The Last Homely House
Undying Lands => Valinor => Topic started by: Legion on May 31, 2013, 04:43:45 AM
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I love sealed leagues. People may have noticed this by the fact that I was the first person to play all 40 games in both of the last sealed competitions. The only problem with them is the fact that I have played all 10 of my games by the second day, so have over a week of having to watch others having fun, wishing I still had one game left. I know lots of people agree with me. So I've decided to organise a kind of mini-league, completely casually. The way you play is as follows:
Create a new account, with the name "SealedLeagueOnly:****" Where **** is your normal account's name. (So I'd be SealedLeagueOnly:Legion)
You get 200 gold. Go to the merchant and choose your starter deck and 6 boosters. The packs should cost 85 gold, and the extra cards at most another 20 gold each. Now open your cards and make your deck from your My Cards set, adding in the set specific 6 companion hate cards if you wish. Hopefully people will only join your games if they're also playing this sealed thing.
Record your wins here (I'll try to keep tables updated) and we can get a league going!
I'm open to suggestions. Before we start I'd like to ask how people want to do this. I see several ways:
4 weeks, introducing the next expansion each week. Just like our current leagues.
1 week, you start with all 3 expansions and only one deck (Don't go Boromir in FotR, it's terrible, even if it was my first set IRL)
Either of the above, but without the 6 companion hate cards (I'm thinking Enquea for Felloship Block, Southron Commander for TTT, both Orc Assault Band and Southron Thief for RotK and the conditions for each culture in Black Rider for WotR).
What do you guys think? By making the new account, you can easily see which cards you can use as they are the only ones in your My Cards. (And then you can easily add in the 6 companion haters)
Also what league do people want to do first? I'd go RotK as we haven't had a seaed league of it since I've been on gemp.
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Ok, so apparently the maximum length of a name is 10 characters. That's sad, so instead change it to SLO-****** Legion is luckily only 6 characters, so I'm fine :)
Also this league would obviously be based on trust. Please don't buy loads of really strong rares or extra packs because that's fun for nobody.
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Well, instead of going through all this trouble - there would be a lot of problems with this, including calculating standings if 2 or more people have the same points, not to mention i think the whole trust thing aint gonna work, i certainly dont wanna spend all the time and then face some trolls with foil greanleaf and 2 aragorns bows - i would remind everyone of DjiDjo's idea:
Let the players who finished their games for points, to continue to play league games, without getting any points or prizes for that, BUT influencing their tiebreakers! So if you start losing a lot, after the initial games for points, you will be last from the all players with the same number of points, but you have a chance to improve your tiebreakers too! Most of us want to play more non-casual games in every format, and that will give us the option to do that. That will also help players who struggle to find opponents for their league games at certain hours/days.
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It's a fantastic idea, but I have to agree with Cthulhu here...
Doing this all based on trust will not work. Plain and simple.
Think of what's going on with the merchant right now, for example: people ignoring all morals to get a ton of gold. Why would a league yield any different results?
It is truly a great idea, and would work in a perfect world. Sadly, as I have discovered, Gemp is far from that. Djidjo's idea is good, but we'd need MarcinS on board. What if we got together a community for your idea that we do trust? If, through this thread or pms, we could have a group of people that prove their trustworthiness (or simply report the cards they open in packs when they get them), it might just work out. (Only allowing people on said list to participate.)
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I would sign up for it, but I'm leaving for a month. I'll see how it is when I get back. :)
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Legion, you can trust me. I will try this as soon as possible...
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I thought it might appeal to you, Skeeve :) Certainly I do expect some trouble based on the element of trust, but I'm willing to sacrifice a few games in order to have some more fun playing sealed. Plus, there's nothing better than beating the internet trolls!
Don't worry about the organising. I'm quite good at that type of thing (even if I do say so myself). I was considering some sort of ladder system, probably similar to the way Rugby International seedings are done. That would allow people to play more games per week, and not be given too much of an advantage over other players who don't want to play as often.
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If there's enough interest, count me in.
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Excellent! To be honest, if people sign up here and don't cheat on the sealed leagues, (I'm quite liking the naming and shaming so I can see who is more trustworthy) I doubt that trust is even going to be an issue. Once I set a few more people saying they're interested, I'll start up. It's probably best that we start with a smaller bunch anyway.
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We just provide the replay links. So no cheating there.
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Interested...
But here's a problem: what if someone like ZooL creates a new account and joins to spam this up...
If the new account acts friendly and trustworthy on here, how can we stop him?
This may (sadly) have to be kept between well-known players only.
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How about this? If you join this league, you must also join (and play at least half of) the sealed league going on at the time with your main account (this is, after all, for people who love the sealed games. If your account gets banned for cheating in the bona-fide league, I'll disqualify you from Legion's League. If you can play at least 20 games without cheating, I'll trust you. I personally don't think that's too big of an ask.
I would like to try to get this started as soon as possible. I'll give people until the weekend to express interest before I get going. Also, I've had no feedback as to ideas like everyone being given Enquea in FotR Block, or if you only choose 1 starter from all 6 in the block instead of 1 from 2 every week. Help me out, here, or I may make an unpopular call by mistake (I might even not give out boosters and say everyone plays with a ready made deck from a choice of starter with cards added of my choosing to make it tournament legal!)
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I am interested Legion. Count me in.
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So, what are we aiming for, size-wise?
We'd have to have enough people to play games fairly consistently, but not so many that we can't keep track of cheaters.
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For the moment, we have at most 6 people interested, so I'll take as many as I can get. If people do as I suggested above, I reckon cheaters won't be an issue. I'm still of the opinion that this will work, I just need a few more people to have as much faith as I do. Come on, guys, and also do say what league you'd like to try first.
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WOTR is my favorite, though I'm most likely alone in this.
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I would be interested if we made the sealed league something I havent played yet. For example a TS sealed where we can choose any starter deck from sets 1-6 or something along those lines. I think the variation would be interesting
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Not a bad shout at all. Would anyone else consider this? I would prefer not to do it as in my opinion the WK starter destroys all the other 5 from TTT Block, and Fellowship Block decks don't have the correct sites. If we gave free choice for the sites, then a Cavern Entrance site 7 means the WK beats 10 of the others, with only Aragorn from Fellowship block having a chance if he plays Pathfinder at the correct time. And then it's still not guaranteed. I'd rather not get into a 2 horse race of WK or Aragorn if there are 12 to choose from.
I do like the WotR block decks, but again the Boromir deck is really the one to play or to beat. If you go for 4 series like real leagues, then you just go Gandalf, Mouth of Sauron then Boromir 9 times out of 10, regardless of your booster pulls. If it was from any of the other 5, I guess Saruman, Gandalf and Mouth of Sauron are all viable. However as it was the most recent league, I would say let's not play it just yet.
If I had to vote now, I would say go for King Block. As they are the online version of the Eomer deck is far more powerful than the Aragorn. However that is purely down to the 2 Elite Riders killing all but 1 of the minions in the Aragorn deck. If they were removed from the deck (like with physical cards) I think the two are fairly balanced. As far as I remember, Pippin vs Merry is quite fun, too. I never got the Mount Doom starters, so cannot say about Frodo vs Sam. (And yes I would consider saying reset the collection each week, as otherwise almost everyone would go Aragorn, Pippin then Sam).
I have written a programme that would give rankings in a way that should allow people to play each other more than once and it still being fair on the rest. It's based on the Rugby Union International Seedings, but uses Arctan instead of linear functions so you do gain (small) credit for beating someone much lower than you.
Has anyone else got any ideas? I certainly feel we could do something very new and inventive.
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Or, we could play the TS idea, but with the choice of 2 decks? 1 from Fellowship, one from Two Towers. It would still be possible that WK and Legolas (from set 3) would still be very powerful (as Legolas gives Saruman's Snows) on the shadow side, but I feel the Free Peoples would take a beating.
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As far as the MD starters go, I found Frodo to be much more powerful than Sam on the freeps side, but the shadows evened it out.
(purely from my experience, that is, owning both decks and playing them against each other with my friends.)
I know that resets are most likely necessary, but I would love to see how Aragorn, Driven by Need (ROTK) works with the two MD decks, with Frodo wraiths/threat control on one side, and Merry, Rohirrim Squire / Pippin, Sworn to Service weird threat-work on the other. Just would lead to some crazy combos, particularly with Knight's Spear out.
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Sounds about right. I wish we did play a RotK sealed league for real on Gemp, but the organiser seems not to like that block much. Pity :( Unless anyone has any other suggestions, I'm going to suggest we go by the TS idea: you pick a deck from Fellowship Block and Towers Block and you get 8 boosters: 2 from sets 1 and 4, 1 each from the other 4 sets. You also get to play up to 2 Ulaire Enquea, Lieutenant of Morgul. I also feel that everyone should get 1 copy of Boromir, Son of Denethor as he is the only real swarm protection available.
I feel there are several interesting ideas for this format. FotR Aragorn and Theoden give a powerful shadow of Uruks, and has the Eomer with an Aragorn signet. Gimli and TTT Legolas would give an interesting wounding shadow combining Whirling Strike and Under the Watching Eye. The fellowship would be good at wounding and can load Gimli up to take out any big minion that survives archery. Gandalf (either) and the Witch King would form a frightening swarm thanks to They are Coming being able to use the Free Peoples cards drawn by all the Sauron Orcs to play even more goblins. FotR Legolas could pair well with either Theoden for loads of Uruks, or WK for Snows in the swarm, or perhaps wit TTT Legolas for some Elven power. Perhaps even Boromir and Faramir could team up for loads of pumps for the men of Gondor. I'm sure someone can do something creative with Eowyn, too.
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ok I am in, I don't support this idea very much, I think we should find a more official way for more leagues, and I have a lot of ideas if there is ever to be a discussion,
but I support you and anyone who cares about this site and this game, plus I love playing lotr, so
count me in!
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I'm asking for the discussion. I just made this idea as it is new: I doubt anyone has ever done this before, and could be interesting. Obviously it won't be everybody's taste. I want to do something that as many people as possible want to play, so your opinions and ideas are very welcome. I obviously cannot set up anything official, but it should be just a bit of fun.
I sometimes wish there could be a ladder system on Gemp. If we went with one similar to mine, but using Linear Splines instead of Arctan functions it should be almost impossible to cheat in any meaningful way (to get your rating past 80 would take literally thousands of games if you're using fake accounts). That's probably a discussion for another time and place, though.