|
Is this where the BattleCON players are lurking? Seems to be more active than BGG or Reddit (and I think anything is more active than the official BC forums). Good games to the gencon tournament people.
|
#
¿
Aug 4, 2015 15:27
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 13, 2024 00:51 |
|
|
That sums up MB pretty nicely. I've played about 10 games on the just previous version and the analysis part of deckbuilding is really simple once you've got the cards down, but for first game or two it can be really confusing because there's so much reading. We usually take a minute or so reading everything before starting the timer if there are new players at the table. Prerelease Tournament is kind of a throwaway, it's useful for getting a feel for the game but isn't all that great otherwise since decks are very static/"solved". Game is pretty fun and really silly. Optimizing is tough, and we've seen some pretty nuts combos. Note re: trades: You can even out trades with money at $1 per star, which is useful.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 4, 2015 17:08
|
|
|
Four player game with all of us playing at as relaxed a pace as you're going to get was often ~2 hours including setup and teardown (both of which take a while because the stack is ginormous per the current rules). Two player game was closer to an hour and a quarter, but because each timed round is 25 minutes (20 minutes + reading cards + making packs) you can't get below that hour and a quarter mark. Tournaments are pretty quick because people know what they want, but some abilities can be a bit fiddly when they require naming cards or otherwise making decisions based on other people's boards. Two player game is odd because collections work differently and there are less cards in play, but still pretty solid. Not really bad, though. Plays well at 3 and 4. Haven't played with 5 yet but the table space gets huge and I suspect tournaments start taking a bit longer than I'd like.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 4, 2015 17:31
|
|
|
Even with a bigger pool I like the red cards because you can take a pile of points (30 or 40 is a nice number) and then burn the card for the future. They're convenient across the board. There are also some fun gold promos that let you do weird things with cards that are really really nice if you're dealing with red. Seems like deck boxes have changed a good bit since I last played. Used to be 5rp/element card, sounds like the current iteration is stronger + more interesting. Anyone in this thread NY area? I know about 5 people around here that play battleCON and am trying to get some sort of organized group together. I've played Gutter Owl and Mad Fnorder, but only at GenCon...
|
|
#
¿
Aug 4, 2015 18:44
|
|
|
Millennium Blades unfortunately has a lot of wording issues at the moment, though I know Ithry and a few others are going over things and trying to clarify/rework and remove edge cases. They use playtesters to get what they can, but right now nobody's even close to WotC's level of templating. It's unfortunate. For example, Egg cards technically don't copy Play effects. For some reason.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 4, 2015 18:59
|
|
|
Millenium Blades does horrible unspeakable things to tables. The only game I have that is comparable in terms of table consumption is probably Imperial Settlers where you take 50% of the deck and just kinda fling it at the player boards to watch it consume all available space. To put it simply, Millenium Blades is 7 sheets of 11x17 paper (5 player mats, 1 aftermarket, 1 normal market), plus elbow room and overflow while deckbuilding, plus a place to put your money and friendship and sell tokens if you don't have them on the map. Golden Sky Stories sounds adorable.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 5, 2015 19:23
|
|
|
Gutter Owl posted:Brad's logic: These all make sense. He was also spitballing ideas about a Devastation Remastered that involved changes to the bases (I remember something about a potential Dash being something like before activating move 1/2, EOB move up to 2, you cannot take more than 2 damage this beat) but that'll have huge repercussions on characters like Byron and Marmelee so idk how likely that is. Either way it sounds like he wanted to do a card-only upgrade kit that slotted into Devastation because he was pretty happy with the production values otherwise (unlike War needing all-new art) and it has more copies in circulation than original war did. Did he mention anything about how he wanted to nerf Arec/Ottavia other than the standard errata to Arec? signalnoise posted:I dig games that make me break out a poker table tbh It's also realtime for extra flailing.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 5, 2015 19:38
|
|
|
Gutter Owl posted:Just that Arec's current errata isn't enough. He no longer breaks the game over his knee (End of Beat triggers need to be inviolate for certain characters to even work), but he still warps the environment way too much. Yeah, figured as much. Nobody around here really plays Arec - well, not that too many people play BattleCON around here in general - but I suspected that to be the case from what feedback was going around... Was trying to get more chatting in with Brad but between playing all the games and him being pretty wiped by the time our game was queued up and I got a few free minutes it didn't really happen (and the rest was just kind of a sprint to the end). I guess the trick is drop early and hang around strategizing and trying to get an Exceed demo.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 5, 2015 19:49
|
|
|
Arec has strong styles across the board (a good mix with almost universally positive stats and not much awkwardness), really powerful control with the ability to threaten various plays and spaces using his styles that care about position or call out bases and bonus ability to ignore soak because lol. Also he can call out Dash incredibly hard with Hesitation without that much risk, and Manipulative is really annoying to play against. Originally he made a lot of characters' UAs just stop working but now he's simply really annoying and strong across the board. He doesn't have raw power, but his ability to make the opponent randomly stop functioning well is very strong and doesn't really have a good counter for a decent number of characters. Basically, he's stupidly powerful against the characters his tokens shut down and decent against the rest until you learn how to play against him, at which point he's stupidly powerful against the characters his tokens shut down and then maybe-a-tiny-bit-worse-than-decent against his counters. Also his unique base is pretty dumb. Ottavia is similar in that she has really strong call-outs and can always shut down opponent's options with her UA. Her styles are reasonably good but not amazing, but the biggest strength she has is that a lot of the time beats come down to a 50:50 where you need to deal with two options based on speed and stun guard - Ottavia can use her UA to negate half of the 50:50, so she's got good odds of winning any given beat. Unless you call her options and keep her pinned, she has some really good escapes and can do good power beats with Anti-Personnel. Ranged characters always are sorta finicky against people who are fast and mobile, but she's got good tools against tanks (Cover is surprisingly good when your opponent is super slow or has a telegraphed power move that's hard to stop like Cadenza's Clockwork Shot) and Snapback/Cybernetic/Demolition all help her win trades against mid-speed characters while her UA helps her hang with the superfast. Owl's probably got a better sense of it, but I've played a decent amount of Ottavia and a bit of Arec - they're both pretty nuts. Andarel fucked around with this message at 22:24 on Aug 5, 2015 |
|
#
¿
Aug 5, 2015 22:12
|
|
|
I don't think Arec has an answer to that 50:50 with his tokens (since it's a pretty simplistic situation) but his styles are so situationally strong it's not a huge deal anyways. Mirrored Drive is always nice in this sort of situation, after all... @Owl/topic in general: How much are people playing online here? I saw a few matches in the old thread but didn't do much more than skim. (We played in LF at the gencon tournament, I had Kehrolyn/Shekhtur/Byron.)
|
|
#
¿
Aug 5, 2015 23:39
|
|
|
It's a pretty reasonable matchup imo. What issues are you having / is one coming out on top a bunch or being understood more easily? Flight 1 has Pendros who's pretty newbie-friendly, Alexian who is kinda strange but is also pretty newbie friendly, Karin&Jaeger who is a bit trickier and Marmelee who is really hard to figure out for newbies and isn't easy in general. At Gencon I saw a few demo rounds of Karin vs Eligor, but I think Shekhtur is probably a better matchup for teaching. Maybe throw Pendros into the mix? He's good at punching things and does interesting stuff with spaces.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 5, 2015 23:45
|
|
|
Pendros' UA is much simpler if the new player is the one playing Pendros because it's pretty intuitive. Nice thing is that he's also fairly forgiving.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 6, 2015 00:25
|
|
|
Aye, I'm definitely up for some games if other people want. Though I got my revenge on Fnorder for sending me to loser's bracket in round 1 of the tournament so that's the big one out of the way.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 6, 2015 00:49
|
|
|
I want to believe it's just ambient rage from the Joal mirror you had just finished and the sweet Byron play.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 6, 2015 00:55
|
|
|
Just play Cadenza and pretend you made a good read. It usually works.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 6, 2015 01:06
|
|
|
ActingPower, you moderator extraordinaire?
|
|
#
¿
Aug 6, 2015 01:48
|
|
|
@Owl: Fnorder did the same thing to me on the other side of the table, I think I died having dealt like 4 damage in our first Shekhtur vs Lixis round... I think Shekhtur vs Lixis is going to get super lopsided a lot because they're both so pressure-based. I remember spending a while trying to figure out how to get out of a 5-bases-in-discard situation D: I don't think there's much Lixis can do about trading vs. Jugular Brand if she doesn't have Naturalizing though, that pair is so good. I'm not sure which of the two I'd rather play into her, but it was super late and Shekhtur is definitely better at punishing misplays than Kehrolyn's walk-at-the-opponent-and-flail-angrily playstyle. Managed to pull Chris into the loser's bracket but got murdered by Tatsumi after the reset. Probably could have won if I had more experience vs Tatsumi but he was playing very well and I wasn't comfortable against her movement (Kehrolyn's hit-confirm is so bad...). @ActingPower: Need to pick up the ability to PM, sending now. Need to level up my predictioning...
|
|
#
¿
Aug 6, 2015 03:11
|
|
|
Saguaro PI posted:How does it compare to Argent? That game takes up a heck of a lot of real estate as well. Comparable. If you organize your spells efficiently, MB has maybe 20% more table space required than Argent in my experience.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 6, 2015 05:10
|
|
|
Well, the nice thing is that it's mostly just your big player mats. Argent is big but it's got to do with pushing cards around, so in the average case they'll probably be about the same size if you're just kinda spreading out your spells.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 6, 2015 05:25
|
|
|
Also if Kehrolyn cared about bases and not styles I would only ever play Bladed Drive Strike because I think it beats everything for a billion damage.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 6, 2015 13:46
|
|
|
By the way, I spoke to go7gaming about the case from Worlds earlier today and got this response:quote:The insert used for the prize is the ASB-002 with 3x additional MULT-DIV-001 dividers packs + baggies I'm waiting to hear back on what that new external solution is.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 6, 2015 19:47
|
|
|
I dunno the details, they said something about an external solution and I'm interested in hearing so I shot a reply. Which battlecon chest do you use - the one that slots into DoI? My DoI box was dead on arrival and lvl99 never replaced it so I taped the edge up and just kinda stuck with it...which means anything that uses that box is a no-go =[ Hobby Lobby artist's case is just a bit too big to really be convenient for me, hard to travel with unless you're throwing it in the back of a car.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 6, 2015 20:03
|
|
|
I'd be worried about that being big enough to hold all the stuff once Fate, Trials, Wanderers, etc. start hitting... How's it compare size-wise to the DoI one?
|
|
#
¿
Aug 6, 2015 20:08
|
|
|
Oh derp it's double-layered, nevermind. Yeah that's pretty huge.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 6, 2015 20:10
|
|
|
The standard Hobby Lobby setup looks like it holds 60 characters if you use the Character Select tuckboxes which are about the right size. It might be more efficient organized in a different way - maybe more standard tuckboxes and separate standees? Either way it should hold everything through Fate which would be a good start. Unfortunately, that'd ruin the portable setup I have going, so that's blah. Do War and Fate come with the envelopes Devastation came with?
|
|
#
¿
Aug 6, 2015 21:12
|
|
|
Mad Fnorder posted:"Why the Lock, though?"  I think best bet might be hobby lobby, no character select screen, with a big reference sheet pasted to the inside top of the box and a little booklet for newer players to look at. I'll have to see what resources I have available to make that happen, and still waiting to hear back from go7gaming about what other solution they might be offering. Is there full art of the character splashes somewhere? Wiki just has the character heads. I guess the PnP might have.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 6, 2015 22:07
|
|
|
Well, Millenium Blades has 80% of its playtime literally dedicated to organizing cards. SO there's that.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 6, 2015 22:11
|
|
|
Check with ActingPower, I threw a character in but I dunno who the other side is yet.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 7, 2015 03:25
|
|
|
Sounds good to me. I need to get more comfortable with the higher flight characters. Played Gaspar for the first time earlier this week and it was painful. - Also either the AI's Shekhtur is borked or my copy of Devastation is misprinted because she's getting +power for moving with Spiral instead of -power. Andarel fucked around with this message at 15:10 on Aug 7, 2015 |
|
#
¿
Aug 7, 2015 14:54
|
|
|
We will call it...Stalpiral.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 7, 2015 17:35
|
|
|
Is there a directory of those sheets somewhere? Really interested in making something like that to throw into my physical set.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 7, 2015 19:51
|
|
|
Google drive, google drive everywhere! Onwards to the pbpamajig.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 7, 2015 20:17
|
|
|
signalnoise posted:So apparently Battlecon Online is going to be getting a Steam release some time according to the email I just got. I am super okay with this. 
|
|
#
¿
Aug 7, 2015 22:46
|
|
|
Kick-star-ter! Kick-star-ter! Interesting that they want to do it League of Legends style where you start with some limited selection and can buy more as you go. Hope that doesn't come back to bite them.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 8, 2015 14:01
|
|
|
You know what the most amazing part of BattleCON online will be? It's going to be rules-enforced!. That means they might actually be competently codifying the rules! We'll have a universal reference as to how everything works! Assuming it's all implemented correctly.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 8, 2015 15:18
|
|
|
Got a couple more games in today. Tanis vs Clive, Karin vs Pendros, Tanis vs Adjenna. Tanis vs Adjenna is so weird. Other player was in a weird situation and ended up getting killed after being clashed out of options because he realllly didn't want to get hit by a 7-damage Shot, managed to deal 14 damage in two turns somehow...
|
|
#
¿
Aug 9, 2015 04:48
|
|
|
The demo at gencon looked very Hearthstone-y in terms of graphic design, which is fine because that's what people are basically programmed to expect from an online card game at this point.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 9, 2015 15:25
|
|
|
Ordered those Go7 inserts since they said the new potential solution was a chest of some sort and it'll use the same trays. I have a hobby lobby case sitting around that I can use anyways, the game in it can be shifted easily. Gotta figure out how best to lay this out - and if it doesn't get used for battlecon I'll repurpose it for something else.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 11, 2015 00:02
|
|
|
Bonk. The good news is we might have managed to pull together a weekly or biweekly battleCON group around here, seems like we've got at least 5 people to start off and a space to play + plenty of copies. Hopefully it stays relatively stable, let's see how it goes.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 12, 2015 13:57
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 13, 2024 00:51 |
|
|
Alright, group went down pretty well. Got 6 games in for today, including a very confused attempt at learning Oriana and a very ill-conceived mirror. Never play Voco mirrors. It's awful. We tested. Truly awful.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 13, 2015 05:02
|
|