I am now the proud owner of 3 MTGO accounts and am working my way through the free New Player Points that come with each account and allow you to enter special new player events. At least they're called new player events, so far my opponents are divided about 50/50 between people who are genuinely new and veteran players brutally farming them.
One opened account costs $12 (in the UK) and gives 5 free tix (equivalent to a dollar each) plus the chance to win 2 tickets from the 4 New to Magic Online Phantom Sealed events your points let you enter. If you get 2 or 3 wins (which roughly corresponds to the top half) you get a pack with a load of very common cards and 2 tix. So potentially you spend $12 and get $13 back if you can place every time.
Another way to look at it is the cost to enter limited events. Magic limited events (where they give you a small set of random cards as part of the entrance) are a ton of fun and even the playing field against veteran players with huge card collections and all the strongest cards in their decks. Most Magic players like Limited and are quite prepared to lose value just for the fun of the events. From that perspective $12 buys you 4 Sealed events. It can be a great way to look at the new cards when the next expansion comes out.
Magic experts have calculated expected value (EV) of participation in events in great detail, there's even a calculator available. Looking at that you can expect a loss of 1.99 tix every event, or in other words if you count cards as equivalent to money it costs you $2 per event if you have 50% win rate. Except those are averaged expectations, the prizes are skewed towards the most successful. On average it costs $1.99 but that counts the guy who usually wins 4-0 and walks off with 11 boosters whenever he does. An average player, never getting 4-0 but also never getting 0-4, with an even amount of 3-1, 2-2 and 1-3 results will get 6, 3 and 0 boosters for those results respectively, which is 3 on average. The event costs 6 boosters and 2 tix so about an $11 loss per event. Or $11 for 3 hours of fun if you prefer to view it like that.
$12 for 12 hours of fun seems a much better deal, or including the prizes and free tix with a new account, about $1 for 12 hours of fun for an average player (I'm assuming playing in the newbie events is worth a free win every time so you'll get 2 wins 3 out of 4 times for 3 wins of 2 tix each, plus the free 5 which is 11 tix per account opened. In other countries sales tax is less so you pay closer to $10.
Now is it an error to equate game value to value in actual money?
Well according to this article investors have used out of print cards as a method of achieving a return on investment that outperforms the leading mutual funds. People take these cards astonishingly seriously.
Saturday, 3 January 2015
Friday, 2 January 2015
MTGO: a newbie's thoughts on starting out.
Magic is a game designed to tantalise you with the prospect of winning to entice you to spend more money. This is to some extent capped by formats which are reduced card pools allowing players to compete more cheaply because you only need to own the cards in that set, and even there, just the ones you use in your decks.
The cheapest format is called Standard Pauper. Pauper means decks built using only Common cards. Standard means decks built using only cards from recent sets. So Standard Pauper means decks built only using Common cards from the most recent sets which is about as cheap as it gets.
Another cheap way to play is using the new player system. When a new account is made your starter pack comes with 5 Event Tickets and 20 New Player Points. Event Tickets (tix) players use as the currency of the secondary card market where you will want to trade for the exact cards you need to use your decks and you also use them to enter official events where prizes can be won. (There are also player run events which generally have a low prize value but are great when new to the game). Your New Player Points allow you to enter a variety of events open only to players with these points from opening a new account. The most lucrative of these is the New to Magic Online Phantom Sealed, a scheduled event which is run in several time slots on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. In these events you will win a useful prize if you can get 2 or 3 wins from 3 games, so it's about 50/50. Opponents range from newbies who are obviously struggling to work out how to cast a spell (one poor chap pulled out a powerful creature destruction spell against me - but then proceeded to cast it on his own creature!) to obvious veterans who are brutally farming the noobs for easy tix.
Competitive Magic is very rewarding if you can be a big fish in a small pond. In this case if you can average 2.5 wins from the 4 events you have made as many tix as you would have done buying tix directly from the WotC store (10 tickets for your ten bucks new player fee). I've played 3 of these and have gone 2-1, 2-1 and 1-2. I lost a crucial match by running out of time so once I know the game a bit better hopefully I can consistently get 2-1s or better here.
The downside of farming these events is that it costs $10 plus tax to enter (that comes to $12 in the UK) and you are generating in-game assets so unless your budget is completely open you will have to move on after a while. My initial budget for MTGO is about £40 so I'll do this 4 times then assess. 4 times with 4 events per go and 3 matches per event is a lot, potentially 144 hours of playing time. Even without the prizes it's pretty cheap entertainment.
It's also crazy fun!
There are also Player Run Events which generally have threads on the WotC official forums and have postings on a very impressive Event manager website run by fans called Gatherling. Another useful site for events and news is the Pauper site, PDCMagic.com. These events are great for new players as they're free to enter. The players are pretty competent though, be prepared to get destroyed a lot while learning!
I've played one tournament so far. I actually beat my first opponent but then got trounced firmly. I did get given a few spare cards though by kind players.
So after you've farmed noobs a bit until you've hit your budget and have mentally allocated a night or two a week to regular tournaments what comes next?
The next goal is to start farming and being farmed in Constructed competition. To do this you will need a deck. Decent decks generally have two elements in common - someone else will have figured the deck out and you just steal the idea from the internet and the cards are more expensive than is typical for the format. For instance in pauper a very popular spell that hasn't released for years might be as much as $20. You can get deck ideas and valuations from sites like mtgo-stats. Currently the cheapest deck that's done well in a Pauper tournament is $7.02, so you don't need to break the bank to have a competitive deck.
It might seem tempting to get a lot of cards that seem good and try to figure out your own strategies. This is certainly a very healthy element of Magic but from an efficiency point of view now is not the time. You're at the bottom of a huge learning cliff. Your notion that a certain combo might be good has almost certainly already been thought of and tried by other people and guess what? no one's winning tournaments with that deck.
There's also a huge financial difference between copying a cheapish deck off the winner's list at MTGO-stats and aspiring to collect all useful cards so you can build and test every deck type and all their variants.
At this stage it's important to manage your learning and your development. Your free resources are basically practice games in the Just For Fun room, weekly sponsored player tournaments (PREs) where you may sometimes win prizes and your event ticket budget. Each competitive pauper match costs 2 tickets to enter and pays nothing if you lose, 1 booster (currently worth 2.45 tix from the trade bots) if you win. The amount the bots pay for boosters varies. It's currently low because the Holiday event does not take this type of booster as entry free and so demand is low but will pick back up after the event closes. With the current depressed value of prizes you would need a 61% win rate to break even (to win boosters worth as many tix as it costs you to enter events, also called "going infinite"). The going infinite win rate goes down if the value of the boosters is higher but there's a ceiling - the store sells them at $3.99. $4 is break even, a competitive match costs 2 tix (worth $1) per player and awards 1 booster to the winner so if a booster is $4 then a 50% win rate is break even. The swings and fluctuations of the Magic secondary market are fascinating and another huge learning cliff in and of itself. In fact there are players who barely actually play the game itself, just play the market, much like auctionhouse players in WoW.
OK so here's my starter strategy, for what it's worth:
- establish goals and resources. It's very important to set a budget in Magic otherwise it becomes a money pit.
- invest your real world cash into multiple accounts farming newbies in the Sealed Deck events in order to win bonus tickets. The cards you win are a nice bonus as is the extensive experience of playing in this Limited format. (Normally Sealed deck events are a really expensive way to play Magic).
- research and plan for participation in regular tournaments. I'm interested in Pauper and Standard Pauper for now. It's a mistake to play too many different formats as you need to learn a lot to even be competent at one.
- invest some tix in a competitive deck that you stole from mtgo-stats. If you like deckbuilding you can do some if you like but you won't really know what you're doing so make sure it's just pauper decks or standard pauper using cheap commons.
- practice practice practice with your deck.
- spend the rest of your tix entering Constructed pauper 1v1 matches and keep track of your win rate. If you can get over 50% consistently you may want to enter the Pauper Dailies. These events pay out more prizes per ticket but you get zilch unless you can manage 3 or 4 wins from 4 games. If you have over 50% win rates in Constructed that should be possible but it's astronomically unikely if you're under 50%.
- at this point you need to keep playing and praticing and getting better. It's quite important to not get distracted by other ways to play like Standard where you can use rares or sealed deck where you get to open boosters. I mean do it if you find it fun and want to spend the money but it has no place in an efficient cheapskate approach.
- this point may be a good time to buy and test other decks. You may find there's a deck that works better for you than the one you've been using so far.
- the pauper meta is almost immune to the release of new sets. Occasionally a card will come in that's worth including (notably Treasure Cruise in the last release), but generally the strong cards all got released years ago and WotC is careful not to introduce more powerful cards in new content.
- the profitability of playing pauper will fluctuate wildly. When a new set is released there's going to be a rush of interest and booster price will be close to $4.00. This means you can make a very good return on playing if you have over 50% win rate. In fact in the longer term leaving Magic for a while then coming back to farm when there's a new release is probably a pretty decent strategy. Sell your boosters quick as you win them.
If you become very good at pauper you can use your baseline profitmaking ability to get further into the hobby. Farm tix and use them to buy obscure commons for deck tech or use them to buy a netdecked Standard deck and then you can start over learning a new meta.
- it's never economic to play Limited unless you're astoundingly good. If you like Limited the most efficient method economically is simply to open more accounts for the newbie events.
- if you're really good at Pauper the game insidiously lures you into deeper waters. Some pauper events give you QPs (qualification points). These allow you free entry into advanced tournaments. These tournaments don't use Pauper format. So you have the choice, do I waste my points or do I need to learn the advanced formats and compete there. At this point the notion that you could become a seriously good player, going professional and earning thousands in tournaments all over the world starts to seep in.
It's all nonsense except for 0.0001% but it's very very cleverly marketed. Magic has over 12 million players, earns its owners $400 million per year and has never had a year in which it didn't grow. Most astonishingly perhaps the average player age is 9 years. Even Eve Online probably has an average player age around 2 years and games like Swtor may measure such things in months.
I digress. I think I've given enough to allow people to participate cheaply without getting sucked in to spending hundreds of dollars. If you do give it a try add me, I'm Callduron1, and read this New Player Guide.
The cheapest format is called Standard Pauper. Pauper means decks built using only Common cards. Standard means decks built using only cards from recent sets. So Standard Pauper means decks built only using Common cards from the most recent sets which is about as cheap as it gets.
Another cheap way to play is using the new player system. When a new account is made your starter pack comes with 5 Event Tickets and 20 New Player Points. Event Tickets (tix) players use as the currency of the secondary card market where you will want to trade for the exact cards you need to use your decks and you also use them to enter official events where prizes can be won. (There are also player run events which generally have a low prize value but are great when new to the game). Your New Player Points allow you to enter a variety of events open only to players with these points from opening a new account. The most lucrative of these is the New to Magic Online Phantom Sealed, a scheduled event which is run in several time slots on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. In these events you will win a useful prize if you can get 2 or 3 wins from 3 games, so it's about 50/50. Opponents range from newbies who are obviously struggling to work out how to cast a spell (one poor chap pulled out a powerful creature destruction spell against me - but then proceeded to cast it on his own creature!) to obvious veterans who are brutally farming the noobs for easy tix.
Competitive Magic is very rewarding if you can be a big fish in a small pond. In this case if you can average 2.5 wins from the 4 events you have made as many tix as you would have done buying tix directly from the WotC store (10 tickets for your ten bucks new player fee). I've played 3 of these and have gone 2-1, 2-1 and 1-2. I lost a crucial match by running out of time so once I know the game a bit better hopefully I can consistently get 2-1s or better here.
The downside of farming these events is that it costs $10 plus tax to enter (that comes to $12 in the UK) and you are generating in-game assets so unless your budget is completely open you will have to move on after a while. My initial budget for MTGO is about £40 so I'll do this 4 times then assess. 4 times with 4 events per go and 3 matches per event is a lot, potentially 144 hours of playing time. Even without the prizes it's pretty cheap entertainment.
It's also crazy fun!
There are also Player Run Events which generally have threads on the WotC official forums and have postings on a very impressive Event manager website run by fans called Gatherling. Another useful site for events and news is the Pauper site, PDCMagic.com. These events are great for new players as they're free to enter. The players are pretty competent though, be prepared to get destroyed a lot while learning!
I've played one tournament so far. I actually beat my first opponent but then got trounced firmly. I did get given a few spare cards though by kind players.
So after you've farmed noobs a bit until you've hit your budget and have mentally allocated a night or two a week to regular tournaments what comes next?
The next goal is to start farming and being farmed in Constructed competition. To do this you will need a deck. Decent decks generally have two elements in common - someone else will have figured the deck out and you just steal the idea from the internet and the cards are more expensive than is typical for the format. For instance in pauper a very popular spell that hasn't released for years might be as much as $20. You can get deck ideas and valuations from sites like mtgo-stats. Currently the cheapest deck that's done well in a Pauper tournament is $7.02, so you don't need to break the bank to have a competitive deck.
It might seem tempting to get a lot of cards that seem good and try to figure out your own strategies. This is certainly a very healthy element of Magic but from an efficiency point of view now is not the time. You're at the bottom of a huge learning cliff. Your notion that a certain combo might be good has almost certainly already been thought of and tried by other people and guess what? no one's winning tournaments with that deck.
There's also a huge financial difference between copying a cheapish deck off the winner's list at MTGO-stats and aspiring to collect all useful cards so you can build and test every deck type and all their variants.
At this stage it's important to manage your learning and your development. Your free resources are basically practice games in the Just For Fun room, weekly sponsored player tournaments (PREs) where you may sometimes win prizes and your event ticket budget. Each competitive pauper match costs 2 tickets to enter and pays nothing if you lose, 1 booster (currently worth 2.45 tix from the trade bots) if you win. The amount the bots pay for boosters varies. It's currently low because the Holiday event does not take this type of booster as entry free and so demand is low but will pick back up after the event closes. With the current depressed value of prizes you would need a 61% win rate to break even (to win boosters worth as many tix as it costs you to enter events, also called "going infinite"). The going infinite win rate goes down if the value of the boosters is higher but there's a ceiling - the store sells them at $3.99. $4 is break even, a competitive match costs 2 tix (worth $1) per player and awards 1 booster to the winner so if a booster is $4 then a 50% win rate is break even. The swings and fluctuations of the Magic secondary market are fascinating and another huge learning cliff in and of itself. In fact there are players who barely actually play the game itself, just play the market, much like auctionhouse players in WoW.
OK so here's my starter strategy, for what it's worth:
- establish goals and resources. It's very important to set a budget in Magic otherwise it becomes a money pit.
- invest your real world cash into multiple accounts farming newbies in the Sealed Deck events in order to win bonus tickets. The cards you win are a nice bonus as is the extensive experience of playing in this Limited format. (Normally Sealed deck events are a really expensive way to play Magic).
- research and plan for participation in regular tournaments. I'm interested in Pauper and Standard Pauper for now. It's a mistake to play too many different formats as you need to learn a lot to even be competent at one.
- invest some tix in a competitive deck that you stole from mtgo-stats. If you like deckbuilding you can do some if you like but you won't really know what you're doing so make sure it's just pauper decks or standard pauper using cheap commons.
- practice practice practice with your deck.
- spend the rest of your tix entering Constructed pauper 1v1 matches and keep track of your win rate. If you can get over 50% consistently you may want to enter the Pauper Dailies. These events pay out more prizes per ticket but you get zilch unless you can manage 3 or 4 wins from 4 games. If you have over 50% win rates in Constructed that should be possible but it's astronomically unikely if you're under 50%.
- at this point you need to keep playing and praticing and getting better. It's quite important to not get distracted by other ways to play like Standard where you can use rares or sealed deck where you get to open boosters. I mean do it if you find it fun and want to spend the money but it has no place in an efficient cheapskate approach.
- this point may be a good time to buy and test other decks. You may find there's a deck that works better for you than the one you've been using so far.
- the pauper meta is almost immune to the release of new sets. Occasionally a card will come in that's worth including (notably Treasure Cruise in the last release), but generally the strong cards all got released years ago and WotC is careful not to introduce more powerful cards in new content.
- the profitability of playing pauper will fluctuate wildly. When a new set is released there's going to be a rush of interest and booster price will be close to $4.00. This means you can make a very good return on playing if you have over 50% win rate. In fact in the longer term leaving Magic for a while then coming back to farm when there's a new release is probably a pretty decent strategy. Sell your boosters quick as you win them.
If you become very good at pauper you can use your baseline profitmaking ability to get further into the hobby. Farm tix and use them to buy obscure commons for deck tech or use them to buy a netdecked Standard deck and then you can start over learning a new meta.
- it's never economic to play Limited unless you're astoundingly good. If you like Limited the most efficient method economically is simply to open more accounts for the newbie events.
- if you're really good at Pauper the game insidiously lures you into deeper waters. Some pauper events give you QPs (qualification points). These allow you free entry into advanced tournaments. These tournaments don't use Pauper format. So you have the choice, do I waste my points or do I need to learn the advanced formats and compete there. At this point the notion that you could become a seriously good player, going professional and earning thousands in tournaments all over the world starts to seep in.
It's all nonsense except for 0.0001% but it's very very cleverly marketed. Magic has over 12 million players, earns its owners $400 million per year and has never had a year in which it didn't grow. Most astonishingly perhaps the average player age is 9 years. Even Eve Online probably has an average player age around 2 years and games like Swtor may measure such things in months.
I digress. I think I've given enough to allow people to participate cheaply without getting sucked in to spending hundreds of dollars. If you do give it a try add me, I'm Callduron1, and read this New Player Guide.
Wednesday, 31 December 2014
A return to Magic: The Gathering, this time online
My Christmas present to myself was a starter pack in Magic: the Gathering Online.
I have a long and rather complicated relationship with this game.
I played obsessively and competitively with the paper version about 20 years ago. I won two national tournaments here in the UK. (Not quite US standard but still pretty good). I spent about £5000 in the 18 months or so I played which seems to me a ridiculous amount of money for a game. (By comparison I have 5 accounts in Eve and pay about £90 a year, paying for one and getting isk for the others as I play).
So it's with an element of trepidation I get back into it.
So what's the attraction?
Magic is quite simply a very good game on many levels. It's fun, it's utterly absorbing, it's competitive and rewards competence and dedication. It also has an astonishingly deep metagame with an economy more complex even than Eve's and wonderful stories of shennanigans and bonhomie.
After some research it seems you don't need to be much better than average to more or less pay your way through the game. In fact if you're above average it's very possible to "go infinite." To play competitively you pay in a currency known as "tix" (a virtual item properly called an Event Ticket) and that wins you boosters depending how well you do, which can be sold for more tix. Win enough boosters and you take out more than you put in.
Of course there's a great trap in Magic and it's the hidden secret of most game economies. Most people don't cash out. And it's very easy to say to yourself "oh I have spent £200 but I've got cards worth £200 so I haven't really lost anything," then you stop playing, never cash out, and you've still spent £200 but you never got £200 back for your card collection. This is why cards like the notorious Black Lotus are so expensive because most copies of the card are sat in storage somewhere gathering dust (well hopefully not literally - dust is mildly acidic!)
The attraction for me is the complexity and seeing how well I can do. I'm not particularly bothered about having access to all the cards, as I was when I was a serious competitive player. (The danger though is that if I start playing it a lot I might get sucked back in). So for me that gives me the chance to eventually become a big fish in a small pond so to speak, ie a player who wins quite often but still hangs around the little leagues.
It's also a wonderful game, tense, utterly absorbing and a test of intellect.
I certainly haven't given up my other games, still playing Eve and Hearthstone but at some point the latter might have to go. Hearthstone feels very light after Magic, usually I know if I'll win or lose in 2 minutes in Hearthstone.
Next post I'll explain how I'm going about getting started with links and a strategy.
I have a long and rather complicated relationship with this game.
I played obsessively and competitively with the paper version about 20 years ago. I won two national tournaments here in the UK. (Not quite US standard but still pretty good). I spent about £5000 in the 18 months or so I played which seems to me a ridiculous amount of money for a game. (By comparison I have 5 accounts in Eve and pay about £90 a year, paying for one and getting isk for the others as I play).
So it's with an element of trepidation I get back into it.
So what's the attraction?
Magic is quite simply a very good game on many levels. It's fun, it's utterly absorbing, it's competitive and rewards competence and dedication. It also has an astonishingly deep metagame with an economy more complex even than Eve's and wonderful stories of shennanigans and bonhomie.
After some research it seems you don't need to be much better than average to more or less pay your way through the game. In fact if you're above average it's very possible to "go infinite." To play competitively you pay in a currency known as "tix" (a virtual item properly called an Event Ticket) and that wins you boosters depending how well you do, which can be sold for more tix. Win enough boosters and you take out more than you put in.
Of course there's a great trap in Magic and it's the hidden secret of most game economies. Most people don't cash out. And it's very easy to say to yourself "oh I have spent £200 but I've got cards worth £200 so I haven't really lost anything," then you stop playing, never cash out, and you've still spent £200 but you never got £200 back for your card collection. This is why cards like the notorious Black Lotus are so expensive because most copies of the card are sat in storage somewhere gathering dust (well hopefully not literally - dust is mildly acidic!)
 |
| $5000 for a small piece of paper with a picture of a flower. Ho hum.... |
The attraction for me is the complexity and seeing how well I can do. I'm not particularly bothered about having access to all the cards, as I was when I was a serious competitive player. (The danger though is that if I start playing it a lot I might get sucked back in). So for me that gives me the chance to eventually become a big fish in a small pond so to speak, ie a player who wins quite often but still hangs around the little leagues.
It's also a wonderful game, tense, utterly absorbing and a test of intellect.
I certainly haven't given up my other games, still playing Eve and Hearthstone but at some point the latter might have to go. Hearthstone feels very light after Magic, usually I know if I'll win or lose in 2 minutes in Hearthstone.
Next post I'll explain how I'm going about getting started with links and a strategy.
Monday, 15 December 2014
The circle is now complete!
The circle is now complete, the pupil has become the master.
My first article was just published on TheMittani.Com.
My first article was just published on TheMittani.Com.
Sunday, 23 November 2014
Bah, I feel like Liddell Hart
Most people have heard of the Blitzkrieg, the terrifying, tremendous revolution in military thinking that Germany introduced at the start of the Second World War. The idea is to punch through the enemy line by concentrating force on a narrow section of the enemy front (called the "Spearpoint") then drive tanks and motorised support through the gap to get behind the rest of the enemy front line soldiers and overrun their rear support areas like canteens ammo dumps and command bases.
Far fewer people know the story of the origins of the sensational new military doctrine.
A British officer, Captain Basil Liddell Hart, invented it and attempted to convince the rather traditional officials at the Ministry of Defence that it would work. Having recently been through the First World War where aggressive audacity was brutally punished by defensive positions based on machine guns and barbed wire there weren't many takers. It was in Germany where there was more of an appetite for a fresh approach.
In null sec it's very difficult to get fleet doctrines adopted by one's alliance. Theorycrafting doctrines is a job a lot of people want, so often it gets allocated by seniority even if the people coming up with the ideas are not active FCs. There are a lot of moving parts to implementing a doctrine from importing the ships, persuading pilots to own one, reimbursing them and of course taking them out and using them correctly.
So like a lot of FCs I come up with good ideas from time to time that my side leaves in the In Tray to moulder and gather dust.
While I was in Test I tried quite hard to get the alliance to adopt sniper cormorants. It was a real struggle, I got kinda half way and even ran a few cormorant fleets but people weren't turning up in the right ships and none of the other FCs were using the doctrine so it withered and died. I even took it against Mr Vee where I was able to out-manoeuvre his Jaguar fleet and keep the Cormorants in range to shoot while being out of range to get shot but we didn't have enough people in the right ships to apply effective dps. A few weeks later CFC introduced its very successful Harpy fleet - small rail sniper ships just like Cormorants which have been a spectacular success ever since and remain one of the CFC's most used doctrines.
Tonight we formed against NC. in Fountain to fight over a timer that they didn't want to contest. They formed in drop and blap Claws, a new doctrine not seen in null sec before. Eve Uni used to fly a similar Thrasher doctrine. The idea is you land, align, shoot then warp off, the whole process taking under 3 seconds. The Claws get one shot off, with the very high alpha of artillery and then are gone before anyone can shoot back (unless specially designed for fast lock). Even our instacane was not able to lock them in time and get a shot in.
The Claws did really well, killing about 16 CFC ships including this tengu. While we balled up in our blob we watched them perch above us, pick a target then warp down to it and kill it. For example, this scimitar. Note how negligible is the damage caused by the other interceptors in the gang. It was all about the Claws.
No Claws were lost in this battle.
Why am I feeling frustrated?
I'll just quote myself from a post I put in the Bastion forums after my friend Idoru and me had been theorycrafting on voice comms:
Here's a high skill, high damage variation. In this you don't point at all, you simply kill them. It's a concept for a fleet of only Clawtys. 576 volley damage at 27 km, 288 volley damage at 38 km (most inties can't even lock that far!). With close range ammo they do 1008 each volley damage allowing a fleet of 20 to warp to the bad guys, one shot a cruiser, then warp out immediately before most things can even lock them.
(Bastion forums, June 11th 2014)
Now I know how Liddell Hart must have felt when the German tanks chased the British Expeditionary Force out of France in 1940 using his ideas on Manoeuvre Warfare.
Far fewer people know the story of the origins of the sensational new military doctrine.
A British officer, Captain Basil Liddell Hart, invented it and attempted to convince the rather traditional officials at the Ministry of Defence that it would work. Having recently been through the First World War where aggressive audacity was brutally punished by defensive positions based on machine guns and barbed wire there weren't many takers. It was in Germany where there was more of an appetite for a fresh approach.
 | |
| Tank warfare guru Liddell Hart |
In null sec it's very difficult to get fleet doctrines adopted by one's alliance. Theorycrafting doctrines is a job a lot of people want, so often it gets allocated by seniority even if the people coming up with the ideas are not active FCs. There are a lot of moving parts to implementing a doctrine from importing the ships, persuading pilots to own one, reimbursing them and of course taking them out and using them correctly.
So like a lot of FCs I come up with good ideas from time to time that my side leaves in the In Tray to moulder and gather dust.
While I was in Test I tried quite hard to get the alliance to adopt sniper cormorants. It was a real struggle, I got kinda half way and even ran a few cormorant fleets but people weren't turning up in the right ships and none of the other FCs were using the doctrine so it withered and died. I even took it against Mr Vee where I was able to out-manoeuvre his Jaguar fleet and keep the Cormorants in range to shoot while being out of range to get shot but we didn't have enough people in the right ships to apply effective dps. A few weeks later CFC introduced its very successful Harpy fleet - small rail sniper ships just like Cormorants which have been a spectacular success ever since and remain one of the CFC's most used doctrines.
Tonight we formed against NC. in Fountain to fight over a timer that they didn't want to contest. They formed in drop and blap Claws, a new doctrine not seen in null sec before. Eve Uni used to fly a similar Thrasher doctrine. The idea is you land, align, shoot then warp off, the whole process taking under 3 seconds. The Claws get one shot off, with the very high alpha of artillery and then are gone before anyone can shoot back (unless specially designed for fast lock). Even our instacane was not able to lock them in time and get a shot in.
 |
| The devastating Claw class interceptor. |
No Claws were lost in this battle.
Why am I feeling frustrated?
I'll just quote myself from a post I put in the Bastion forums after my friend Idoru and me had been theorycrafting on voice comms:
Here's a high skill, high damage variation. In this you don't point at all, you simply kill them. It's a concept for a fleet of only Clawtys. 576 volley damage at 27 km, 288 volley damage at 38 km (most inties can't even lock that far!). With close range ammo they do 1008 each volley damage allowing a fleet of 20 to warp to the bad guys, one shot a cruiser, then warp out immediately before most things can even lock them.
(Bastion forums, June 11th 2014)
Now I know how Liddell Hart must have felt when the German tanks chased the British Expeditionary Force out of France in 1940 using his ideas on Manoeuvre Warfare.
Wednesday, 5 November 2014
Jumping is hard now.
FC: is anyone not clear to jump?
[20:51:18] BuffFresh > x
[20:51:19] Althurus Vendrius > x
[20:51:20] Odin Valknir > x 3hrs
[20:51:24] Jelle K > x
[20:51:24] Krestianin > x
[20:51:27] THE PROPHIT > X
[20:51:32] Minchurra > the red one you mouthbreathers
[20:51:32] Hirotakimora > the timeeerrrrr
[20:51:33] Julia Starling > the orange one
[20:51:33] Odin Valknir > yes thats reactivation timer
[20:51:38] Odin Valknir > YES THATS THE ORANGE ONE
[20:51:44] Raven Seer > rip
[20:51:48] Zen'ya Zoku > o7
[20:51:51] Odin Valknir > my blue is 23hrs
[20:51:55] Havoc Faux Amatin > why is ccp making us math hard
[20:52:14] h4kun4 > they wanna make eve a geek game again
[20:52:18] JohnyRingo > Odin Valknir you need a break lol
[20:52:30] h4kun4 > ohwait
[20:52:35] JohnyRingo > cuz its gonna go up now..ways up
[20:52:53] Odin Valknir > i cant jump till the orange timer goes away anyway
[20:52:58] Odin Valknir > so i may as well drop from fleet
[20:53:03] Adrie Atticus > hide in the tower
[20:53:16] Odin Valknir > my orange timer is 3hrs so lol
[20:51:18] BuffFresh > x
[20:51:19] Althurus Vendrius > x
[20:51:20] Odin Valknir > x 3hrs
[20:51:24] Jelle K > x
[20:51:24] Krestianin > x
[20:51:27] THE PROPHIT > X
[20:51:32] Minchurra > the red one you mouthbreathers
[20:51:32] Hirotakimora > the timeeerrrrr
[20:51:33] Julia Starling > the orange one
[20:51:33] Odin Valknir > yes thats reactivation timer
[20:51:38] Odin Valknir > YES THATS THE ORANGE ONE
[20:51:44] Raven Seer > rip
[20:51:48] Zen'ya Zoku > o7
[20:51:51] Odin Valknir > my blue is 23hrs
[20:51:55] Havoc Faux Amatin > why is ccp making us math hard
[20:52:14] h4kun4 > they wanna make eve a geek game again
[20:52:18] JohnyRingo > Odin Valknir you need a break lol
[20:52:30] h4kun4 > ohwait
[20:52:35] JohnyRingo > cuz its gonna go up now..ways up
[20:52:53] Odin Valknir > i cant jump till the orange timer goes away anyway
[20:52:58] Odin Valknir > so i may as well drop from fleet
[20:53:03] Adrie Atticus > hide in the tower
[20:53:16] Odin Valknir > my orange timer is 3hrs so lol
Tuesday, 4 November 2014
I've started a corp: Officer Training School
I'm delighted to say I'm giving running a corp a try. I've had experience in previous games of running guilds - in Star Wars Galaxies where we acquired a certain notoriety and in Rifts where we couldn't quite progress in the raids fast enough to retain our useful players. I also co-founded a WoW guild that was server first for several years.
The Officer Training School is a corp built around a playstyle - intense interest in Eve tactics with a bunch of enthusiasts testing out different doctrines tactics and fits. Nullsec is a great environment for this kind of play as we see all sorts of pvp from big fleet fights to small skirmishes and solo combat.
Anyone interested in joining or simply in talking to us join in game channel OffTS
The Officer Training School is a corp built around a playstyle - intense interest in Eve tactics with a bunch of enthusiasts testing out different doctrines tactics and fits. Nullsec is a great environment for this kind of play as we see all sorts of pvp from big fleet fights to small skirmishes and solo combat.
Anyone interested in joining or simply in talking to us join in game channel OffTS
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