INCIT scoops: I don’t play Incit (I already spend to much time with Forumwarz and I doubt that I’d be good at it) but I’m grateful for everything that lessens the predominance of vanilla scoops. Incit might be open for exploitation but what isn’t? It’s part of the Forumwarz universe and Orb and the others of 70CS certainly deserve some scoops for keeping it alive.

I’d like to know how many chocolate scoops dedicated Incit players made this week, but I doubt that the change had a noticeable impact on the outcome in the higher brackets. Maybe they made a difference in the lower brackets.

8 scoops for solo vanilla: Mixed feelings. Solo players could make a lot of scoops but not enough to compete with raiders (though that wasn’t a problem this week because there were no raiders outside the top bracket). Together with the hand limit it allowed for great new strategic options and fun competition. On the other hand it made the scoop gab between experienced players and beginners even bigger and – worse – now even solo players can easily make more vanilla scoops than all other flavours combined.

bumhole hitting for 6: I disagree with scully; that you can play them at any time makes them very powerful. They didn’t make an impact in the top bracket not because the bumhole isn’t powerful enough but because vanilla raiding gives ridiculous amounts of scoops.

In my bracket (Headsets) almost a dozen players made more than 300 scoops this week (without raiding!) and in the end Max Scoops was only 66. There were a lot of bumholes played in the last minutes. I’d prefer it, if bumholes would hit for 10 if you have less than 4 scoops and attack randomly one of the three players with the most scoops and if you have 4 or more scoops they hit for 5 and attack only the player with the most scoops.

Hand limit: Great change. If you make a lot of scoops early in the week you are forced to play some cards if you don’t want to expose your scoops. This way you can optimise your hand to your strategy. Together with 8 scoops for solo vanilla it offers a lot more strategical options and action within the week and not only in the last 5 minutes.

No ties: I love it! The fight for medals is much more fiercely and fun though it would be better if the higher brackets were a bit smaller – about 20 players should be right.

Keeping alts out of raids: Simply put the reason for the best dom round this season so far. Thumps up! But though this week there were no players with raided vanilla outside the top bracket nothing prevents that they pester lower brackets in the future.

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: Not really a solution, vanilla raids are still broken and overpowered.

All things considered the changes are a big step in the right direction.

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My personal experience this week: I was in the second bracket, Headsets, and it was a merciless fight in there. I loved it!

I had 12 visits saved and completed a pistachio loop on Sunday. I made 3 successful runs for solo vanilla, so I got way more scoops than ever before. The hand limit forced me like the others to play cards midweek to optimise my hand or else the exposed scoops would have been wasted. I still lost almost 70 scoops before the last day because I couldn’t protect them, so it isn’t necessarily a big advantage any more to save visits.

The last minutes were nerve-wracking. 9 players were fighting for medals and some more were attacking just for the fun of it. My timing was almost perfect this week but in hindsight I made two small tactical mistakes which might have cost me Min Scoops. Well, we live to learn. In the end I had the second most scoops and if ercbume hadn’t killed a pistachio in the last second I’d have tied with Squidly for Min Scoops.

It isn’t surprising that Squidly won all medals – he had three alts and a lot of klanmates in the bracket, but unlike vanilla raids those are advantages of klan cooperation and having a lot of alts that I really don’t mind. Also I’m kinda glad that I didn’t won any medals – being in the top bracket would be sooooooooo boring. Log in to see images!