Who is choosing

[Jumpingfist]

Looking over the last 10 games start up threads it seems a lot of choice of players signing up is being removed.  A big part of 3rd cycle was that you could choose between two kingdoms per region.  But that rarely happens now.  I see a lot of posts about how kingdoms are stacking up in Valhalla.   Isn't forcing which kingdoms are or are not played skewing those results.

Last 10 signup threads
5 on 5 - one player chose all kingdoms
Team game - all kingdoms available
Full on - no mages allowed
Anon - all kingdoms
Confederations - preset kingdoms
New game (5 on 5) one player chose all kingdoms
Confederations (mentor game) preset kingdoms
Full on - all kingdoms
Championship - all kingdoms
Alliance (team game) - preset kingdoms

Only 4 of the last 10 games had all kingdoms available.  Maybe just a phase?

[IMPERIAL_TARK]

Looking over the last 10 games start up threads it seems a lot of choice of players signing up is being removed.  A big part of 3rd cycle was that you could choose between two kingdoms per region.  But that rarely happens now.  I see a lot of posts about how kingdoms are stacking up in Valhalla.   Isn't forcing which kingdoms are or are not played skewing those results.

Last 10 signup threads
5 on 5 - one player chose all kingdoms
Team game - all kingdoms available
Full on - no mages allowed
Anon - all kingdoms
Confederations - preset kingdoms
New game (5 on 5) one player chose all kingdoms
Confederations (mentor game) preset kingdoms
Full on - all kingdoms
Championship - all kingdoms
Alliance (team game) - preset kingdoms

Only 4 of the last 10 games had all kingdoms available.  Maybe just a phase?

I think a lot of it may be that the wizards kingdoms were too powerful. I suspect now that the January corrections are finished, we'll move back to all kingdoms being on the table much more often.

[Ry Vor]

As I've posted before, we need to do more to get new players up and running.  So, that means several things.  We've given everyone a free DUEL.  We encourage newer players to play Primeval (recent editions called Cut Throat choosing any kingdom and revising as they like) next after their DUEL - the five player game where mistakes may not be quite so lethal.  We've offered free positions to Mentors in Primeval games, and also free DUELS to experienced players mentoring a new player in a DUEL.  

Meanwhile we've also allowed experienced players to propose their particular flavor of format in new games forming.  We have probably a dozen formats of Alamaze.

And I recently asked players for the game forming currently shortly after its draft is arranged to refrain from magic kingdoms in that game where maybe 8 of 10 players have the Chivalry bonus, i.e., are newer players.  Newer players should neither jump into a mage kingdom nor be confronted by them.   We need the new players to get successfully grounded.  So occasionally either I or players ask for certain formats in the interest of helping new players.


The mage kingdoms have been the most successful and the most popular choices of experienced players.  Again, I haven't done a study of kingdom selection by players, but I hope our top players are selecting kingdoms ranked in the bottom 5-10 currently.