There are three spaces on the board which essentially allow you to acquire resources every turn for the rest of the game. Early on these spaces are awesome and you should almost always pick one of them if you can. Later on they're a little worse but still pretty good since there are ways to score points based on how much infrastructure you have. I'll discuss those in more detail when we go over scoring but for now it's just important to know that the infrastructure spaces start very powerful and remain strong over the course of the game. The three infrastructure spaces are agriculture, population, and tools.
Agriculture is the most straightforward and most intrinsically powerful of the three. You spend 1 guy now and you get to move your marker on the farm track up one space permanently. At the end of each turn you have to pay 1 food per guy you have. Farms knock one off of that cost so if you have 5 guys and 5 farms you actually don't pay any food at all. Since a food is essentially worth 2 points each you're spending one guy now for 2 points a turn for the rest of the game. The guy's action is worth 3.5 points so as long as there's even one more turn left in the game this is a positive action. The only caveat here is food is only used for eating so if you end the game with a lot of extra food they don't count for anything. This means you generally don't want to end up with as many farms as people since then you can't eat food and any food you do pick up is wasted. Ideally you want to end the game with 0 food left.
Population is relatively straightforward and has the potential to be the most powerful of all. You spend 2 guys now in the 'love shack' space and get an extra guy permanently. You start the game with 5 in play and have a hard cap of 10 over the course of the game. Note you don't get to take an action with the guy this turn but you do have to feed them at the end of the turn. (Stupid children and their insistence on being fed.) As such, the cost of going to this space is 9 points. (You give up rolling with 2 guys - 3.5 each. You also spend an extra 2 feeding the kid.) The long-term gain is you get an extra 3.5 points each turn by rolling a die with the new guy, but you have to feed him 2 points. So the net gain is 1.5 points. This is worse than agriculture by 5.5 points right now and .5 points every turn, so if you have a choice between the two then agriculture tends to be better. On the other hand if you're sucking up the 10 point penalty for not feeding your guys at the end of the turn then population is awesome. It costs 10 points regardless of how many people you don't feed, so the extra guys have no added cost and are just an extra 3.5 a turn. Since you aren't feeding then the agriculture is worth nothing. (There is a whole strategy around this which we'll flesh out in more detail later. For now just know that getting more population is key to the starvation plan.)
Tools are the hardest to work out a value for and are my personal favourite infrastructure item. The first tool you pick up sits on your board ready to be used. Then any time you roll dice to pick up resources you can 'tap' your tool to add 1 to the roll. So if you roll 2 dice on gold and they total 5 you'd get nothing at all. But if you had a tool to tap you'd instead get a full gold. Once a tool is tapped you can't use it again that turn but they all untap at the start of your next turn so you can boost one roll every turn for the rest of the game. Your second tool gets you another 1 tool so you can add 2 to one roll or 1 to two rolls. The third tool is the same as the first two. After that you no longer get extra tools but you instead upgrade existing tools to add more to a roll. So if you've acquired 4 tools you'll have a 2, a 1, and a 1. You can use them on the same roll or on different ones if you're making lots of rolls in a turn.
How much are tools worth? This is a tricky question and depends on both how many tools you have and how many things you're trying to pick up. At the simplest, assume you have 1 tool and roll 1 die on 1 resource. Then the tool is worth 1 point on average. (1/6th of the time it's worth gold or 6 points. 5/6th of the time it's worth nothing. This averages out to one point. Or if you're rolling on food, 1/2 the time it's worth 2 and 1/2 it's worth nothing.) But what if you roll a die on gold and then one on food? Well, then 1/6 it's worth 6 and 5/6*1/2 it's worth 2. So it's worth 1.83 points. In general the more different things you roll on the more chances you have to proc your tool which is awesome.
The problem though, as we discovered in the last post, is spreading out your guys is actually bad for the value of your guys. That first guy on gold is only worth 1 point himself. The first guy on food is worth 2. So with 2 guys and 1 tool you can either get 4.83 points by splitting them or 5.5 points by stacking them both on gold. (1 point for first guy on gold, 3.5 for second guy on gold, 1 for the tool.) We can make the tool worth more by splitting but our overall EV goes up by stacking.
Consider what happens if you have 4 tools, though. 2 guys on gold with 4 tools is worth a total of 8.5. But split them between gold and food and they're worth 10.3 total. It's even better with 5 tools, since then you can guarantee at most 1 pip wastage across your rolls and tools. 2 guys on gold with 5 tools is 9.5. 1 on gold and 1 on food with 5 tools is 11.5 points.
The way to minimize the random swings in the game is to stock up on tools. You'll roll some 1s and some 6s over the course of the game, and your goal is to minimize the number of wasted pips. (Roll 5 on gold with no tools and you've wasted 5 pips. Roll 6 on gold with 5 tools and you've still wasted 5 pips.) But by having enough tools to make your gold roll become "just in" and by also rolling on food you can guarantee at most 1 pip wastage. (Due to the way tools build up this isn't always true. With 6 tools, for example, an odd roll on gold and an odd roll on food is 2 pip wasteage since you can only ever add 2 to the rolls. This makes the 6th tool not very good, but you still need it to get up to 7 tools.)
There's two ways to look at it. Either the extra value gained from these tools gets counted on the tools and you need to devalue guys or the tools just smooth out your guys and push them closer to being worth their theoretical 3.5 points and tools are just worth 1. I find it easier to take the second stance when I'm thinking as I play the game, but I recognize that the first 5 tools are really critical. I hate rolling on gold without having the 5 tools, so I place a premium on picking up early tools. Having lots of tools makes everything else smoother. You can afford to throw just 1 guy on gold then and know you're guaranteed to get it when you need it. Put other guys on other spots and you can still use the tools when you roll 'lucky' with your one guy on gold. I've played games where people keep rolling their eyes and lamenting how lucky my rolls are since I always get just in on most of my rolls. What they fail to realize is I get to do this because of how many tools I have. That's what tools do!
I still take agriculture over tools first pick (if you don't then you have to dedicate a lot of guys to food every turn and just get to do less stuff) but I take tools over population until I have at least 5 tools even if the people are potentially more powerful in general. I like the smoothing affect of tools.
Friday, December 31, 2010
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Cracking a Playfair Cipher
When I was a kid I used to take code books out from the library. I'd spend days writing secret messages to myself and trying to get friends to play along but no one else is insane enough to spend too much time encrypting and decrypting inane messages. As part of my ongoing treasure hunt I now have an encrypted message to decrypt using one of those old ciphers I used to mess around with. It's a Playfair Cipher, where essentially you build a 5x5 matrix from a keyword followed by the rest of the alphabet in order. You take your plaintext that you want to encrypt, split it into pairs of letters, and then encrypt the letters using the matrix. (Note a 5x5 matrix has only 25 spaces so you need to drop a letter. Generally this is done by eliminating Q or combining I and J together.) In this way you have 600 different 'characters' (or digraphs) instead of just 26 with most normal ciphers. This really ramps up the complexity when it comes to decrypting it without the key. (A normal substitution cipher is easy enough it gets included in standard puzzle magazines as Cryptograms or Cryptoquotes.)
At any rate, I'm working on one of the chapters in The World's Greatest Treasure Hunt. Each chapter has 20 questions to answer and I've worked out 18 of them. The two that remain are "What is the password given in this chapter?" (the real crux of the treasure hunt is figuring out what in the world these passwords might be I think) and a Playfair Cipher where they've encrypted a trivia question about Pirates of the Caribbean. They didn't give me the key, unfortunately, though they did include the note "the password is the key". I'm operating under the assumption that the answer to the first question is therefore the key to the code in the second question. They have a website up where you can enter in answers and check if they're right (that's how I know I have the other 18) and there is a fixed number of blanks for each answer. So, I believe the password has 6 characters.
Now, the ciphertext of the trivia question is pretty short so a lot of common codebreaking tricks won't work. I can't check for commonly occuring digraphs, for example, since there are 600 possible digraphs and only 25 in the ciphertext. My first thought was I should just write a program to brute force it, but there are 244 million possible 6 letter keys with 25 letters in my alphabet. Assuming 2 seconds per test I'd be looking at more than 15 years of processing time. My guess for how long each test might take could be off, but I doubt it's off enough to make up that gap. I could narrow things down more by only using common words in the hope the key is a real word, but that's not going to save enough time.
So I got to thinking... This is a trivia question, right? Most questions start with one of 5 words: who, what, when, where, or why. All 5 of those words start with the same two letters. So, what if I restricted my matrixes to ones where the first digraph (Ye) decrypts to Wh. I messed around a bit on the bus this morning and established 19 possible ways to have a 6 letter key which results in Wh turning into Ye. (That there is only 1 letter between W and Y and 2 between E and H narrow things down a lot and also make it pretty plausible that this is the right decryption of Ye.) I'm going to quantify things a little more when I get a chance but I'm pretty sure this will drastically reduce my search space for the key.
On top of that, 4 of the letters in the ciphertext are capitalized. The first letter, of course, but then 3 more later on. Most likely these are refering to a name or place from the movie and I may be able to find more restrictions on my key if I work from the capital letters. A digraph actually repeats itself shortly after two of the capitals as well, so the capitalized words share letters. I have a hunch I need to flesh out more on the bus, but I think I may be able to lock down a couple more conversions. The second digraph of the whole ciphertext (which I suspect is o_, at, en, er, or y_ if the first one is really Wh) is reversed and found in one of the capitalized words which now that I'm looking at it more really gives me an idea. Time will tell!
At any rate, I'm working on one of the chapters in The World's Greatest Treasure Hunt. Each chapter has 20 questions to answer and I've worked out 18 of them. The two that remain are "What is the password given in this chapter?" (the real crux of the treasure hunt is figuring out what in the world these passwords might be I think) and a Playfair Cipher where they've encrypted a trivia question about Pirates of the Caribbean. They didn't give me the key, unfortunately, though they did include the note "the password is the key". I'm operating under the assumption that the answer to the first question is therefore the key to the code in the second question. They have a website up where you can enter in answers and check if they're right (that's how I know I have the other 18) and there is a fixed number of blanks for each answer. So, I believe the password has 6 characters.
Now, the ciphertext of the trivia question is pretty short so a lot of common codebreaking tricks won't work. I can't check for commonly occuring digraphs, for example, since there are 600 possible digraphs and only 25 in the ciphertext. My first thought was I should just write a program to brute force it, but there are 244 million possible 6 letter keys with 25 letters in my alphabet. Assuming 2 seconds per test I'd be looking at more than 15 years of processing time. My guess for how long each test might take could be off, but I doubt it's off enough to make up that gap. I could narrow things down more by only using common words in the hope the key is a real word, but that's not going to save enough time.
So I got to thinking... This is a trivia question, right? Most questions start with one of 5 words: who, what, when, where, or why. All 5 of those words start with the same two letters. So, what if I restricted my matrixes to ones where the first digraph (Ye) decrypts to Wh. I messed around a bit on the bus this morning and established 19 possible ways to have a 6 letter key which results in Wh turning into Ye. (That there is only 1 letter between W and Y and 2 between E and H narrow things down a lot and also make it pretty plausible that this is the right decryption of Ye.) I'm going to quantify things a little more when I get a chance but I'm pretty sure this will drastically reduce my search space for the key.
On top of that, 4 of the letters in the ciphertext are capitalized. The first letter, of course, but then 3 more later on. Most likely these are refering to a name or place from the movie and I may be able to find more restrictions on my key if I work from the capital letters. A digraph actually repeats itself shortly after two of the capitals as well, so the capitalized words share letters. I have a hunch I need to flesh out more on the bus, but I think I may be able to lock down a couple more conversions. The second digraph of the whole ciphertext (which I suspect is o_, at, en, er, or y_ if the first one is really Wh) is reversed and found in one of the capitalized words which now that I'm looking at it more really gives me an idea. Time will tell!
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Bridge Match 1 - Board 95
Board 95 – Dealer South – NS Vul
My hand: ♠ A K 3 ♥ Q J 8 ♦ K J 5 ♣ K Q 9 3
I open 1 club. Partner responds 1 heart, Walsh. I jump to 2NT with my balanced 19 count. Partner bids 4 hearts which gets passed out.
Well, I have 6 hearts and 2 spades for sure. I can easily establish 2 diamond tricks for 10. And a club for 11. And I have 2 Aces to lose, and no way to avoid it. Unless something weird happens at the start I will make 5. West wins the A of diamonds and returns a diamond which isn't ruffed. So I make 5.
Most straightforward hand ever? Captain Jack agrees with me as does the replay.
Nick: 650
Jack: 650
IMPs: +0 (+13 total)
My hand: ♠ A K 3 ♥ Q J 8 ♦ K J 5 ♣ K Q 9 3
I open 1 club. Partner responds 1 heart, Walsh. I jump to 2NT with my balanced 19 count. Partner bids 4 hearts which gets passed out.
NORTH ♠ 6 4 ♥ A K 9 7 5 3 ♦ Q ♣ 8 6 4 2 | ||
| EAST ♦ 9 | ||
| SOUTH ♠ A K 3 ♥ Q J 8 ♦ K J 5 ♣ K Q 9 3 |
| West | North | East | South |
| 1♣ | |||
| Pass | 1♥1 | Pass | 2NT |
| Pass | 4♥ | All Pass | |
| 1Walsh | |||
Well, I have 6 hearts and 2 spades for sure. I can easily establish 2 diamond tricks for 10. And a club for 11. And I have 2 Aces to lose, and no way to avoid it. Unless something weird happens at the start I will make 5. West wins the A of diamonds and returns a diamond which isn't ruffed. So I make 5.
| NORTH ♠ 6 4 ♥ A K 9 7 5 3 ♦ Q ♣ 8 6 4 2 | ||
| WEST ♠ J T 9 ♥ T ♦ A T 7 6 4 3 2 ♣ T 5 | EAST ♠ Q 8 7 5 2 ♥ 6 4 2 ♦ 9 8 ♣ A J 7 | |
| SOUTH ♠ A K 3 ♥ Q J 8 ♦ K J 5 ♣ K Q 9 3 |
Most straightforward hand ever? Captain Jack agrees with me as does the replay.
Nick: 650
Jack: 650
IMPs: +0 (+13 total)
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Bridge Match 1 - Board 94
Board 94 – Dealer East – No Vul
My hand: ♠ A Q T 7 2 ♥ K ♦ Q J ♣ A K Q 8 3
I open 1 spade intending to jump shift in clubs. Partner actually responds 2NT though, showing 13+ points and 3+ spades. I have visions of slams dancing in my head. I bid 3 hearts to show my stiff. Partner jumps to 4 spades and I believe from reading Philip Martin's blog that this is 'fast arrival' and shows a minimum. I'm willing to risk it. I bid 4NT. Partner shows 2 keycards and no queen of trump. I might be off two diamond tricks off the top and they're likely to find that lead. But what can partner's 13 points even be? KJ of spades, AQJ of hearts, J of clubs? That's only 12 points. So it's plausible I can be off two top diamonds but very unlikely. I am short a keycard though, so I settle for 6 spades. West leads the 2 of diamonds.
Well, I don't have the A or K of diamonds but it turns out partner has a stiff. Wish he'd felt like telling me that instead of his 4 spade bid. He also only has 10 points which doesn't seem like the 13+ his bid ostensibly shows. Oh well. I have 1 loser and infinite tricks so as long as I don't lose to a 4-0 trump split I make. If I start by cashing the A in hand I can pick it up either way. The opening lead isn't ruffed and neither is the club return, so I make 6.
Professor Jack disagrees with my opening bid. He wants me to open 2 clubs. With only 21 points and with that including both a stiff K and a QJ dub I'm not sold.
He then disagrees with my 3 heart response to 2NT. He wants me to bid 4 clubs to show my 5-5 instead of showing my stiff. I guess that makes sense but since partner retreats to 4 spades when I do it I'm not sure how it would help.
On the replay they start with 2 clubs and end up in 6 spades. I think they made a big mistake to end up in 6 spades, though. They ended up establishing spades as trump at the 3 spade level. South cuebid clubs and the North cuebid hearts. Note he skipped diamonds, so he is claiming to not have a diamond control. South with his QJ doubleton should now avoid slam like the plague and settle for 4 spades. They actually had an auction which got them the information needed to avoid a bad slam and then ignored it.
On the play South covers the diamond return and West plays low instead of the king! Declarer ruffs it anyway. None of it matters, they make 6 as well.
Nick: 980
Jack: 980
IMPs: 0 (+13 total)
My hand: ♠ A Q T 7 2 ♥ K ♦ Q J ♣ A K Q 8 3
I open 1 spade intending to jump shift in clubs. Partner actually responds 2NT though, showing 13+ points and 3+ spades. I have visions of slams dancing in my head. I bid 3 hearts to show my stiff. Partner jumps to 4 spades and I believe from reading Philip Martin's blog that this is 'fast arrival' and shows a minimum. I'm willing to risk it. I bid 4NT. Partner shows 2 keycards and no queen of trump. I might be off two diamond tricks off the top and they're likely to find that lead. But what can partner's 13 points even be? KJ of spades, AQJ of hearts, J of clubs? That's only 12 points. So it's plausible I can be off two top diamonds but very unlikely. I am short a keycard though, so I settle for 6 spades. West leads the 2 of diamonds.
NORTH ♠ K 9 6 3 ♥ A Q 9 8 6 4 ♦ 7 ♣ J 5 | ||
| WEST ♦ 2 | ||
| SOUTH ♠ A Q T 7 2 ♥ K ♦ Q J ♣ A K Q 8 3 |
| West | North | East | South |
| Pass | 1♠ | ||
| Pass | 2NT1 | Pass | 3♥2 |
| Pass | 4♠ | Pass | 4NT3 |
| Pass | 5♥4 | Pass | 6♠ |
| Pass | Pass | Pass | |
| 1Jacoby 2NT | |||
| 2Singleton or Void | |||
| 3Roman Keycard Blackwood - Spades | |||
| 4Two Keycards + No Queen of Trump | |||
Well, I don't have the A or K of diamonds but it turns out partner has a stiff. Wish he'd felt like telling me that instead of his 4 spade bid. He also only has 10 points which doesn't seem like the 13+ his bid ostensibly shows. Oh well. I have 1 loser and infinite tricks so as long as I don't lose to a 4-0 trump split I make. If I start by cashing the A in hand I can pick it up either way. The opening lead isn't ruffed and neither is the club return, so I make 6.
| NORTH ♠ K 9 6 3 ♥ A Q 9 8 6 4 ♦ 7 ♣ J 5 | ||
| WEST ♠ 8 5 4 ♥ T 5 ♦ K 8 6 2 ♣ T 7 6 4 | EAST ♠ J ♥ J 7 3 2 ♦ A T 9 5 4 3 ♣ 9 2 | |
| SOUTH ♠ A Q T 7 2 ♥ K ♦ Q J ♣ A K Q 8 3 |
Professor Jack disagrees with my opening bid. He wants me to open 2 clubs. With only 21 points and with that including both a stiff K and a QJ dub I'm not sold.
He then disagrees with my 3 heart response to 2NT. He wants me to bid 4 clubs to show my 5-5 instead of showing my stiff. I guess that makes sense but since partner retreats to 4 spades when I do it I'm not sure how it would help.
On the replay they start with 2 clubs and end up in 6 spades. I think they made a big mistake to end up in 6 spades, though. They ended up establishing spades as trump at the 3 spade level. South cuebid clubs and the North cuebid hearts. Note he skipped diamonds, so he is claiming to not have a diamond control. South with his QJ doubleton should now avoid slam like the plague and settle for 4 spades. They actually had an auction which got them the information needed to avoid a bad slam and then ignored it.
On the play South covers the diamond return and West plays low instead of the king! Declarer ruffs it anyway. None of it matters, they make 6 as well.
Nick: 980
Jack: 980
IMPs: 0 (+13 total)
Monday, December 27, 2010
Gift Certificates
I'm not a big gifty person in general and gift certificates in particular are a little weird. On the one hand I get to get whatever I want, but on the other hand it feels even more impersonal. At any rate, I got a gift card to a book store and decided to buy some things not so much that I wanted but that I thought I might have gotten as gifts. Things people might think I want! Normally this wouldn't be very relevant here but some of it is at least tangentially gaming related and I wanted my mother to see what I got. Might as well put it here!
First up I actually wanted to get the next book in a series of mystery books I've been reading. I have the first 12 and figured someone might know that (they're on my bookshelf) and pick out #13. Well, it turned out they had books 1-12 along with 14, 15, and 16 of the series but no #13. Oh well. I wandered around the mystery section a bit and saw a book with dice on it. It was from a series but it looks like the books are all unrelated so who knows!
Then I headed over to the gaming section. I lent out my Backgammon for Blood book or lost it and can't find it and wanted to look for a replacement. Turns out they didn't have any backgammon books that I could find. But they did have a little book of celtic enigmas. 117 pages of puzzles and brain twisters attributed to celts? That sounds like something I might like!
I wandered a bit more and saw a big display with a board game marked 75% off. Probably terrible, but I gave it a look. Turned out it was a game based on a book series. The game didn't look very good but the premise sounded interesting. So I picked up the first book in the series and figure I can always go back and get the other two and the board game too if it ends up great. (The Hunger Games is the book. It's published by Scholastic so it may be a kids book, but we'll see.)
I was turning to leave when the ultimate book caught my eye. The second I saw it I knew my mother would have bought it if she'd seen it. "The World's Greatest Treasure Hunt. Quest for the Golden Eagle. A $1 Million Treasure is hidden SOMEWHERE in the world. All you have to do is FIND IT." I had Treasure Quest as a video game when I was in high school which purported to be a treasure hunt with a million dollar prize. According to Wikipedia there was some controversy over awarding that prize but I never came close. I was a failure at hunting for treasure in a video game. But maybe in book form I can pull it off? As an added bonus the book's writer is donating a lot of the proceeds from the books to breast cancer research, so it's win win. As I understand the book is a year old so it's either super hard or already solved and I'll have to do some searching on the topic to see but it should be interesting to say the least. I can remember reading a treasure hunt book my parent's had which had to do with cat puppets and tracing lines through their eyes or something. It was fun reading that despite the fact it had been solved years earlier.
At any rate, if it turns out the hunt is still on then I may try to harass other people into joining in on the hunt. If I can't find the Golden Eagle myself then maybe someone can help!
First up I actually wanted to get the next book in a series of mystery books I've been reading. I have the first 12 and figured someone might know that (they're on my bookshelf) and pick out #13. Well, it turned out they had books 1-12 along with 14, 15, and 16 of the series but no #13. Oh well. I wandered around the mystery section a bit and saw a book with dice on it. It was from a series but it looks like the books are all unrelated so who knows!
Then I headed over to the gaming section. I lent out my Backgammon for Blood book or lost it and can't find it and wanted to look for a replacement. Turns out they didn't have any backgammon books that I could find. But they did have a little book of celtic enigmas. 117 pages of puzzles and brain twisters attributed to celts? That sounds like something I might like!
I wandered a bit more and saw a big display with a board game marked 75% off. Probably terrible, but I gave it a look. Turned out it was a game based on a book series. The game didn't look very good but the premise sounded interesting. So I picked up the first book in the series and figure I can always go back and get the other two and the board game too if it ends up great. (The Hunger Games is the book. It's published by Scholastic so it may be a kids book, but we'll see.)
I was turning to leave when the ultimate book caught my eye. The second I saw it I knew my mother would have bought it if she'd seen it. "The World's Greatest Treasure Hunt. Quest for the Golden Eagle. A $1 Million Treasure is hidden SOMEWHERE in the world. All you have to do is FIND IT." I had Treasure Quest as a video game when I was in high school which purported to be a treasure hunt with a million dollar prize. According to Wikipedia there was some controversy over awarding that prize but I never came close. I was a failure at hunting for treasure in a video game. But maybe in book form I can pull it off? As an added bonus the book's writer is donating a lot of the proceeds from the books to breast cancer research, so it's win win. As I understand the book is a year old so it's either super hard or already solved and I'll have to do some searching on the topic to see but it should be interesting to say the least. I can remember reading a treasure hunt book my parent's had which had to do with cat puppets and tracing lines through their eyes or something. It was fun reading that despite the fact it had been solved years earlier.
At any rate, if it turns out the hunt is still on then I may try to harass other people into joining in on the hunt. If I can't find the Golden Eagle myself then maybe someone can help!
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Bridge Match 1 - Board 93
Board 93 – Dealer North – All Vul
My hand: ♠ J 7 4 ♥ K T 9 6 2 ♦ K Q 7 ♣ T 9
West opens 1Nt in 4th seat which itself gets passed out. Partner leads the 6 of spades.
6-3-J-A. Declarer shifts to clubs. K-8-3-T. A-6-5-9. 7-4-J-4 of spades. Q-7 of spades-5 of hearts-2. And now over to diamonds. 3-7-8-A. Partner is in and goes back to spades. K-5-6 of hearts-T. And now to hearts. 7-8-9-Q.
Declarer goes back to diamonds. 2-5-6-Q. I attack hearts. K-A-3-J. My hand is now up, but they've already taken 7 tricks. Just in.
Professor Jack agrees with me all the way!
On the replay they play 1NT as well, but the defense is worse and they make 9 tricks.
Nick: -90
Jack: -150
IMPs: +2 (+13 total)
My hand: ♠ J 7 4 ♥ K T 9 6 2 ♦ K Q 7 ♣ T 9
West opens 1Nt in 4th seat which itself gets passed out. Partner leads the 6 of spades.
NORTH ♠ 6 | ||
EAST ♠ Q 5 3 ♥ J 8 ♦ J 6 4 3 ♣ Q J 5 3 | ||
| SOUTH ♠ J 7 4 ♥ K T 9 6 2 ♦ K Q 7 ♣ T 9 |
| West | North | East | South |
| Pass | Pass | Pass | |
| 1NT | Pass | Pass | Pass |
6-3-J-A. Declarer shifts to clubs. K-8-3-T. A-6-5-9. 7-4-J-4 of spades. Q-7 of spades-5 of hearts-2. And now over to diamonds. 3-7-8-A. Partner is in and goes back to spades. K-5-6 of hearts-T. And now to hearts. 7-8-9-Q.
Declarer goes back to diamonds. 2-5-6-Q. I attack hearts. K-A-3-J. My hand is now up, but they've already taken 7 tricks. Just in.
| NORTH ♠ K 9 8 6 2 ♥ 7 3 ♦ A 5 ♣ 8 6 4 2 | ||
| WEST ♠ A T ♥ A Q 5 4 ♦ T 9 8 2 ♣ A K 7 | EAST ♠ Q 5 3 ♥ J 8 ♦ J 6 4 3 ♣ Q J 5 3 | |
| SOUTH ♠ J 7 4 ♥ K T 9 6 2 ♦ K Q 7 ♣ T 9 |
Professor Jack agrees with me all the way!
On the replay they play 1NT as well, but the defense is worse and they make 9 tricks.
Nick: -90
Jack: -150
IMPs: +2 (+13 total)
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Stone Age - Immediate Resources
There are 5 different raw resources in Stone Age (Food, Wood, Brick, Stone, and Gold). These resources are obtained from the five spaces circles in red in the screenshot here. They're all acquired the exact same way. When you activate one of these spaces with guys on them you roll one six sided die per guy. Add up the total on the dice and divide by the value of the resource. Round down to the nearest whole number and that's how many you get. Food costs 2, wood costs 3, brick costs 4, stone costs 5 and gold costs 6. In the picture you can see that purple has 3 guys on wood and blue has two guys on brick.We'll get to it in more detail when we discuss scoring but in general the value of the raw resources is equal to how much they cost. A wood is worth 3 points while a gold is worth 6 points, for example. Also at the start of the game you need to eat 5 food or lose 10 points and food costs 2 to pick up.
How much, then, is a guy worth? If you were able to receive partial resources then every turn every guy would be worth 3.5 points. Unfortunately any spillage is completely wasted so this is an upper bound on how much they're worth instead of an exact value. For example, the 3 guys above on wood are worth 3.1667 points each. The two guys on brick? Actually only worth 2.722 points each. A single guy on gold is only worth 1 point since he often returns nothing at all.
Remember how I said there were ways to negate a lot of the randomness in the dice? Not putting one guy on gold is a good start. In fact, while the first guy on gold is only worth 1 point every other guy on gold is worth the full 3.5. Not only does stacking guys on gold make it more likely to get the first gold which you presumably really need if you're rolling on gold at all but it increases the per guy value of the previous gold diggers.
Friday, December 24, 2010
Stone Age - Introduction
Stone Age is a German board game for 2 to 4 players. It's reasonably short and plays in about an hour and a half with the full four players. The game is a worker placement style game with a large die rolling component so a lot of people feel the game is very random. I think the game has ways for the attentive player to negate a lot of that randomness and feel a strong player will beat a weaker player practically every time. The different actions are not all of equivalent power and the different ways to score points require drastically different amount of effort. I have my own ideas for which actions to take and will be sharing those in the next few posts.
This game is available for play on BSW and the screenshots used all come from the BSW client for the game.
Each player starts the game with 5 workers and 12 food. Every turn follows the same sequence of play. The starting player picks one of the squares on the board and puts workers on that square. Some squares have a mandatory number of workers and others can take a variable number. (The specific squares will be covered in detail later.) Then the next player does the same thing. Keep going around until everyone has all of their workers on the board. Then the starting player activates all of his workers on the board. He does not have to activate them in the order they were placed on the board; they can be activated in any order. Then after everyone has activated all of their workers the turn ends. Each player must pay 1 food for each of their workers or suffer a flat 10 point penalty regardless of the amount of the food shortfall. Pass the starting player marker clockwise and start over from the top. Eventually one of the game end conditions will be met and whoever has the most points wins.
In general the actions you can take fall into one of three categories. The action either provides immediate resources, or it allows you to invest in your infrastructure to increase your resource acquisition rate for the future, or it allows you to convert resources into victory points. Investing in the future tends to be very good but some of the scoring cards are much better than others and you need to know when it's right to 'first pick' one of those instead of just getting more infrastructure. And since the scoring cards take resources and you need food every turn you have to balance immediate resource acquisition in there as well.
This game is available for play on BSW and the screenshots used all come from the BSW client for the game.
Each player starts the game with 5 workers and 12 food. Every turn follows the same sequence of play. The starting player picks one of the squares on the board and puts workers on that square. Some squares have a mandatory number of workers and others can take a variable number. (The specific squares will be covered in detail later.) Then the next player does the same thing. Keep going around until everyone has all of their workers on the board. Then the starting player activates all of his workers on the board. He does not have to activate them in the order they were placed on the board; they can be activated in any order. Then after everyone has activated all of their workers the turn ends. Each player must pay 1 food for each of their workers or suffer a flat 10 point penalty regardless of the amount of the food shortfall. Pass the starting player marker clockwise and start over from the top. Eventually one of the game end conditions will be met and whoever has the most points wins.
In general the actions you can take fall into one of three categories. The action either provides immediate resources, or it allows you to invest in your infrastructure to increase your resource acquisition rate for the future, or it allows you to convert resources into victory points. Investing in the future tends to be very good but some of the scoring cards are much better than others and you need to know when it's right to 'first pick' one of those instead of just getting more infrastructure. And since the scoring cards take resources and you need food every turn you have to balance immediate resource acquisition in there as well.
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Bridge Match 1 - Board 92
Board 92 – Dealer West – NS Vul
My hand: ♠ A Q 6 4 ♥ T 5 2 ♦ 4 ♣ A K 6 4 3
Partner opens 1 spade in second seat. I bid Jacoby 2NT. Partner bids 3 clubs which I believe shows a singleton or void. I bid 3 diamonds hopefully showing my own singleton. Partner bids 3 spades, bypassing hearts. I don't think we have a slam, so I just bid 4 spades. Partner moves to 4NT. I have 2 keycards and the Q of trump, so I bid 5 spades. He asks for kings. I show 1. He settles into 6 spades. East leads the Q of hearts.
I have 6 spade tricks, a heart, 2 clubs, and a diamond. Unless spades split 3-0 I can easily ruff two diamonds in hand for the missing tricks. Q-2-9-A. Trumps split 2-1 so I ruff two diamonds and make 6.
Professor Jack disagrees with my 3 diamond bid. Apparently it showed 5+ diamonds and fewer than 3 spades. How my first bid can guarantee 3 spades and my second bid can deny 3 spades is a little beyond me. He would have just jumped to 4 spades. After taking the long road I did take though, he would have bid blackwood himself instead of 4 spades. Finally, he would have played for an overtrick instead of drawing the second round of trump and safetying the hand.
The auction is different on the replay but they get into an ace asking sequence and get to 6 spades as well. They try for the overtrick by ruffing 3 diamonds and make it.
Nick: 1430
Jack: 1460
IMPs: -1 (+11 total)
My hand: ♠ A Q 6 4 ♥ T 5 2 ♦ 4 ♣ A K 6 4 3
Partner opens 1 spade in second seat. I bid Jacoby 2NT. Partner bids 3 clubs which I believe shows a singleton or void. I bid 3 diamonds hopefully showing my own singleton. Partner bids 3 spades, bypassing hearts. I don't think we have a slam, so I just bid 4 spades. Partner moves to 4NT. I have 2 keycards and the Q of trump, so I bid 5 spades. He asks for kings. I show 1. He settles into 6 spades. East leads the Q of hearts.
NORTH ♠ K T 9 7 3 2 ♥ A 8 4 ♦ A J 6 3 ♣ | ||
| EAST ♥ Q | ||
| SOUTH ♠ A Q 6 4 ♥ T 5 2 ♦ 4 ♣ A K 6 4 3 |
| West | North | East | South |
| Pass | 1♠ | Pass | 2NT1 |
| Pass | 3♣2 | Pass | 3♦ |
| Pass | 3♠ | Pass | 4♠ |
| Pass | 4NT3 | Pass | 5♠4 |
| Pass | 5NT5 | Pass | 6♦6 |
| Pass | 6♠ | All Pass | |
| 1Jacoby 2NT | |||
| 2Singleton or Void | |||
| 3Roman Keycard Blackwood - Spades | |||
| 4Two Keycards + Queen of Trump | |||
| 5Blackwood for Kings | |||
| 6One King | |||
I have 6 spade tricks, a heart, 2 clubs, and a diamond. Unless spades split 3-0 I can easily ruff two diamonds in hand for the missing tricks. Q-2-9-A. Trumps split 2-1 so I ruff two diamonds and make 6.
| NORTH ♠ K T 9 7 3 2 ♥ A 8 4 ♦ A j 6 3 ♣ | ||
| WEST ♠ J 8 ♥ K 9 6 ♦ K Q T 9 2 ♣ J T 2 | EAST ♠ 5 ♥ Q J 7 3 ♦ 8 7 5 ♣ Q 9 8 7 5 | |
| SOUTH ♠ A Q 6 4 ♥ T 5 2 ♦ 4 ♣ A K 6 4 3 |
Professor Jack disagrees with my 3 diamond bid. Apparently it showed 5+ diamonds and fewer than 3 spades. How my first bid can guarantee 3 spades and my second bid can deny 3 spades is a little beyond me. He would have just jumped to 4 spades. After taking the long road I did take though, he would have bid blackwood himself instead of 4 spades. Finally, he would have played for an overtrick instead of drawing the second round of trump and safetying the hand.
The auction is different on the replay but they get into an ace asking sequence and get to 6 spades as well. They try for the overtrick by ruffing 3 diamonds and make it.
Nick: 1430
Jack: 1460
IMPs: -1 (+11 total)
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Bridge Match 1 - Board 91
Board 91 – Dealer South – No Vul
My hand: ♠ K 8 2 ♥ K 5 2 ♦ T 9 ♣ J T 9 3 2
Partner opens 1 club in third seat. East overcalls 1 diamond. I bid 2 clubs which gets passed around to East who gets in there with 2 diamonds which gets passed out. I lead the J of clubs.
J-4-A-5. 8-K-2-7. Declarer starts t draw trump. 3-T-Q-6. And now he plays a heart. 3-8-J-K. What should I fire back? I have a feeling a club would be a ruff and sluff. A trump is probably my safest exit, so I go with that. 9-2-J-A. Declarer shifts to spades now. 6-2-3-T. Partner tries to cash his A of spades. A-4 of diamonds-8-4. Declarer cashes his Q of clubs. Q-3-4 of hearts-6. And now the A of hearts. A-2-9-6. Ruff a heart. Ruff a spade. All trump left. Making 4.
Professor Jack disagrees with selling out to 2 diamonds. He wants me to bid 3 clubs. I don't think it's really my place to do that since I have what I said I had with my first bid. Oh well.
He then disagrees with playing the T of diamonds instead of the 9. His reasoning isn't that it's a bad signal but that he thinks it might not work out as expected. THEY'RE EQUIVALENT JACK! IT WORKS JUST AS EXPECTED!
On the replay my hand bids 3 clubs which just makes East bid 3 diamonds. They also make 4.
Nick: -130
Jack: -130
IMPs: +0 (+12 total)
My hand: ♠ K 8 2 ♥ K 5 2 ♦ T 9 ♣ J T 9 3 2
Partner opens 1 club in third seat. East overcalls 1 diamond. I bid 2 clubs which gets passed around to East who gets in there with 2 diamonds which gets passed out. I lead the J of clubs.
WEST ♠ Q 9 7 4 3 ♥ 9 4 3 ♦ Q 7 2 ♣ 7 4 | ||
| SOUTH ♠ K 8 2 ♥ K 5 2 ♦ T 9 ♣ J T 9 3 2 |
| West | North | East | South |
| Pass | |||
| Pass | 1♣ | 1♦ | 2♣ |
| Pass | Pass | ♦ | All Pass |
J-4-A-5. 8-K-2-7. Declarer starts t draw trump. 3-T-Q-6. And now he plays a heart. 3-8-J-K. What should I fire back? I have a feeling a club would be a ruff and sluff. A trump is probably my safest exit, so I go with that. 9-2-J-A. Declarer shifts to spades now. 6-2-3-T. Partner tries to cash his A of spades. A-4 of diamonds-8-4. Declarer cashes his Q of clubs. Q-3-4 of hearts-6. And now the A of hearts. A-2-9-6. Ruff a heart. Ruff a spade. All trump left. Making 4.
| NORTH ♠ A J T 5 ♥ Q T 8 6 ♦ J 6 ♣ A 8 6 | ||
| WEST ♠ Q 9 7 4 3 ♥ 9 4 3 ♦ Q 7 2 ♣ 7 4 | EAST ♠ 6 ♥ A J 7 ♦ A K 8 5 4 3 ♣ K Q 5 | |
| SOUTH ♠ K 8 2 ♥ K 5 2 ♦ T 9 ♣ J T 9 3 2 |
Professor Jack disagrees with selling out to 2 diamonds. He wants me to bid 3 clubs. I don't think it's really my place to do that since I have what I said I had with my first bid. Oh well.
He then disagrees with playing the T of diamonds instead of the 9. His reasoning isn't that it's a bad signal but that he thinks it might not work out as expected. THEY'RE EQUIVALENT JACK! IT WORKS JUST AS EXPECTED!
On the replay my hand bids 3 clubs which just makes East bid 3 diamonds. They also make 4.
Nick: -130
Jack: -130
IMPs: +0 (+12 total)
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Bridge Match 1 - Board 90
Board 90 – Dealer East – All Vul
My hand: ♠ A 8 5 ♥ A 5 4 ♦ K J T 7 ♣ J 6 4
I open 1 diamond in 2nd chair. Partner responds 1 spade. I bid 1NT and partner jumps to 3 clubs.
I have hearts stopped so I bid 3NT. West leads the 3 of hearts.
I have a spade, 2 hearts, and 4 clubs. I need to set up 2 more tricks which can be done in either diamonds or spades. 2 are guaranteed in diamonds but I have to lose the lead twice to ensure it. (If the finesses are on I only need to lose the lead once.) Spades I'm not even guaranteed to get 2 tricks out of (4-1 offside sinks me). So, I think I will attack diamonds.
But first, the heart lead. 3-Q-K-A. I want to lead up to my diamonds so I need to play clubs first. J-8-7-9. 6-T-A-3. I now float the 9 of diamonds. 9-3-7-Q. West fires back a heart. 7-J-6-4. I'm now down unless hearts split 4-4. They aren't, so I'm down 1.
Professor Jack disagrees with my 3NT bid. He says I should bid 3 spades to show our fit. I guess there's no reason partner wouldn't bid 3NT instead of 3 clubs with a balanced hand so I can assert he has at least 5 spades.
He also disagrees with attacking diamonds. He wants me to cash out the clubs which just seems like it will eat an entry away in case I want to finesse again.
At the other table my hand bids 3 spades and North is the one to bid 3NT. My hand doesn't care and goes to 4 spades. West refuses to ruff in while he has an exit and eventually is thrown in to lead a diamond, removing declarer's guess. Making 4.
Nick: -100
Jack: 620
IMPs: -12 (+12 total)
My hand: ♠ A 8 5 ♥ A 5 4 ♦ K J T 7 ♣ J 6 4
I open 1 diamond in 2nd chair. Partner responds 1 spade. I bid 1NT and partner jumps to 3 clubs.
I have hearts stopped so I bid 3NT. West leads the 3 of hearts.
NORTH ♠ Q 9 6 4 2 ♥ Q J ♦ 9 5 ♣ A K Q 7 | ||
| WEST ♥ 3 | ||
| SOUTH ♠ A 8 5 ♥ A 5 4 ♦ K J T 7 ♣ J 6 4 |
| West | North | East | South |
| Pass | 1♦ | ||
| Pass | 1♠ | Pass | 1NT |
| Pass | 3♣ | Pass | 3NT |
| Pass | Pass | Pass |
I have a spade, 2 hearts, and 4 clubs. I need to set up 2 more tricks which can be done in either diamonds or spades. 2 are guaranteed in diamonds but I have to lose the lead twice to ensure it. (If the finesses are on I only need to lose the lead once.) Spades I'm not even guaranteed to get 2 tricks out of (4-1 offside sinks me). So, I think I will attack diamonds.
But first, the heart lead. 3-Q-K-A. I want to lead up to my diamonds so I need to play clubs first. J-8-7-9. 6-T-A-3. I now float the 9 of diamonds. 9-3-7-Q. West fires back a heart. 7-J-6-4. I'm now down unless hearts split 4-4. They aren't, so I'm down 1.
| NORTH ♠ Q 9 6 4 2 ♥ Q J ♦ 9 5 ♣ A K Q 7 | ||
| WEST ♠ J T 7 ♥ 7 3 2 ♦ Q 8 6 4 2 ♣ T 8 | EAST ♠ K 3 ♥ K T 9 8 6 ♦ A 3 ♣ 9 5 3 2 | |
| SOUTH ♠ A 8 5 ♥ A 5 4 ♦ K J T 7 ♣ J 6 4 |
Professor Jack disagrees with my 3NT bid. He says I should bid 3 spades to show our fit. I guess there's no reason partner wouldn't bid 3NT instead of 3 clubs with a balanced hand so I can assert he has at least 5 spades.
He also disagrees with attacking diamonds. He wants me to cash out the clubs which just seems like it will eat an entry away in case I want to finesse again.
At the other table my hand bids 3 spades and North is the one to bid 3NT. My hand doesn't care and goes to 4 spades. West refuses to ruff in while he has an exit and eventually is thrown in to lead a diamond, removing declarer's guess. Making 4.
Nick: -100
Jack: 620
IMPs: -12 (+12 total)
Monday, December 20, 2010
Bridge Match 1 - Board 89
Board 89 – Dealer North – EW Vul
My hand: ♠ A T 3 ♥ K Q 9 4 ♦ K J ♣ J 9 5 4
I open 1 club in third seat. Partner responds 1 diamond. I bid 1NT which gets passed out. West leads the 3 of hearts.
I have 4 heart tricks and 1 spade trick. I can set up 3 diamond tricks and 2 club tricks. The club tricks take more work to set up, so I will attack diamonds. But first, the heart lead. 3-T-7-4. I shift to diamonds. 3-9-K-2. J-4-6-5. Guess it's time to play clubs. 4-3-T-Q.
East is in and fires out a spade. 2-3-Q-5. 6-7-J-T. K-A-4-9. Time to cash out. I win 3 hearts and lose the rest. Making 1.
Professor Jack disagrees with my club shift and would have just cashed out hearts. Not sure what difference it makes.
On the replay they play 1NT as well, but they play it from the North hand since they aren't playing Walsh. This also pinpoints spades as the right suit to lead. It doesn't end up mattering as they make exactly 1 as well.
Nick: 90
Jack: 90
IMPs: 0 (+24 total)
My hand: ♠ A T 3 ♥ K Q 9 4 ♦ K J ♣ J 9 5 4
I open 1 club in third seat. Partner responds 1 diamond. I bid 1NT which gets passed out. West leads the 3 of hearts.
| NORTH ♠ 9 7 5 ♥ A T 5 ♦ Q T 6 3 ♣ K T 7 | ||
| WEST ♥ 3 | ||
| SOUTH ♠ A T 3 ♥ K Q 9 4 ♦ K J ♣ J 9 5 4 |
| West | North | East | South |
| Pass | Pass | 1♣ | |
| Pass | 1♦1 | Pass | 1NT2 |
| Pass | Pass | Pass | |
| 1Walsh | |||
| 2Walsh | |||
I have 4 heart tricks and 1 spade trick. I can set up 3 diamond tricks and 2 club tricks. The club tricks take more work to set up, so I will attack diamonds. But first, the heart lead. 3-T-7-4. I shift to diamonds. 3-9-K-2. J-4-6-5. Guess it's time to play clubs. 4-3-T-Q.
East is in and fires out a spade. 2-3-Q-5. 6-7-J-T. K-A-4-9. Time to cash out. I win 3 hearts and lose the rest. Making 1.
| NORTH ♠ 9 7 5 ♥ A T 5 ♦ Q T 6 3 ♣ K T 7 | ||
| WEST ♠ Q 6 4 ♥ J 8 6 3 2 ♦ 8 4 2 ♣ A 3 | EAST ♠ K J 8 2 ♥ 7 ♦ A 9 7 5 ♣ Q 8 6 2 | |
| SOUTH ♠ A T 3 ♥ K Q 9 4 ♦ K J ♣ J 9 5 4 |
Professor Jack disagrees with my club shift and would have just cashed out hearts. Not sure what difference it makes.
On the replay they play 1NT as well, but they play it from the North hand since they aren't playing Walsh. This also pinpoints spades as the right suit to lead. It doesn't end up mattering as they make exactly 1 as well.
Nick: 90
Jack: 90
IMPs: 0 (+24 total)
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Bridge Match 1 - Board 88
Board 88 – Dealer West – No Vul
My hand: ♠ K 9 8 5 ♥ K Q 6 ♦ 6 5 ♣ Q J T 2
West opens 1NT and East bids 2 clubs Stayman. My hand is too flat to get involved so I pass. West bids 2 diamonds showing no major and East jumps to 3NT. Partner leads the 3 of spades.
Partner has 3-5 points, 4 spades, and 3 hearts. I'd guess he's 4-3-3-3. Declarer only has 2 spades and one of them is the 2. Declarer is going to make if he has 5 solid diamonds with the A of hearts and the AK of clubs, and if he has that there's nothing I can do to stop him. If he doesn't then I think he's just toast. At any rate... 3-T-K-7. I play another spade. 9-2-6-A.
Declarer decides to attack clubs. 3-2-A-7. 4-5-8-T. I'm in and we have 2 tricks to cash. Is there any reason to not cash them? Well, I don't partner to play a diamond. I can set up a trick in either hearts or clubs and set them any time it's possible. I'm not setting up any tricks for them by doing so, so I don't think it can hurt. Partner managed to block spades, so I don't have any entry to my hand to cash the club so I need partner to be able to play a heart to me. I play the K of hearts. K-A-5-3. Declarer plays on hearts himself. 2-7-8-Q. I play a spade to partner. 8-9 of hearts-J-4. Q-9 of clubs-5-7 of diamonds. Partner throws dummy in with a heart. Declarer is up. Down 1.
Professor Jack disagrees with my spade return at trick 2 and wants me to shift to the Q of clubs. He then disagrees with my choice to play the K of hearts and wants me to again play the Q of clubs.
The auction is the same on the replay. What does Jack have against inviting? My seat shifts to the Q of clubs when he gets in with the spade K. He then gets back in with the T of clubs and shifts to a spade. Declarer can then finesse him out of his second club trick. It doesn't matter since declarer can't find a 9th trick. Down 1.
Nick: 50
Jack: 50
IMPs: 0 (+24 total)
My hand: ♠ K 9 8 5 ♥ K Q 6 ♦ 6 5 ♣ Q J T 2
West opens 1NT and East bids 2 clubs Stayman. My hand is too flat to get involved so I pass. West bids 2 diamonds showing no major and East jumps to 3NT. Partner leads the 3 of spades.
NORTH ♠ 3 | ||
| EAST ♠ A T 4 ♥ J 8 4 3 ♦ K J 4 ♣ 9 8 3 | ||
| SOUTH ♠ K 9 8 5 ♥ K Q 6 ♦ 6 5 ♣ Q J T 2 |
| West | North | East | South |
| 1NT | Pass | 2♣1 | Pass |
| 2♦2 | Pass | 3NT | All Pass |
| 1Stayman | |||
| 2No 4 Card Major | |||
Partner has 3-5 points, 4 spades, and 3 hearts. I'd guess he's 4-3-3-3. Declarer only has 2 spades and one of them is the 2. Declarer is going to make if he has 5 solid diamonds with the A of hearts and the AK of clubs, and if he has that there's nothing I can do to stop him. If he doesn't then I think he's just toast. At any rate... 3-T-K-7. I play another spade. 9-2-6-A.
Declarer decides to attack clubs. 3-2-A-7. 4-5-8-T. I'm in and we have 2 tricks to cash. Is there any reason to not cash them? Well, I don't partner to play a diamond. I can set up a trick in either hearts or clubs and set them any time it's possible. I'm not setting up any tricks for them by doing so, so I don't think it can hurt. Partner managed to block spades, so I don't have any entry to my hand to cash the club so I need partner to be able to play a heart to me. I play the K of hearts. K-A-5-3. Declarer plays on hearts himself. 2-7-8-Q. I play a spade to partner. 8-9 of hearts-J-4. Q-9 of clubs-5-7 of diamonds. Partner throws dummy in with a heart. Declarer is up. Down 1.
| NORTH ♠ Q J 6 3 ♥ T 7 5 ♦ Q T 9 3 ♣ 7 5 | ||
| WEST ♠ 7 2 ♥ A 9 2 ♦ A 8 7 2 ♣ A K 6 4 | EAST ♠ A T 4 ♥ J 8 4 3 ♦ K J 4 ♣ 9 8 3 | |
| SOUTH ♠ K 9 8 5 ♥ K Q 6 ♦ 6 5 ♣ Q J T 2 |
Professor Jack disagrees with my spade return at trick 2 and wants me to shift to the Q of clubs. He then disagrees with my choice to play the K of hearts and wants me to again play the Q of clubs.
The auction is the same on the replay. What does Jack have against inviting? My seat shifts to the Q of clubs when he gets in with the spade K. He then gets back in with the T of clubs and shifts to a spade. Declarer can then finesse him out of his second club trick. It doesn't matter since declarer can't find a 9th trick. Down 1.
Nick: 50
Jack: 50
IMPs: 0 (+24 total)
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Bridge Match 1 - Board 87
Board 83 – Dealer South – EW Vul
My hand: ♠ K T 8 2 ♥ 7 5 ♦ T 4 ♣ K 9 7 6 3
West opens 1NT in second seat. East raises to 3NT. Partner leads the 2 of diamonds.
Partner only has between 4 and 6 points, so I doubt we can possibly set this. At any rate, 2-3-T-J. Declarer continues diamonds. A-5-8-4. 6-K-9-5 of hearts. Partner is in and shifts to spades. J-Q-K-5. Does partner have either the A or 9 of spades? I know he can't have the A since he already played 4 points. I think I need to play him for the 9. I return a low spade. 2-4-9-6.
Partner shifts back to a diamond so I guess he started with J-9 doubleton and declarer has A-5-4-3. I couldn't afford to play the T in this layout to stay in, since then my 2 loses the 4th trick to declarer's 3.
Anyway, diamonds. 7-Q-7 of hearts-2 of clubs. Declarer cashes his spade, setting up my T. 7-8-A-2 of hearts. He then cashes 4 hearts and the A of clubs. Making 3.
Professor Jack agrees with me all the way!
On the replay everything is identical in the last two tricks. You see, North pitched his low club on the third spade in order to keep 5 hearts to the 9 and this allowed my hand to be squeezed since the club threat was isolated to my hand. So, they make 4.
Nick: -600
Jack: -630
IMPs: +1 (+24 total)
My hand: ♠ K T 8 2 ♥ 7 5 ♦ T 4 ♣ K 9 7 6 3
West opens 1NT in second seat. East raises to 3NT. Partner leads the 2 of diamonds.
NORTH ♦ 2 | ||
| EAST ♠ Q 7 6 ♥ A T ♦ Q 9 8 3 ♣ A J 8 4 | ||
| SOUTH ♠ K T 8 2 ♥ 7 5 ♦ T 4 ♣ K 9 7 6 3 |
| West | North | East | South |
| Pass1 | |||
| 1NT | Pass | 3NT | All Pass |
Partner only has between 4 and 6 points, so I doubt we can possibly set this. At any rate, 2-3-T-J. Declarer continues diamonds. A-5-8-4. 6-K-9-5 of hearts. Partner is in and shifts to spades. J-Q-K-5. Does partner have either the A or 9 of spades? I know he can't have the A since he already played 4 points. I think I need to play him for the 9. I return a low spade. 2-4-9-6.
Partner shifts back to a diamond so I guess he started with J-9 doubleton and declarer has A-5-4-3. I couldn't afford to play the T in this layout to stay in, since then my 2 loses the 4th trick to declarer's 3.
Anyway, diamonds. 7-Q-7 of hearts-2 of clubs. Declarer cashes his spade, setting up my T. 7-8-A-2 of hearts. He then cashes 4 hearts and the A of clubs. Making 3.
| NORTH ♠ J 9 ♥ 9 8 6 3 2 ♦ K 7 5 2 ♣ Q 5 | ||
| WEST ♠ A 5 4 3 ♥ K Q J 4 ♦ A J 6 ♣ T 2 | EAST ♠ Q 7 6 ♥ A T ♦ Q 9 8 3 ♣ A J 8 4 | |
| SOUTH ♠ K T 8 2 ♥ 7 5 ♦ T 4 ♣ K 9 7 6 3 |
Professor Jack agrees with me all the way!
On the replay everything is identical in the last two tricks. You see, North pitched his low club on the third spade in order to keep 5 hearts to the 9 and this allowed my hand to be squeezed since the club threat was isolated to my hand. So, they make 4.
Nick: -600
Jack: -630
IMPs: +1 (+24 total)
Friday, December 17, 2010
Tank Rating Follow-Ups
Over at OGT we've had two raid nights now with Argaloth and Magmaw downed. My automated logging hasn't worked properly yet so I've only had partial data from both raids but I do have some numbers to look at now in terms of the different ratings. (I ended up having to DPS Magmaw, so tanking data there is a little suspect but at least I was topping the meters in ungemmed/unenchanted leveling greens.)
To start with I reforged everything I had into mastery as I suggested I would. I now want to look into the impact that mastery had and what likely would have happened with parry or dodge in their place. I'm also going to take a look at haste since if stacking mastery to improve Death Strike is good then maybe stacking haste to get more Death Strikes in is good too.
One thing to note about Blood Shield that I wasn't realizing until recently is it only absorbs physical damage and does nothing to spells. I wonder why that is, maybe a pvp nerf? Also, the log parser we use (World of Logs) fails to accurately reflect Blood Shield at all. It seems to be assigning all the absorption from it to Divine Aegis which really boosts the discipline priest's numbers, but I think I can still get worthwhile data out of it. Finally, overheal doesn't count for squat so pounding a Death Strike out when I'm at full wastes the healing and the shield.
The kill fight lasted almost 5 minutes. In that time I used Death Strike 24 times, or once every 12.5 seconds. Each Death Strike averaged healing for 10775. Each point of mastery rating increases the resulting shield by .000349162 per healing, so on that fight a point of mastery rating was worth 3.76222 healing every 12.5 seconds.
The boss has a bunch of unavoidable damage floating around and a melee swing that can be dodged/parried. He attacked me 62 times total with his melee swing, or once every 4.83 seconds. When he hit the swing averaged 18000 damage. Ignoring diminishing returns for now one point of dodge rating prevents .000056497 of the damage. One parry rating was therefore worth 1.01695 healing every 4.83 seconds. Normalizing for the same time period as Death Strike, it was worth 2.63186 healing every 12.5 seconds. Clearly this is worse for this specific fight since there is diminishing returns on top of that.
What about haste? It's been very difficult to find a formula for this, but I believe my runes cooldown every 10/(1.2*(1+hasterating/12800)) seconds. With no haste rating they should refresh every 8.33 seconds. Assuming a linear improvement and 12.5 seconds between Death Strikes then one point of haste rating would add on an extra .00000625 Death Strikes every second. With my current mastery adding on about 93% of the heal as a shield this is adding 10775*1.93 healing per Death Strike, for a total of .12997 healing every second. This is 1.62467 healing every 12.5 seconds.
Haste is clearly bad compared to mastery but it's not nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be. It also has a threat component to it which the avoidance stats don't have which isn't relevant for me right now but could be in the future. I do find it amusing that str/sta/mastery/haste could be good tanking gear, though. The plate DPSers will love me!
I also feel like my Death Strike frequency isn't often enough and I need to work on ways to make it better. I'm also not sure it's fair to compare dodge/parry on a fight where the boss only spends half his time swinging at me and his dangerous move isn't a melee swing at all. Mastery is certainly better on this specific fight for sure but I can believe it will end up worse on a lot of fights. Time will tell as we actually get into a more diverse set of encounters.
To start with I reforged everything I had into mastery as I suggested I would. I now want to look into the impact that mastery had and what likely would have happened with parry or dodge in their place. I'm also going to take a look at haste since if stacking mastery to improve Death Strike is good then maybe stacking haste to get more Death Strikes in is good too.
One thing to note about Blood Shield that I wasn't realizing until recently is it only absorbs physical damage and does nothing to spells. I wonder why that is, maybe a pvp nerf? Also, the log parser we use (World of Logs) fails to accurately reflect Blood Shield at all. It seems to be assigning all the absorption from it to Divine Aegis which really boosts the discipline priest's numbers, but I think I can still get worthwhile data out of it. Finally, overheal doesn't count for squat so pounding a Death Strike out when I'm at full wastes the healing and the shield.
The kill fight lasted almost 5 minutes. In that time I used Death Strike 24 times, or once every 12.5 seconds. Each Death Strike averaged healing for 10775. Each point of mastery rating increases the resulting shield by .000349162 per healing, so on that fight a point of mastery rating was worth 3.76222 healing every 12.5 seconds.
The boss has a bunch of unavoidable damage floating around and a melee swing that can be dodged/parried. He attacked me 62 times total with his melee swing, or once every 4.83 seconds. When he hit the swing averaged 18000 damage. Ignoring diminishing returns for now one point of dodge rating prevents .000056497 of the damage. One parry rating was therefore worth 1.01695 healing every 4.83 seconds. Normalizing for the same time period as Death Strike, it was worth 2.63186 healing every 12.5 seconds. Clearly this is worse for this specific fight since there is diminishing returns on top of that.
What about haste? It's been very difficult to find a formula for this, but I believe my runes cooldown every 10/(1.2*(1+hasterating/12800)) seconds. With no haste rating they should refresh every 8.33 seconds. Assuming a linear improvement and 12.5 seconds between Death Strikes then one point of haste rating would add on an extra .00000625 Death Strikes every second. With my current mastery adding on about 93% of the heal as a shield this is adding 10775*1.93 healing per Death Strike, for a total of .12997 healing every second. This is 1.62467 healing every 12.5 seconds.
Haste is clearly bad compared to mastery but it's not nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be. It also has a threat component to it which the avoidance stats don't have which isn't relevant for me right now but could be in the future. I do find it amusing that str/sta/mastery/haste could be good tanking gear, though. The plate DPSers will love me!
I also feel like my Death Strike frequency isn't often enough and I need to work on ways to make it better. I'm also not sure it's fair to compare dodge/parry on a fight where the boss only spends half his time swinging at me and his dangerous move isn't a melee swing at all. Mastery is certainly better on this specific fight for sure but I can believe it will end up worse on a lot of fights. Time will tell as we actually get into a more diverse set of encounters.
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Bridge Match 1 - Board 86
Board 86 – Dealer East – EW Vul
My hand: ♠ 3 ♥ K 9 8 6 4 ♦ K 9 7 6 5 ♣ 3 2
East opens 2NT. I'm crazy so I bid 3 hearts. West doubles showing spades. Partner bids 4 hearts, East bids 4 spades. Partner sacs in 5 hearts which gets doubled. West leads the 2 of spades.
I have a loser in every suit and quite possibly a second loser in both diamonds and clubs. My plan is to try to cross ruff after losing some aces. 2-7-9-3. A-4 of hearts-6-8. I'm pretty sure East has all the high cards. Might as well let him in with the Q of clubs. 2-6-J-Q. He goes back to spades. K-6 of hearts-4-Q. I throw out another club. 3-7-8-9.
Now East draws trump. 5-8-3-T. I lead a diamond up to my K. 2-T-K-A. Wow. Guess I'm just screwed. West draws a round of trump. J-2-A-9. I get three trump tricks and lose the rest. Down 5, doubled.
Professor Jack disagrees with my overcall and would have passed. He then would have finessed deeply and gone with the 8 of clubs instead of the J on the first round.
At the other table they settle easily into 4 spades. They make 6.
Nick: -1100
Jack: -680
IMPs: -9 (+23 total)
My hand: ♠ 3 ♥ K 9 8 6 4 ♦ K 9 7 6 5 ♣ 3 2
East opens 2NT. I'm crazy so I bid 3 hearts. West doubles showing spades. Partner bids 4 hearts, East bids 4 spades. Partner sacs in 5 hearts which gets doubled. West leads the 2 of spades.
NORTH ♠ Q 8 7 ♥ Q T 7 2 ♦ 4 2 ♣ K J 8 4 | ||
| WEST ♠ 2 | ||
| SOUTH ♠ 3 ♥ K 9 8 6 4 ♦ K 9 7 6 5 ♣ 3 2 |
| West | North | East | South |
| 2NT | 3♥ | ||
| Double1 | 4♥ | 4♠ | Pass |
| Pass | 5♥ | Double2 | All Pass |
| 1Takeout | |||
| 2Penalty | |||
I have a loser in every suit and quite possibly a second loser in both diamonds and clubs. My plan is to try to cross ruff after losing some aces. 2-7-9-3. A-4 of hearts-6-8. I'm pretty sure East has all the high cards. Might as well let him in with the Q of clubs. 2-6-J-Q. He goes back to spades. K-6 of hearts-4-Q. I throw out another club. 3-7-8-9.
Now East draws trump. 5-8-3-T. I lead a diamond up to my K. 2-T-K-A. Wow. Guess I'm just screwed. West draws a round of trump. J-2-A-9. I get three trump tricks and lose the rest. Down 5, doubled.
| NORTH ♠ Q 8 7 ♥ Q T 7 2 ♦ 4 2 ♣ K J 8 4 | ||
| WEST ♠ 6 5 4 2 ♥ J 3 ♦ A J 8 3 ♣ T 7 6 | EAST ♠ A K J T 9 ♥ A 5 ♦ Q T ♣ A Q 9 5 | |
| SOUTH ♠ 3 ♥ K 9 8 6 4 ♦ K 9 7 6 5 ♣ 3 2 |
Professor Jack disagrees with my overcall and would have passed. He then would have finessed deeply and gone with the 8 of clubs instead of the J on the first round.
At the other table they settle easily into 4 spades. They make 6.
Nick: -1100
Jack: -680
IMPs: -9 (+23 total)
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Blood Worms
I haven't actually built a tanking spec yet for level 85. I had a rough one at level 80 and then got tapped to tank some dungeons at level 84. I had 4 talent points to spend at that point and figured I'd just throw them anyplace and go rather than think about it. Those places were Scent of Blood for more Rune Strikes and Blood Parasite because pets are cool. I figure I'll build a real spec soon, but part of that is figuring out what the different talents actually do. What are these blood worms and what are they doing? I went to the log of our first raid and went into the section for the Argaloth kill. This isn't a perfect fight to work things out on but it's the best I've got.
It seems I spawn a blood worm every 15 seconds or so when I'm actually fighting. 12 of the 13 blood worms actually killed themselves to pop a heal and the 13th was alive when the fight ended. When a worm exploded it healed everyone nearby for 1666 times the number of buff stacks it had. On average it had 7.25 stacks on explosion, so it was healing over 12k to everyone nearby on average. A 12k AE heal every 15 seconds feels good. I try to hit rune tap on cooldown when anyone in my party is damaged and it's only a 6k heal every 30 seconds.
Now, rune tap has the advantage of being on demand, no range restrictions, and healing me personally for more like 16k when I hit it so I like it more but it seems in a world where healers are willing to leave people at not-full the blood worms will pump out an awful lot of extra healing to those nearby.
Which is the main problem with bloodworms. Who exactly is 'nearby'? On Argaloth the answer was hardly ever me. Our rogue and the hunter pet were nearby almost every time. Sometimes it also hit people in the other tank group. (Especially Byung for some reason... I guess maybe he was standing on the melee side of the other group? Elemental shamen are melee units, after all...) Overall for the fight they only did 2.28% but that's completely mana free healing and feels ok.
On top of that they do damage as well. Unfortunately they don't do very much of it. They were only 0.28% of our damage on the fight. They swung for only about 630 damage a swing and tend to die after 7 or so swings. It's not nothing, but it's not exactly something either.
If there were fights where the heal actually hit me as the tank I think they'd be very solid. Unfortunately we also threw some attempts at the Conclave of Wind encounter and bloodworms healed me for 84 across the entire night. They actually did a substantial amount of healing on our ret paladin who was fighting my mob, doing 105k healing or 16.6% of the total healing he took over those attempts.
I think they probably need a design change to be a reasonable option. They either need a much larger radius so they'll heal the tank no matter how big the boss is, or they need to melee from the front without providing parry haste, or they need to make the heal always hit the DK who made them along with the people in melee range. They're just not consistent enough to build a positional strategy around and if they aren't healing a few people or a tank they're not powerful enough to justify 2 talent points. I'm not sure what I could take that's better though. 2% spell hit probably.
It seems I spawn a blood worm every 15 seconds or so when I'm actually fighting. 12 of the 13 blood worms actually killed themselves to pop a heal and the 13th was alive when the fight ended. When a worm exploded it healed everyone nearby for 1666 times the number of buff stacks it had. On average it had 7.25 stacks on explosion, so it was healing over 12k to everyone nearby on average. A 12k AE heal every 15 seconds feels good. I try to hit rune tap on cooldown when anyone in my party is damaged and it's only a 6k heal every 30 seconds.
Now, rune tap has the advantage of being on demand, no range restrictions, and healing me personally for more like 16k when I hit it so I like it more but it seems in a world where healers are willing to leave people at not-full the blood worms will pump out an awful lot of extra healing to those nearby.
Which is the main problem with bloodworms. Who exactly is 'nearby'? On Argaloth the answer was hardly ever me. Our rogue and the hunter pet were nearby almost every time. Sometimes it also hit people in the other tank group. (Especially Byung for some reason... I guess maybe he was standing on the melee side of the other group? Elemental shamen are melee units, after all...) Overall for the fight they only did 2.28% but that's completely mana free healing and feels ok.
On top of that they do damage as well. Unfortunately they don't do very much of it. They were only 0.28% of our damage on the fight. They swung for only about 630 damage a swing and tend to die after 7 or so swings. It's not nothing, but it's not exactly something either.
If there were fights where the heal actually hit me as the tank I think they'd be very solid. Unfortunately we also threw some attempts at the Conclave of Wind encounter and bloodworms healed me for 84 across the entire night. They actually did a substantial amount of healing on our ret paladin who was fighting my mob, doing 105k healing or 16.6% of the total healing he took over those attempts.
I think they probably need a design change to be a reasonable option. They either need a much larger radius so they'll heal the tank no matter how big the boss is, or they need to melee from the front without providing parry haste, or they need to make the heal always hit the DK who made them along with the people in melee range. They're just not consistent enough to build a positional strategy around and if they aren't healing a few people or a tank they're not powerful enough to justify 2 talent points. I'm not sure what I could take that's better though. 2% spell hit probably.
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Cauldron of Battle Issues
One of the big advancements in raider quality of life was supposed to be the new cauldron of battle item which spawns an item on the ground in your raid that people can click on to get flask buffs. Last expansion brought food feasts which allowed raiders to get lazy and not farm their own food and instead just eat from the feast that someone else put down. (Ostensibly everyone would have provided equal shares of feasts but we all know that wasn't the case.)
There are a plethora of issues with the cauldron of battle, though. Wrath feasts could be learned from a trainer after doing some cooking dailies. Cata feasts can be learned after your guild fishes up 10k fish from pools which will take some time but is certainly feasible within a month or two. Just learning how to make the cauldron of battle requires your guild to make 10k flasks. How feasible is this?
Well, my guild raids 3 times a week for 3 hours a night. Assuming full flasking through the night (mandatory once we get going) we're probably looking at using 28 flasks a night. (Alchemists use 2 per raid, the rest of us use 3.) 28 flasks a night is 84 flasks a week. We'll miss a few raids over the year for holidays and what not, so probably 50 weeks of raiding a year, so that's 4200 flasks a year. Which means we'll have consumed 10k flasks approximately 6 months into the next expansion which is well after the cauldron of battle will become obsolete.
If we want to make any use of this new quality of life improvement we'll need to have our alchemists mass producing flasks for sale to other people on the server. This only works if other guilds aren't working towards the same guild achievement or if pugging takes off on the server. Or, theoretically, we could try to form a coalition with other guilds. We could set it up so our alchemists make all the flasks for several guilds. Then once we unlock the recipe they send us one of their raiders for a week to rep up and buy the recipe. Then they have to go back to their old guild and rep back up with them. Certainly not something I'd be willing to be on the giving end of, that's for sure, but I could see being the flask making guild.
Moving along, there are more issues. The cauldron by default only makes 7 flasks and there are 10 people in a raid. Unless the guild is providing the cauldrons and the excess flasks (some don't take twilight jasmine to make) for some flat fee (possibly nothing) there's going to be drama about who is paying for the cauldrons and who gets to click on it, etc... Compounded with that issue is a relatively early guild perk makes cauldron flasks last an extra half hour, so one needs with 2 cauldron hits for a raid or 3 flasks. (Possibly we stiff the alchemists and make them drink 2 depending on how their profession perk interacts with the guild perk.)
Eventually with much later guild perks the cauldrons make 10 flasks each and the flasks last 2 hours. There are sites listing how much guild xp it takes to reach each perk, so when would get those buffs assuming we hit the cap every day?
Well, that doesn't actually seem all that bad. In three months the cauldrons will make the full 10 flasks. I could be wrong but I simply can't conceive of us managing to craft 10k flasks by that point in time no matter what our long term strategy ends up being.
One important thing to point out is that the cauldrons themselves take 4 flasks to make (1 of each main type) and therefore we should actually have a big stack of flasks lying around to turn into cauldrons when we eventually hit 10k flasks made. How many should we have set aside?
Assuming we don't get this done until after March 11th (and that we always cap guild xp every day) we need 2 cauldrons per raid. This is 6 cauldrons per week. Assuming a year and a half of raiding after March 11th we're looking at needing 450 cauldrons total. with 4 flasks per cauldron we'd want to have at least 1800 flasks just set aside waiting to be turned into cauldrons. (Note the cauldrons are bop and therefore we'd want to spread them around amongst our alchemists.) This still means we'd need to drink/sell 8200 other flasks in the next 3 months which just blows the mind. Though I guess with a team-up effort a few similar guilds would each need 1800 flasks to make their cauldrons which would make things more feasible...
All in all, I doubt I'll ever be using a cauldron unless it turns out the alchemists in my guild are able to sell a lot of flasks. Unfortunate since it was promoted as such a cool idea. I'll have to content myself with fishing up over 9000 more fish to make feasts I won't even use...
There are a plethora of issues with the cauldron of battle, though. Wrath feasts could be learned from a trainer after doing some cooking dailies. Cata feasts can be learned after your guild fishes up 10k fish from pools which will take some time but is certainly feasible within a month or two. Just learning how to make the cauldron of battle requires your guild to make 10k flasks. How feasible is this?
Well, my guild raids 3 times a week for 3 hours a night. Assuming full flasking through the night (mandatory once we get going) we're probably looking at using 28 flasks a night. (Alchemists use 2 per raid, the rest of us use 3.) 28 flasks a night is 84 flasks a week. We'll miss a few raids over the year for holidays and what not, so probably 50 weeks of raiding a year, so that's 4200 flasks a year. Which means we'll have consumed 10k flasks approximately 6 months into the next expansion which is well after the cauldron of battle will become obsolete.
If we want to make any use of this new quality of life improvement we'll need to have our alchemists mass producing flasks for sale to other people on the server. This only works if other guilds aren't working towards the same guild achievement or if pugging takes off on the server. Or, theoretically, we could try to form a coalition with other guilds. We could set it up so our alchemists make all the flasks for several guilds. Then once we unlock the recipe they send us one of their raiders for a week to rep up and buy the recipe. Then they have to go back to their old guild and rep back up with them. Certainly not something I'd be willing to be on the giving end of, that's for sure, but I could see being the flask making guild.
Moving along, there are more issues. The cauldron by default only makes 7 flasks and there are 10 people in a raid. Unless the guild is providing the cauldrons and the excess flasks (some don't take twilight jasmine to make) for some flat fee (possibly nothing) there's going to be drama about who is paying for the cauldrons and who gets to click on it, etc... Compounded with that issue is a relatively early guild perk makes cauldron flasks last an extra half hour, so one needs with 2 cauldron hits for a raid or 3 flasks. (Possibly we stiff the alchemists and make them drink 2 depending on how their profession perk interacts with the guild perk.)
Eventually with much later guild perks the cauldrons make 10 flasks each and the flasks last 2 hours. There are sites listing how much guild xp it takes to reach each perk, so when would get those buffs assuming we hit the cap every day?
| Level | XP (M) | Days Needed | Earliest Date | Perk |
| 2 | 16.57 | 3 | 12/8/2010 | Fast Track (Rank 1) |
| 3 | 34.8 | 6 | 12/11/2010 | Mount Up |
| 4 | 54.7 | 9 | 12/14/2010 | Mr. Popularity (Rank 1) |
| 5 | 76.25 | 13 | 12/18/2010 | Cash Flow (Rank 1) |
| 6 | 99.46 | 16 | 12/21/2010 | Fast Track (Rank 2) |
| 7 | 124.34 | 20 | 12/25/2010 | Reinforce (Rank 1) |
| 8 | 150.87 | 25 | 12/30/2010 | Hasty Hearth |
| 9 | 179.07 | 29 | 1/3/2011 | Reinforce (Rank 2) |
| 10 | 208.92 | 34 | 1/8/2011 | Chug-A-Lug (Rank 1) |
| 11 | 240.43 | 39 | 1/13/2011 | Mobile Banking |
| 12 | 273.6 | 44 | 1/18/2011 | Mr. Popularity (Rank 2) |
| 13 | 308.43 | 50 | 1/24/2011 | Honorable Mention (Rank 1) |
| 14 | 344.92 | 56 | 1/30/2011 | Working Overtime |
| 15 | 383.06 | 62 | 2/5/2011 | The Quick and the Dead |
| 16 | 422.86 | 68 | 2/11/2011 | Cash Flow (Rank 2) |
| 17 | 464.31 | 75 | 2/18/2011 | Guild Mail |
| 18 | 507.42 | 82 | 2/25/2011 | For Great Justice |
| 19 | 552.19 | 89 | 3/4/2011 | Honorable Mention (Rank 2) |
| 20 | 598.62 | 96 | 3/11/2011 | Happy Hour |
| 21 | 646.72 | 104 | 3/19/2011 | Have Group, Will Travel |
| 22 | 696.47 | 112 | 3/27/2011 | Chug-A-Lug (Rank 2) |
| 23 | 747.88 | 120 | 4/4/2011 | Bountiful Bags |
| 24 | 800.95 | 129 | 4/13/2011 | Bartering |
| 25 | 855.68 | 137 | 4/21/2011 | Mass Resurrection |
Well, that doesn't actually seem all that bad. In three months the cauldrons will make the full 10 flasks. I could be wrong but I simply can't conceive of us managing to craft 10k flasks by that point in time no matter what our long term strategy ends up being.
One important thing to point out is that the cauldrons themselves take 4 flasks to make (1 of each main type) and therefore we should actually have a big stack of flasks lying around to turn into cauldrons when we eventually hit 10k flasks made. How many should we have set aside?
Assuming we don't get this done until after March 11th (and that we always cap guild xp every day) we need 2 cauldrons per raid. This is 6 cauldrons per week. Assuming a year and a half of raiding after March 11th we're looking at needing 450 cauldrons total. with 4 flasks per cauldron we'd want to have at least 1800 flasks just set aside waiting to be turned into cauldrons. (Note the cauldrons are bop and therefore we'd want to spread them around amongst our alchemists.) This still means we'd need to drink/sell 8200 other flasks in the next 3 months which just blows the mind. Though I guess with a team-up effort a few similar guilds would each need 1800 flasks to make their cauldrons which would make things more feasible...
All in all, I doubt I'll ever be using a cauldron unless it turns out the alchemists in my guild are able to sell a lot of flasks. Unfortunate since it was promoted as such a cool idea. I'll have to content myself with fishing up over 9000 more fish to make feasts I won't even use...
Monday, December 13, 2010
Initial Tanking Rating Thoughts
Today we're going to be attempting our first raid of the new expansion and as such this marks the first time I've really thought about tanking stats in a few months. I should head out and reforge my gear, but I don't know what to reforge to! I intend to really model this stuff out in the future and getting data from an initial raid will certainly help that, but for now I want to just do some napkin math and get something started. So I need to get a rough idea of what the different stats do. I did a look at some random World of Logs recap and found a boss swinging for about 20k. I'm going to assume he swings every 2 seconds. I also assume I hit Death Strike every 8 seconds and maintain debuffs with free runes from Runic Empowerment. I also seem to not have threat issues at all on anything I pump Rune Strikes into, and it can't be dodged or parried. So...
- Expertise Rating - absolute garbage
- Hit Rating - helps keep debuffs up in a timely manner, helps Rune Strike hit, still pretty bad
- Haste Rating - lets me Death Strike more often I guess. I will do more math on it for sure, but my gut instinct is it's garbage
- Parry Rating - 1% parry negates 100 damage every second in the long term. It takes 177 parry rating to get 1% parry, before diminishing returns
- Dodge Rating - 1% dodge negates 100 damage every second in the long term. It takes 177 dodge rating to get 1% dodge, before diminishing returns
- Mastery Rating - 1 mastery makes Death Strike put up an extra shield for 6.25% of the amount it healed for. With 140k max health it will heal for a minimum of 14k, so 1 mastery prevents 109 damage per second in the long term. It takes 179 mastery rating to get 1 mastery with no diminishing returns
If the boss hits harder or faster then parry/dodge get better. As I get more health or as I get more parry/dodge then mastery gets better. If the boss does a lot of non-avoidable attacks like magic then parry/dodge get worse. If the boss hits hard enough for Death Strike to heal for more than 10% max hp then mastery gets better.
All told it looks like mastery is probably the best and is what I'm going to reforge into for now. We'll see how things stand after tonight, though!
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Bridge Match 1 - Board 85
Board 85 – Dealer North – NS Vul
My hand: ♠ A Q J 6 4 ♥ A 9 ♦ 9 8 5 ♣ 9 5 2
East opens 1 diamond in 2nd seat. I bid 1 spade. West makes a negative double, partner bids 2 spades, and East jumps to 4 hearts. White on red I'd consider saccing here, but red on white seems sketchy so I pass as does everyone else. I lead the 9 of diamonds.
9-J-Q-A. East draws trump. 2-9-Q-7. Back to diamonds. 3-2-T-5. East shifts to clubs. A-2-6-4. And diamonds again. K-8-5 of spades-4. 6-5 of clubs-T of spades-3 of hearts.
Partner returns a club. J-2 of spades-9-Q. Trump is drawn to my hand and I have to lead a spade. Declarer is up. Making 5.
Professor Jack disagrees with my lead and honestly, when I made it I forgot East opened 1 diamond. I would have lead a club if my head was in the game. Jack suggests leading a club.
He then disagrees with my heart suit play. He wants me to hop with A9. Is that right?
On the replay I get screwed as East only bids 3 hearts, not 4. They make 5 as well.
Nick: -450
Jack: -200
IMPs: -6 (+32 total)
My hand: ♠ A Q J 6 4 ♥ A 9 ♦ 9 8 5 ♣ 9 5 2
East opens 1 diamond in 2nd seat. I bid 1 spade. West makes a negative double, partner bids 2 spades, and East jumps to 4 hearts. White on red I'd consider saccing here, but red on white seems sketchy so I pass as does everyone else. I lead the 9 of diamonds.
| WEST ♠ T 5 ♥ Q T 8 6 ♦ J 3 ♣ K Q 8 7 6 | ||
| SOUTH ♠ A Q J 6 4 ♥ A 9 ♦ 9 8 5 ♣ 9 5 2 |
| West | North | East | South |
| Pass | 1♦ | 1♠ | |
| Double1 | 2♠ | 4♥ | All Pass |
| 1Negative | |||
9-J-Q-A. East draws trump. 2-9-Q-7. Back to diamonds. 3-2-T-5. East shifts to clubs. A-2-6-4. And diamonds again. K-8-5 of spades-4. 6-5 of clubs-T of spades-3 of hearts.
Partner returns a club. J-2 of spades-9-Q. Trump is drawn to my hand and I have to lead a spade. Declarer is up. Making 5.
| NORTH ♠ K 9 3 ♥ J 7 3 ♦ Q 4 2 ♣ J T 4 3 | ||
| WEST ♠ T 5 ♥ Q T 8 6 ♦ J 3 ♣ K Q 8 7 6 | EAST ♠ 8 7 2 ♥ K 5 4 2 ♦ A K T 7 6 ♣ A | |
| SOUTH ♠ A Q J 6 4 ♥ A 9 ♦ 9 8 5 ♣ 9 5 2 |
Professor Jack disagrees with my lead and honestly, when I made it I forgot East opened 1 diamond. I would have lead a club if my head was in the game. Jack suggests leading a club.
He then disagrees with my heart suit play. He wants me to hop with A9. Is that right?
On the replay I get screwed as East only bids 3 hearts, not 4. They make 5 as well.
Nick: -450
Jack: -200
IMPs: -6 (+32 total)
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Realm First! Working As A Team
All of the individual realm first achievements have come and gone. Several people in my guild were trying for one or another of them with varying degrees of success and we ended up walking away with none of the first to 85 achievements but with 5 of the max profession achievements. Sky got Jewelcrafting, Tmiv got Leatherworking, and I brought in Cooking, Blacksmithing, and (on an alt) Inscription. I didn't even try very hard for the last two, I just wanted to not be the person holding us back from the guild achievement so I put a small focus on maxing my professions and it seems no one else on my realm really cared a lot about blacksmithing or inscription. (They were 2 of the last 4 done, with Jewelcrafting forced to take 4 days by game mechanics and Archaeology taking forever because it takes forever.)
It turns out, however, that maxing your professions is actually not the concern with Working As A Team. That may seem a little odd since that's all the achievement says. Be the first guild on the realm to get max skill in every profession. Seems pretty straightforward, no? It turns out they didn't want people guild hopping to earn achievements (probably a decision made back when guild achievements did something relevant instead of doing nothing at all like they were hot-fixed to do) so in order to count towards this achievement you need honoured rep with the guild. Ok, sucks for me because my professions are split across two characters but I don't need to sleep. I can grind two reps before another guild can max all their professions. Nope, it's even worse. You can't just spend a day or two grinding because they put in a weekly cap on guild rep. So it takes three weeks worth of grinding to get up to honoured. Three weeks!
This achievement is no longer about what guild can work together to max their professions fastest. Pooling resources? Planning to make sure all professions are covered? Worthless. All that matters is getting your max profession people to log in and play a whole bunch on December 21st. On the plus side in the time it takes waiting to get the rep someone else in my guild will max inscription so I won't need to grind rep on the 21st on two characters to try for the achievement, just on one. And I need to hope the other people in my guild also feel like grinding out quests two weeks after they need the experience. It really makes me wonder why they bothered making this a realm first achievement...
It turns out, however, that maxing your professions is actually not the concern with Working As A Team. That may seem a little odd since that's all the achievement says. Be the first guild on the realm to get max skill in every profession. Seems pretty straightforward, no? It turns out they didn't want people guild hopping to earn achievements (probably a decision made back when guild achievements did something relevant instead of doing nothing at all like they were hot-fixed to do) so in order to count towards this achievement you need honoured rep with the guild. Ok, sucks for me because my professions are split across two characters but I don't need to sleep. I can grind two reps before another guild can max all their professions. Nope, it's even worse. You can't just spend a day or two grinding because they put in a weekly cap on guild rep. So it takes three weeks worth of grinding to get up to honoured. Three weeks!
This achievement is no longer about what guild can work together to max their professions fastest. Pooling resources? Planning to make sure all professions are covered? Worthless. All that matters is getting your max profession people to log in and play a whole bunch on December 21st. On the plus side in the time it takes waiting to get the rep someone else in my guild will max inscription so I won't need to grind rep on the 21st on two characters to try for the achievement, just on one. And I need to hope the other people in my guild also feel like grinding out quests two weeks after they need the experience. It really makes me wonder why they bothered making this a realm first achievement...
Friday, December 10, 2010
Archaeology All Items
Of course, there are also achievements for Archaeology in World of Warcraft and a lot of them deal with getting specific grey artifacts. What races do you have to dig to get them? Here's a list of all artifacts by race.
Draenei
Anklet with Golden Bells - Junk
Arrival of the Naaru - Vanity
Baroque Sword Scabbard - Junk
Carved Harp of Exotic Wood - Junk
Dignified Portrait - Junk
Fine Crystal Candelabra - Junk
Plated Elekk Goad - Junk
Scepter of the Nathrezim - Junk
Strange Silver Paperweight - Junk
The Last Relic of Argus - Vanity
Dwarf
Belt Buckle with Anvilmar Crest - Junk
Bodacious Door Knocker - Junk
Bone Gaming Dice - Junk
Boot Heel with Scrollwork - Junk
Ceramic Funeral Urn - Junk
Chalice of the Mountain Kings - Vanity
Clockwork Gnome - Pet
Dented Shield of Horuz Killcrow - Junk
Dwarven Baby Socks - Junk
Golden Chamber Pot - Junk
Ironstar's Petrified Shield - Junk
Mithril Chain of Angerforge - Junk
Moltenfist's Jeweled Goblet - Junk
Notched Sword of Tunadil the Redeemer - Junk
Pewter Drinking Cup - Junk
Pipe of Franclorn Forgewright - Junk
Scepter of Bronzebeard - Junk
Scepter of Charlga Razorflank - Junk
Scorched Staff of Shadow Priest Anund - Junk
Silver Kris of Korl - Junk
Silver Neck Torc - Junk
Skull Staff of Shadowforge - Junk
Spiked Gauntlets of Anvilrage - Junk
Staff of Sorcerer-Thane Thaurissian - 85 Epic
Stone Gryphon - Junk
The Innkeeper's Daughter - Vanity
Warmaul of Burningeye - Junk
Winged Helm of the Corehammer - Junk
Wooden Whistle - Junk
Word of Empress Zoe - Junk
Worn Hunting Knife - Junk
Fossil
Ancient Shark Jaws - Junk
Beautiful Preserved Fern - Junk
Black Trilobite - Junk
Devilsaur Tooth - Junk
Feathered Raptor Arm - Junk
Fossilized Hatchling - Pet
Fossilized Raptor - Mount
Imprint of a Kraken Tentacle - Junk
Insect in Amber - Junk
Proto-Drake Skeleton - Junk
Shard of Petrified Wood - Junk
Strange Velvet Worm - Junk
Twisted Ammonite Shell - Junk
Vicious Ancient Fish - Junk
Nerubian
Blessing of the Old God - Vanity
Ewer of Jurmungar Blood - Junk
Gruesome Heart Box - Junk
Infested Ruby Ring - Junk
Puzzle Box of Yogg-Saron - Vanity
Scepter of Nezar'Azret - Junk
Six-Clawed Cornice - Junk
Spidery Sundial - Junk
Vizier's Scrawled Streamer - Junk
Night Elf
Bones of Transformation - Vanity
Carcanet of the Hundred Magi - Junk
Chest of Tiny Glass Animals - Junk
Cloak Clasp with Antlers - Junk
Coin from Eldre'Thalas - Junk
Cracked Crystal Vial - Junk
Delicate Music Box - Junk
Druid and Priest Statue Set - Vanity
Green Dragon Ring - Junk
Hairpin of Silver and Malachite - Junk
Highborne Pyxis - Junk
Highborne Soul Mirror - Vanity
Inlaid Ivory Comb - Junk
Kaldorei Amphora - Junk
Kaldorei Wind Chimes - Vanity
Necklace with Elune Pendant - Junk
Queen Azshara's Dressing Gown - BoA Gear
Scandalous Silk Nightgown - Junk
Scepter of Xavius - Junk
Shattered Glaive - Junk
Silver Scroll Case - Junk
String of Small Pink Pearls - Junk
Tyrande's Favorite Doll - 85 Epic
Umbra Crescent - Junk
Wisp Amulet - Vanity
Orc
Fiendish Whip - Junk
Fierce Wolf Figurine - Junk
Gray Candle Stud - Junk
Headdress of the First Shaman - BoA Gear
Maul of Stone Guard Mur'og - Junk
Rusted Steak Knife - Junk
Scepter of Nekros Skullcrusher - Junk
Skull Drinking Cup - Junk
Tile of Glazed Clay - Junk
Tiny Bronze Scorpion - Junk
Tol'Vir
Canopic Jar - Junk
Castle of Sand - Junk
Cat Statue with Emerald Eyes - Junk
Crawling Crab - Pet
Engraved Scimitar Pommel - Junk
Pendant of the Scarab Storm - Vanity
Ring of the Boy Emperor - 85 Epic
Scepter of Azj'Aqir - Mount
Scimitar of the Sirocco - 85 Epic
Sketch of a Desert Palace - Junk
Soapstone Scarab Necklace - Junk
Staff of Ammunae - 85 Epic
Tiny Oasis Mosaic - Junk
Troll
Atal'ai Scepter - Junk
Bracelet of Jade and Coins - Junk
Cinnabar Bijou - Junk
Drakkari Sacrificial Knife - Junk
Eerie Hakkari Idol - Junk
Feathered Gold Earring - Junk
Fetish of Hir'eek - Junk
Fine Bloodscalp Dinnerware - Junk
Gahz'rilla Figurine - Junk
Jade Asp with Ruby Eyes - Junk
Lizard Foot Charm - Junk
Skull-Shaped Planter - Junk
Tooth with Gold Filling - Junk
Zandalari Voodoo Doll - Junk
Zin'rokh, Destroyer of Worlds - 85 Epic
Vrykul
Fanged Cloak Pin - Junk
Flint Striker - Junk
Intricate Treasure Chest Key - Junk
Nifflevar Bearded Axe - BoA Gear
Scramseax - Junk
Thorned Necklace - Junk
Draenei
Anklet with Golden Bells - Junk
Arrival of the Naaru - Vanity
Baroque Sword Scabbard - Junk
Carved Harp of Exotic Wood - Junk
Dignified Portrait - Junk
Fine Crystal Candelabra - Junk
Plated Elekk Goad - Junk
Scepter of the Nathrezim - Junk
Strange Silver Paperweight - Junk
The Last Relic of Argus - Vanity
Dwarf
Belt Buckle with Anvilmar Crest - Junk
Bodacious Door Knocker - Junk
Bone Gaming Dice - Junk
Boot Heel with Scrollwork - Junk
Ceramic Funeral Urn - Junk
Chalice of the Mountain Kings - Vanity
Clockwork Gnome - Pet
Dented Shield of Horuz Killcrow - Junk
Dwarven Baby Socks - Junk
Golden Chamber Pot - Junk
Ironstar's Petrified Shield - Junk
Mithril Chain of Angerforge - Junk
Moltenfist's Jeweled Goblet - Junk
Notched Sword of Tunadil the Redeemer - Junk
Pewter Drinking Cup - Junk
Pipe of Franclorn Forgewright - Junk
Scepter of Bronzebeard - Junk
Scepter of Charlga Razorflank - Junk
Scorched Staff of Shadow Priest Anund - Junk
Silver Kris of Korl - Junk
Silver Neck Torc - Junk
Skull Staff of Shadowforge - Junk
Spiked Gauntlets of Anvilrage - Junk
Staff of Sorcerer-Thane Thaurissian - 85 Epic
Stone Gryphon - Junk
The Innkeeper's Daughter - Vanity
Warmaul of Burningeye - Junk
Winged Helm of the Corehammer - Junk
Wooden Whistle - Junk
Word of Empress Zoe - Junk
Worn Hunting Knife - Junk
Fossil
Ancient Shark Jaws - Junk
Beautiful Preserved Fern - Junk
Black Trilobite - Junk
Devilsaur Tooth - Junk
Feathered Raptor Arm - Junk
Fossilized Hatchling - Pet
Fossilized Raptor - Mount
Imprint of a Kraken Tentacle - Junk
Insect in Amber - Junk
Proto-Drake Skeleton - Junk
Shard of Petrified Wood - Junk
Strange Velvet Worm - Junk
Twisted Ammonite Shell - Junk
Vicious Ancient Fish - Junk
Nerubian
Blessing of the Old God - Vanity
Ewer of Jurmungar Blood - Junk
Gruesome Heart Box - Junk
Infested Ruby Ring - Junk
Puzzle Box of Yogg-Saron - Vanity
Scepter of Nezar'Azret - Junk
Six-Clawed Cornice - Junk
Spidery Sundial - Junk
Vizier's Scrawled Streamer - Junk
Night Elf
Bones of Transformation - Vanity
Carcanet of the Hundred Magi - Junk
Chest of Tiny Glass Animals - Junk
Cloak Clasp with Antlers - Junk
Coin from Eldre'Thalas - Junk
Cracked Crystal Vial - Junk
Delicate Music Box - Junk
Druid and Priest Statue Set - Vanity
Green Dragon Ring - Junk
Hairpin of Silver and Malachite - Junk
Highborne Pyxis - Junk
Highborne Soul Mirror - Vanity
Inlaid Ivory Comb - Junk
Kaldorei Amphora - Junk
Kaldorei Wind Chimes - Vanity
Necklace with Elune Pendant - Junk
Queen Azshara's Dressing Gown - BoA Gear
Scandalous Silk Nightgown - Junk
Scepter of Xavius - Junk
Shattered Glaive - Junk
Silver Scroll Case - Junk
String of Small Pink Pearls - Junk
Tyrande's Favorite Doll - 85 Epic
Umbra Crescent - Junk
Wisp Amulet - Vanity
Orc
Fiendish Whip - Junk
Fierce Wolf Figurine - Junk
Gray Candle Stud - Junk
Headdress of the First Shaman - BoA Gear
Maul of Stone Guard Mur'og - Junk
Rusted Steak Knife - Junk
Scepter of Nekros Skullcrusher - Junk
Skull Drinking Cup - Junk
Tile of Glazed Clay - Junk
Tiny Bronze Scorpion - Junk
Tol'Vir
Canopic Jar - Junk
Castle of Sand - Junk
Cat Statue with Emerald Eyes - Junk
Crawling Crab - Pet
Engraved Scimitar Pommel - Junk
Pendant of the Scarab Storm - Vanity
Ring of the Boy Emperor - 85 Epic
Scepter of Azj'Aqir - Mount
Scimitar of the Sirocco - 85 Epic
Sketch of a Desert Palace - Junk
Soapstone Scarab Necklace - Junk
Staff of Ammunae - 85 Epic
Tiny Oasis Mosaic - Junk
Troll
Atal'ai Scepter - Junk
Bracelet of Jade and Coins - Junk
Cinnabar Bijou - Junk
Drakkari Sacrificial Knife - Junk
Eerie Hakkari Idol - Junk
Feathered Gold Earring - Junk
Fetish of Hir'eek - Junk
Fine Bloodscalp Dinnerware - Junk
Gahz'rilla Figurine - Junk
Jade Asp with Ruby Eyes - Junk
Lizard Foot Charm - Junk
Skull-Shaped Planter - Junk
Tooth with Gold Filling - Junk
Zandalari Voodoo Doll - Junk
Zin'rokh, Destroyer of Worlds - 85 Epic
Vrykul
Fanged Cloak Pin - Junk
Flint Striker - Junk
Intricate Treasure Chest Key - Junk
Nifflevar Bearded Axe - BoA Gear
Scramseax - Junk
Thorned Necklace - Junk