Unofficial Tournament

[Morakas]

B5 A Call to Arms tournament on Sunday October 15th at 1pm. The location is Blue Dragon Games which is located at the southwest corner of Mound and West Utica Road in Shelby Twp. Michigan. The address is 45581 Mound Road, Shelby Twp MI 48317. Phone number is (586)323-6700.

We will be using the Tournament Pack as standard fleet list. Players will be allowed 5 raid points to generate their fleet. No more than 4 ships/flights of the same type. No more than 1 independent wing of auxillery craft purchased per ship purchased. This is restricting but I'm trying to stop cheese fleets. If anyone has a better idea please let me know. Players will fight 3 battles. Registration is $5.00 at the door. Prizes to be announced and will be based on attendance. I apologize for the short notice.

I appreciate the input of your responses. I will for go the above restrictions and reconsider the limits. However no chesse fleets!!!!! No Vorlon and Shadow, local club thinks they are unfair. I am also considering no Minbari. The only members of local club who think Minbari are fair are those whom play Minbari. No offense meant. I myself have beat up some Minbari on occasion but I knew they were coming and used a lot of Corvans.

 

[katadder]

no more than 1 aux flight per ship, guess there goes the novas use.

 

[lastbesthope]

We will be using the Tournament Pack as standard fleet list. Players will be allowed 5 raid points to generate their fleet. No more than 3 ships/flights of the same type.

This is very limiting on the ISA player

LBH

 

[Burger]

Yeah, Drazi players are screwed too... and Raiders

 

[Reaverman]

We will be using the Tournament Pack as standard fleet list. Players will be allowed 5 raid points to generate their fleet. No more than 3 ships/flights of the same type.

This is very limiting on the ISA player

LBH

Screws every race, and retards fighters full stop! Something like that, is going to encourage people to just buy Shadow Hunters!

 

[B5freak]

I think the "ships/flights" might have meant "ships/independent wings". If so, I think you could scale it back to:

No more than 4 ships of the same type, no more than 1 independent wing of aux craft per capital ship purchased.

 

[Locutus9956]

That still means alot of fleets are VERY limited in what they can choose. I know the intent is to stop things like 10 saggs etc but in some cases (as noted in the case of the Drazi and ISA) but this doesnt prevent other types of 'cheese fleets' (such as the Vorlon hvy cruiser, or the 2 Shadow hunters). Now of course Im assuming this is refering to the old tourney list not the armageddon preview one that some people have but in all honesty I think if youre going to limit what people can take to try and prevent cheesy fleets you need to be fairly specific about it.

As much as I like the PL system it DOES tend to lead to problems with generalising things a bit too much (10 sags are broken and cheesy, 10 warbirds is a realistic drazi fleet for example).

If I were to run another tourney with the tournament lists I would put the following restrictions in:

No first ones - I know theres people out there who are very fond of their shadows and vorlons but frankly I just think theres too many play balance issues with those fleets for competitive play (even in a 'friendly' tournament)

No more than 3 specialist ships per fleet. I would consider the following to be specialists ships:

Sullust Destroyers
Dag'Kar Missile Frigates
Saggitarius Missile cruisers (Id still count the tourney version as raid frankly)
ALL scout ships
(and any other ships I thought of (I would spend some time coming up with the list)

No more than 1 raid point may be spent on fighter wings

Now of course in armageddon the first ones are very different so I might consider letting them back in but Id have to think about it.

 

[B5freak]

locutus 9956 wrote:

As much as I like the PL system it DOES tend to lead to problems with generalising things a bit too much (10 sags are broken and cheesy, 10 warbirds is a realistic drazi fleet for example).

Agreed, though I think it could work if the ships were actually balanced across PL's as opposed to "across fleets". If, for example, a Solarhawk was just as attractive a selection as a Sulust or Prefect, a fleet of 10 Warbirds might still be realistic, but a mixed fleet of some Warbirds and some other Drazi craft would be more likely.

 

[Reaverman]

locutus 9956 wrote:

As much as I like the PL system it DOES tend to lead to problems with generalising things a bit too much (10 sags are broken and cheesy, 10 warbirds is a realistic drazi fleet for example).

Agreed, though I think it could work if the ships were actually balanced across PL's as opposed to "across fleets". If, for example, a Solarhawk was just as attractive a selection as a Sulust or Prefect, a fleet of 10 Warbirds might still be realistic, but a mixed fleet of some Warbirds and some other Drazi craft would be more likely.

You are confusing regular games/B5 universe with Tourney's, they are two seperate entities.

 

[B5freak]

Reaver,

Not sure I follow your logic. With the tournament lists going away, why is a tournament game any different from a regular game? Even if they weren't, Matt has stated that some ships are indeed more powerful than their PL would suggest because other ships in the fleet are weaker than the PL they've been assigned (the Sagittarius and Solarhawk being excellent examples of each).

 

[Reaverman]

Reaver,

Not sure I follow your logic. With the tournament lists going away, why is a tournament game any different from a regular game? Even if they weren't, Matt has stated that some ships are indeed more powerful than their PL would suggest because other ships in the fleet are weaker than the PL they've been assigned (the Sagittarius and Solarhawk being excellent examples of each).

I mean that a Tourney the players are trying to configure a specific fleet, to win the rouney. Consequently they are more likely to pick ships, that might stray from the traditional selections. Where as a campaign player, is selecting ships, that he's going to be using for more than one-off games.

 

[B5freak]

Ah, so you're talking tournament vs campaign. For many of us, a "regular game" is a one-off game.

Still don't think it makes a difference though. After all, a ship that isn't worth it's points is probably more of a hinderance in a campaign. I mean, why spend a Raid point on a Solarhawk or a Battle point on a Stormfalcon if you know those ships won't stand up in a fight? That just makes for a points sink that will take away from more useful ships and will give your opponent easy victory points.

Heck, if I was fighting against someone in a campaign that I knew had taken sub-par ships, I'd willingly sacrifice victory in a game or two if it meant I could take out an appreciable portion of his fleet with fewer losses to my own.

 

[Burger]

Campaigns have battles of levels other than Raid... you need higher level ships if you get a War fight.

 

[B5freak]

burger wrote:

Campaigns have battles of levels other than Raid... you need higher level ships if you get a War fight.

Not necessarily, and even then, it only highlights the imbalance. Going back to the Drazi example, lets say I get in a War fight. I can buy 6 Warbirds or two Stormfalcons per point (assuming Armageddon system). If the Stormfalcon was equivalent in capability to most other fleets' Battle selections, taking the Stormfalcon might make sense, but since I know it's not, why not go with the Warbirds?

Assuming that the true power ratio between PLs is supposed to be 2:1, I'm effectively losing 2 "ships worth" of capability (should be 8 Warbirds but I'm only getting 6), but since my other choices (Stormfalcon, Nightfalcon, Solarhawk) aren't worth the points anyway, and the Warbird is actually one of the stronger ships of it's PL, I'm actually getting closer to my opponents fleet strength by not going with the big ships.

Add to that the effect that a lucky Critical can have on a fleet weighted towards high-points ships, and a swarm of small, "stronger than most ships from their PL" ships can be devastating. And what's worse, if you're lucy enough to be using a race that has a really good, low PL ship, they're dirt cheap to replace in a campaign. In a recent campaign here, I played Abbai and had a fleet largely composed of Milani for those very reasons.

 

[lastbesthope]

Ah, so you're talking tournament vs campaign. For many of us, a "regular game" is a one-off game.

Still don't think it makes a difference though.

But a tourney is a series of one off games with unknown opponents, whereas a one off game with someone at the local club, you'll more likely know at least which race you're going up against before you pivk your fleet.

LBH

 

[B5freak]

LBH wrote:

But a tourney is a series of one off games with unknown opponents, whereas a one off game with someone at the local club, you'll more likely know at least which race you're going up against before you pivk your fleet.

Yes, and? If anything that only emphasizes Reaver's statement about building a fleet designed to win. In a one-off game, if you know the race you're going to play against, and only have to worry about beating that one race, it's all the easier to take advantage of fleet imbalances.

The core arguement is that you will continue to have "10 Sagittarius fleet" issues so long as you have ships that are either worth more than they cost in points or worth less than they cost. If ship A is rated as Skirmish but has an actual worth closer to that of a Raid ship and ship B is rated at Raid but is actually closer to a Skirmish in capability, why would I ever take B over A?

 

[lastbesthope]

My point is that in a ytourney, unless therei is an uber gleet (10 Sag allegedly) then you have to take ana ll rounder as you will have multiple enemies, in a 1 off game with a knoewn enemy, you can tailor the fleet to that enemy.

LBH

 

[B5freak]

Sorry to seem thick, but still not following how your arguement proves or disproves the topic of conversation. So I have to build a well-rounded fleet for a tournament. So what? If a ship is really powerful for it's PL it goes into the list since it will be really useful against the widest range of opponents. If it's a lot weaker than its PL, then it stays off the list since it could only have limited applicability at best.

Ergo, whether we're talking tournament, campaign, or one-off game, the current list incentivizes me to take stronger ships and penalizes me for taking weaker ones.

 

[lastbesthope]

My point is that there are 3 types of game One-off, tourney and campaign.

I may have misinterppreted but I thought you were suggesting that there were only 2 types of game, my apologies if I got that wrong, I'll just go throw myself in the brig to be tortured by G'Kar's singing

:lol:

LBH

 

[B5freak]

A most fitting punishment. :lol: