I thought this was an interesting week. It think the vanilla bump for solo players was a wonderful thing, it really offered a huge reward to those putting in the effort.

As something to combat raiding, it doesn’t level the field, since one can earn solo vanilla within a raid. (Half of my klan earned solo vanilla within our raids.) But, it definitely has a balancing effect. (It is absolutely more difficult to get solo vanilla within a raid, as you want to wait to drop to 11 klan scoops in order to get the klan vanilla. The wrong forum falling can really slow things down.)

No Shields. The good old days when 21 bumhole cards meant 210 scoops destroyed. The carnage was awesome, I saw several “clean” brackets as late as Tuesday. People still used the same strategies, they were just far more vulnerable. The really notable change without Shields was the obvious difficulty organizing ties. Bracket after bracket the ties are few and far between. Maybe that is a good thing, maybe not.

I think the removal of the Shield was probably harshest for inexperienced players. Not because they use them, most newbie brackets see very little in the way of cards period, but because regular Dom players reacted to the lack of Shields with “Well, if they never have any scoops, they can’t bumhole me later.” or “Wheee, bombs away!” People who would have normally been left alone were getting hit on a huge scale.