A Couple o' Doubles Decks

Doubles is probably my favorite format right now. It's fast, and it's fun, and it's brutal. And playing the game as part of a smoothly functioning, well-synced team is much more satifsying to me than going solo. I spent most of my prep-time for Kubla Con working on doubles decks with Jason Partee (The Maker), with whom I have fought many a doubles battle.

We went with Tavis Jape and Trevaine Cartwright this time around, with Jason playing Tavis and me playing Trevaine. Our decks were well tuned, and pretty much balls to the wall cheese. What follows is the decklists, match history, and notes on some of the card choices.

First, here's my Trevaine Deck:

Start:
Trevaine Cartwright
2 Glenn the Blaze
3 Jiyacin Fret

Characters (19):
1 Glenn the Blaze
3 Amoudasi's Wrath
3 Kun Iacob
3 Brother Dominy
3 Jal Forsyth
3 Tseleuse Worm
3 Aida

Actions (14)
3 Tzin's Attention
3 Misear Diplomacy
2 Sneak
3 Exhaustion
2 Too Fast to See

Items (12)
2 Amulet of Waking
3 Black Steel Dagger
1 Shadow of Jealousy
1 Gloves of Mischief
2 Armor of Blending
3 Cloud Racer

There are 12 cards in the deck that deal with Astral/Ethereal characters (Tzin's Attention, Kun Iacob, Misear Diplomacy, and Amoudasi's Wrath). This is because I'm a Rogue player, Rogues hate Astral/Ethereal characters, and it gives me great satisfaction to kill them dead, dead dead.

The Glenn the Blazes were a last minute swap for Dreiga, to up the number of strikes in my start and allow me to run Tzin's Attention; the Attentions were originally two Infinity's Ends and a Shadow of Jealousy. This proved to be a critical swap. Dreiga is too slow and too fragile for doubles, and the extra strikes from the Glenn the Blazes helped immensely (he kills Brine Fiends quite effectively). Tzin's Attention is simply one of the best cards in the game right now; the effect it has on Astral/Ethereal characters is only the beginning of the niceness of the card -- wounding and spending stuff is much better than sitting around with an Infinity's End in your hand, waiting for your opponent to do something stupid.

There are 8 movement cards in the main deck to back up the Frets (counting Amulet of Waking as movement), plus 3 Black Steel Daggers to boost Trevaine's attack, and 8 defensive cards to protect Trevaine just in case the going gets rough. A fair chunk of playtesting time was spent getting that balance right -- you want to have a little bit of everything in a Rogue deck, but with so many good options, it can be difficult to decide just how much of any specific thing to have.

If I were to go single player with the deck, I'd probably run one Dreiga in the start, to make up for the lack of Kallistone on my partner's side of the table. I'd also consider Zaina's Treachery, as Trevaine will get swung at a lot more in a one on one match.


Here's what The Maker sent me when I asked him for his Tavis decklist:

Decklist hmmmm
Lets see, there was:
Jank
Cheese
Janky Cheese
Cheesy Jank

After he had settled down a bit, I got this out of him:

Start:
1 Tavis
2 Amoudasi's Wrath
3 Amoudasi's Fire

Characters (19)
1 Amoudasi's Wrath
3 Spirit Wing
3 Brine Fiend
2 Stirges
2 Spot
3 Ss'saurth
1 Antaleus
2 Kabyrr the Insane
2 Venomhiss

Actions (21)
3 Scourge Of Dythanus
1 Saving Grace
2 Tzin's Attention
3 Final Power
2 Veiled Passing
3 Blast
2 Curse of Heartless Lies
3 Exhaustion
3 Elemental Madness

Items (4)
2 Kallistone
2 Recruiters Orders

The changes this deck went through during playtesting mainly involved stripping healing and other reactive cards out and throwing in more spells that generated strikes. We wound up with four healing spells, 7 "screw you" cards (2 Kallistone, 3 Elemental Madness and 2 Veiled Passing), and pretty much all of the rest of the deck was strikes, again under the theory that it's generally much better to kill stuff than to wait around and react to stuff once it tries to kill you.

We didn't run Blind the Gods, as we hadn't really absorbed Eye of the Storm enough to appreciate the card pre Kubla-Con. I'm still a little bit skeptical that the card is as awesome as people think it is, and I wouldn't automatically throw it into this combo -- Trevaine likes having cards in hand -- but BtG is definitely something to think about if you're going to run this deck in singles,

The Tavis/Trevaine Combo works for three reasons:
1) They're both overpowered Warlords
2) Tavis' -3 to things has fine synergy with Trevaine's "I smack you in the face if you miss" ability.
3) We found in playtesting that it is generally the wrong move to go after Tavis first in a Tavis/X combo. His advantage is about early game hit percentages rather than raw action superiority or efficient build, which means that he generally doesn't have the mojo to cut through two Warlords if his partner gets knocked out. What he does have is a tough Merc starting army that will almost guarantee that he absorbs opposing strikes thrown against him and survives into the second turn. Trevaine's Jiyacin Frets encourage people to make that wrong choice and make a futile move for Tavis' head first, which means that they wind up fighting a hard game against a fully built and supported Trevaine from one side, whilst suffering a -3 penalty to their rolls and taking little potshots to the head from weenie mercenaries on the other.

Here's how our matches went:

1) vs. Durin Kortouched and Yscar the Elder

Durin was a build deck with a lot of nasty powerattacking dwarves. Yscar was running as a straightforward frontline Rogue.

Durin started 2x Demented in the second rank, which made things a bit tricky. With no Amulets of Waking in hand, I didn't want to risk Trevaine getting stunned, and we had to play around the Dementeds. Luckily, Yscar the Elder just doesn't have the juice to stand toe-to-toe with Trevaine. We softened Durin around the edges, took care of the Lycanthrope when he hit the front rank, and then it was two against one, and Durin couldn't hold out against us. (It didn't help that the Durin player had accidently left a critical weapon in his deck box, though we pretty much had the game by the time he got around to searching for it, and discovered that it wasn't there; I don't think that the outcome would have necessarily been different had he been able to equip it.)

2) vs. Cathel Rowan and Krun.

This was a team from Reno running Cathel ranged strikes + a rather cool Krun deck that equipped a bunch of the high level Hero's Gambit fighter stuff, with Contest Thy Title for extra juice. Unfortunately, the Reno players had made weak choices for their starting army, and we were able to disintegrate their start after locking Krun down with Tzin's Attention. Frontline fighters don't like being forced to make saves or spend.

3) vs. Lord Gahid and the Doom Kitty

This was a straightforward front line Gahid coupled with Kestrel for nasty tricks and bonuses. The Gahid player made a critical play error when he neglected to play Ghed Nuri in response to my first turn Tzin's Attention. I still feel pretty confident when I face front line fighters -- Devs are tough, but Rogues like Trevaine are made to kill front liners -- but the match would've been much closer had it not been for that mistake.

As it was, Gahid took out most, but not all, of my starting army with a Bear's Soul + Circle kick, and then died, and Kestrel couldn't hold out after he had lost his right hand man.

4) Bronwen and the Lady of Mercy

Tricky choice -- both are third rank Warlords, so you don't have the usual "right" choice of softening the support Warlord first, going after the front ranker when you have the opportunity, and then finishing off the support. We opted to go for the Lady, as FreeKs have a more fragile start than Elves, and that choice seems to have been the right one. Somas and Javvyns softened Tavis' ranks enough so that he was stunned in the front by the first turn, but the Lady was stunned by that time, too, and we still had some extra actions and strikes to take her out. Again, Tavis doesn't really care about being stunned up, so long as he made the right choice about being good or evil before he got stunned. Bronwen died the next turn.

And that was doubles. There were enough teams for four rounds, but not really enough to justify cutting to an elimination round. As the only undefeated team, we took first -- the Lady and Bronwen took second. We didn't go for originality. We just went for raw power, and tested the hell out of out decks and tightened them up as much as possible, and it worked. Which was nice, because my 2-4 record in singles the previous day stung just a bit, all my writing about keeping one's ego out of the game aside ...

The Flip Side

So the corollary to my last post is this: you are also human.

And this means that you'll make mistakes, and second guess yourself, and play too cautiously.

What's the solution?

Relax, mainly.

This isn't necessarily easy, but the ability to chill out and just play your game can be invaluable when it comes down to tourney time. How?

Knowing that your opponent is probably having the same issues helps; the monster's never as scary when you know that it's also afraid of you.

Jeremiah already touched on a couple of other things that can help you chill: healthy food, hydration, and prepartion. Feed your body and your brain, and make sure that you are armed with a tuned, familiar deck and have some solid ideas about what to expect in the metagame. No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy, but you'll be much better prepared to improvise if you start from a solid foundation.

The really difficult part is setting aside your ego. Because the stakes are too high, if your ego is involved in the outcome of the game.

I'm tempted to say "set aside your ego because it is, after all, just a game," but ego sidelining is a good idea regardless of the "seriousness" of the pursuit in question. Don't build your idea of self worth upon your victories and triumphs; that's far too fragile a foundation for something so important. There is always going to be somebody better, faster, smarter, or just plain luckier than you. And you're going to have to deal. And relax. And play your game.

It'll be interesting, to see how well I follow my own advice, at KublaCon this weekend ...

~ PeteVG
A Rogue Elf

The Human Element

Much good stuff that has been written, on this site, on the Temple, and in other places, about the tactical, strategic and mathematical considerations that one must take into account when playing Warlord.

But there is another dimension to the game, and it's one that's a bit trickier to talk about in concrete terms: your opponent is a human being.

Okay, stating the obvious, right? But the fact that you are playing against a human changes the way that you should think about strategy and tactics in important ways.

Know, for example, that your opponent is afraid of you. Seriously. You're an unknown. You're sitting across the table from them in a competitive environment, which quite likely means that you have a deck that has a fair chance at beating them. This means that they will play cautiously. They'll second guess themselves. And you can help this process along by playing confidently and withholding information about the cards in your hand as long as possible. If you didn't draw movement in your opening hand in your Krun deck, don't sigh and say "oh no, now I'm screwed." Play as much of the turn as you can without revealing the fact that you can't move. Keep Krun ready. Attack aggresively with your other characters. When you're close to running out of juice, try to bluff your opponent into passing and ending the turn prematurely -- that movement you need may be waiting for you in the next hand.

Watch for your opponent to make mistakes. They're human, remember, and aren't going to play perfectly. Keep an eye out for baited traps, but try to capitalize on mistakes when you see them -- the game is partially about building a better deck, and partially about playing a better game. Allow room for opponent-side errors in your strategic and tactical decisions. This can be as simple as playing your minor threats first, hoping your opponent will waste an Exhaustion or Outmatched on them before your throw down your big guns, and as subtle as knowing when to remind your opponent about their options. When playing against a stressed out Devernian with Halo of Secrets in play, I take special care to pause and ask if they have any reacts whenever I play an action that targets one of their characters; I want to give them as many chances to use the Halo on the wrong action as possible.

Don't step over ethical lines, of course. I had a friend in elementary school chess club who used to hum off key during every match that he played, just to throw his opponents off. Don't be like him. You don't want to be annoying. And you need to remember that Warlord is just a game. Being courteous and sportsmanlike goes a long way towards forging out-of-game friendships, which can be much more rewarding than victory.

But there's nothing wrong with playing confidently, bluffing well, and always having a trick or two up your sleeve.

Treyik Is Not an Auto-Include

This is a post by PeteVG, a software issue appears to have corrupted his first attempt

So I play Elves a lot. One of the things that Elf decks tend to do is discard cards for an effect. And I therefore usually include Treyik in my decks, because, he's pretty good in a discard deck, right?

Treyik

Level 1 - Cleric - Evil

ATK: +2 AC: 10 Skill: +3 Hit Points: 1

Elf * Novice of Bone

After Treyik is discarded from your hand, you may put him into play.
Order: Kill one of your Undead: Give an Elf a +3 ATK and +3 AC.

Then I came across biglazydragon's response to Zechnophobe's recent article on his Caitlyn the Free "Discount dot deck." And I don't mean to pick on biglazydragon, because his overall reaction was basically what my reaction to the deck would've been had I not spent a good chunk of a Saturday afternoon losing to it. But the part that stood out to me was the part where he suggested that Zechno should add Treyik to the deck to "improve" it. Because that suggestion is pretty silly -- there are a lot of better things Zechno can do with the deck than put a stunned level 1 elf with 10 AC into play.

And that got me to thinking: Treyik is not necessarily an auto-include in decks that discard cards from their hand, even when those decks are Elf decks. Assuredly, Treyik is a fine card. He has a decent ATK, and he gives you the nice little bonus of an extra character when you discard him from your hand. The problem is that he doesn't have much of an impact on your typical game. His AC is low enough that he will die quickly if your opponent is even remotely worried about him. His ATK bonus is nice, but nothing to write home about.

And Treyik is downright bad in some circumstances. If you have a Treyik in hand at a time when you don't need to discard cards, he's just a sub-par character, taking up a slot that could've been dedicated to any number of more useful cards. If you're playing an elf deck and are starting Javvyn or Amatria Tansiq -- not exactly an unlikely choice -- you typically do not want to add Treyik to your front rank on the first turn, even if you're in a position to discard him. You want your opponent to be engaged in making hard choices about whether or not to swing at Javvyn/Amatria and reap the negative consequences; you don't want to give them the easy choice of taking out Treyik instead.

This isn't to say that the little guy is completely useless. In Raziel decks, which often rely on "early game" board advantage to swing games, Treyik is a much more significant factor, just by virtue of being another hit point and strike at the happy cost of discarding a card from an opponent's hand. And he's definitely a consideration for any other elf deck that discards cards. But he's not an auto include. If you have better cards, put them in instead.

More generally, there are some cards printed to work with a certain mechanic, but it's a trap to mindlessly throw them into a deck that uses that mechanic. You want to include the best cards for your particular deck. And that sometimes means leaving cards like poor old Treyik by the wayside, sad as that may be.

~ PeteVG
Rogue Elf

Lady Luck is a Moody Wench

I am known, in some circles, as a devilishly "lucky" player. While I have witnessed friends ritualistically bless their dice with their own blood in order to bring the luck factor under control, a few basic insights into the way that probability works might suggest more practical ways of coping (and give my opponents some insights into why I seem to be so damn lucky all the time).

Let us begin with a simple idea: Lady Luck is highly susceptible to mood swings. Aside from tasteless stereotyping, what exactly do I mean by that?

Well, say you flip a coin six times. Of the three possible outcomes below, which is more probable?

1. H T H T H T
2. T T T T T T
3. H H H T T T

If you answered "1," you're wrong. If you answered "2," you're also wrong. And "3"? Nope, that's not the correct answer, either.

All outcomes are equally likely.

To see why, let's simplify things a bit. Say you flip a coin twice. There are four possible outcomes:

1. H T
2. T H
3. H H
4. T T

Each of the four outcomes is equally likely. You'll note that two of them contain one heads and one tails. You've got a better chance of getting a mix of heads and tails than straight heads or straight tails. But no specific sequence of flips is more likely than any other.

I won't waste your time writing out all 64 possible unique combinations of the six flips we started with. But note that there are only two possible outcomes of those 64 that contain strictly alternating heads and tails:

1. H T H T H T
2. T H T H T H

All the rest of the combinations contain at least two heads or two tails in a row. Lots of them contain more than that. This means that, most of the time, when you go to flip a coin, you'll see runs of heads or tails.

If we replace "heads" with "a roll of 11 or better" and "tails" with "a roll of 10 or less," you begin to see that you should expect runs of "good" rolls or "bad" rolls over the course of any Warlord game. Unfortunately, since any particular sequence of rolls is just as likely as any other, it's impossible to predict how long the runs will be or when they will occur.

What this means is that you're going to have to build a deck that can deal with runs of bad luck. I don't mean that you should have a contingency plan for the occasional statistical anomaly. I mean that you have to realize that, while you might get about an even number of bad and good rolls over the course of the tourney, they're going to come in fits and starts and runs, and your deck is going to have to be able to suck it up and win anyway, even if you have those first turns where you can't hit anything, and your opponent makes every strike.

In other words, don't plan for the "ideal" situation -- where you're expecting a neat little row of alternating good and bad rolls. I see a lot of people make this mistake; their decks generally fall apart come tourney time. Instead, prepare for the more likely situation, which is that you're sometimes going to roll 3 20s in a row, and other times not be able to roll above a 4 to save you life.

You already know some of the ways to cope: big bonuses to the roll, making as many strikes as possible, using cards to fix the roll to a pre-determined result.

More import than that is to keep in the fore of your mind the knowledge that this is how probability works . Don't get flustered by it. I see far too many players psych themselves out and lose a game because of a few bad rolls.

If you just rolled the 3rd 4 in a row, realize that the Good Lady is just a bit grumpy at the moment. Instead of throwing dice, cards, and/or sharp objects, keep a cool head and play through it. Her mood could change at any moment, and you need to have the presence of mind to see it and take advantage of it when the rolls start going your way again.

~ PeteVG
Rogue Elf