I'd like to jump in real quick here...

I do think there was a comment or two about SG and that boards with it "may have a disadvantage", which I can see the prejudiced against Cumber's board may have been pre-existing or at least thought to be pre-existing.  I think it's good that M57 at least tried the board, I really don't think he joined just to be a jerk and to bash it, but as he has even said he doesn't fully understand SG, which boards you don't understand usually aren't as much fun, no surprises there really.  That said, I hope M57 (and others) do attempt to just jump on board with SG and gain that understanding rather than waiting for a system that really only a select few will understand at go live.

As for the board, it was my understanding that Cumber seen some areas that could be fixed with his Pangaea board.  I noticed the "non-losing strategy" of never leaving the river early in the Review game (didn't think about it in the Dev game), and M57 ended up putting that strategy to the test.  There was this "issue" and then there was the "issue" of a potential elimination on turn 1 if you had a bad turn order or could lead to even implementing the "non-losing strategy" if you didn't take a spot outside the river on turn 1.  Ultimately I personally think these were 2 fairly major flaws with the board (well 1 major and 1 minor probably), but I do think there are options for Cumber and some that were suggested in the Review game, although my guess is that Cumber can come up with something even more fantastic to fix the flaws.

Having played in some of the Dev process of Cumber boards and playing in many many of his Live boards, I would say that this one just didn't feel "Cumberdale complete" yet.  I think he hit the time wall and submitted what he had, which I do think is good has originality to it and has the potential to be a great SG board, but just wasn't quite finished yet.  I do hope he continues to hash it out and ends up submitting it again!

P.S. I'm bias against all boards that I lose the public game on. *hint*hint*

Gimli wrote:

As for Alpha, you may have to recheck what you think he admitted. He has no idea what you refer to. Cuz he sure doesn't view the capitals and river situation as an issue.

as for this comment "I feel the need to intervene here and say that this is pretty weak." i can't really guess what you are actually referring to out of my big chunk, but I will guess you did not either read or did not understand my post previous. So nothing for me to actually say, but I guess I should let you know I did read it.

Last post from cumberdale in review game:

" just waiting for a day when i have a chance to get my hands dirty and fix this sucker..."

I may have misunderstood this, but this seems to be a withdrawal of the board based on known problems.  As to that review game, Raptor was ready to pass and no one had objected to this in game (I wouldn't pass it, but I wouldn't have block it either).

As for the pretty weak comment, I was saying that I thought it was pretty weak to call others a "bunch of morons" for voicing their concern.

Although the river turtling may not constitute a major flaw for other players, it was for me (again I wasn't going to fail it for this reason, but I wasn't going to pass it either).  I understand your argument that if everyone did nothing but place and end turn then every board would be broken.  In this situation, one player can do nothing and ruin the game for everyone which is a different scenario and would upset me if it happened in a game that I was playing to win.  There was an in game suggestion for how to fix this without any graphic updates or new territories or change to the starting scenario or even change in game-play that would have taking a short amount of time to implement so that a player "turtling" player could not sit and stall out the game.

hey Alpha... that comment is not for the majority of people. That was more about the the noobs (mostly on warfish) that played 1 game of BAO, reviewed boards giving it 1 star. In their reviews, they are even admitting they don't understand it.

So once again, you can dislike SG all you want... not the issue for me. I don't care, there are lots of different things to like it. I am just lamenting a great board maker being "chased off" in a sense.

I think your quote just shows he was caving to the pressure. But since it wasn't bad in his opinion, he doesn't really feel the need to fix things. You know when you know you can do better, get that mental energy thinking of the achievement? Couldn't happen here.

Yertle: again, I don't think we can go around failing boards/calling it major flaws when you have to assume the worst in people- the non-losing strategy assumes someone will be a dick and not ever move out of spite. I think we have to assume people are reasonable and are joining to win, or to have fun.  If you want to delay, your chances of getting bonuses landslides downwards. The only way that would pay off (and here I am arguing against myself) would be in an elimination style tourney.

As for the turn 1 elim... that would be pretty difficult again with the fast fall of attack odds. if you spread yourself really thin, it would take an extreme amount of luck to get hit at every place. I also don't think that if you went the major stacks way in several places, that you will find all your opponents doing the same thing and having astounding dice rolls. And I was pretty sure that there were several land places that could only be hit by 1 place. Did this ever come close to happening in any of the test games?

Gimli: I agree with your sentiment that not finishing the board and releasing it is a shame because I liked the idea a lot.  I also agree that someone would have be a dick to place and end turn, but since that is a possibility and it will eventually happen and it could be fixed, I think it should have been, and then released, not only for the competition, but also as a great addition to the site and list of Cumberdale classics.

To be honest, I believe that I misunderstood the intention of your initial post to be a call of protest, but really it is meant to be a call for support of Cumberdale's board.  I do not believe that there lack of support for the board here and would be happy to implement a "factory fix" that would capture all of the river sites when Pangaea is owned.  This would take about 20 minutes using xml.

Yertle wrote:

..rather than waiting for a system that really only a select few will understand at go live..

I think that there are a number of misconceptions about the system that I propose.  At least my vision for it sees it as playing almost identically to regular risk from a players perspective.  Yertle, you have played it just fine without the benefit of an interface that would move your troops normally through to a "hoped for" outcome. ..but I won't go into details there.

By contrast..

Percentage dice are hard to understand for players who are use to regular dice.  Why was it necessary to develop such a different paradigm for battle resolution?  Even if it is an improvement over standard dice, is it that substantial that it was worth the confusion? Personally, I think %-Dice are flawed.  With the standard 60% v 70% dice, if I attack your 100 with my 100 (first), the outcome is in your favor.  Where is the logic in this? Furthermore, this battle is likely to take more than two turns to resolve. This, in a format for play that is inherently slow to develop (there is no blitzing, or even the possibility of semi-blitzling - I don't see how URange as proposed could be incorporated into SG).

Keeping track of SG moves is very hard to understand..

As you place orders, there is no way to keep track of what you have done other than to view a pop-up spread-sheet window.  In a format where order is critical, this will be the kiss of death for players who need to see a "current" board that reflects their intentions.  Those little dots give you little to no idea of how you have allocated your units,  not to mention fortified units.

Understanding the mechanics of turn order is very hard to understand, though I am told that this is of little importance to players (similar arguments and explanations could be used for M-Engine, where there is no player order - a paradigm that will be hard to understand for many because the dice roll in psuedo-realtime - but this will be opaque to players and the dice will behave like normal dice).

SG as implemented just doesn't meet the standards that are placed on current suggestions for improvements to this site.

I do "understand" it.  I just don't "get" it.

Sorry to hi-jack -- I probably should have started another thread.

Alpha wrote:

Gimli wrote:

As for Alpha, you may have to recheck what you think he admitted. He has no idea what you refer to. Cuz he sure doesn't view the capitals and river situation as an issue.

as for this comment "I feel the need to intervene here and say that this is pretty weak." i can't really guess what you are actually referring to out of my big chunk, but I will guess you did not either read or did not understand my post previous. So nothing for me to actually say, but I guess I should let you know I did read it.

Last post from cumberdale in review game:

" just waiting for a day when i have a chance to get my hands dirty and fix this sucker..."

I may have misunderstood this, but this seems to be a withdrawal of the board based on known problems.  As to that review game, Raptor was ready to pass and no one had objected to this in game (I wouldn't pass it, but I wouldn't have block it either).

I had a private communication with Cumberdale and he asked me to fail the board review. 

I was willing to pass the board if he felt it was finished.

M57 wrote:

Sorry to hi-jack -- I probably should have started another thread.

Since this is the voting thread for the contest can we take this conversation elsewhere?

Sorry, I believe that was fault.

Ok, so where do I vote for all of these.  I've played all of them and I know which one I think is best.

Beastlymaster wrote:

Ok, so where do I vote for all of these.  I've played all of them and I know which one I think is best.

Vote right here!  Hopefully now that voting is starting, we can all agree to keep this thread as clean as possible and take other conversations to other threads.  Don't forget - you have to vote for top 3!

Do you have to finish the games to vote?  If so,  does being terminated count?  ..even if the game isn't over?

Terminated, meaning eliminated, or players voted to end?

Either way... we still have almost two months before the deadline to vote, so I personally would recommend that voters take that time and play a few games on each board.  However, we are basically going on the honor system, so IMO it is up to each player to decide when they are ready to vote.

So we just submit our vote in thread? Or should we appoint an election judge and everyone PM's the judge with their vote in private?

PMing would make things clearer and easier to find, as the votes could be interspered with other discussions on voting, as is pretty much happening here anyways!

Tom would make the most sense, but does he (or we) want to distract him from his other duties? or maybe just another, clean thread of "vote only"?

Ozyman wrote:

Beastlymaster wrote:

Ok, so where do I vote for all of these.  I've played all of them and I know which one I think is best.

Vote right here!  Hopefully now that voting is starting, we can all agree to keep this thread as clean as possible and take other conversations to other threads.  Don't forget - you have to vote for top 3!

O, why don't you start a clean thread with a title that clearly states the purpose of the thread.  

Something like.

VOTE HERE for your favorite Pangea Board.

The first post could restate guidelines and suggest how the thread is to be used, including something like..

Remember ONLY votes are allowed here. Please post any questions about voting to the invitation thread.

..that's my 2 cents.

I liked your idea M57.  Here is the new voting thread:

http://www.wargear.net/forum/showthread/1722/VOTE_HERE_for_your_favorite_Pangea_Board

Please no discussion in that thread, only votes!

If someone does happen to vote in this thread, I'll make a post in the official voting thread and copy their votes over there.

I am willing to setup a googledoc, or similar, to handle voting, I am only vaguely familiar with this so it will take a moment, but it could show current standing without seeing who has actually voted for which boards, but the voters who have voted could be tracked.  I need to practice this anyways and we could put the link in the voting thread and board descriptions.