Bridge Match 2 - Board 7

Board 7 – Dealer South – Both Vul

Opponents convention card: Dutch Acol.
Opponents playing strength: Intermediate.

My hand: ♠ 7 6 5 ♥ K Q ♦ A K 8 7 4 ♣ Q 6 4

I open a weak 1NT. Partner bids 2 hearts as a transfer to spades. East doubles for lead direction. I bid 2 spades which gets passed out. West somehow finds a heart lead and plays the 8.

	NORTH ♠ A K T 9 3 ♥ J 9 5 3 ♦ 2 ♣ 9 5 3
WEST ♥ 8
	SOUTH ♠ 7 6 5 ♥ K Q ♦ A K 8 7 4 ♣ Q 6 4

West	North	East	South
			1NT
Pass	2♥1	Double2	2♠
Pass	Pass	Pass
1Transfer
2Lead Directional

I have 3 or 4 spades, 2 hearts, and 2 diamonds. I will lose a spade or two, a heart, and 2 or 3 clubs. I guess the first thing to do is see how many of their round suit tricks they take off the top. 8-3-T-Q. The answer is 0. They are taking 0 of their tricks off the top. So I can play 2 top diamonds in order to pitch a club and then draw trump. A-5-2-6. K-9-3 of clubs-3. Switch to spades. I have no easy entries back to hand, so if I want to finesse I need to do it now. But that would only help if West has QJxx. And hurts if East has one of the honours and they're split 3-2. That seems wrong. 7-2-A-8. K-J-5-4. Huzzah! The only spade left is the big one, so off to get more tricks. Hearts seems like the place to get them. 5-A-K-2 of clubs. Yikes!

East fires back a low heart which sets up my 9. Thanks East! I lose 2 clubs and the Q of spades. Making 3.

	NORTH ♠ A K T 9 3 ♥ J 9 5 3 ♦ 2 ♣ 9 5 3
WEST ♠ Q 4 2 ♥ 8 ♦ Q J T 9 5 ♣ A J 7 2		EAST ♠ J 8 ♥ A T 7 6 4 2 ♦ 6 3 ♣ K T 8
	SOUTH ♠ 7 6 5 ♥ K Q ♦ A K 8 7 4 ♣ Q 6 4

Professor Jack disagrees with my diamond play. He wants me to draw trump right when I get in. Pitching a club loser first seemed really important, but I guess I did give up on an entry to hand in order to finesse again? Of course it turns out doing that is bad news when the finesse loses and they cash 3 clubs and a heart ruff.

2 spades up one was a solo top board. 1 pair made 2 spades just in. 3 were down 1 in 2 spades. 2 were down 2 in 2 spades. And one poor pair went down 2 in 3 spades doubled.

Ranking after board 7/60: 8/16 with 53.06%.

Blood Bowl League 'Fair' Starting Conditions

A topic that seems to keep coming up is if teams in a Blood Bowl league need to start on even footing or not. And if not completely even footing, should you get close? How close? And how to approach it?

The first season of our Cyanide league the rule was every team had to fit under a 1500 TV cap, with cash counting against you. So you could be 1500TV with no cash, or 1450TV with 50k cash like I did. You could also be less if you wanted, so we had one team that was just 1000TV. But even in getting down to 1500 different teams took different approaches. I'd decided fan factor was terrible and conceded games to burn it all away. A couple other people believed my analysis and did the same thing. Some people didn't have time to level up, so I conceded games to them so they could get free randomly assigned SPP and cash in order to catch up. Other people brought in teams from other leagues and had to fire tons of guys in order to squeeze in, but kept their fan factor because they thought it wasn't appropriate to concede games to get rid of it, or they didn't think to do it.

The end result was that we had a bunch of teams that all 'legally' were 1500TV with cash but were at pretty wildly different power points. My team was probably the most powerful starting roster in part because I was Dwarves, in part because I was able to induce an agility potion, and in part because I had no fan factor so I basically got a free guy with a skill over some of my opponents. Compared to the fresh team guy it was no contest. He finished the season 1-6, with his win coming in week 6. I finished 8-2 including playoff games.

The second season had a lot of dissenting opinions on how we should let new teams in. Some people took the stance that you had to start at 1000 TV. They didn't like the way some of us had built our initial 1500TV teams for the first season and didn't want a repeat. Or possibly they did want a repeat of the 1000TV season? Regardless, sticking a fresh team up against my then 1830TV Dwarves would have been an exercise in frustration. Randy campaigned pretty heavily to allow all new teams to farm their way up to whoever was the highest legacy team from the last season. He likened it to deck building in Magic. The fun part of the league was going to be taking even teams against each other and seeing how they evolved. Forcing him to start with a starter deck while I was running ProsBloom wouldn't be fun, interesting, or fair. Neither side ended up getting their way and ultimately the decision was made to let teams in under the previous entering condition. 1500TV, be as cheesy as you wanted, but you're still down 330 TV to my Dwarves.

Even that compromise had detractors. Some people with a new team have complained that they're just outclassed. Some people with old teams have complained that carrying a lot of fan factor is unbalancing against the incoming teams. This is especially relevant since some of the old teams were actually worse than the incoming new teams. At any rate, through 36 games I wanted to take a look at things...

Old teams currently hold a record of 5 wins, 6 ties, and 7 losses when they played against new teams. If I change things around a bit to count the old teams that came in sub 1500 as new teams that changes to the old teams having a record of 4 wins, 5 ties, and 6 losses. In either case the results are incredibly even with possibly a slight edge to the newer teams.

What about if we look at playoff odds? The 5 new teams currently have, according to the Sports Club Stats website odds of 100%, 84%, 71%, 24%, and 11%. With half the teams making the playoffs this group looks to have 2.9 playoff slots, which is more than the 2.5 they should have. Bundle in the 2 sub-1500 old teams and their 98% and 4% odds and the group has 3.9 playoff spots which is more than the 3.5 they should have.

All told these numbers are pretty close. There are skill disparities between different players, of course, which complicate matters. But if one of the two categories was a way better starting point then I'd expect to see one group really dominating the games and the playoff spots. Instead it feels more like play skill, race matchups, and dice are playing bigger parts than initial TV. The 1500TV teams clearly can compete with the 1800TV teams. My gut feeling is still that I have a big advantage as a team that started at 1800 but the numbers seem to make it out like there's no advantage to a minor disadvantage to having started at 1800. I donno, but I guess it worked out ok. Much better than the league with 3 1500s and 5 1000s!

Final Fantasy VIII: Omega Weapon

Final Fantasy VIII has a couple of challenge bosses. Ultimate Weapon is hidden in a secret dungeon (under Bahamut's cave I think) and Omega Weapon is in the final dungeon. Final Fantasy VIII is also set up such that when you enter the final dungeon you can't go back. In my current game I ended up meandering into the final dungeon without really realizing what was going on, and I played for a while after that, so either I reload old saved games or I give up on the secret dungeon and Ultimate Weapon. I remember him being quite easy, so I decided to press onward.

Omega Weapon, on the other hand, I could still try. I didn't remember anything about him except that he was harder than Ultimate Weapon, supposedly very hard, but that I beat him pretty easily when I first played the game way back in the day. I didn't want to look anything up about it until I'd tried him a few times first. Those few times made it clear just how hard this guy is for a level 7 party... The problem is he has an attack that hits the whole party for 9998 damage. And with me being level 7 and all, getting to 9999 max health is hard. I think I could have done it if I'd taken the time to farm up 300 copies of Ultima, but I hadn't, so I couldn't. The best I could do was around 9300 or so, which was not good enough.

I tried a bunch of different ideas for how to survive it. Protect? Nope. Shell? Nope. Float? Nope. I had a couple one shot items that made me invincible for a short period of time. Those would work. But I only had 2 and couldn't get any more in the final dungeon. The game doesn't have an auto-raise spell of some kind which would be my typical fallback trick for this sort of problem.

I went and did some reading on the internet and the claim is the fight is doable, but in order to win at level 7 you need to pick up as many copies as you can of an item that makes your whole party invincible for a short period of time. I didn't have any of those! But you can crush a card I didn't have into some.

I now have two options... Skip Omega Weapon on this playthrough or load an older game. If I was still transiting to work every day I might be willing to play the PSP more and do the reloading thing, but as things stand now I think I'm just going to skip him. I've beaten him before, I know it can be done, and I know I was on the right track with my own plan for beating him with the invincible consumable. If I ever play a low level game again I'll be sure to grind up Ultima spells and/or scoop up a bunch of invincible items.

Blood Bowl: Star Player Access

Cyanide tends to have most of the real Blood Bowl rules implemented and has even gone above and beyond by making some stuff up themselves and passing it off as real. The one spot they're really lacking is in the implemented star players. I believe this happened because each star player needs their own player model and animations. But because you can't see the available ones without starting a game it's hard to make plans for who to induce when you're down a lot of money. So I thought it would be useful to go through all the teams in single player and note what star players they have and which they are missing for future reference.

Amazons
HAVE - Morg n Thorg (430k), Zara the Slayer (270k)
MISSING - Helmut Wolf (110k), Willow Rosebark (150k), Roxanna Darknail (250k), Bertha Bigfist (290k)

Chaos
HAVE - Grashnak Blackhoof (310k), Morg n Thorg (430k), Lord Borak the Despoiler (300k)
MISSING - Max Spleenripper (130k), Lewdgrip Whiparm (150k), Brick Far'th & Grotty (290k)

Chaos Dwarf
HAVE - Grashnak Blackhoof (310k), Morg n Thorg (430k), Zzharg Madeye (90k)
MISSING - Nobbla Blackwart (130k), Rashnak Backstabber (200k), Hthark the Unstoppable (330k)

Dark Elf
HAVE - Horkon Heartripper (210k), Morg n Thorg (430k), Eldril Sidewinder (200k)
MISSING - Ithaca Benoin (220k), Roxanna Darknail (250k), Hubris Rakarth (260k)

Dwarf
HAVE - Grim Ironjaw (220k), Morg n Thorg (430k), Zara the Slayer (270k)
MISSING - Barik Farblast (60k), Boomer Eziasson (60k), Flint Churnblade (130k)

Elf
HAVE - Jordell Freshbreeze (260k), Morg n Thorg (430k), Eldril Sidewinder (200k)
MISSING - Dolfar Longstride (150k), Prince Moranion (230k), Hubris Rakarth (260k)

Goblin
HAVE - Ripper (270k), Morg n Thorg (430k), Scrappa Sorehead (150k), Bomber Dribblesnot (60k)
MISSING - Fungus the Loon (80k), Nobbla Blackwart (130k)

Halfling
HAVE - Morg n Thorg (430k), Zara the Slayer (270k), Deeproot Strongbranch (300k)
MISSING - Puggy Baconbreath (140k), Willow Rosebark (150k), Bertha Bigfist (290k)

High Elf
HAVE - Morg n Thorg (430k), Zara the Slayer (270k), Eldril Sidewinder (200k)
MISSING - Dolfar Longstride (150k), Soaren Hightower (180k), Prince Moranion (230k)

Human
HAVE - Griff Oberwald (320k), Morg n Thorg (430k), Zara the Slayer (270k)
MISSING - Helmut Wolf (110k), Puggy Baconbreath (140k), Mighty Zug (260k)

Khemri
HAVE - Nekbrekerekh (220k), Ramtut III (380k)
MISSING - Sinnedbad (80k), Hack Enslash (120k), Humerus Carpal (130k), Ithaca Benoin (220k)

Khorne Demons
HAVE - Grashnak Blackhoof (310k), Morg n Thorg (430k)

Lizardman
HAVE - Slibli (250k), Morg n Thorg (430k)
MISSING - Helmut Wolf (110k), Hemlock (170k), Lottabottol (220k), Quetzal Leap (250k)

Necromantic
HAVE - Count Luthor von Drakenborg (390k), Nekbrekerekh (220k), Ramtut III (380k)
MISSING - Hack Enslash (120k), J Earlice (180k), Wilhelm Chaney (240k)

Norse
HAVE - Morg n Thorg (430k), Zara the Slayer (270k), Icepelt Hammerblow (330k)
MISSING - Boomer Eziasson (60k), Helmut Wolf (110k), Wilhelm Chaney (240k)

Nurgle
HAVE - Grashnak Blackhoof (310k), Morg n Thorg (430k), Lord Borak the Despoiler (300k)
MISSING - Max Spleenripper (130k), Lewdgrip Whiparm (150k), Brick Far'th & Grotty (290k)

Ogre
HAVE - Morg n Thorg (430k), Scrappa Sorehead (150k), Bomber Dribblesnot (60k)
MISSING - Nobbla Blackwart (130k), Bertha Bigfist (290k), Brick Far'th & Grotty (290k)

Orc
HAVE - Ripper (270k), Varag Ghoul-Chewer (290k), Morg n Thorg (430k), Scrappa Sorehead (150k), Bomber Dribblesnot (60k)
MISSING - Ugroth Bolgrot (100k)

Skaven
HAVE - Headsplitter (340k), Morg n Thorg (430k)
MISSING - Fezglitch (100k), Skitter Stab-Stab (160k), Hakflem Skuttlespike (200k), Glart Smashrip Jr. (210k)

Undead
HAVE - Count Luthor von Drakenborg (390k), Nekbrekerekh (220k), Ramtut III (380k)
MISSING - Sinnedbad (80k), Hack Enslash (120k), J Earlice (180k)

Underworld
HAVE - Morg n Thorg (430k), Bomber Dribblesnot (60k)
MISSING - Fezglitch (100k), Nobbla Blackwart (130k), Skitter Stab-Stab (160k), Glart Smashrip Jr. (210k)

Vampire
HAVE - Morg n Thorg (430k), Count Luthor von Drakenborg (390k)
MISSING - Helmut Wolf (110k), Crazy Igor (120k), J Earlice (180k), Wilhelm Chaney (240k)

Wood Elf
HAVE - Jordell Freshbreeze (260k), Morg n Thorg (430k), Eldril Sidewinder (200k)
MISSING - Dolfar Longstride (150k), Willow Rosebark (150k), Zara the Slayer (270)

GM Bidding System Obligations

I've been thinking a fair bit recently about how bidding systems should be dealt with at the World Boardgaming Championships. I managed to rope myself into being a GM for a game so this is more than just theoretical musing at this point, but I mostly care about the theoretically 'right' way to do things.

The primary problem that is trying to get solved by a bidding system (where before a game starts the players bid some sort of currency in order to pick which starting position they want to have) is that some games have very unbalanced starting positions. As the rules are written the USSR will beat the USA most of the time in Twilight Struggle. The players that start in the corn seats in Puerto Rico will tend to finish higher than those that start with indigo. Princes of Florence has bidding tempo advantages for some of the seats. A Few Acres of Snow is an auto-win for the British under optimal play. In other cases the bidding systems exist to allow people to play their preferred side, like in Star Wars: The Queen's Gambit. I've also seen systems which allow the game to be played at all like 1776 where a full campaign game would take days. So they restrict the game to a certain subset of the war and you bid for how many cities you need to control at the end of that time period in order to win.

How should the GM handle advising the players about these bidding systems? A GM that tells new Puerto Rico players to bid highly for the indigo seats is doing them a great disservice. In 1776 the 'consensus' right bid was something like 12 or 13 cities, but I imagine it took them a lot of plays to arrive at that number, and I believe it did evolve over time even though the game itself didn't change. If the actual right number is 14 and they started off recommending 10 is that a big problem or an honest best try? How is the GM even supposed to know what the actual right number is? In some cases the GM may actually be the best player of the game and have spent the time to really nail the number down but I suspect it's way more likely the GM is merely average or hasn't invested the time.

I believe the year I won Puerto Rico the GM posted historical seat data, but not bidding data, to let everyone know what had happened in the past. I ended up winning with a bid of 2 for corn which had apparently never happened before. Is that a case of getting lucky or did my little play group figure out a better bid for corn than anyone else? Maybe some of both? But if the GM had actually made a big deal that a bid of 2 or more is unplayable he may have swayed the way I bid and may have made it so I didn't win.

A Few Acres of Snow, the game I will be GMing, is not very balanced. I strongly believe the British will win every game between top players. There was a bidding system in place last year and I just copied those rules for this year too. I know at some point the game switches from an auto-win for the British to an auto-win for the French. 39 in particular! So the 'correct' point is going to be somewhere between 0 and 39. But I have no one to test with and I can't use this rule variant on Yucata so I have no way to know the real number. What should I be telling people?

Here's a final wrinkle... If you remove the games I played from the equation it looks like the British won 12 games and the French won 17. So while I firmly believe the British are guaranteed to win it turns out the French actually won 70.6% of the games I didn't play. And since my bids of 5 and 6 for the British were pretty much the highest bids in the event it wasn't because people were paying too much for the British. On the other hand 9 of those 17 French wins were from the three people in the Henning group who had a really refined French plan which I'm sure took less experienced British players by surprise.

The problem is if the French win most games between inexperienced players then advocating everyone bids really high for the British means the French are apt to win the vast majority of the games, while the British will keep winning the games when a really good British player is playing. As a really good British player I like this situation, but I don't think it is appropriate to cause it to happen as the GM. But on the other hand if I don't let people know that high bids are probably the right way to go in top tier games that's also an advantage for me. And I don't even know what the right bid is because I can't test it at all. I've played a total of 6 games with this rule set, all at last year's WBC!

Also, do I have an obligation to teach new players how to win the game or just the rules of the game? If I could convince everyone to just play British military games I could probably get a good bid value by next year. But I don't think I can convince everyone to just play military games in part because lots of people like to play games for fun and not just to win and in part because there's actually a lot of subtle little things going on that the good British player needs to be aware of in order to play optimally.

I feel like I can't teach optimal play in a demo, or during the event itself, even if I thought it was a good idea. So I should let that slide... But if I let that slide, and accept that many games will play out with a points focus should I advocate that people start bidding for the French? In a game between two newer players the French will actually win most of the time I think because they start with many more points on the board and are better able to handle a bloated deck. Is it even fair to come out and basically say anyone who loses as the British is terrible at the game?

My feeling for right now is to just give a rules centered demo, point out that each side has advantages, and mention that last year's event was won by a British military strategy with a bid of 6. Let people do what they want from that point. Ideally the event will end up with higher bids for the British among the experienced players and we'll eventually evolve into a fair game. It's just so weird that the game is weighted in favour of the French if people don't know what they're doing and in favour of the British if they do.

Opening Lead Signals

Drew commented on my bridge hand from Sunday saying he disagreed with my plan on partner's opening diamond lead. Ordinarily I would reply to his comment on that post but I was actually already planning a post about how my opening lead play was the right one. I really wanted partner to return a club, not another diamond, when he got back in. He fired back a second diamond and made me very sad.

It turns out partner can see 10 of the diamonds right off the hop between himself and dummy. He is missing the 8, the 7, and the 5. One of those cards remains hidden after declarer and I play a card. Could I have it?

It all comes down to what my signal means. There are three types of signals: attitude, count, and suit preference. Which one am I playing on this opening lead? The default is to play attitude on partner's lead. In that case, with a single diamond I would play the one I have. If I have two diamonds I would play the lower one since I don't want partner to play more diamonds. So if the card I play is higher than the missing card partner knows I started with 1. Otherwise I might or might not have both.

But dummy has a royal flush in the lead suit. Attitude in the suit may not be the right way to go. But then what does my signal become? If it becomes count I'd want to play my highest one from two, as Drew suggests. So if the card I play is lower than the missing one partner knows I started with 1. Otherwise I might or might not have both. But is this switch clear and correct?

If you assert leading this suit again is clearly wrong then my signal may well be suit preference. A high diamond would ask for a spade shift, a low diamond would ask for a club shift. Leading this suit again may be seen as clearly wrong when dummy has stiff ace for example, but maybe not with the 5 card suit?

Another problem stems from what happens when it isn't quite so clear. Where is the line when my card play switches from attitude to not-attitude?

This is a topic Philip Martin harped on a lot in his series of hands that inspired my initial series of hands. I dug one post up in particular where he rants a bit about it. His basic complaint is that you end up with the low card meaning different things depending on context and the two partners might end up disagreeing on what context it is since they see different things. So his basic premise is that whenever it's ambiguous you play reverse attitude for the 'obvious shift'. Want a shift to the 'obvious' suit? Play low to this suit. Want to avoid the obvious shift? Play high to this suit. This has the advantage that even when the two partners don't agree on the context the cards tend to mean the same thing. If I play a low diamond then either I don't want you to play another diamond or I do want you to play a club. Either one will likely accomplish the same thing. Maybe you end up playing a spade instead, it isn't perfect, but we're not in a state where I think high means play a diamond and you think low means play a diamond. This just seems safer to me, and therefore better. Especially if your partner is someone like Andrew or Byung and you're more likely to end up on different sides of the same 'obvious' situation.

Bridge Match 2 - Board 6

Board 6 – Dealer East – EW Vul

Opponents convention card: Dutch Acol.
Opponents playing strength: Intermediate.

My hand: ♠ K 6 5 4 ♥ 7 6 3 2 ♦ 8 5 ♣ K Q J

East opens 1NT. I pass. West bids 2 hearts as a transfer to spades. East bids 2 spades. West bids 3 hearts showing a game forcing hand with 5+ spades and 4+ hearts. East bids 4 hearts. West asks for aces, East shows 2, and they settle into 6 hearts. I can hope the heart split is bad for them, but I don't actually see any tricks available and partner is likely broke so I can't double.

Partner leads the 3 of diamonds

	NORTH ♦ 3
		EAST ♠ 9 8 ♥ J 5 4 ♦ A K Q J T ♣ A T 5
	SOUTH ♠ K 6 5 4 ♥ 7 6 3 2 ♦ 8 5 ♣ K Q J

West	North	East	South
		1NT	Pass
2♥1	Pass	2♠	Pass
3♥	Pass	4♥	Pass
4NT2	Pass	5♥3	Pass
6♥	Pass	Pass	Pass
1Transfer
2Ace asking
32 aces

Interesting. The tooltips indicated East had 4 hearts for his 4 heart bid. It's entirely possible they are in a 4-3 split here. Of course that diamond suit is a good source of tricks for them. I have a sinking suspicion that a club lead here may have been very bad for them. Oh well. 3-T-5-7.

Declarer decides to draw trump. 4-2-8-Q. Oh my. Partner goes right back to diamonds. 6-J-8-6 of clubs.

Declarer goes to spades now. 8-4-3-7. Huh. Guess his spade suit is pretty darn solid. Now that he got that out of the way he draws more trump. 5-3-T-K. Juh? Not only did partner have at least 5 points he had two of the top three trump? I wonder if declarer could make by playing for KQ tight opposite 4 small?

Partner really likes diamonds, and I guess now I might as well ruff to keep declarer from pitching. 9-Q-6 of hearts-9 of hearts. Draw trump, lead up to the A of clubs, cash diamonds, and finesse me out of my K of spades. Down 1.

	NORTH ♠ 7 2 ♥ K Q ♦ 9 6 4 3 2 ♣ 9 8 4 3
WEST ♠ A Q J T 3 ♥ A T 9 8 ♦ 7 ♣ 7 6 2		EAST ♠ 9 8 ♥ J 5 4 ♦ A K Q J T ♣ A T 5
	SOUTH ♠ K 6 5 4 ♥ 7 6 3 2 ♦ 8 5 ♣ K Q J

Professor Jack disagrees with my first spade play. I played low when I had an even number and should have played higher. 6 instead of 4. You are right Jack. I will try to get better.

I can't help but notice that a club lead the first time partner gets in instead of insisting on playing diamonds is crushing to declarer. With no board entries at all once the A of clubs is gone he's boned. He can pitch one club before I can ruff in but he can't stop be from getting a club and the K of spades. Of course he can also avoid a second heart loser but he should still be down 2. Not that we forced them to bid up to 6 hearts... These MPs were a complete gift from our intermediate opponents who chose to play a 26 point slam with no fit. It's just a little annoying to leave 1 of those gifted MPs on the table with bad defense.

1 pair played 4 spades down 1 to tie us for a top. Other scores include 4 hearts just in, 4 spades up one, 3NT up 2, and 3NT up 3. So we get 13 MPs on this hand.

Ranking after board 6/60: 9/16 with 45.24%

Whoaah! Frakkin' Zeno's Paradox!

Zeno was a Greek philosopher who lived around 2500 years ago who came up with a bunch of paradoxes that seemed to show that movement was actually an illusion and nothing could ever move. One of the paradoxes essentially took the stance that if you tried to move from point A to point B you'd never actually reach point B. The reason is that halfway between A and B will always be a point C that takes some finite amount of time to reach. But once you reach C there's going to be a new halfway point between C and B that will take some finite amount of time to reach. Because you can keep dividing this path in half you're going to have an infinite number of points to cross before you reach C, and they all take some finite amount of time.

Now, I've taken a walk before, and I tend to actually reach my destination. I don't know the actual refutation but it probably has something to do with the fact that in one step I actually reach a pretty large number of points all at the same time so once the halfway point gets close enough to the end point I'll hit them both at the same time.

This works great for walking, but it turns out it doesn't work so well for getting promoted out of the Silver I division in League of Legends. I complained earlier about how games used to be worth 20+ points with more points for a win than a loss. The swing near the top of Silver I is more like 3-5 points either way. This meant that without going on a pretty big winning or losing streak I wouldn't be able to see a real change in my   position. People kept saying that doesn't matter and I just need to keep playing and winning, either to improve my hidden matchmaker rating or just to grind out small numbers of points over a long enough period of time to get up to the 100 I need for a promotion series. Ok, fine, whatever. Play some games, go on a streak, sure.

Earlier this week I went on such a streak and, winning 4 points at a time, got my way all the way up to 96 points from the 76ish I had. Got into my next game and won it too. Yes! Promotion series, here I come. Nope. Turns out a win at 96 points was actually only worth 2, not 4, so I only went up to 98. Ok, fine, whatever. One more game, which I lost. I lost 3 in a row, in fact, and tumbled back down to 87 points.

Play some more the next day, win more than I lose, get back up to 96. Win again. A gain of 2 points, to 98. Ok, fine, whatever. I was sorta expecting that. One more win and I should be good, right? Wrong. I won my next game, for +1 point. Whooah, I'm halfway there. 99 points. There's no more spots between me and 100 so the next win is golden, right? Wrong. I won my next game too, for +0 points. Movement, it would seem, actually is an illusion. I will never get to the end point because I can't get from 99 to 100 without passing through a middle point which doesn't exist and can't be reached.

Maybe one more win would be enough? I don't know because my next game was a disaster and I lost 3 points back down to 96. One loss undid three wins worth of points. (Though one of those wins was worth nothing so can you really say it got undone?)

I no longer feel like just play a bunch of games and win more than I lose is good enough. I've won significantly more than I've lost in recent days but will need to maintain a 75% win rate just to tread water. Not even the pros win that much against equal competition. So the idea that I need to win that much to stay still in Silver I is ludicrous. Either I'm significantly better than my competition and deserve to be promoted or I'm in the right spot and my point gains should maintain parity at a 50% win rate. The way things are now is illogical to me, which makes it very frustrating, and makes me want to stop playing.

I understand how rating systems work in general. The old system made sense. If I went on a winning streak I could expect to see my number go up. If I lost a bunch it would go down. I played a bunch near the end of season 2, went on a winning streak, and grinded my number up to the point where I was gold status. The similar winning streak now has me making no progress at all and wanting to break something.

Even worse, there's a website that shows you where the players in your games sit divisionwise. I've been checking out all of my games and pretty consistently now I'll be on a team with people in the gold divisions. You can also tell who has the higher hidden matchmaker rating because you pick champions in rating order. I know my rating is higher than some of these gold people as a result. Probably not by much, but it does show that it isn't unreasonable for me to get promoted. The arbitrary barrier where I simply can't get more than 99 points doesn't make sense to me when other people, with worse ratings, are gold themselves.

And really, even if I didn't deserve to be gold, what does it hurt to make it possible to get promoted anyway? Will the world collapse if I'm Gold V instead of Silver I? It really feels like giving me something to play for has to be worth the risk that an unworthy person gets into Gold V. Especially since some people are already there! If I'm not worthy why are the people with worse ratings than me worthy? The answer is Riot changed the rules after some people got promoted and I'm caught in the backlash because I played Blood Bowl when season 3 started instead of League of Legends. If I can't see that number go up maybe I should just go play more Blood Bowl now...

Full Build Ezreal Comparison

I finally got around to altering my spreadsheet to incorporate all the real damage items. How does blue Ezreal compare to a more traditional ADC build. For reference I swapped out the life steal quints for AD quints and changed the items to berserker's greaves, infinity edge, phantom dancer, blood thirster, last whisper, and frozen mallet.

Do keep in mind that the spreadsheet is an idealized picture of damage done. It's being able to hit all your spells exactly on cooldown, always hit with all of them, and to squeeze in every auto attack. This isn't actually possible. Which build suffers more from this isn't immediately clear to me. Standard ADC likely gets to get in all the autoattacks but should be missing more spells and is more susceptible to being jumped on while blue EZ can kite more which tends to mean hitting most of the spells but missing some autoattacks.

At any rate, blue EZ looks to max out at 992 DPS for 13850 gold, or 7.15 damage per second per 100 gold spent. Standard build EZ looks to max out at 974 DPS for 16300 gold, or 5.98 damage per second per 100 gold spent. Less damage for way more money! You do get a real defensive item in there in the frozen mallet? That's actually probably a worse defensive item than frozen first anyway. Swap those around! With frozen fist instead the standard build gets up to 1066 DPS for 16250 gold or 6.56 damage per second per 100 gold spent. At least now we're getting something out of that extra money. Probably not enough, but something at least.

The last thing I checked was how good the cooldown boots were, and they were way better than the attack speed ones. Maybe that's still true? Turns out it is, barely. The difference isn't nearly as pronounced as it was for full blue build but it's still there.

At any rate, I am now completely convinced. Blue EZ is absolutely the way for me to play when I'm playing Ezreal. It's cheaper, and better, and more fun. Run it!

Blood Bowl: Revisiting Huge TV Gaps

Last month I posted about large TV gaps in Blood Bowl teams. I had one team that was way above everyone else in one of our turbo leagues and my opponents by and large didn't like playing those games and multiple people refused to play in another league with them when the TV gap was so big. I'd joined a league that Duncan runs on FumBBL where I'd be on the other side of such big TV gaps. How do I feel about them now?

Well, first of all, I feel like the chance of winning games with a big TV gap isn't actually that bad. Despite the fact that my Skaven team went undefeated and my Amazon team has 3 losses and a tie. The higher team will win most of the time... Ok, so maybe the chance of winning games is that bad? Part of the problem is how swingy the inducements are. Having a wizard and a bribe and a chainsaw can be the difference between winning and losing, but they also hinge on a very small number of dice. Having your wizard miss completely (or, worse, take out one of your own guys while missing 4 of mine like what happened to Randy recently) is basically throwing the game in the bin. Now you're down 150k and have no power to fall back on. But if it knocks the ball loose and turns a touchdown one way into a touchdown the other way it's game changing.

Another problem is the fun factor of inducements. Having a wizard impact the game one way or the other isn't fun. Losing a game to your opponent's wizard getting lucky sucks. Having your wizard do nothing sucks. Maybe fun in this game is zero sum in general, but I feel like a lot of inducements are actually negative sum. I don't have a ton of fun getting a good wizard off, certainly not enough to make up for how bad it makes you feel.

Then there's the team building aspect. Part of the appeal of Blood Bowl is that you level up some guys and make choices about what skills to give them. Inducements take that away. My last game I was down 920k in inducements, lost 1-0, and felt I had a reasonable shot at the 1-0 win instead. But my team had no impact on the game. The wizard and the two star players were keys to the game. My players existed to get knocked over by my opponent or to get knocked over by failed dodges. I play Blood Bowl to level up some guys and kill some guys. My team doesn't get to level up, and they certainly don't get to kill anyone. In fact through 4 games I have one level across my team. And two deaths sustained. I've inflicted 3 casualties but one was done by a chainsaw (who also got the MVP) and one was done by Morg n Thorg. All told my team has earned a total of 23 experience.

So? How do I feel about big TV gaps now? Well, I don't think they're very fun. I don't feel like they're very skill intensive. And I feel like they remove a lot of the team building aspect of the game. I'm not as sure about big TV gaps between reasonably established teams (1500 vs 1800 will be better than 1000 vs 1900) but I don't think putting a starting team against highly leveled teams is a good idea. It actually seems like a really terrible idea.

I guess my Skaven team is on ice until 7 other teams get leveled up really high. Maybe in another 2 or 3 turbos...

Stunty Success

I posted a couple weeks ago about starting to play stunty games of Blood Bowl. It's an even swingier version of Blood Bowl if that can be believed. On the one hand I hate the swinginess as it is, so stunty can be frustrating. On the other hand I do like seeing guys get killed and that happens more often in stunty. And before anyone starts complaining, I do like seeing my guys die too. As long as I get to kill some back. I don't like being solely on the receiving end, but I'm fine with death for all!

At the time of my post my team was 1-4-2 and I didn't think I had enough time to start a new team before the major stunty tournament started. My team is now 6-4-3. Maybe I've gotten better at playing the team? Maybe having block on my three strong dudes is really making a difference? Maybe I'm just getting luckier? Probably some of all three, really. Two of those games were just random pick up games before the Fighting Cockerel Classic qualifiers started but the other four were part of the event. It turned out to be an 80 team field, with 16 groups of 5 each playing round robin. Top team of each division advances to a single elimination bracket. People have a week for each round but my division was really gung ho and have finished all relevant games. My 3-1 record is good enough to advance. Woo!

My last game was against an opponent who's profile talks about how he has the record for highest coach rating in the history of the site, and how he doesn't view any tactic as 'too cheesy', and how there should be no whining. So I was rather surprised when he spent the entire game against me whining up a storm. I had some things go my way for sure, and definitely used a cheesy tactic of my own, but I'd think he should be above whining given his profile. Especially since some of the 'lucky' things that happened for me or against him were avoidable if he'd planned differently.

For one thing, I have a guy who throws bombs. Bombs knock down anyone they hit, and have a 50% chance of knocking down anyone around the explosion. Throw a bomb at someone and they get a chance to catch it and throw it themselves so generally it seems throwing it at people is a bad idea. So mostly I throw bombs beside people and hope the 50% shot it good enough. This opponent, however, had multiple guys with the 'no hands' skill which means they aren't allowed to catch balls. Or bombs. So I just throw my bombs at those guys with the guaranteed knock down and the 50% spill over. My very first bomb took out 5 people. Because he built a nice little clump of dudes beside a guy with no hands when he kicked off and I got to bomb them before he got a turn. Sure, I got lucky to hit all 4 of my 50% shots, but he probably shouldn't have been stacked so close together.

For another, many of his guys had blood lust which means when they start moving if he rolls a 1 he has to eat an ally or get removed from the pitch. He rolled about his fair share of 1s, but he just threw his blocks as normal with the expectation of eating a nearby ally after the block. A couple of times this worked for him, but a couple of times his block ended up knocking his own guy down. In one case he even used piling on to knock himself down after getting blood lust. All of these resulted in his guys leaving the field.

Now, maybe that is ok, because they'd come back at the next kickoff. But the cheesy thing I did was limit the number of kickoffs. I received in the first half and decided my goal wasn't to score, it was to keep him from scoring. I didn't want to score for a few reasons. I have 4 secret weapons on my team and only enough inducement money to get one bribe. My team had a bunch of miss next game injuries the previous game so my bench was short. Having to kick off on turn 8 would just mean rolling more secret weapon dice since I didn't have the bodies to bench them for that short drive. Also I'd gotten a key knockout on turn one (with the bomber) and didn't want to give that guy an extra chance to wake up. And with his bloodlusting I didn't want to let those guys back on either. So in the first half I delayed a bit then threw a hail mary pass the length of the field. I put a couple guys in the area to keep him busy, don't get me wrong, but I wasn't going to score. But by doing so I got him to focus on dealing with those dudes instead of the important guys (like the bomber) and was able to use my turns killing his squishy dudes instead of really trying to score.

The one KO check ended up working in his favour since his guys came back and mine didn't, but my awesome secret weapons didn't get kicked out either. He really had no answer for a 4/5/1/10 guy with Foul Appearance, Juggernaut, Dirty Player, Mighty Blow, No Hands, Frenzy, Block, Guard, and Break Tackle. Getting two full halves with that guy was pretty awesome. Especially in an environment that is so block light and has so many 2 strength dudes... He gets 6 dice when he attacks and succeeds on two of the faces. And when they get knocked down they tend to leave the game.

I don't know when the next section of the event will finally start since most of the qualifiers are no where near as close to done as mine is. But it's nice to advance in my first stunty event, with my first stunty team. Woo!

TABSCon XXXV

This weekend was the quarterly TABSCon event and Andrew dragged me out to it. By dragged me out I really mean he was willing to drive by my place and pick me up, which is really all it takes to get me to do things! We played some games and then hadn't played enough games by the time they kicked us out so we went to Sara and Duncan's place and played more games there. Woo!

All told I believe I played Innovation, Quarriors x2, Fruit Ninja, Zombie Fluxx, Galaxy Trucker, Castles of Burgundy, and Suburbia. Most were games I'd played before; most were games I really want to play again.

Suburbia was new to me, and is probably the one I want to play again the most. The game felt like a cross between Through The Ages, Vegas Showdown, and SimCity the computer game. Each turn you get to buy one tile with tiles getting cheaper the longer they sit around going unpurchased. The tiles represent buildings in your little piece of the city, and have different stats in terms of how they help you gain money or points. Tiles get better or worse based on other tiles that are already bought, or that will be bought in the future. But you don't play with all the tiles each game, so it's a bit of a crap shoot to figure out the actual power of a given tile. The game we played had all 6 airports in the game, which made them all really good since they scale based on number of other airports in play across all players. Restaurants anti-scaled with the number of other restaurants in play which was weird but interesting. The slaughter house, on the other hand, just scaled up with number of restaurants.

To top it all off there are a bunch of public and hidden goals worth bonus points at the end of the game. Most continuous civic buildings, or fewest lakes, or highest on the income track. This coupled with not using all the tiles means the game probably has a lot of replayability. Certainly one game was not enough for me!

Bridge Match 2 - Board 5

Board 5 – Dealer North – NS Vul

Opponents convention card: Dutch Acol.
Opponents playing strength: Intermediate.

My hand: ♠ 5 3 ♥ Q T 6 2 ♦ K T ♣ A J 8 6 2

Partner opens 1 diamond. I respond 1 heart. Partner jumps to 3 hearts. My hand seems to be pretty good, so I accept and go to 4. West leads the 5 of clubs.

	NORTH ♠ A T ♥ K 9 8 5 ♦ A Q 8 7 2 ♣ Q 7
WEST ♣ 5
	SOUTH ♠ 5 3 ♥ Q T 6 2 ♦ K T ♣ A J 8 6 2

West	North	East	South
	1♦	Pass	1♥
Pass	3♥	Pass	4♥
Pass	Pass	Pass

I have 3 diamonds, a spade, and a club. I probably have 2 hearts and certainly have an extra club too. I have a spade loser and probably two heart losers. Maybe a club loser too... I need to pick up the J of hearts or the K of clubs or set up a pitch of my spade. The club lead certainly feels like it will help. If I play low and win with the J I can force out the K with the Q losing that trick, but then I can pitch the T of spades on the A of clubs. Unless the club gets ruffed, which is entirely feasible... I think I'm better off trying to avoid the club loser instead by inserting the Q now. 5-Q-K-A.

Now I want to draw trump. What is the right way to play this suit? I feel like I used to know this, but don't anymore. Low to the 8 sounds good. 2-3-8-J. East returns a club. T-J-3-7. I feel like West lead the 5 from 5-3 doubleton and can now ruff a club. Time to draw more trump! 6-7-K-4. Yay! I feel good now, with only the A of trump left. Time to play a diamond or two and see what's up there. 2-9-K-5. T-3-Q-6. A-2 of spades-3-of spades-4. Now I can ruff a diamond to set up the 5th diamond. I should get out of this losing just the A of trump. I do. Making 5.

	NORTH ♠ A T ♥ K 9 8 5 ♦ A Q 8 7 2 ♣ Q 7
WEST ♠ K Q J 7 ♥ A 7 3 ♦ J 5 4 3 ♣ 5 3		EAST ♠ 9 8 6 4 2 ♥ J 4 ♦ 9 6 ♣ K T 9 4
	SOUTH ♠ 5 3 ♥ Q T 6 2 ♦ K T ♣ A J 8 6 2

Professor Jack disagrees with my play of the heart suit. He wants me to play the K, not the 8, when I lead up. Which saves me from losing to the J on this specific layout. But is it the right play in general? A quick internet search leads me to believe that yes, in fact, you should play up to a high honour first. But I replayed the hand and needing to draw that low heart out meant I ended up losing a spade so I still only went up one.

6 of the pairs played 4 hearts up one. One played 4 hearts just in. One played 4 hearts double down one which really confuses me. Maybe declarer played both minors before drawing trump and the opponents got lots of ruffs? At any rate, we get 9 of 14 MPs for that result.
Ranking after board 5/60: 12/16 with 35.71%

Zombie in my Pocket

Andrew invited me over to play board games at Sara's today which was a lot of fun. We played a bunch of Hanabi, Galaxy Trucker, Ricochet Robots, Mutant Meeples, and Tier Und Tier. And one silly game Andrew really wanted to play... Zombie in my Pocket. It felt like a pretty big dud.

The game was introduced as a mostly cooperative game. The rules to the game stated in bold that it was a non-cooperative game. This may be a bit of the issue since for most of the game most of us were playing it as a coop game while Andrew was playing to score the most points. We finally got justice by killing Andrew off and then tying the game between the other three of us.

In a sense the game reminded me a lot of Republic of Rome. If everyone plays just to win themselves then the game is impossible and everyone will lose. If people actually work together completely selflessly the game is probably pretty easy but has no substance. Flip some cards up, see if the optimal but trivial play wins or not. The trick to this sort of game would be finding a way to make the 'stab for the win' part of the game interesting enough while not being blatantly obvious. I've yet to see that happen. Red November tried, but it didn't have it. Only a couple people could possibly stab for the win in that game which meant the 'right' play is to waste the early game trying to be one of those people which tended to mean everyone lost.

Maybe it's just playing these sorts of games with people like Andrew and Sky. They're practically unwinnable when we're all trying to find the way to screw the team over for the solo win. But playing this sort of game with true team players just means I either don't play for the optimal win or I screw them over time and again. Neither of those situations is very appealing either. I love winning, but I want to win games on the same terms as my opponent. Playing a different game and sneaking in the win isn't fun for me. But if we're all playing the same game we just lose. So maybe the real problem is playing this sort of game with people like me...

World of Warcraft: Brawler's Guild

One of the features they added in the first big content patch this expansion was the Brawler's Guild. This is basically a series of solo boss fights in a room under the tram between Stormwind and Ironforge. It's got a pretty neat atmosphere as an underground fight club style thing. Some of the fights I've done so far have neat twists to them, so it's a lot like I get all the things I liked about raiding with none of the bad parts!

Well, I lied. There is one bad part... Mechanics which punish melee characters. I've beaten 25 fights so far, and am stuck on fight 26. The fight is certainly interesting. It's got a boss who starts off immune to damage, and who can cast two spells. The first summons an add, the second hits for a ton of damage but can be interrupted. When you kill the add the boss becomes vulnerable to damage for a short period of time. So you need to manage interrupting the boss with alternating who you're damaging based on when the boss is immune.

Oh, and the adds have a significantly larger than normal attack range. And they melee for 175% of my max health. You can stun the adds by looking at them, ala the ghosts from Mario. But the stun takes some time before it registers. So if you're a melee character and you see the ghost spawn and you run at it to kill it, you die. Because his range is larger than yours. So instead you need to run up to a medium range and stand still. Wait for your stun to resolve. Then attack. Oh, and my interrupt is melee ranged, so if I do this I can't interrupt the big damage spell he's going to cast. The adds build up faster than you want to kill them, but you can stun them all if you can get them into a line.

All of these things are significantly easier for ranged attackers. I feel like the fight is winnable for me, if I play perfectly. But that if I was a warlock or a hunter that it would comparatively trivial. I haven't played perfectly yet, though. It doesn't help that I have a 10 minute cooldown to hit that I want to wait for. Part of me wants to wait until I get a better weapon to try this fight. Part of me wants to keep trying every 10 minutes until I win. And part of me wants to glitch the fight (sometimes you can have two people fighting two bosses and if either boss dies you both win).

World of Warcraft: Boo Hackers!

Stochastic commented on my Monday post about the guild bank saying he didn't take the guild gold and had cancelled his account. He'd been hacked in the interim and someone else must have made off with the gold. I'm glad the hacker didn't kick everyone out of the guild and try to sell it, but I guess that probably would have meant continuing to use a hacked account for far too long.

I opened a ticket in game just to see what they'd say. There was no category for 'friend got hacked and the hacker used your stupid guild stealing feature to steal our guild bank' so I improvised and used the 'item restoration - other' category. It took them a couple days, but they responded this afternoon.

We've got Stochastic's account locked down, we restored the gold to him as he's the guild leader, and I removed Sairoy and promoted him back to GM. Anyway, the gold is available whenever he's able to log in and deposit it. As you said he stopped playing, you can let him know, if you have a way to keep in touch, that our billing department could probably give him a free day of time when he's ready to log in and deposit the money, if he'd like to do that. Hope that's helpful! ^_^

So, huzzah? It's not clear from the response if the hacker also stole Stochastic's personal gold (I have to assume the answer is yes) or if Blizzard restored that too. The good news is that we don't have a dummy character as guild leader anymore and I don't have to worry about someone logging in and taking the gold I put in the bank so I can hit the muscle memoried repair button. If we ever played again and needed the gold (maybe next expansion?) it'll be on Stochastic's account. The gold itself was never actually the problem though, at least for me.

Stochastic probably should run a malware/virus scan if he hasn't already and change at least his Blizzard password? Blizzard seems happy to give him a free day to give us back the gold, but since we don't actually need it I wouldn't worry about patching/reinstalling the game at this point just for that sake.

World of Warcraft: Looking For Raid

I'm dabbling in all kinds of things in my little trip back to Azeroth. On the weekend I decided to give the looking for raid thing a go. I could use a better weapon, after all! And I did like raiding back in the day...

I ended up doing 10 bosses, I think, across 4 raid zones. They were all trivial. I understand they set up the looking for raid system to be pretty easy by default, and that I was doing older raids because I didn't have the gear to get into the newest ones. But everything seemed really undertuned and we just stomped it all.

That said, it was still fun. I could see how some of the bosses were interesting puzzles and how they could have been a lot of fun figuring out with a guild. There was one insect boss that was particularly interesting. He  had an ability that killed anyone who walked under him, and I could imagine is figuring that out as Bung got himself killed standing under it. There was a trail ability that you had to pick up off your friends when they got debuffed and then run around the room making sure you leave room for the fight. Drew was totally on that duty. You have to kill the boss legs to damage the body but they keep respawning. It was fun.

Trash was incredibly boring. I never hated trash while raiding, but then I like the ambiance of having a populated game world and it tended to at least do something.

I got lots of loot. No weapons though. 8(

World of Warcraft: Guild Thieves

Last year Blizzard put in code to the game in order to save their GMs time. Now if a guild leader stopped logging in for a month the game would ask other people in the guild when they logged in if they'd like to become guild leader to save the guild. Sky thought this was a good system and I hated it. Saving GMs time (and therefore Blizzard money as they have to employ fewer of them) is probably a fine thing, but you need to think about the side effects of the change. While this system is merely automating what went before, it's also making the option of taking over a guild extremely trivial for the prospective usurper. Having to message a GM and make up a story as to why you should get control of the guild creates a barrier that I think would deter many people. Just hitting a button? That's pretty easy.

A couple people had made use of the feature during the lull between Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria on our guild, but no one was a jerk about it. No one sold the guild, or kicked people out, or raided the guild bank, or changed the tabard. When I came back before Mists I was able to use it myself, and actually did some of that stuff. To be fair I cleaned out the guild bank of worthless junk instead of stealing it, and changed the tabard to something pink because I'm odd, but it wasn't malicious. Even then, I think it would have been better if Sky had still been guild leader the whole time. He did come back and could have promoted me if he really wanted to, or he could have cleaned the bank up himself. If he didn't come back then we could have messaged a GM and made the change. It would have taken more time, but if I wasn't willing to spend that time why should I become GM?

I started playing again last week when Blizzard gave me a free week. I was no longer GM (no big surprise there, I was gone for 5 months so people had plenty of opportunity to jump in) but the person who is GM was an unfamiliar name. A level 1 priest named Sairoy. I spent a while trying to figure out who this person could be. An alt of an old DK named Saideath who has since server transferred away? Maybe? If the old guild forums still existed I could try to look up Saideath's email from his application to ask him if I really cared, but they don't. Oh well, whatever. Play a bit, do some quests... Eventually I get to a vendor and go to repair my gear from the guild bank since that's the button my brain wants to hit. Can't be done. No funds.

Juh? Ok, log over to an alt that's still an officer in town and check out the guild bank. Completely empty of cash. The MoP Gems tab is completely empty and I feel like that probably had some stuff in it. The really good leg and shoulder enchants are gone from the MoP enchants tab. I don't know if we'd stocked any in there (and anyone who wanted them could have taken them as the whole guild had access to them). I clicked on the log tab but it was blank.

Ok, that's annoying. The guild bank had a lot of money. It being broke now doesn't actually change anything for me except that I need to repair by clicking another button since I do have more money than the guild bank and no desire to spend it on anything as it is. But it's annoying that someone would take all of the money. I liked that the guild was paying for everyone's repairs and now it can't. Of course now everyone is no one... But maybe someone else would come back and want to repair. And they can't because we're broke.

On the plus side they didn't kick everyone out of the guild. I guess they were content with just taking all the money, promoting an alt, and leaving?


I went back in today while writing this post and randomly clicked on a guild bank log before alt-tabbing out and came back to find it was populated with month old data. Turns out these logs just take time to load! So now I can piece together what happened... Turns out there was nothing in the bank of value as the empty tabs were empty the whole time. All that went away was the cash, and Stochastic took it all. Someone we went to school with in Waterloo, and who was in our challenge dungeon group. I'm pretty sure he was also very rich personally, which confuses me greatly as far as why he took the guild bank. My hope at this point is he took it for safe keeping to prevent anyone else from taking it later. He also invited the Sairoy character to the guild and promoted him to leader, and hasn't logged in since then. I guess another option is he got hacked or sold his account and the recipient stole the guild bank cash too. Or that he's just mean.

Holding the cash for safe keeping is a reasonable plan, and one I now wish I'd done myself. I wouldn't have taken the entire 268622 gold though. I would have left enough to cover repairs for people. Though in the 4 months prior to the guild bank being emptied it looks like less than 350G was spend on repairs. So it really would have just been a convenience thing, not an actual value thing. Heck, I should just put 1k in for repairs now myself. Done! Maybe Stochastic will come back and take that too, but at least now I can hopefully hit the right repair button?

Bridge Match 2 - Board 4

Board 4 – Dealer West – All Vul

Opponents convention card: Majeure cinquième.
Opponents playing strength: Adequate.

My hand: ♠ 6 4 ♥ Q T 3 2 ♦ J T 4 ♣ T 8 6 2

West opens 2 clubs, strong. East responds 2 diamonds showing 0-7 points. West bids 2NT showing no long major and a cap of 23 points. East bids 3NT denying a 4 card major and denying a truly terrible hand. West asks for aces, East says 0 or 3, and West settles into an odd 6 diamond contract.

I'm on lead. I know partner has long spades since everyone else denied having them. So I'm tempted to lead a spade here. I'm also pretty sure partner has an ace somewhere since East doesn't have any and West probably wouldn't have asked if he had all four. I could also lead a trump to cut down on potential ruffs in East's hand, but I expect they're double fit in the minors so I don't know what he's ruffing. I decide to go with a spade.

WEST ♠ A J 3 2 ♥ A 4 ♦ A K Q 9 6 ♣ A 9
	SOUTH ♠ 6 4 ♥ Q T 3 2 ♦ J T 4 ♣ T 8 6 2

West	North	East	South
2♣1	Pass	2♦2	Pass
2NT	Pass	3NT	Pass
4NT3	Pass	5♣4	Pass
6♦	Pass	Pass	Pass
1Forcing
20-7 points
3Ace asking for NT
40 or 3 aces

6-2-K-5. Turns out West does have all four aces. And four spades. I certainly knew that was possible (he only denied having 5+ with the 2NT bid) but I figured he was bidding crazy with a known double fit. With a 5-4-2-2 'minimum' and no fit at all I'm very surprised with his bidding. We won the first trick, which is a good start. 1 down, 1 to go!

Partner returns the T of spades, probably hoping I lead a singleton. T-7-4-J. Declarer draws 2 rounds of trump with everyone following and then cashes the A of hearts. A-9-5-2. He goes back and draws that last round of trump, with partner pitching the 7 of clubs. A spade to his Q, then he lead the J of clubs around to partner's K. Declarer has the K of hearts, so he's up now. Down 1.

	NORTH ♠ K T 9 8 ♥ J 9 8 6 ♦ 8 2 ♣ K 7 5
WEST ♠ A J 3 2 ♥ A 4 ♦ A K Q 9 6 ♣ A 9		EAST ♠ Q 7 5 ♥ K 7 5 ♦ 7 5 3 ♣ Q J 4 3
	SOUTH ♠ 6 4 ♥ Q T 3 2 ♦ J T 4 ♣ T 8 6 2

Ok, I'm a little confused here. East's first bid showed 0-7 points. He clearly has 8 points. A smelly distribution, sure, but he has 8 points. He had reasonable plays to make the contract and got a little unlucky that both black Ks were offside. I feel West got very lucky to find East with more points than he promised and 3 diamonds for a trump fit. It was entirely reasonable for me to have a natural trump trick on the bidding with JTxx.

Captain Jack disagreed with the low heart and low club I played the first time those suits were lead, because I showed the wrong count. Sorry, Jack! Definitely my bad. Keep yelling at me, maybe I'll get better.


Every single other EW pair made their contracts, so we get a top on this board for putting them down 1. Interestingly enough one pair made 6 diamonds and another made 6 diamonds doubled. Did North lead away from a K or something? Or maybe there's an endplay? I don't see it, unless North pitches badly. He can always return the black suit he wins I think?

Ranking after board 4/60: 13/16 with 28.57%.

Azarothian Lure

Blizzard sent me a nice email earlier this week begging me to come back and play World of Warcraft again. 7 free days, they said! Check out our new features and then pay us lots of money! WoW will always have a special place in my heart. I am not one of those people who quit the game and now act like I hate what it's become. But maybe that's because it was never the game itself that drove me away. My issue has always been not having enough people who don't make me crazy to play with.

Of course, WoW has lots of single player content kicking around too. Not enough to really sustain how much I tend to want to play a game, but still quite a bit. Having not played in months the idea of getting 7 free days to check out the new stuff is actually rather appealing. I probably won't run into people to sustain my needs to keep playing, but I can at least check out new features and see what's up.

But first, I need to read through the patch notes. What's actually new?

Heroic scenarios! Three man content, so probably not something I get to check out, but I was always a little sad that scenarios were so easy. I like that there are harder versions now!

Offspec loot! One of the things I found frustrating while leveling up after the last expansion came out was that I quested in a DPS spec since that was fastest, but that meant all the quests gave DPS rewards. When I hit max level I had no gear at all that could feasibly be used to tank dungeons. They've put in a toggle now where spec specific loot options can be toggled to a different spec, so I could have picked up a few DPS upgrades from the first couple quests in a zone and then switched to tank loot in order to have a viable tanking set going too. It also makes it plausible to do raids or world bosses with your best gear while still picking up loot for the other spec. You used to need to pug raids as an undergeared spec in order to become geared in that spec. Letting people play with their best stuff and get better in another role seems fantastic for pug success rates.

World bosses are now tag to faction, which is an interesting concept. So I just need to fly around and hit a boss for loot and don't need to bother talking to people to get into a raid!

There's a quest for warlocks to turn their fire green! FINALLY!

Tons of pet battle system upgrades, including what sounds like elite pets to fight? Also you can find battle pets on old raid bosses... A new reason to go solo Molten Core? I like it!

There's a whole solo PvE combat system modeled after Fight Club that sounds interesting.

Also lots of new quest chains and stuff surrounding the story of Pandaria. And new raids, and battlegrounds, and scenarios. Basically it sounds a lot like what I would have expected. Lots of new content and some system upgrades. Reading patch notes like these makes me realize just how big a mountain any new MMO has to climb if they want to 'slay' World of Warcraft. Unless Blizzard really goofs I just can't see it happening.

Blue Ezreal Boots

I decided to build a 'target dummy' style spreadsheet for the blue Ezreal build. People keep saying things like the build tails off at high levels, and is bad at low levels. I want to quantify those statements. I'm not sure this is really a fair way to approach things, but I don't know of a better way. Standing in one spot and turreting isn't really what this build does well regardless, but it does provide a maximum for damage. If your team protects you, or the other team ignores you, this will be about what you can do over the whole fight. Mash all your buttons and keep autoattacking! I actually doubt you can even hit the maximum since you can't autoattack while casting a spell and I really haven't built that level of detail into the sheet.

I need to manually add each item to the sheet in order to work out what impact they'll have. One thing I really wanted to look at first was boots. Archers pretty much exclusively buy boots with attack speed on them. Blue Ezreal builds boots that have cooldown reduction on them instead. What does that difference mean?

A full build blue Ezreal with cooldown boots will max out at 1062 DPS, or a gain of 7.66 damage per 100 gold spent. Switch in the cheaper attack speed boots and fall down to 909 DPS, or a gain of 6.61 damage per 100 gold spent. That's about a 16% boost in damage efficiency, and a really huge deal. This is against an enemy with 100AV, 80MR, and 2000hp.

Also interesting when looking at the sheet is it looks like Ezreal's Q does almost as much damage as his ult to a single target thanks to all the extra things that proc off of the Q that don't proc on the ult. And all the big hitter procs do physical damage which makes me wonder if maybe getting armour pen quints would be a great deal. I just bought life steal quints to use instead because I don't build any life steal until very late in the game and having some sustain early seemed useful.

DMC - Devil May Cry

I played the initial Devil May Cry way back in the day. I can no longer remember who I lived with when I was playing it (I thought for sure I used to play it with James, but Aidan couldn't remember it. So maybe I used to play with Josh and Bung?) but I really, really liked the first one. You're a guy with a sword, and two pistols, and a laundry list of awesome special abilities. Variable difficulty settings. Different currencies for buying items and skills and stuff. Speed and score targets for clearing each level. It was really hard, but I remember I got really good at the game.

They came out with a bunch of sequels that I never played. Earlier this year they came out with a 5th game in the series which was a reboot of the first game. Intrigued, I put it on my Steam wish list. It went on sale last week, so I decided to pick it up and give it a try. I honestly didn't remember very much about the original game (except for one scorpion boss that took forever to kill because I chose to shoot him with pistols instead of jumping on his back to sword slice his weak point) until I started playing DMC. It all came flooding back. DMC is definitely faithful to Devil May Cry. My arm hurt after the first level because I'm just not used to playing games with a controller anymore, but it was awesome. The story seems to be completely new but the gameplay is so familiar. Swords and guns and combos! The intro movie had fantastic graphics.

Perhaps most importantly, everything worked! I bought a game, downloaded it, installed it, and was able to play! It did exactly what I wanted it to do. I wish I lived in a world where this was the norm, not astonishing.

Blocking Plays

Last year I went through the process of learning all of the games on Yucata because I wanted to get a win in every game on the site. Andrew helped me out in a few places by also learning games at the same time. I remember one game in particular that was illuminating in terms of how people play games. The game was Bangkok Klongs and the specifics of the game don't really matter. You play boats, move boats, and at certain points of the game you can score points. You can only score points if a 2x2 square is filled in with boats, and then you remove one of the boats. Because any given square in the middle of the board is part of 4 different 2x2 squares you can really change what areas can be scored based on which boats you remove. In the boat placing turns you can impact things as well by putting higher scoring boats into good locations you're apt to score multiple times.

I ended up winning by a very large margin, and we talked a bit afterwards about why that happened. Andrew, it turns out, was trying to maximize his score each turn. He'd look at the board, figure out how to set up a big score, and go for it. On the other hand I was trying to maximize the difference between our scores. So I was taking care to not open up big plays for him, and to put low scoring boats where he wanted high scoring boats. And in the scoring phases I wasn't focusing on scoring big sectors for myself. Instead I was trying to take away his big scoring areas while keeping an eye on locking in my own big scoring areas for end game scoring. 

It seems so obvious to me that if you want to win a 2 player game you need to look for ways to gain points on your opponent, not just score points for yourself. But I ended up playing an awful lot of 2 player games on Yucata with a lot of people and very few people seem to pay much attention to that at all. My record in 4 player games on the site was decent, but my record in 2 player games was really, really good. And I think the reason for that is I keep my eye out for 'blocking plays', where you make a move not to help yourself so much as to hurt your opponent. Sometimes these can be right in a 4 player game too, but they're almost always right in a 2 player game. 

Blood Bowl also has opportunities for blocking plays, and I think one of the ways I really got better was when I was watching Sceadeau play a game and noticed him making a particular blocking play that I have since started calling 'operation look at the ball'. 

Often the ball will end up on the ground near players of both teams. When this situation happens at the start of your turn most people seem to look for the way to maximize their chance at picking up the ball themselves. Do they want to knock down the opponent's guys around the ball? Push someone into the ball? Run in and take the big penalty to the pick-up roll? All 3 options tend to be pretty mediocre but one of them will be better than the others and people will try the one they like best. They end up completely ignoring another option which is to leave the ball sitting on the ground. Don't try to pick it up at all! Instead do what you can to put your opponent in a terrible spot on his next turn. Run more guys over beside the ball and just have them look at the ball. Maybe you'll have a better shot at the ball next turn with more guys in the area. More likely your opponent will end up taking a low percentage shot at the ball themselves and really give you a good play.

It's like in Snooker, where you don't have to try the bad shot yourself. Instead try to give your opponent no shot at all! 

Stunty Leeg

Another major tournament is set to launch on FumBBL later this week. This one is the Fighting Cockerel Classic, a tournament set up for teams using their made up stunty teams. Stunty teams in the real game are Halflings and Goblins which are both terrible, but fun. The problem with them in the real game is they're too weak, too squishy, and have no easy access to the general skills which make actually winning games possible. But they're cool, and fun, and there is certainly something to be said for watching Halflings die. Stunty Leeg teams are set up to maximize those weaknesses, but since every team suffers from them it shouldn't really impact winning games the way it does in the real game.

I hadn't played any games with these teams but I wanted to be able to enter the tournament so over the weekend I started a team up and played a few games. Not knowing how the games actually play out I didn't know which rosters were good or would fit my style of playing. I decided I wanted the ability to make a guy with block, tackle, and mighty blow. I found a team with a 4/3/1/10 dude who starts with mighty blow and stand firm and actually had access to general skills. And you could get two of them! The rest of the team is pretty smelly (the lineman is 6/1/3/6 with dodge, guard, and stunty) but I figured it was a reasonable place to start. 10 armour is insane! You only get your armour broken on an 11 or 12, so 1 in 12! Compare that to my 6 armour dudes who get their armour broken more than half the time!

I've played 7 games with 1 win, 2 losses, and 4 draws. I've had 4 guys die or retire so far, and 2 of them have been the expensive 10 armour dudes! It turns out some of the teams start with claw, or have easy access to mutations and get claw first. I hate claw so much. You're 5 times as likely to break armour on the 10 AV guy when you have claw. That's too large of a swing. 10 AV is a lot, and may well be too much, but the solution isn't to build such a huge swing into the game.

They've also changed the secret weapon rules for this division. Instead of always getting kicked out after a drive each weapon gets assigned a chance to get kicked out after a drive. I've got one guy who is pretty awesome (4/5/1/10 with a lot of crazy skills) but he gets kicked out 72% of the time. One game I got lucky and he got to play 4 drives. That was my win. (I did fail one of the three checks, but I had a bribe.) So while it's good that you can have a bunch of secret weapons and not lose your whole team after one drive it's also really swingy. Getting to keep my awesome guy for the whole game is a game changer.

I think way more than the normal game this game is higher variance. Not just with claw and secret weapon. When almost everyone on every team has dodge it's harder to knock someone over. And when everyone also had 5 or 6 AV and stunty getting knocked over tends to result in leaving the game permanently. So I think I need to just play to have fun, do crazy things, and kill some dudes. Maybe I should start a new team with that in mind, since I am just going to get annoyed when my 10 AV dudes get taken out by claw...

Bridge Match 2 - Board 3

Board 3 – Dealer South – EW Vul

Opponents convention card: Majeure cinquième.
Opponents playing strength: Adequate.

My hand: ♠ Q J ♥ J T 7 3 ♦ A 9 4 ♣ 9 7 5 2

Partner opens 1NT (12-14) in 3rd seat. East overcalls 2 diamonds, showing 6+ diamonds. I pass and West pulls to 2 hearts which comes around to me. We have half the points and around half of the hearts, so I double. West runs to 2 spades which also comes back around to me. I don't really want to double spades and if I could trust partner I think I'd let this sit. But I'm imagining him with a bunch of spades and didn't know he should double. Part of me thinks at match points that any positive score is optimal on this auction so maybe I shouldn't double. But they're in their third choice of a suit so I double anyway, which gets passed out. Partner leads the A of spades.

	NORTH ♠ A
		EAST ♠ 8 5 2 ♥ 6 ♦ K J T 7 6 5 ♣ A J 8
	SOUTH ♠ Q J ♥ J T 7 3 ♦ A 9 4 ♣ 9 7 5 2

West	North	East	South
			Pass
Pass	1NT1	2♦	Pass
2♥	Pass	Pass	Double2
2♠2	Pass	Pass	Double3
Pass	Pass	Pass
112-14
2Penalty
3Penalty

A-2-Q-3. Partner switches to clubs. K-A-2-3. Declarer decides he wants to ruff some hearts so he leads the singleton off board. 6-7-A-4. But instead of ruffing a heart he plays a diamond back. 3-2-K-?. Partner's 2 should show an odd number of diamonds, I think? Which would likely give declarer a stiff and partner 3. If that is true then partner still has diamonds stopped and I should really win. If partner only has 1 then winning and firing one back for a ruff is fine, too. My worry is that declarer is somehow going to set up diamonds. But with no outside entry to board that only happens if partner started with Ax of spades and lead the A for no reason. I wouldn't put that past Jack... But then I'll just blame him! I decide to win and get rid of diamonds myself. 4-T of clubs-Q-5. Partner draws trump. 6-5-J-K. Now declarer ruffs a heart. 2-9-8 of spades-3. Declarer cashes a diamond. T-9-8 of hearts-8. Rather than cash another he plays a club. 8-9-4 of spades-4. Declarer then draws partner's last trump, concedes a heart, and is up. Making 3.

	NORTH ♠ A 9 6 ♥ K 9 4 ♦ Q 8 2 ♣ K Q 6 4
WEST ♠ K T 7 4 3 ♥ A Q 8 5 2 ♦ 3 ♣ T 3		EAST ♠ 8 5 2 ♥ 6 ♦ K J T 7 6 5 ♣ A J 8
	SOUTH ♠ Q J ♥ J T 7 3 ♦ A 9 4 ♣ 9 7 5 2

Professor Jack disagrees with my double of 2 hearts. And my double of 2 spades. He doesn't like my 7 of hearts on the initial heart play (he wants me to play the T) and he really doesn't like my diamond return. Looking at how it played out I also don't like it. Since, you know, partner opened NT and therefore couldn't have had the stiff... Man, I am _so_ rusty. He wants me to return my spade.

2 spades doubled +1 was a solo bottom board. 2 spades +1 would have been in the middle, it turns out, since 3 NS pairs actually made it all the way to 3NT somehow.

I replayed the hand and for some reason West pulled to 2NT which we set 2 which would have been a top board. I replayed again with the 2Sx auction and tried returning a spade instead of the stupid diamond. They end up making +2. Because partner throws a tricks away for no reason I can understand. But even still, that means my diamond play cost nothing. I go back and force partner to lead the K of clubs instead of the A of spades. They go down 1. Which would have been a top, because of the double. I can understand cashing the A of spades on a misfit deal, I guess. It just worked out terribly in this case.

Ranking after board 3/60: 16/16 with 4.76%.