by Friman
Dam the Man wrote:
Wanted to touch in this as I kept thinking about this bit last evening after logging off. Something I coined "theme smoke screen" for. Just a maybe, but perhaps you are in fact the better player of the two of you, in terms of min-maxing and in Euros, there is rarely a theme to distract you from the mechanics. Whereas, in AT games, could it be that he is able maintain his focus on the min-max mechanics (see through the theme smoke screen) as he is less interested in theme (as you do refer to him as euro/chess player), while you, who prefers theme and can/wants to get into it, gets sort of sucked in by the theme and it creates a distraction from the mechanics?
Maybe. It has to do with the fact that when I play Caylus I rarely see myself as the foreman, sending workers to do their jobs, etc. I have fun out of the fact of finding the best combo/strategy and winning. I have fun too, of course, if I lose against a good opponent in a exciting duel. And I don't have fun when I win or lose due to a player unknowingly king-making. In other words, I see that as duel of intelligences.
On the other hand, when I play a Dungeon Crawler, you are right, I don't focus on "winning at all cost", but in having the experience of incarnating a hero (or the bad guy), and performing as the hero would do... I know that the difference between Euros and Ameritrash sometimes is kinda blur, and from a "rules of the game" point of view it doesn't make sense to focus on winning on Caylus and focus on "excited about rolling dice and dealing damage or protect my partener" on games like Descent. In fact, this is very interesting when I play Bang with a lot of different people. I play Bang! in order to win, and I often beat the Overlord guy too (of course, it depends on the role, the character, etc., too). When my friends begin to shoot each other without having realistic information about who is who, I get pissed off, too. The OL player we are speaking about tends to shoot anyone when playing Bang!, no matter his role, no matter the information. He has not grasped at all the strategy in order to maximize his chances as the Sheriff, as the Outlaw or as the Renegade, he just tries to kill everyone (Sheriff first if possible when he is an Outlaw, Sheriff last if possible when he is a Renegade, everyone but the Sheriff, in any order, when he is the Deputy. He doesn't care if he is the Sheriff and he is shooting his Deputy).
It seems that in that case, theme (or excitement incarnating a far west character, if you want) is more important for him than winning, or either he didn't understood than in order to win you can't (and you shouldn't) kill them all on your own.
I think, on the other hand, he is a very good WH40k player (never played against him, but it seems so), and at other games where the strategy blends with the theme: just kill them all, or just seize the point, or whatever. He is pretty good too at Chaos in the Old World, and I don't know if this has to do with forgetting theme and mini-maxing. Or maybe the theme on Chaos is cool, but it doesn't affect in any way your strategy (I haven't seen anyone saying: It would be nice for me to kill your cultist, but I'm not Khorne, so I'd prefer leaving the area...).
Another problem is we, as the heroes, can't usually agree on what is our best strategy (in Last Night on Earth, I focus on searching before fighting, the rest of the heroes prefer to go wild for the objective and rely on luck, etc.). I remember the dwarf player wasting his heroic feat. on a stupid situation, but what can you do then? After arguing, the dwarf player was very stubborn and did not yield. The Overlord knows us very well and knows exactly how to make benefit of a divided hero party (provoking one, going for the weak points another one left by not agreeing on the best move, etc.).
Dam the Man wrote:
I think I've played First Blood 8 times now, OL has won one of these (one more I remember being sort of close) and even that win was down to a combination of weak starting hero weapons (no red die for either hero) and a X-streak that didn't seem realistic.
Although I would say the heroes don't exactly come off squeky clean in terms of playing according to theme. What I mean is if Mauler is standing there, doing his best Arnold from Predator impression:
"Come on... Come on! Do it! Do it! Come on. Come on! Kill me! I'm here! Kill me! I'm here! Kill me! Come on! Kill me! I'm here! Come on! Do it now! Kill me!"
and the heroes' objective (as stated in both the flavor text and rules for the quest) is to kill Mauler, but the heroes didn't go fatigue move -> double attack on him, instead saw the Search tokens as Pokemon (gotta catch them all), isn't that going against the theme? If they are tasked with killing Mauler, shouldn't they do it as soon as possible if we're using theme as an argument? For me, OL suiciding Mauler is as "gamey" a move as the heroes choosing to not go after Mauler with everything they have and instead grab Search tokens.
I must confess I have laught at the picture, but I was thinking about the Joker in The Dark Knight instead of Arnold...
The problem wasn't that we wanted to go for the search tokens instead of killing Mauler. In fact, the OL planned ahead us and considered that going for all the tokens would be our best maneover (he has probably played Descent 2ed. before, since we had no idea that searching was so vital), and denied that to us before we figured it out that it was our best move. We understood why did he do that and realized we should have planned before to counter the move. We didn't do that because we were thinking in terms of "win the quest", no matter the XP awarded, but he wasnt thinking in terms of "immediate win of the Quest", but "long term benefit for further quests". Very clever on his part, but a different mentality of ours: we wanted to win the quest and kill Mauler in a fight in which he kind of hit and ran, while his goblins tried to support him and, at the same time, flee out of the scenario. We clearly failed to understand the mentality of our oppponent, failed to understand the planning of the battle that was awaiting us, and thus failed to get more searching.