Kemious wrote:DeeGee wrote: Solitaire means that you play as though you had no opponent.
Control files are solitaire files. as much as you hate to believe that DG its the truth.The win condition is achieved the moment you maintain more field presence then they do. Once you have that presence your win condition is very much achieved. often the counter play to this is none existent and I'll fully admit that . Probably as a result to create some sort of counter play to issues Falkow had at the time. bigs being a file type they had no chance against. However as time when on and Falkow gained more units dion could hide behind such a file was deemed credible not as a counter play file but as an actual means to winning The cost of Playing DIon's action => than the unit she's going to return 99 % of the time.
The general idea of a control file is to play as if you have no opponent your actions aren't generally based on what kinda of card they put on to the field or how u can stop em from messing up your file. So In most cases it doesn't matter if They dropped Bringer , Dilate , Fistara or Francis, your gonna play exactly the same. There is no reaction just follow through. As long as you have SP and considering the fact that she gains as much sp as uses each turn losing is hardly possible unless your opponent can effectively remove dion from acting while maintain field control which for the majority of files is something not very do able.
However you DG have to consider format and games when you compare games. If you wanted to compare a TCG to Alteil probably the best one to would be The Pokemon TCG, but even then its a substantial stretch, because of how the rules are. Though honestly the best game to compare it to would probably be Risk. Dion Control would probably be the = of controlling Australia from the get go and as the rest of the players struggle for the remain land.
Well yeah, the general idea is "if I'm playing with a bunch of units whose attributes suck for doing damage, I'm going to make a game state in which the winner isn't determined by who can field the most badass unit".
Look, every good game is going to, at high-level play, have some sort of strategy that wins because it changes the game state into one that's completely out of left field for most of the metagame to deal with and catch everyone with their pants down. If Alteil is going to be about "who can beat up whose critters", then if I play a file that's about not letting you attack, and not attacking into you, then I'm going to win because I adapted to you (changed the game state), and you didn't adapt to me.
That's what the Psychatog meta was about in Magic: the Gathering. That's what the Morrigan/Doom/Vergil team is about in Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 (I don't care how much damage you can do if you can hit me, because I'm going to fill up the screen with fireballs so you can't even touch me to begin with), or on a more basic level, fireball keepaway games in Street Fighter 2 onwards. That's what "the blitz" is about in football. It doesn't matter how far you can throw that football, or how acrobatic your wide receivers are, if your quarterback is getting his face planted in the grass on half the plays. It's what submission/grappling/wrestling martial arts are in MMA (it doesn't matter how badly you can knock me out if I get you on the ground).
And yes, those strategies are usually seen as "boring" to those that want to see something dazzling. Dion control is boring to players that want to see gaudy numbers from their tribal bonuses. Psychatog makes for a boring game to those that want to play beatdown with rare creatures. Keep-away is boring for those that want to see a fighting game turn into a combo video reel. Submission wrestling is boring for those that want to see a stand-up striking fight.
A good game designer will say "too F'ing bad". Those that lock themselves in some sort of mental bubble about how a game "should be played" are what Sirlin defines as "scrubs". Those that accept that there are other strategies besides the ones that make dazzling highlight reels are the ones that play to win.
The good games are the ones designed for those who play to win. A game designed for scrubs by scrubs will fail. Every single time.
