Tuesday, June 1, 2010

USB Escapism

Well, once again I’m missing my USB stick. That little bugger just keeps escaping me. So, I’ll have to present you with something off the cuff.

Today, I’m going to talk about Magic: The Gathering, and how you can relate it to Warhammer 40,000. Why Magic? Because, after picking up Magic Online (a digital version of the game – pretty much just an interface for playing the game), I’ve had many more chances to play Magic than Warhammer.

Overall, in fact, it’s much easier to become “good” at Magic than it is to become “good” at Warhammer. This has nothing to do with the game’s complexity or difficulty though. The big reason is the fact that you do get more chances to play Magic than Warhammer. In Magic, you can play a match in as short a time-span as 5 minutes, although a common length for the game would be 10 or 15 minutes. Warhammer, on the other hand, takes a good 2 and a half hours even for a straight-up, 1-on-1, 1500 point match. You need to set up terrain, place armies, go through 5 or 6 turns of back and forth action/reaction, and your tactical decisions take longer to execute.

So, in the time that it takes you to have 1 battle, you could probably have played 10 games of Magic. You’ll learn a lot more about how Magic works from those 10 games than you will from that 1 game.

But, regardless of the differences, Magic and Warhammer are built on very similar concepts. In both you have a pre-determined pool of resources that you choose to play with. In Warhammer this is your army list, and in Magic this is your deck list. You both play a game, trying to maximize your use of limited resources. Warhammer is much more a game of controlled loses, as your army tends to be diminished, whereas Magic is more about gaining and growing your power-base in order to have a superior lead over your opponent (although games can be won without doing this; see “Red Deck Wins” philosophies about trying to win before you run out of gas).

In the end, every game in the world comes down to a similar basic resource – time. In Warhammer, think of everything you could do if you could take 2 turns in a row – think of how destructive that would be for your enemy. In Magic, you literally can take an extra turn with cards like (((Time Warp))). Even games like Monopoly or Chess have a basis of gaining ground on your opponent – using moves, cards, or actions to make your moves count for more and making your opponent’s count for less, effectively gaining fractions of a turn on your opponents.

In Magic, gaining a turn on your opponent is much easier – and not just because of cards like Time Warp. The crux of the matter comes down to what does it mean to gain a turn? Magic theory states this as laying down an extra land (bypassing the one-land a turn rule), or drawing extra cards (bypassing the one-card drawn per turn rule). There are some other ways (like having extra Upkeeps (Paradox Haze), Attack Phases (Relentless Assault), etc.) but they’re much, much more rare.

So, if you can do things like return a land to their hand (Boomerang), you can “gain” a turn on your opponent. If you destroy multiple creatures with a single card (Consume the Meek), you “gain” a turn on your opponent. If you cast a spell that does a lot of different things (Cruel Ultimatum), you “gain a turn” (or in this case, multiple turns) on your opponent.

Warhammer, meanwhile, is a lot more difficult for gaining ground on your opponent. There are no special abilities that give a whole extra turn, nothing that stops your opponent from moving their entire army, and zilch that can call in an extra unit to appear in the game.

Instead, you have to rely on tactics and strategy to gain ground. Every turn that you merely Stun an enemy vehicle, you gain ground as the vehicle is effectively destroyed for one more turn. Every time you force your opponent through difficult terrain, you slow them down, giving you more time to get into a better position or send another volley of Pulse Rifles into their ranks. Every time you make an assault with the intention of preventing them from moving on their next turn, you take ground away from them.

In Warhammer this is called “controlling the flow of the game”. Are you the one who is dictating what happens in the game, or is your opponent dictating what happens? In short, if you’re controlling it, then you’re likely winning. If your opponent is controlling it, then you’re likely losing.

Take this situation; you have a Seer Council and are facing up against Grey Knights. You really want to get your Seer Council into combat with their Terminators. It’s your best chance at slowing them down if you can get a “Doom” psychic power off on them. However, there’s a Land Raider nearby that will just take apart your army if you let it live, and only your Seer Council is in a position to tackle it.

In a sense, at this point, you may think that you’re in control. You have your choice of targets, and can go for the best chance-to-profit move (attacking the Land Raider). But really, you’re probably out of control. In the time it takes you to attack the Land Raider, the Terminators will have moved away from you, meaning that to attack them back again will take twice as much effort as it did before. The same goes for the Land Raider. Yes you have a choice, but neither of them are good.

Overall, it’s easier for a close-combat style army to control the flow of the game than it is for the shooting army. Shooting armies get a bonus at the start of the game through army placement, but once on the table they’ll be stuck in their initial deployments – while the close combat army still has lots of options for taking you apart.

When the game is between two shooting armies, placement is even more important – as shooting and destroying one unit can allow you to gain ground on your opponent as they can’t fire back.

Things are most complicated when the game is between two close combat armies. It’s all too easy for the game to collapse into one grand melee somewhere on the table – with forces pilling in on all sides. If it looks like this is about to happen, carefully judge the strength of all units that likely will get involved. The winner of the grand melee often wins the game. Remember a backup plan should your forces fail. If it looks like your opponent has the advantage, turn tail and run for cover and reinforcements. You may be giving some ground to your opponent, but you can gain a lot of it back by deciding where and when the grand melee takes place.

And now, you're moment of Zen...

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