Although opening theory is a part of all games, it's not something I've ever had to explore a great deal. The games I've played the most: Magic; WoWTCG; and Star Wars: Epic Duels have opening plays dependent on the cards you've drawn. As there are a massive number of possible game states in the beginning of the game, opening strategies consist of general principles rather than a set of explicit moves.
WoWminis is a different beast. There isn't any random input until an attack is made, which means there is quite a lot of room for opening theory. A lot of it will be pretty simple stuff. Example:
You're playing a Warlock character with Summon Hukkrit. In order to mitigate the summon's hefty 4 tick cost, you want to play it at a point where tempo* is not a factor. The first tick of the game is one such point. On the Warlock's first turn, he will move 2 spaces towards the nearest VP location and summon his pet, which sets his personal clock to 5. This gives him anther 2 moves to get adjacent to the VP location and score in the first VP phase. To accommodate the warlock getting off to a slow start, the other characters on the team will set up a defensive position around their home VP square.
This sort of strategy is pretty simplistic. More interesting will be the strategies designed to exploit such an opening move. It's possible that forcing a quick confrontation isn't practical for every party. I'll have more to say on this after some proper matches.
*Tempo is a factor in the thick of battle, when a tick of time costs a tick of time. When parties are maneuvering and not taking actions, paying ticks comes with less opportunity cost. It is during these breaks of action that heals and summons and other buffs will shine.
5 comments:
Opening theory is a lot more important in mini games than card games, from my experience with Dreamblade. The first thing we did with a warband was evaluate all our possibilities for spawning minis in the first three turns and see if there were any glaring holes to fill up. In fact, most of the time some choices of warbands were completly invalidated just because they had sequences for the first three turns that were utterly unsatisfactory, no matter the strenght of the main combo of the band in a vacuum.
It's good to try something new. I know that after my break from Magic playing Dreamblade competitively, when I returned to Magic I just won 200 rating points in a year or so, won a prerelease and made it on the cusp of winning three others, and grinded into Nationals despite not playing the format for months (I'd been practicing Block almost exclusively for the PTQ season). Cross-training, as athletes call it, is very good to improve your game in other games. :)
If you want to have a leg up and some practice before we get the data for WoW minis, I suggest trying out Dreamblade. There's a VASSAL mod out there so you wouldn't even need to splurge for the product (and the product itself has been in a freefall price wise since the game's cancellation). It should help you experience some of the quirks in which minis games differ from card games (perfect information, for one, though I guess WoW minis is not a 100% perfect information game due to the action cards).
I agree with your cross-training comment. People who have played a lot of different games can rapidly grasp new games, as they are able to establish equivalences. Every game has some time-related mechanic and some opportunity to 'invest' in future development.
I played Dreamblade on Vassal a few times and went to a tournament or two. When I played there was minimal variation amongst the best warbands, and kitsune made the game unfun.
That's why it got banned around the time of the Chrysotic Plague release.
Baxar's War was a rather powerful set. As soon as Kitsune got banned, most top tier strategies started to revolve around the use of the Gambit pieces, who themselves had been introduced in Baxar's War but were totally invalidated by Kitsune-based warbands. All of the Gambit pieces were played in top warbands (in order from most used to least: Bloodhawk Barag, Crypt Worm, Cyclopean Sprite, and the Angel), and it transformed the game from a really sit-and-wait affair to a game of trying to score points early to be able to abuse Gambit late game. Once Kitsune got banned the game became a lot more entertaining (and CP brought almost nothing new to the game, so the post-Kitsune season was mostly fought with BW minis that hadn't been able to compete).
"On the Warlock's first turn, he will move 2 spaces towards the nearest VP location and summon his pet, which sets his personal clock to 5. This gives him anther 2 moves to get adjacent to the VP location and score in the first VP phase."
Are you saying that a character can move before his personal clock matches the game clock? From the downloadable rulebook "That character won't take another turn until the master clock matches its personal clock again" and "During each character's turn it can move up to 2 spaces"
I may be wrong about what you were saying, but if I understand you correctly, I think you are mistaken.
-jeff
VPs score at end of tick 5. You will be able to move the warlock on tick 5 before VPs are scored
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