..Did I get your attention? 

I'm in the process of thinking how to port my Appomattox board over to WG, which will be no small feat on a site that eschews circle-fills.  Actually, I look forward to redesigning it.

Make no mistake. This is not an even game.  Now I'm not going to claim that the design does not spare the smallest of details in its attempt to achieve renown as having reached the pinnacle of historical accuracy, but I do prefer in this particular case that changing history be challenging.

With proper play, Grant has an advantage.  Well ..I should say, with proper play by Lee, Grant has a slight advantage.  I don't see a problem with this.  White has the advantage in chess tournaments. No one complains about that.  With random seating, over time players will play Grant as often as they play Lee.  In tournament play (assuming that the seats are mixed), the players who pull off the upsets will win.  I'm actually excited about this because of the adoption of Swiss and RR formats here.  

Which leads to my question about the structure of these formats.  In a 1x1 game, is the seating random (I.e., you could get lucky and play Grant through the entire tournament), or is it predetermined (i.e., alternating)?

If the former, I might be a tad more motivated to strive for parity.

2 points:

Yes. It's in the guidelines.

And secondly, with a little creativity it's easy to turn a circle-fill map into a fill map for this site. Check out Cramchakle's battle board for a fantastic example.

Thanks, asm

Yes, it is random ..or yes, it is alternating? Or Yes, ..just because I ask questions that I should be able to find here on the site without making annoying posts?

Of course, you know I can figure out how to make a circle-fill using fill map technology. It's just that because circle-fill not explicitly supported, the implication is that it is frowned upon.

Guidelines..? ..for tournaments? Where? I guess I'd better go looking for them..

Sorry, yes to the question in the headline. In general you'll have a tough time selling a board to the Review team that explicitly favors one seat over the other.

Tournaments, I have no idea. Ask Tom if he'd be willing to write some code for tourneys on 1v1 boards that balances seat positions.

I get what you mean about the implication of disapproval for circle-fill maps but that's not really the case. The goal we're going for there is a bit more indirect (implicitly filtering out really poor maps by requiring mapmakers to figure out territory fill before submitting a map for review); I would say there's really no bias against well-executed circle-fill-style boards.

asm wrote:  In general you'll have a tough time selling a board to the Review team that explicitly favors one seat over the other.

It's all but impossible to make a board completely fair.  Chess, again, is an example. 

What if a design is perceived to be unfair when in fact it's not.  Does the designer need to present a mathematical proof?

Clearly, there's a line to be drawn, right?

I'm going to answer my own question and conjecture that the spirit of the law is that designers should attempt to make their boards as fair as possible, and that the reviewers are on the lookout for, and do their best to help the designer in this effort.

Ok, what about a "hypothetical" board where one player (Let's call them Grant ) can get away with a pretty much straight-ahead go directly at the enemy Risk style of play, but where the other player, (Let's call them Lee), has trickier decisions to make, which as it turns out, are typically not foreseen or understood by a large number of casual players.  So when one looks at the actual playing stats for the game over time, Grant appears to have an advantage..

How might the great and worthy council consider such a board??

M, you are 57 varieties of awesome sauce. (Which may beat Toaster, I'm not sure 'cause he's exponential).

You do realize that the 'great and worthy council' consists of a bunch of regular people who went through the time consuming and harrowing process of asking to join the board review team?

You are also aware that said highly exclusive board review team basically made up the rules as we went along, that the rules are not set in stone, and that I wound up writing the Board Review section of the help file in about 4 minutes:

http://www.wargear.net/help/display/Board%20Review

Except I didn't write it, I just consolidated what everyone else said in this thread and put it into 'friendly' text:

http://www.wargear.net/forum/showthread/229p1/Board_Review_Guidelines

All you need to do in order to make a Circle style map is make your fill areas circles. Oddly enough I put up a huge bitchy fight against disallowing circle mode for public games months ago. I was overruled, and damn if I wasn't wrong.

This site is a very nice hybrid of democratic input, meritocracy, and ultimate dictatorial control by tom. So far it seems to have worked out OK.

I guess what I'm saying is, relax. Join the Board review team. Submit your Appomattox map, write in the Rules that it's not a beginners map and that Grant may have an easier time of it, and as long as it doesn't suck in other ways it'll get passed.


PS: 'Yes, ..just because I ask questions that I should be able to find here on the site without making annoying posts?"

I'm sure Yertle would LOVE help in editing the Help files!

11's,

Thanks for the vote of confidence.  I need it right now because with 3 boards under review, not one has passed muster yet. (I can't wait for a good mountain climbing tournament)

But seriously, I'm not worried or anything.  I will never make a "beautiful" board.  I'm a teacher and musician, not a visual artist.  I draw a mean stick man, but that's about the limits of my capabilities where art is concerned.  I feel that is respected here.

I have to say that the comments offered in the three boards under review have been wonderfully helpful.  And though it is not the responsibility of the review members to give feedback and or otherwise act as a development advisory board, those regular people you speak of have clearly gone beyond the call.  As you you can imagine, King of the Mountains is a nightmare to border without error.  I'm not embarrassed to admit that it was submitted with what I consider a significant number of missing borders and incorrect modifiers, yet I did not hear one complaint..  On the contrary, I have received nothing but compliments for what works and thoughtfully constructive criticism for what doesn't or is of questionable quality.

Thanks for the links..  And perhaps this summer, after school's out, and I get a better handle on the mechanics of map-making ala WarGear, I will be able to offer my newcomer/dilettante mapmaker's perspective to the Help file effort.

I'm not so sure about King of the Mountains at this point, but in my opinion Assassin and Fall of Rome are ready for approval. In any case I'll warn you to look out for the immanent invasion Wargear by a barrage of M57 boards.

M57 wrote:

 Which leads to my question about the structure of these formats.  In a 1x1 game, is the seating random (I.e., you could get lucky and play Grant through the entire tournament), or is it predetermined (i.e., alternating)?

If the former, I might be a tad more motivated to strive for parity.

I'm fairly certain it is Random, just from watching the GearWars tournament that's been my take.

Don't worry about not having "passed muster," M, we're just a slow bunch. Personally I like to play several games on a given board. But in general you just have to wait for the review team to at least finish the game. I agree that Fall of Rome is ready. Matter of fact, I'm going to go pass it now.

IRoll11s wrote:

... (Which may beat Toaster, I'm not sure 'cause he's exponential).

I tried to add "+ ∞" just to be safe, but the system told me I had too many characters even though I only had 17/19.

M57, i personally love the KotM map. can't wait for it to go live! keep with it!

i also kind of really like appomattox too and have never considered it 'unfair'. difficult, yes. balanced...pretty much. you definitely have to play to the best of your ability when playing that board cus pretty much any screwup (from either side) could result in a loss.

Appomattox Map.. cardboard? No. Delicious? Yes!

IRoll11s wrote:

All you need to do in order to make a Circle style map is make your fill areas circles.  

I don't think that a board needs to have border to border fill to be called a fill map.  If the background serves a purpose or has a just cause then you can use small fill spaces like the flags on WarGear Quest or the spaces on Yertle's Mario board. 

Flags would be perfect for your board.

Speaking of the High Council, did anyone have an issue with The RiskyVerse or is it just not live because. Just curious and didn't know where else to post the question.

I think you found a flaw in the Review process RB. I didn't have any problem with it. Once I finished kicking everyone's butt across known space and the game was over, I just kind of forgot and/or assumed someone else would promote it.

Ha, I just went to check and I don't have a promote checkmark, which means I must have been in a Dev and not the Review game, sorry.  You'll have to have someone else do it.

I don't know about you all but the whole thing is still more confusing that I think it has to be.  Dev games that not everyone can comment on and you need direct links to, review games that everyone can comment on but not everyone can promote.  Review games that you can join if you are a member of the review board, but Dev games you need to be privately invited, or publicly if you change a setting.  All very confuzzling.

RiskyBack wrote: Speaking of the High Council, did anyone have an issue with The RiskyVerse or is it just not live because. Just curious and didn't know where else to post the question.

I try and not promote Review games that I don't actually play in the Rev game (played a Dev game on it though), but I don't see a problem with it passing.

How does one become a member of the review board?

If all I have to do is ask, then I am asking.

I give Alpha the super-secret handshake special sponsoring for Review membership.

I don't have the checkmark for RiskyVerse either.

Sorry, i was eliminated out of that game early, thought one of the 'players' in that game *coughvatarocoughkjeldcough* would have taken care of it. I'll take a look and hit it if i don't see any commentary stating otherwise (which i don't remember while i was watching).