scullyangel Posted:
While, I think this week was incredibly frustrating to many, I did think it was interesting to see who played it out.
Honestly, I was surprized that there wasn’t more teamwork going on, since pairing up with a klannie (or non-klannie) would be a mega advantage. One player playing for medals, the other there to shoot shields if it was needed.
Cards were obviously far too cheap – see the brackets for a serious amount of clean, winner-free brackets. The only viable strategy was using visits as late as possible, and I think a big bunch of players who thought there would be scoops to use The Thief on were stuck holding their cards just because there were no scoops.
It’ll be interesting to see if this destruct-o round awakened the grief based player in any of the players who normally only play if they have a shot at medaling. More pointedly, it’ll be interesting to see how many players are interested almost exclusively in the destruction based medal when it is released. There were just a ton of players who were utterly gleeful about keeping the brackets scoop free. Log in to see images!
I know I was one of them. Log in to see images!
The main reason for the lack of teamwork is that it wouldn’t have been truly effective. People didn’t buy many Shields this week because 1) they didn’t have any scoops to protect and 2) most of them were aware that anyone with a Peeping Tom could tell everyone in the bracket not to attack them, and force a disqualification. You *could* help teammates, but they’d just be another person with scoops you couldn’t your cards on… and they’d be just another person your enemies would be able to attack to get rid of their cards. Teammates were more of a liability than an advantage, and I think people sensed this.
The vibe I got was that everyone overdid it on cards. Any scoops out in the open were doomed to be destroyed. And the natural reaction of any dom player is to card down when scoops are in danger. But the result of this is that essentially everyone carded down. Everyone was armed to the teeth with a 30 card arsenal of bumholes, Shotguns, and especially Thieves. ...and then… there weren’t enough scoops to destroy, because everyone had carded down. So Wednesday comes and there simply isn’t enough to destroy for anyone to deplete their hoard of cards.
Carding down came too naturally for dom players, and the 1-scoop cost made it even more tempting, but this was the wrong strategy. Ironically, amidst all the rampant destruction, the real way to win was by being zen and doing almost nothing. Acgreat timesulate no scoops and give your enemies no opportunity to get rid of their cards, and get your scoops in the last fifteen seconds… ideally, (as was said early in the week) by completing a pistachio streak at the last minute. Everyone is disqualified, you get two medals.
I enjoyed this round, but ultimately Gambit might just be too different from what domination players are used to. The change in strategy it required to win was so radical in comparison to normal domination tactics that it ended in a huge cluster****. I think if we played this theme again, people would fare much better, but there’d still be more brackets without winners than ones with.
Luna Lovegood edited this message on 08/28/2008 2:47AM
