Cactus Game Design Message Boards

This is a test to see if it fixes the abuses of first turn Mayhem.  There are no concrete changes being made right now.  We just need to see if in fact it helps alleviate the situation.

 

HALLELUJAH!

It would have been really nice to test alternate ideas for other cards prior to settling for erratas.

I feel like this will be extraordinarily hard to test, even in an online setting.

You'd have to allow your opponent to search for Mayhem, let him use it first turn, play out the game.
Reset, use intro prep, make sure he FTMs again.

Switch sides so each player has done this.

And you still might not get any good feedback from 4 games if neither of you get draws that would matter with intro prep.

I feel like this will be extraordinarily hard to test, even in an online setting.

You'd have to allow your opponent to search for Mayhem, let him use it first turn, play out the game.
Reset, use intro prep, make sure he doesn't first turn Mayhem, play out the game.

Switch sides so each player has done this.

And you still might not get any good feedback from 4 games if neither of you get draws that would matter with intro prep.

The idea is not to test the "same game" with and without FTM, the idea is to test games with intro-prep, and see if FTM is still the huge problem that a lot of people say it is. If FTM actually shows up in 20-30% of games, as statistics predict and players claim, then it won't take too many games to figure out if intro-prep helps. If a game where a FTM was used ends up not being the one-sided game it often turns out to be, then that's evidence that intro-prep helps. That's the kind of feedback we need. I remember at least a couple of months in ROOT where it seemed as if every other score report was "5-something, FTM really killed me, etc.".

EDIT: I agree with lp.

Would somebody please paste the "intro prep" rules? (can't find em)
Thanks! 

Quote from: Smokey on August 18, 2011, 07:00:19 PM

I feel like this will be extraordinarily hard to test, even in an online setting.

You'd have to allow your opponent to search for Mayhem, let him use it first turn, play out the game.
Reset, use intro prep, make sure he doesn't first turn Mayhem, play out the game.

Switch sides so each player has done this.

And you still might not get any good feedback from 4 games if neither of you get draws that would matter with intro prep.

The idea is not to test the "same game" with and without FTM, the idea is to test games with intro-prep, and see if FTM is still the huge problem that a lot of people say it is. If FTM actually shows up in 20-30% of games, as statistics predict and players claim, then it won't take too many games to figure out if intro-prep helps. If a game where a FTM was used ends up not being the one-sided game it often turns out to be, then that's evidence that intro-prep helps. That's the kind of feedback we need. I remember at least a couple of months in ROOT where it seemed as if every other score report was "5-something, FTM really killed me, etc.".

EDIT: I agree with lp.

I dun goof'd with how I wrote that, but I fixed it.
I still think it's a good idea to test with and without intro prep, so that if intro prep has an effect on how hard FTMs hit that can be noted easier since both games would happen around the same time.

I believe intro-prep phase is where you can place your characters, arts (not sure if these can be active), sites, and forts down before the first player's turn. No dominants are allowed in the prep phase.

Also, I'd say that none of the abilities should activate UNTIL the first turn. So you cant put down gates of samaria, a king, and 3 samaria sites to kill off the other persons characters before the game even begins.

I asked many questions about intro-prep at Nationals in teams, and you are allowed to do ANYTHING that you are normally allowed to do during your preparation phase, which would include playing dominants. I didn't ask about dominants, but I did ask about many other things. Here are what we were specifically told we could do:
- Lay down characters
- Lay down artifacts
- Activate artifacts
- Place weapon-class enhancements
- Play set-aside cards (and yes, your first turn counts as the first turn it was set aside)

So if playing dominants is allowed, this would not make any difference in the ability to have a first-turn Mayhem (which would be played during the intro-prep). Are dominants the ONLY exception to what is normally allowed during your prep phase? If so, that seems like a random ruling...

Quote from: Lamborghini_diablo on August 18, 2011, 07:24:51 PM

I believe intro-prep phase is where you can place your characters, arts (not sure if these can be active), sites, and forts down before the first player's turn. No dominants are allowed in the prep phase.

Also, I'd say that none of the abilities should activate UNTIL the first turn. So you cant put down gates of samaria, a king, and 3 samaria sites to kill off the other persons characters before the game even begins.

I asked many questions about intro-prep at Nationals in teams, and you are allowed to do ANYTHING that you are normally allowed to do during your preparation phase, which would include playing dominants. I didn't ask about dominants, but I did ask about many other things. Here are what we were specifically told we could do:
- Lay down characters
- Lay down artifacts
- Activate artifacts
- Place weapon-class enhancements
- Play set-aside cards (and yes, your first turn counts as the first turn it was set aside)

So if playing dominants is allowed, this would not make any difference in the ability to have a first-turn Mayhem (which would be played during the intro-prep). Are dominants the ONLY exception to what is normally allowed during your prep phase? If so, that seems like a random ruling...

This would help against first turn mayhem because you would still be able to draw. First turn Mayhem will still be good but it won't be as good if intro prep is included.

I still strongly feel SAs on cards should not activate until your first turn. Otherwise, you could troll the opponent by activating Captured ark on the prep phase, or kill things with crown of thorns / PwD / Gates of Sam.

I agree, the only thing that this phase should only eliminate first turn Mayhem and not cause other possible problems.

Or, simply errata Mayhem to have a clause that excludes it from working on the first round.

The way we have been playing it in teams is that after deciding who will go first, the players each take an intro-prep phase in the order that they will get to take their first turn. So, the player who will go first does an intro-prep phase (doing anything that they could do in any other preparation phase), then when they are done the next player takes a preparation phase, etc. Once all of the players have taken their intro-prep phase then the first player starts their first turn. The ordering of the intro-prep phases helped define the effects of players using Captured Ark, etc.

Having the intro-prep be just like any other preparation phase keeps from needing a bunch of extra rules for intro-preps and would be highly desirable for getting this to work with newer players in my playgroup.

I'd really like to see this become part of T1-2p.

Mike