Let’s start discussing what the player community would like to have changed for next year’s league. Gamerman and I will then take the suggestions and attempt to reason out which ones have the most support and don’t conflict with other ideas, and codify next year’s rules. AKA same as last year, only instead of me doing it by myself, Gamer will help out (which will at least make me feel a lot less guilty about declaring things!)
I’d like to discuss bidding myself. You don’t have to start here, but it’s something I want ironed out once and for all.
I see bidding as the follows:
A. You are bidding for units to be placed at the start of the game.
B. Bids are for the allies, negative bids are not allowed.
C. You must place as much of the IPC awarded to you for winning the bid on the board prior to the start of the game. (ie, you may ONLY retain 1 or 2 IPC to be spent during your first round’s purchases.)
NEW:
D. You may not bid units for China (therefore no risk of stacking Yunnan, no question on if you can bid a second fighter, etc. Don’t even have to worry about if they can bid for tanks or artillery or flying foo-foo pink bunnies with huge teeth and thus Japan won’t need Holy Hand Grenades of Antioch to win. This is humor of course!)
E. You are limited to 3 units in any specific territory or sea zone from your bid. (Regardless of what is present already, you may only add up to three more) and these units can only be placed in a territory or sea zone that you control and start with at least one unit in at the start of the game.
F. No bid units in Victory Cities (there, problem of stacking France, etcetera fixed.)
I think I covered every possible issue I have been presented with this year in this list. If I missed any, let me know. This is a SUGGESTION, the whole idea of his thread is to debate and make changes for next year, so put the emotion aside and come up with arguments and counter arguments. Any flaming and I will personally disregard anything said from you and I will be keeping a list (of course you could still luck out if someone else says the same thing and isn’t on the ignore list.) That is, in regards to this thread. A good clean fight, no hitting below the belt (unless you’re a girl, then girls can feel free to kick, bite, scratch and punch anywhere they want. hairpulling too, but only for girls. Again, HUMOR!)
wouldn’t it be easier to just go with the more conventional 1 unit per territory rule for bid placement?
Bidding to start with a technology or two should be considered.
1. I’m not in favor of limiting bids to certain powers (re:China) or terr (re:VCs)
2. I think a 1 unit limit per terr limit would solve anyone’s concerns about stacking Yunnan and/or Paris.
3. Please explain the no negative bids part. Are you saying that the bids CANNOT go lower than 0 for the allies or are you stating that you can’t pull pieces off the board? I’d be in favor of allowing someone to bid units to the axis if they so desire and don’t see the need for that rule. I would however be in favor of nixing anyone trying to pull units off the board(say US aa guns).
4. A weighted ranking system is needed, Gamer’s system would be perfect for this. If not, I’d suggest instituting a minimum number of games against tier 1/2 players in order to qualify for the playoffs.
Personally i am not for limiting the bid at any way.
The focus should be on Tech and how to envolve it in the game. It will bring a new life to the game.
Also, we should speak to Veqryn to fix all those bugs.
Very important is the number of minimum games needed for playoffs, i would personally add maximum allowed number of games that counts.
Also the minimum number of opponents, of course.
So playing on 2 wins or 3 wins should be ok.
The league should IMHO finish earlier and the playoffs should be on 2 wins. The players start playing with both sides 2 matches at the same time. This how we avoid a great player looses because off an oversight. Also we see both players with both powers. If it is 1-1 then the better ranked player chooses the side for the last match.
I think that this idea of multiple playoffs is great, as Gamer says so playoff for each of the 3 tiers. But personally i think that all the guys that finish in 1-3 tire should play those playoffs , only those at 4th should not.
So lets say we have 32 players in teh league, that means that 24 of them will play the playoffs
Thanks, guys, all read and noted.
I have no problem with bidding tech…. if you’ll give me jets with the USA so that you can have Axis, I will accept. I guess the point of bidding is to achieve a mutually agreeable game start situation such that both players are happy with their side and how it’s starting.
Thoughts on bidding:
I also think Axis bids should be allowed. Garg and I have a game started where I have +7 Axis. Some of us call this a “negative bid” because we bid past 0 for Allies. But if you mean no pulling units off the board, I agree. It should be possible to have an Axis bid after the Allied bid goes down to 0 and both players still don’t want the Allies.
I see no need for requirement C - better to keep it simple. It’s normally sub-optimal to give money to a power instead of units on the board, so I see no reason to disallow it.
I appreciate your D, but I also see your good attempt to keep the rules simple and uniform (treating sea zones and TTs the same), and therefore I think bids to China of infantry and artillery should be allowed.
I also am in favor of a 1 unit per space bid, to prevent people from pulling tricks. The bidding process is not supposed to be a way to win the game before the first turn is played.
Then you won’t need any rules against placing in certain places.
Agree that New Guinea bids should no longer be allowed (that is, you must have a unit in the zone, territory already), for uniformity and to reduce player confusion/questions.
Thanks for starting the thread at the appropriate time, and kicking it off with a really well thought out post of suggestions and ideas, Jenn.
It should be possible to have an Axis bid after the Allied bid goes down to 0 and both players still don’t want the Allies.
Both players don’t want the Axis, rather :-)
I too would like to see some sort of runners up playoff or tournament for those that don’t qualify for the main event.
I have no problem with bidding tech…. if you’ll give me jets with the USA so that you can have Axis, I will accept. I guess the point of bidding is to achieve a mutually agreeable game start situation such that both players are happy with their side and how it’s starting.
Great. This how we can have three categories of bids: units, IPCs to the bank and tech.
With the tech it could be really interesting.
Maybe (if both players agree) we can try with ˝double bids˝
For example the players bid, the Allies go to Gamerman with 8 IPC, that means Jen gets 8 IPC with Axis to bid and Gamerman 8*2=16 IPC for the Allies.
this how we could get more interesting situations early on. Limit of 1-2 units per territory could help here because of the large Allied bids. But it is just a thought, personally the tech thing seems like a good new thing by itself :)
@seththenewb:
I too would like to see some sort of runners up playoff or tournament for those that don’t qualify for the main event.
Good news - it’s happening even for this year, in November.
I imagine we’ll go probably go ahead and put it in the league rules for next year (provision for multiple playoffs, with the main playoff producing the league champion)
I’ve heard of a few players thinking the Allies are overpowered and the Axis needs the handicap. I rewrote B to address both opinions.
B. Bidding starts for the Allies at 48 and goes down to zero. If neither player wants to play Allies with a positive bid, then the bidding restarts at 1 and goes to 48 for the Axis handicap.
I’m happy to play Allies with a bid of 6 although I understand other players have gotten much higher bids. WOuld this version of D work better than no chinese unit bids at all?
D. Bids placed in China may only be infantry or artillery and must comply with bidding rules E and F.
Gargantua had made a couple of scenario changes in the XDAP tournament. A simple rule G will allow the moderators to make any balance changes to the scenario if they want.
G. The following changes should be made during the bid process for no cost:
1. Add a heavy bomber to Moscow
2. Add a transport to the French fleet off Southern France
3. etc.
And for games that use technology,
H. For games with technology
1. Starting with certain technologies is allowed and would be negotiated between players as part of the bidding process
2. for single die roll games, IPCs in increments of 5 may be added to each country’s starting IPC total to be spent during the first turn.
3. For tech token games, IPCs in increments of 5 may be added to each country’s starting IPC total to be spent during the first turn.
If the winner of the second tier 1 playoff beats the winner of the by win percentage playoff 2 straight then thay are the league champ!
If the winner of the second tier 1 playoff beats the winner of the by win percentage playoff 2 straight then thay are the league champ!
That sounds really great until you think about being the winner of the main playoff event. You run the gauntlet of 7 of the other top players in the league and then you have to win up to 2 more games against the guy who won the other, so up to 5 games to win the championship?
No, that’s NG :-)
Keep thinking
No the guy that wins the playoff based on highest win percent wins it all with only ONE win against the challenger. The challenger must win 2 straight.
No the guy that wins the playoff based on highest win percent wins it all with only ONE win against the challenger. The challenger must win 2 straight.
That’s up to three additional games.
As I said, these are ideas and a place to kick off from.
I have no personal objection to virtually any bid either player wants to make, as long as it does not violate the rules. However, bidding for technology is rather hard to police. How much are paratroopers worth? This is not to say it cannot be allowed, just something to consider is all.
As for negative bids being for Axis units, I have no objection to that. We can rewrite the section in question to say that you bid for the allies, if the bid for the allies reaches zero, you start to bid for the axis. Under no circumstances will a bid be placed in which a unit or units are removed from the board. (I tried this with the tournament last year, let me tell you, I don’t EVER want to do that again!)
I don’t really have a problem with one unit per territory or sea zone, I just think it might be overly restrictive. Just my opinion. In some cases putting an infantry in Bessarabia, Ukraine and East Poland for instance, the restriction seems capricious at best, useless at worst. I do see justification in regards to defense in certain critical areas on round 1 that would be bad to have major swings on, so I understand the reason for the rule. Just my thoughts.
@seththenewb:
No the guy that wins the playoff based on highest win percent wins it all with only ONE win against the challenger. The challenger must win 2 straight.
That’s up to three additional games.
Forget I said anything.
Seth, it’s up to two additional games (is not best of 3), but that is unacceptable…
Jenn, I think we are saying the same thing which is cool - we’re not opposed to bidding techs. I also thought “shoot, we’d have to value each tech” but you don’t. The players bidding with it do.
It’s not going to be like I win a bid of Allies +10, now can I have paratroopers?
It’s going to be like I’ll take the Allies if you give me paratroopers with UK +5 in units/IPC’s
2nd guy goes “No, but I’ll take the Allies if you give me rockets with the USA and +5”
Now the 1st guy might actually think the 2nd guy didn’t bid him down, but that’s moot. Either the 1st guy likes the counter-offer or he doesn’t, and makes another offer of his own.
The point of bidding is to come to an agreeable starting setup for both players.
I do think it would be good to have a couple of league rules, and I completely agree that it should not change the rules of the game (I’ll take Allies if you let my infantry move 2 spaces) or remove pieces (I’ll take Allies if I can trade in all my starting infantry for mech)
I won’t argue that 1 unit per space might be overly restrictive. Limit 2 would probably be OK too.
Next Year’s ranking system:
PPG
ELO
Percentage
Other
Thoughts? Concerns?
My opinion is this, any ranking system we go with next year should be one that encourages game play for all players without ostracizing any class or group.
Perhaps we could devise a way to rank players where wins gain you points and losses don’t cost you any points but you don’t earn any points either? The stronger the player the more points you earn for beating them? Not sure how that would look exactly, but it’s just an idea.
Just a few things (I dont know too much about the technicalities and appreciate the immense amount of time invested in rules, rankings etc.)
Thx again for keeping this up to all our enjoyment.
