Second Chance or Falcon off with Ambush. (If I can get my hands on some AT-STs, I could combine this with running Finn: Finn/Rey/Trooper is 30.) I think I'll probably try to draw up one like that; just because I'm grinding it out doesn't mean I can't benefit from building some more character synergies, after all. It also gives at least a theoretical out to the dumb hyperspace thing, though without the AT-ST to blow up the Falcon it's not a long-term one. Still helps, and if I really wanted to I could include a DL-44 to Scavenge back for it to let me keep it up. The die removal is at least a useful ability, even if the actual die it grants is pretty garbage for what I'm doing. quote:Did you have an opportunity to test the deck against anything else, maybe at separate times? I'm curious how you'd handle something like eLuke/Ackbar with that deck. The early versions were quite good against something like Luke/Ackbar, but Negotiate was great there, which is one reason I'm thinking I'm going to get it back in; it's a stellar card when your opponent is trying to take their time setting up powerful dice rather than spamming out a bunch of questionable ones. Guardian is also quite good against a deck like that since it can take some critical dice out of play before they can get fixed to the good results (or even just targeting the wrong character). But I'm also kind of behind the meta; at the beginning of the month I left my job as a TO and moved so I can open my own store in a few months, but that means I don't have a local playgroup at the moment, so I haven't played a lot with more recent builds of stuff. Here's what I currently have for my Jabba/Vader deck (assuming I proxy one Force Choke, sigh): eJabba Vader Frozen Wastes (should maybe be Throne Room) 2 Sith Holocron 2 Immobilize 2 Force Throw 2 Force Training 2 Mind Probe 2 Force Choke 2 Cunning 2 Unpredictable 2 Isolation 2 Backup Muscle 2 Feel Your Anger 2 He Doesn't Like You 2 Deflect 2 Underworld Connections 1 Reversal 1 Speeder Bike Scout I should probably go to bed now but I'll try to figure out a new hero deck build tomorrow.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 23, 2017 08:25
|
|
|
guts and bolts posted:Specifically if you were after a much more complete dice control element, I feel like you'd have to dedicate so many more cards to specifically blue that you'd wind up leaving most of either yellow or red on the cutting room floor, that was all I was driving at. Even so, I'm not sure why Patience would be dismissed, particularly with Rey; adding upgrades increases your die pool which in turn makes Patience scary, plus it doesn't require a blue spot, plus it's low on resource expenditure. Shouldn't it be pretty good for exactly what you built? Going all-in on dice control isn't a great plan because Jango is a thing. I'd like a few more than I have now, particularly ones I can play without having activated a character, but I'm certainly going to keep the shield element. One of the things that worries me about the Vader/Jabba deck is that it's pretty short on shield generation in that version, so it's vulnerable to a couple of good initial rolls by a Jango deck. I ran Patience for a while early, but it felt a lot like a win-more card. In order to run it for a large number of dice, you need to already have built up a bunch of upgrades, and you need to roll them all without the opponent removing many of the dice in the middle activations, and you need to be able to afford to use a resource and a bunch of dice on something that has no effect on the board whatsoever. The one time that might happen is the endgame, where the opponent has 5 or less cards left in deck such that you could realistically finish it off. But by that time if you've got enough surviving characters to have significant dice to Patience away you probably win anyway. I could try it as a one-of again but when I was running it I just never had a chance to play it for more than 2 or so, and 1 resource to mill 2 is nowhere near good enough to justify the slot in the deck.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 23, 2017 18:25
|
|
|
Meanwhile it looks like Alliance had a clerical error that meant a bunch of LGSes that thought they were getting a restock this week aren't. Awkward.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 24, 2017 19:49
|
|
|
Dr. VooDoo posted:Miniature Market now says my order will ship Early March/Late February. Given that awakenings is supposed to be drying up I dunno if I should leave my order in place. I'm pretty bummed about it cause if I don't get my one box outside of my starters I'm going to have gotten literally zero cards from this set Is it now possible to describe the Awakenings release as a punt without people saying it doesn't matter? In any case, agreed. I managed to get almost 4 boxes, primarily since I worked at the LGS so was in when they came in and able to buy the limit most days, but I still am missing several important things and have almost no trade stock. It's really frustrating, and I'd overall rather give money to FFG/LGSes for more packs than buy singles, but despite having had a box on preorder for months it might just be that the store will never get the promised restocks despite their best efforts. I get that Destiny is probably difficult enough to produce that slotting more in to factory schedules isn't a trivial matter, but FFG could really stand to learn transparency and communication. Even if they don't have any good news to share, saying nothing about egregious stock shortages is a bad idea. At the very least they should do something to restore faith that it won't be like early Magic sets where it remains legal but becomes impossible to obtain, leaving players who missed out unable to compete until format rotation.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 24, 2017 20:22
|
|
|
ShowTime posted:Yea this release was bungled. I tried to give FFG the benefit of the doubt, but the hype around this game is making it impossible to find product. It's looking more and more like this actually is the end of the Awakenings print, at least until after Spirit of Rebellion. That is really bad. People looking to play the game are either unable to or have to pay super inflated prices for stuff. I sold all my extra stuff (things I didn't intend to play or had 3+ copies of) and easily made enough money off of it to break even, while having an amazing collection. People are just paying absurd prices for stuff. What's really surprising isn't the second market prices IMO, but the fact that boosters haven't been widely inflated above MSRP. It makes sense - in the long-term, stores will make more money if the game succeeds and develops a local playgroup than if they gouge ebay scalpers now. But the contrasts with early Magic are pretty interesting. In those cases you often did get inflated pack prices very quickly, but the shortages just drove interest in the game long-term. But of course, it was novel and the only game in town, whereas no matter how good Destiny is, if people are having trouble getting the product to stay competitive, they've got plenty of other good games they could be playing. That's why FFG needs to communicate, IMO. Even if the news is bad, silence about major issues in 2017 is worse than anything else because it makes you look clueless or unconcerned.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 24, 2017 21:05
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 12:19 |
|
|
ShowTime posted:The right cards and dice are still in the box. This happened to me and I read about it happening a lot onn the swdestiny subreddit. Everytime it happened they got the correct stuff out of another pack. I had one where I didn't, I have a cardless copy of the red sniper rifle and some orphaned other card (I think Promotion or something else I have spares of, so not super bothered, but would be otherwise).
|
|
#
¿
Jan 24, 2017 22:53
|
|