Ok, so I played out this past week as a solo player. I’ve played solo before, but with these changes I thought that might be helpful having seen the inside of klan vanilla.

– INCIT scoops. Thumbs up. I thought I was going to see klan abuse, but it wasn’t even an issue. If klan vanilla is nerfed I don’t know what would happen, but honestly I think it would be pretty damn easy to spot, so it shouldn’t even be a real concern. It’s an interesting new source for scoops, but it’s never going to be overwhelmed by Domination players since it takes a pretty serious time commitment to earn even 5 – 10 scoops. Huge benefit in that it draws a few extra players into INCIT helping to kill off that horrible “we need at least 5” message. I just don’t see it doing anything that Forumbuildr doesn’t already do, so why not open the door to the regular INCIT players.

– 8 scoops for solo vanilla. A great change. Makes everything except the top bracket(s) awesomely competitive and fun. It’s enough scoops that there is room to play bully and still have a shot at medalling.

– bumhole hitting for 6. Underpowered, imo. Bump to hitting for 8 and I think it would be perfect. 6 would be fine if klan vanilla is nerfed in a way that restricts it from pulling 800+ scoops in a week. As is, it makes little to no impact on klan. I unloaded 2 characters with almost 100% bumholes on the top bracket and it would have taken another 120+ bumholes to bring the max scoops to 50. And, then they raided again earning another 250+ scoops per player. Had every single non-klan, non-E2B player run optimal visits and maxed scoops and dedicated everything to destruction the same people would probably still have won. The power balance there is a little ridiculous.

– Hand limit is outstanding. It provides an instant element of strategy, since even a solo player using visits effectively must leave scoops exposed. Also really eliminates that safety net of the Shield/Modest strategy that is so secure, especially in the top brackets.

– No ties. Mixed feelings. On the one hand it provides for a great fight to the finish. I haven’t had so much fun losing a bracket in ages! I lost mins on Natasha Sweet in Headsets. There were at least 5 or 6 players just slamming through each others shields, hitting each other and rebuilding, buying new cards – it was awesome. On the flip side, at 3 winners per bracket the truly competitive players are going to consistently get hosed while those who don’t bother playing except once a month or so will be able to sweep their less competitive brackets. Does that really matter? I don’t know. Overall I prefer 1 medal to 5 even if it means I don’t get one. I would much prefer seeing 3 new medal options bringing any bracket total to 6 unique winners.

– Keeping alts out of raids. Huge improvement in morale to not have to look at looming towers of scoops sitting on players who obviously aren’t even playing. Major thumbs up. I do think if the medal restriction is kept we are going to see more klan players doing what Vuron, meeeeeeeeee, Arktor, myself and several other player have done for ages – choose a few alts that you play as your main when you don’t want to use your main for whatever reason. I started doing it because I was cred running for a really long time and missed playing Domination, so I started rotate who my active Dom character was. I can see those with alts in vanilla klans choosing to “join raid” with a character not in that annoying top bracket. Then were going to start seeing random vanilla towers again, but overall this is an outstanding change and if enough top bracket players start rotating which character they are playing the top bracket will start to shift from a one klan show, and that would be a lot more fun.

– When a raid group pwns 12 forums, raid group members have to beat forums not already owned by anyone in their raid group in order to get subsequent scoops Currently, zero impact on raiding except to make it take longer. I don’t actually think taking longer is better. I’d be very interested to see things reverted to being able to take something already held, but allowing only those joined to the raid to hold forums that count. Pretty much would put a knife in the heart of alts, but as things stand klan vanilla is still radically overwhelming.

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My personal experience this week:

The Pusher in an unmedaled bracket, no klan vanilla, used all visits effectively, gambled. 4 medal sweep. This was pretty much expected as most any experienced Dom player can sweep an unmedaled bracket this far into the season.

scully_bot in a 2-3 medal bracket (this season, most in bracket had 4 – 7 overall), no klan vanilla, used all visits effectively, gambled. 3 medals – would have lost mins if I hadn’t gambled or if even one more person had decided to hammer at me, since 200KillerWasps and AAHZ had gone through all my shields. Definitely didn’t have that “this is locked down, no worries” feel.

Druzilla in Sexy Hikers (3rd highest bracket), no klan vanilla, used all visits effectively, gambled. Had an alt in bracket to offer support, but didn’t have time to actually use it. Took fav flava pretty much accidentally – yay for people distracted while playing other brackets! Log in to see images!

Lily Fontaine in Sexy Hikers, didn’t really run her beyond basic visits, since I knew I wouldn’t have time to play all my characters.

Natasha Sweet in Headsets don’t make you a man – no klan vanilla, used all visits effectively, gambled. Had alt in bracket to offer support, used alt to blast the crap out of people while going for mins. Several other players were in exactly the same position, it made for a fantastic death match for mins. Loads of fun even though I didn’t end up on top – Squidly is a sneaky bastard! Log in to see images!

Psychotic Vengeance was the support alt in Headsets, pretty much just blew crap up.

Illyria – didn’t play her at all beyond running visits. I have too many characters. Should have, since fav flava was only 41 and a win would have been possible just using the 12 visits the character is sitting on.

angstcity and scullyangel in top bracket – used all visits effectively, dedicated all scoops to destruction and just blew crap up. Even played INCIT on scullyangel. Couldn’t even dent klan vanilla.

EDIT: I know several other klan players were playing solo as well this week. I hope a lot of players chime in with opinions. I know I heard from a lot of people expressing that they like a lot of these changes, but I think posting that fact will lend a hell of a lot more weight than a few people saying, “I kept hearing…”