Overseer Lazarus said:

http://www.nfl.com/news/story?id=09000d5d809215cf&template=with-video&confirm=true

http://nfl.fanhouse.com/2010/01/25/will-the-4-000-yard-quarterback-kill-the-nfl-running-game/

The point I was making was that they weren't static that coaches/managers/owners make changes to the teams and their overall strategy as needed (though it isn't really readable in a play by play manner but more of year by year). Large swathes of the entire league has has drifted from one emphasis to another over time. Draft choices are based on what will further a teams existing strategy or help it exploit holes or cover weaknesses, sometimes immediate, but most often what they feel will be long term choices that will take years to really come into fruition. This is something that was much talked about during the Superbowl and something discussed a fair amount due to the draft.

Yikes. Sorry I've been away so long. I got wrapped up in other projects and a couple of other threads and totally missed that someone responded to my last post here.

Despite my edifying plea for folks to stick their milieu, the response we get is......regurgitation of others' sports analyses?!? Aye carrumba. The thing to do when debating someone who really knows their stuff is to maintain dignity and concede the point, not flail wildly with a flurry of terminology and confusion. I was going to rebut this whole thing point by point, but I came to my senses and remembered how hard I've worked to move far away from my old, stubborn penchant for debate and towards an accessible, humorous style of discussion. So, for me, that'll be enough on the NFL discussion. I don't have a lot of hope for my perennially heart-breaking Redskins and their latest, washed-up bust of an acquisition. Jeff George, Deion Sanders, Jeremiah Trotter, Dan Wilkinson, and now...McNabb? Egads. Besides, it's NHL playoff season. Waiting impatiently for this year's Ovechkin/Crosby Series of Greatness......

Overseer Lazarus said:

@dormouse - I think experience with other games can be relevant if you can establish a common frame of reference. Safe to say, unless you've played competitive MTG (because I havent played AGOT), conclusions drawn via comparison are just going to be a frustrating exercise for all involved. I don't get the sense that a majority of community members here have experience with any one game apart from W:I, so it would probably be prudent to limit this kind of discussion, Fair?

On the sideboarding issue, I got to thinking... what would a typical sideboard plan look like? Anyone have ideas on this, theoretically speaking? In a meta so dominated by Skaven, clearly you play Skaven and pre-board for the mirror. I'm not even sure we need sideboards for anything right now. I'd be totally happy going into a tournament sleeving up my exact 50 right now even if everyone else in the room was running a 10-12-card board.

The net? Maybe its not a productive time to be talking about sideboards.... I assume we'll see a few more competitive archetypes in the near future though, and maybe this discussion will be more interesting when there are more W:I examples to draw from. We'll see.

Your sideboard plan right now, given that you would most likely play Orc/Skaven or possibly DE/Skaven, would be to run Veteran Sellswords in the s/b against people who were unfortunate enough not to play a rush deck. Mob Up! possibly if you think that the Bolt Thrower decks are a threat, although I suspect they generally aren't fast enough (yet) and you just bring in Sellswords anyway. Maybe Troll Vomit as a panic button in the mirror match, especially if you run a version with heavy supports.

But yeah, sideboards/no sideboards doesn't matter too much right now because everything just loses to Skaven anyway. In a possible future where you can play decks that have good answers to rush, bolt thrower, etc. then sideboards would be more useful.

ddm5182 said:

I have played competitive Magic. Never close to pro-tour but I did decent at multi-store events, but this was all many MANY years ago, so I am not the most experienced with it here, I don't question others experience with that game. I've played with sideboards, and in Magic they make a ton of sense and a world of difference. One draw a turn, extremely limited ability to use necessary resource producers for anything other than resources, and a lot of effects and combinations that can lead to or near to auto-loss without the perfect answer within the turn, pretty much requires a sideboard for anything other than a NPE. But none of those factors are present in this game, which is why I don't see the logic behind the statements made about sideboards being required for serious competitive play for any modern game (especially since I've played competitively, seriously, in a modern game).

The auto-loss combos and the unbeatable deck match-ups could end up being in this game at some point. FFG has two other games that for years have managed to avoid this and still be competitive. I don't think it is a stretch of the imagination to think they can't do it a third time.

dormouse said:

I usually don't talk about the use of sideboards or not but this answer let me quite a little bit perplexed (according to many of your post about sideboards)

- You have stated many time that personnal experience is personnal experience and does not have to interfer.

- You suppose that magic has a "high random factor" cause of the one draw a turn rule (which is just the default rule as in WH:I), magic is a game that allow you a very good control of your library just better than WH:I.

- When you say "but non of those factors are present in this game" it is just your interpretation, and it is obviously wrong, as you have one draw a turn too by default, and you have the possibility to do not even be able to play a card turn 1 so as to increase your ressource or your card draw. The only way to totally avoid that is to play 44 cards in a 50 card deck that are playable turn 1. And even if you can allow just a fraction of your deck playable turn 1, that mean that you have high restriction in your deckbuilding for sure the ressource system of WH:I is very good compared to the land system but it also has implication in your deck building.

- "The auto-loss combos and the unbeatable deck match-ups[...]" please explain that with example or anyone can freely say the same for WH:I.

The part about FFG is meaningless according to what your are saying about personnal experience others games are others game CoC is CoC and GoT is GoT.

There are many reason to allow or not sideboards ( I do not matter about sideboard I will just play with or without it has FFG decide), but your reasons as they can be good in others post are totally crap in this one. (maybe crap is too strong for a native speaker but I am a poor english speaker myself )

I don't know if it is the case, but please forgive me if my answer seems a little bit "agressive" for a native english speaker, this is not what I want.

Unfortunately I could not make much sense out of your post, Shindulus. Not sure what you're trying to say here. I thought that Dornouse made some very good, very reasonable, and very accurate points in his posts. Anyway, maybe it's time for this thread to die out. We're not really accomplishing that much here and now that we have the tourney rules (such as they are), we know that the ruling is for NO sideboards (for good or bad). Time to move on and discuss the game in the format that it's in, rather than what it is not (a game that offers sideboarding).

The powers that be have made their decisions and there's not going to be sideboarding, no matter how much debate there is.

Peace out.

Personally I think I could follow what Shindulus was trying to say without difficultly. His post seemed to have a slightly harsh tone, but as he noted it was more from the fact that he is not a native english speaker than it was from an intent to sound that way.

I'd rather have one game no sideboard ideally. Maybe this would have worked if warpstone excavation would have had the "limited" keyword, but as things are it would not be fair to play only a single game. I dont think either having or not having a sideboard is that big of a deal, I do not have a strong opinion on that either way.

dormouse said:

You are continusly comes in conflict with your own comments, which is sad. Once you say experience with other games are not relevant, and next it is relevant (maybe because in this time this is your experience... that matters, while others with different background are not) AGoT and CoC are LCG-s without sideboard, but above what makes them similar to W:I ? Not much, because then FFG would have created a rival for it's own games. But W:I is obviusly a (very succesfull) attempt to rival MtG... this is why its draw so many MtG players into the flock, including myself.

It seems to me that continuing your post you compares "Factory A MP3 Player" to the "Factory A Discman" and "Factory A Microwave Oven" because they are created by the same design team, instead of "Factory B MP3 Player".

I agree that if both the discman and the microwave oven are over the top, you could except the same for the MP3 player in the most cases (this is what great brands about after all), but they won't be that relevant to find out or compare your new music players capabilities and limitations.

Also, you are wrong in the extreme if you say that any and all other CCG has as many in common with W:I as MtG has... but I'm sure that you also know that. The usage of units (creatures), supports (enchatements/artifacts), tactics (instants/sorceries), the way that combat works etc. have that many similarities that it would be hard to create a full list, as some of the cards have direct equal in the two games.

The main differences are :
- resource and card-draw management
- 3 zones with 8 point healt, instead a single "zone" with 20
- damage stays on units (which sometimes happen even in MtG)

So, my final points :

- both LCG and Magic experience counts for looking at W:I... but yes, I hapily agree with you that most of our deductions are speculations.

- hovewer the current (only starting up) enviroment seemingly shows that FFG not always that good at creating a fine balance between deck types, or even cards... as currently no reliable deck to face skavens/rush... (and this is while the whole worldwide community try to find a way to beat them... and if possible without a direct "anti-skaven" build). Also, the high count of "not sure how it works based wording" card effects makes your points implying how faultless half-gods the developers are because their two other LCG don't seems right. To be clear : they are very good developers imho, but as every human they make mistakes, and we are yet to see how they could manage problems.

As we see until now their problem management is slow (look at the FAQ, which arrived late, and is still very uncomplete) and inconsistant (as their official answers were changed by their own FAQ) Hovewer I strongly believe that it is just because they are overbudened by so many projects.

I feel I've been extremely consistent about what should be looked at and what should be given precedence when comparing things. If you think W:I is more similar to M:tG than say, any of the top 5 none Eric-Lang CCG's released in the last ten years then we'll just have to agree to disagree. Similar card effects are meaningless in an environment where the base mechanic for achieving the win condition, draw, and resource generation are completely different. Those three mechanics are what defines a game of this type. A card that nullifies damage in a game that deals with damage completely differently has an entirely different scope and needs to be evaluated and treated entirely differently.

The call for sideboards once M:tG and other sideboard using games was eliminated from the reason seemed to come down to, 'I don't trust them to keep it from degenerating into X' in which case looking at how they did with their other games becomes the only way to even remotely determine what likelihood there is of that happening. And you can make claims about how things aren't balanced now, but how many Regionals have had the much vaunted Orc/Skaven Rush or feared Orc Blitz finish in the top 4 or walk away with the top place. We've even had order decks in the top 4.

Everyone's opinion on this is just that opinion, there is no fact on either side. No one in favor of sideboards was able to put together an argument that wasn't easily countered, and all the posts against sideboards would turn the same arguments used around, which amounted to 'prove why it is needed in this game though,' and 'your experience is not overly relevant and is easily countered by my own, which also not completely relevant is provable to be of a nature that is worth considering with greater weight than your own, if that is the tact you insist on taking.'

As to auto win combos - there is always the non-combo match-up where you have no answer to your opponents circle of protection. Not truthfully an auto-win combo but so solid a lock that as to be as near as you get without giving you the game by its very initiation, the Elspeth, Knight-Errant & Empyrial Archangel combo and the Vampire Hexmage and Dark Depths combo. Cranial Extraction all by itself is an auto-win against auto-win combo decks. There is always the original, Lotus, Mox, Channel, Fireball for a first turn auto-win. There is the Scapeshift/Valakut Combo. The Hive Mind/Pact combo. Grindstone/Painter's Servant... do I need to go on? W:I has nothing on the level of these. The most you get is units which may be able to do a lot of damage to a zone, or if you finesse it two zones, or a lot of indirect damage which with the right conditions could burn two zones, but all of these are stoppable with just basic strategy adjustments, or at least able to be delayed, by common cards to very nearly every build, and are not so much auto-win combos as God hands or careful play and planning... unless I've missed something.

If these kinds of combos were available I would also be clamoring for a sideboard to, and that is God's own truth.

All that said... There is what I would term incredible synergy on the side of Destruction rush, making more easily to build and pilot decks of this type than anything on Order's side. There are no sideboards. These are the things most of us can all agree on and must deal with. Anything else is just theorycraft.

LOL, I can't believe this post is still going! Not what I originally intended though...

Yeah, at this anyone who wants to respond can. After looking at my last few posts I'm pretty much just repeating myself using different words to different people. Anyone wants to pipe in can have the last word.