Field of Battle

Posted on July 9, 2009 by tehdiplomat

Writing that last post about Magic reminded me about one of the old forums I used to hang around in my hey-day of playing and collecting the grand-daddy of all CCGs. It had a few different names to it, but most people knew it as the Field of Battle.

I wasn’t around from the very beginning, but I’ll pass along a little of what I know. Inquest (the best of all gaming magazines around at the time) had message boards on AOL. Now these message boards had tons of different sections, but most of the people on them were magic players. This was around 97 or so, and the story as I understand it went like this. One of the people started talking about World Domination, which was contended by others, or supported by more. It almost felt just like any free form roleplaying campaign. After some complaints, those involved in this budding war moved into the stories forum, which was renamed as “The Field of Battle” where people could control their destiny and duke it out.

Once FoB and the war was started, Apprentice was brought in to aid in actually fighting the wars. For those unfamiliar, Apprentice was a simple program that let users have access to all the cards in Magic, and held a simple UI. It wouldn’t automate anything like the current versions of Magic Online (or the Magic XBLA game I had previously spoke about) but if two players knew the rules they had enough “useful bits” to play each other online. There were plenty of superstitions of Apprentice, and even though shuffling once should be “randomized” many choose a certain number to shuffle their decks.

Peoples personalties took over the boards, people had a good time, rivalries were started and enjoyed, with plenty of smack talk, and pointless posturing. It was the internet, and instead of just being anonymous selves, we all created unique personas and played a role. Factions would form, temporary teammates to compete on the field of battle and a rule system was formed for battles. Some battles would be for nothing but bragging rights, other battles forced factions to disband if they lost. The Alliance was able to gain a stranglehold on the boards at one point a well oiled machine, trimming useless players and improving their mediocre players.At this point, many of the players didn’t want to live with the historical implications of The Alliance, and migrated off FoB to a forum called BAR. Named after the three premier factions previous to the Alliance’s domination. I wasn’t around quite yet, so the other two names I don’t recall, although I may have some documents that show their name in my archives somewhere.

I was one of the “Fresh recruits” on the new boards. I had regularly scoured the Magic chat room on AOL, and apparently so had many members in the FoB, we had our own faction system where players were eliminated by losing two consecutive duels, and a scoring system that allowed encouraged playing. We enjoyed our time in the sun and refined our rules system and tried to improve everyone’s play style. Some people just liked hanging out, and wouldn’t play as much, but it was all in good fun. I couldn’t list the amount of factions I ended up being on, or even leading. The boards were fun, but since they were mostly teenagers they degenerated quickly, traditional bashings and rivalries take  a turn for the worst, recruits are scared off from this type of gesturing, other internet leagues formed with real prize systems that take away the stronger players.

But the biggest blow was the downfall of The Alliance. I’m not sure exactly what year it took, place but probably around 2000 a group of players made it their mission to take down the giant. Deep scouting was done on classic Alliance players, a few trial runs went in to see which players were weak. Hiding their own weak players, and manipulating the rules to their own advantage started occurring. It was a nasty fight. And it took a handful of tries too. I don’t even remember the factions name that took down The Alliance. But someone did it, and after they fell, a new rules system was implemented. A forced re-draft if things get stale basically saying “We will never let one team hog a board the way these guys do” the rules charter didn’t prevent teams from reforming with their favored members, but it destroyed everything that connected the new to the old.

In my case I stopped frequenting the boards when I went off to college and didn’t have as much access to AOL. I was also no longer keeping up with the game, and i think many were in the same boat as myself. I met a bunch of fun people, a few that I still chat with occasionally, but things happen and people move on. Since our boards were entirely based on AOL, things came to a close one fateful day when the Inquest boards were shut down for good. As far as I know noone has archived copies, and the only thing left is memories of the people, and some of the ridiculous things we did.

And if you are a former FoB-er I still have the Chaos Magic Belt and I am still accepting challenges for it.

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Magic the Gathering

Posted on June 18, 2009 by tehdiplomat

As some of you may know while a young adult, Magic was a huge part of my life. Summers were spent socializing, gaming, and strategizing. Trying to hash together the best decks, the coolest combos, basic teenager geek cred. Luckily, I probably won more tournaments than I didn’t.

For those familiar with the game, I played from just around Homelands to Planeshift. I’ve played a few limited tournaments since then, but by no means have I bought more than a pack or two here or there.

Now I’ve tried to keep up a little bit with new sets, and rules changes (including the new “no more mana burn” ruleset). Anyway, this topic comes up with the new XBLA game, Duels of the Planeswalker. Which is a borrowed name from the original Microprose “Shandalar” series. Maybe one of the first video games I was excited about getting (even at it’s expensive price).

Now this will be a quick little review of the XBLA game that I got last night (around 11) and played for a few hours.

Pros:

  • Pretty. Now I haven’t played Magic Online, but this game is pretty. Flying creatures hover on the board, all the art looks great in High Def, even the targetting lines look slick.
  • Simplified interface. The game autotaps for you, auto untaps, draws, etc etc. Basically the game autopilots through a lot of mundane parts of magic and cuts it down to pre-combat, combat, and post-combat.
  • Puzzles. I love puzzles. Problem solving is one of those things that turned into a career for me. I had subscriber to Inquest Magazine (before it changed it’s name) for the two page puzzle. Some of those things were harsh. A few of these puzzles are pretty easy, and I can’t tell if there are only the 8 that are unlocked to start or if there are more once I get through them.
  • Nostalgia. XBLA is a goldmine for nostalgia games. I can’t wait to play a few two-headed giant games with my friends I played magic with growing up.
  • Value. $10. That’s right. Growing up I spent $100 on the Microprose game and first expansion. While that game is larger, and had more of a roleplaying feel (Go find it and play it if you never have) the basics of it exist in this new title. The good comparison is the dvd comparison. I can buy a dvd for 15 bucks, and watch it a handful of times. And get maybe 6 hours of entertainment. Since I’ve already played for 2 hours. I think I’ll get plenty of entertainment out of it.

Cons:

  • Deck building. One of my favorite things about Magic is deck building. The ultimate customization of thousands of cards and unique combos that different cards allow. The deck starts with a base “theme” and you can unlock what looks like up to 17 cards and add those into the starter decks.
  • Combat timing. Maybe this is just me, but since the phases/steps are timer based I’ve had a little bit of trouble with combat timing. I almost lost a game because I missed regenerating one of my creatures. I had to replay one of the puzzles, to successfully activate a creatures on attack ability.
  • AI. They claim the AI is better, and it seems decent for now, but it still attacks when it should be holding off to block, and I’ve noticed a few mis-matched blocking assignments. I’ll hold judgement until the AI does something unexpected to turn around a lost game. I’m really competitive so we’ll see how that goes.
  • Deck building. Sorry, I just wish it was better.

Unknowns:

  • DLC. I don’t know what the dlc will actually be and how much it costs. I generally don’t buy dlc, but once in a while I do.
  • Multiplayer. I haven’t broken out the multiplayer, so we’ll see how that is once I get that far.

Ah good ol’ Magic. I still have my decks lying around somewhere, if you are up for a game. I generally play Lock type decks. My first actual deck being a Stasis deck. It doesn’t exist anymore, and it got deconstructed because it wasn’t too fun to play. Oh well, gotta get some work done before I can go back to playing.

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Multiplayer Go

Posted on May 28, 2009 by tehdiplomat

So in a few days of high productivity we have the basic multiplayer game working. I still have some tweaking to be done for the most basic, turn-by-turn saving, multiplayer to be fully functional. For example, whether a person is “alive” is not being updated to the server. To prevent a search through all of the Power Stations each time the game loads, I’d like to just be able to retrieve this and assume it’s correct.

I was however able to play a game with two different browsers open, doing a game refresh (not a page refresh) to reload the current state for the next turn in the next browser. And it was a bit of a slaughter. I’ll worry about balance a bit later, once the game has a few of it’s missing components filled in. But for now, I have multiplayer, and i feel good about it. My goal for today is to get the tweaks in place I need for the turn-based saving (such as the alive state above). I’m considering if I should do the action-based saving now. (To disallow people from undoing bad results in the middle of a turn)

Well, I suppose I don’t have too much more right now. I will be working on my resume and getting in touch with some of these outplacement guys soon.

Posted in gskirm, life | Leave a comment