29 replies to this topic

[MightyToenail]

So there is randomness, but someone better than I could ever be could mitigate it? That's what I'm getting. Doesn't sound that bad then.

 

But I am concerned about Asklepios's comments about the elite versions of characters. I hadn't thought of that. I would have to buy a lot just to use them. Hmm. 

[Tacullu64]

So there is randomness, but someone better than I could ever be could mitigate it? That's what I'm getting. Doesn't sound that bad then.
 
But I am concerned about Asklepios's comments about the elite versions of characters. I hadn't thought of that. I would have to buy a lot just to use them. Hmm.

It depends on what you want to play, but generally elite characters aren't an issue. Six if the 24 characters can't even be played as elite, although you can play multiples of those characters so you may need a second die and card. Some of the remaining characters are pointed in such a way that they fit into teams better as a single die. Some characters work fine as elites or single die. The biggest offender is Luke. I have a hard time finding a team for him as a single die and he is expensive.

I would buy however many boosters you feel comfortable with then hit the secondary market for the elite characters you want.

[Hakkor]

I think you and I are in perfect harmony about the mechanics of the game. It seems we only differ on how we perceive the workings of said mechanics. For you the randomness of the dice causes the act of fixing imperfect rolls which is a more of a task or job you wish you didn't have to do to play the game properly, while I perceive the randomness of the rolls as the beginning of my struggle for dominance with my opponent in that round. I'm not trying to say there is a right or wrong way to view the game only that our perceptions of what is happening influence how we feel about it.

 +1. And, for the record, any complaining of mine is actually from the winning side, rather than the losing side. I can't keep myself from feeling "guilty" for such good rolls in tournaments, and sometimes I admit someone else deserved victory more than me

[HarriettFax]

Hey guys were working on adding a couple games to our gamefinder system and are looking for the proper classification for Bloodbowl. Is it a miniature game or a board game? This is how it will be filtered on the site so its important we label it the way the community would search for it. Any help on this is greatly appreciated.

[Hakkor]

I'm not sure this is the right topic to ask that, Herriett

[Asklepios]

If you have enough random repetitions of events with fixed probabilities, things actually become quite predictable. 

 

That's the case with this game. You're rolling a lot of dice each turn, over many turns, and each turn you're normally rerolling quite a few dice. Outcomes are pretty consistent, all in all. You might get that odd turn where Vader/Raider dual-wielding lightsabers produces zero damage after the rerolls, but that's pretty rare. The dice, I would say, are much less random than recall bias is likely to suggest.

 

There are some swingy cards, however, that can be amazing in some circumstances and good for nothing but a discard in others. Block and Dodge come to mind, as does Deflect. If your opponent is specialising in the damage type you are foiling, you have an incredibly economical effect, if they're not, you have a card to discard for rerolls.

Fortunately this can be mitigated by in game decisions on both players parts. There's all sorts of ways to minimise your risks of your guns deck being Dodged (firing off damage piecemeal, disrupting, discarding, and so on).

 

So this game does have luck to it, but I would say no more than in FFG's LCGs, like Conquest, or Thrones. This game is certainly less prone to "strong 1st turn wins the game" than those games.

 

However, it really is the distribution model that throws the element of chance in there. Ho hum.

[Hakkor]

I'd say I have a different view on that. Terrible first turns on Consquest are hard, but not an automatic lose (Swarmlord was amazing on winning apparently lost games). In Destiny, a player that makes a huge burst on turn 1 finishing off a character, gets really lucky rolls, equiping his characters with 4-5 resource worth equipment or prevents the opponent from developing in any way, while your opponent has ****** rolls (blanks, disrupts, 1 damage sides and such) swings the game completely. It turns into a snowball. More dice means more resources, damage, shields or whatever. The one who is rolling 8 dice will surely win over the one who is rolling just 4, because control events are much more effcetive on the seconds case.

 

And the only way to mitigate it is to hope the tides change, so you start rolling some excellent 4 dice and your opponent has terrible rolls with his 8 dice. Then you take down a character with your incredible damage roll, your opponent does little to you and the dice count on each side is balanced again.

 

Or, your opponent gets average rolls and ends up steamrolling you.

 

Not saying it's inherently a bad mechanic. It actually makes the game faster and less repetitive (which is good for tournaments, I have to admit), but it is much more random than otherLCG, by far.

[Tacullu64]

When I play Destiny I analyze the match up and formulate an endgame plan. By this I mean what state I'd like the game to be in at the end of the 3rd or 4th turn. I play the early turns with the goal of achieving my desired end game set up. Obviously what your opponent does affects your ability to get to your desired endgame.

Now to where I'm going with this. I'm trying to manage the game state to keep it reasonably close to staying on the path I need to set up my endgame. I can't allow wild swings in my opponents favor, such as my opponent creating a game state where he has an 8 to 4 dice advantage that lasts. It is acceptable if he finishes a turn with that advantage only if I'm able to even it up in the next turn before he can make use of his dice advantage.

The dice rolls are a single element of this game. Destiny is won and lost on controlling the tempo of the game. You accomplish that through using your actions to accomplish more in the turn than your opponent. I haven't seen a deck yet than can win consistently without a way to control the opponents dice or extend a characters life at a key moment, not even Jango/Veers.

I have seen some games I've played come down to a die roll to determine a winner, but you can't boil the game down to that single moment and say the dice won the game. It was the culmination of everything that went before. It is possible that one player rolls good every time and another rolls poorly every time. However, this is very unlikely as over the course of the game variation tends to smooth out.

Players need to build their teams and decks with a way to handle the times their opponents out roll them by a significant margin. It could happen any given turn no matter how unlikely it is to happen for an entire game. The amount of deck space needed for dice mitigation will depend on the deck. Jango/Veers will need less than a midrange control version of eRey/2x Padawan.

tldr; Controling the tempo through action efficiency/quality will win you more games than dice rolling.

[Crikrunner]

I too really wish this had been and LCG, already had several friends sell off collections once they realized how expensive it is just for the first set to get a good play set.  There is some skills to this game both in deck building and piloting the deck.  There is also a ton of luck, between two good players in a mirror match it comes down to the rolls of the dice.  Jango's react then shoot with no counter can hit for 0 to 13 damage once he's well armed.  Other than him the game has common cards (dodge & block) that can mitigate all of someone's damage.  While skill will get you to the top 25% of most tournaments (assuming you've made the buy in of over 100$ for a solid deck) luck does play a huge factor in this game.  I really wish all swiss matches were best 2 of 3 and the final 3 of 5 but that makes for a long tournament.  At the same time the game is really fun casually and I enjoy playing it.  Not sure how long that will last when I need to shell out 200$+ 3/times a year to keep up.

[Kaloo]

If you have enough random repetitions of events with fixed probabilities, things actually become quite predictable. 

 

That's the case with this game. You're rolling a lot of dice each turn, over many turns, and each turn you're normally rerolling quite a few dice. Outcomes are pretty consistent, all in all. You might get that odd turn where Vader/Raider dual-wielding lightsabers produces zero damage after the rerolls, but that's pretty rare. The dice, I would say, are much less random than recall bias is likely to suggest.

 

There are some swingy cards, however, that can be amazing in some circumstances and good for nothing but a discard in others. Block and Dodge come to mind, as does Deflect. If your opponent is specialising in the damage type you are foiling, you have an incredibly economical effect, if they're not, you have a card to discard for rerolls.

Fortunately this can be mitigated by in game decisions on both players parts. There's all sorts of ways to minimise your risks of your guns deck being Dodged (firing off damage piecemeal, disrupting, discarding, and so on).

 

So this game does have luck to it, but I would say no more than in FFG's LCGs, like Conquest, or Thrones. This game is certainly less prone to "strong 1st turn wins the game" than those games.

 

However, it really is the distribution model that throws the element of chance in there. Ho hum.

 

I'd disagree. Whilst all card games have randomness built into them, due to the nature of a deck of cards, their randomness is quickly mitigated once the cards are being played. For example, in Conquest you can cover drawing the wrong cards by increasing your card draw capabilities or committing your warlord to particular planets.

 

Whilst such concepts are still the case in Destiny, the consistent use of dice means that there's always randomness involved on top of the randomness in card draw (which for all games becomes less random as the deck becomes smaller). What this means is that huge swings can happen due to circumstances that are beyond the control of the player. Taking Conquest again, a big pitched battle which favours one player is determined by the events/supports etc that they have available as well as the choices they make with what they have. In Destiny, those concerns are supplemented by the prayer required for your dice to actually land.

 

There are ways to increase your consistently, or to reduce that of your opponent's, but, for me, it's still a limiting factor since it can just get frustrating.

 

More crucially, however, the CCG model is a real turnoff. Being forced to add inconsistency into my deck because I'm lacking key cards / additional copies is slowly pushing me away from the game. Whilst one can proxy non dice cards (read: Electroshock) quite easily, it's far less immersive to proxy a die (and definitely illegal for tournament play), which annoys me to no end. The argument that "you need to pay more" doesn't cut it for me.

 

Having said all of that, the game is fun and has a number of tactical choices built in which does make the game immersive, but the combination of the above factors is really getting to me. I had initially planned to just use this to plug the gap between Conquest and L5R, but I'm leaning towards quitting earlier.