Alex & Adam - Getting +1 Wit for Kills: Why it's a really poor change to Outwitters

[bmike]

This is a long thread, but one mistake I see being made is that many seem to be forgetting that the game mechanics are a bit like a putting green.

We all learned on greens with certain attributes and changed our swing, tools and style to adapt to that baseline. Most have found success in using the pieces with the rules in place to become confident when to make piece X and when to attack, how to defend and such.

Taking this change in isolation is impossible since no-one has played with just the +1 AFAIK. (yes, you could make paper pieces - but the fog of war is hard without two sets of paper and someone to be the referee to let you know what you can see on your next move).

My impression is that if you are on the fence in the old rules - you don't attack since a counter attack is generally easier to make than the initial attack - especially in the first 30 turns of a game when you might not know what the defense has done.

This change will loosen that up a bit and also make it more subtle to make your defense, since both the attack and counter attack can reach further than in the past. This clearly is an anti-turtling change and I support it.

Even if it is a mistake, they can't really test it without letting everyone play with it, adapt to the changes and then get 100 games in on the new style. Only then will we (and they) know if this was a good change. At that point, they could reverse it, change it (perphaps fractional wit bonuses and/or more bonus for killing a more robust piece) if needed once enough people have adapted their play style to the "new design of the putting greens".

With less friction on attacking - sometimes you'll want to back off and be more gentle - other times, you will be able to swing harder - but it depends a lot on the board, the pieces and also the relative WIT balance between you and your opponent at the moment.

I've played a lot of beta games and one thing is certain - I feel it will make the game more fresh and fun - even if it's something that needs further tweaking, I am happy the developers are looking to make it more fun and let us play with some modified rules to see if it's better.