Board 8 > I'm playing in my first Fire Emblem draft soon.

(+) Yeah! (+)

What if you just ban Matthew instead?

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None of us are great at the game so it just seems more fun to include him than ban him.

turbopuns3 posted...

Right that's why I was saying if you can't get an early healer, this won't get you very far. Because I don't think you wanna burn all your vulneraries with a limited roster. And even if you have a healer, that's putting a damper on your team's damage output so you also don't burn all your healing staves early. Idk.

Any map with a fort gives you infinite free healing, albeit slowly.

It's not a fun strategy and definitely not a fast one!

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Kenri posted...

Any map with a fort gives you infinite free healing, albeit slowly.

Oh true.

Oh yeah, what are you guys doing with Merlinus? Does everyone get him for free?
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Merlinus doesn't take a deployment slot in FE7 so him being free is a given
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I've also seen variants where thieves are free but only for support tasks, you have to draft them if you want them to fight
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Hbthebattle posted...

I've also seen variants where thieves are free but only for support tasks, you have to draft them if you want them to fight

I think that's the best way to handle it personally

Still makes them a really good draft cause having some meat on your thief can make said tasks easier and it's nice for them to not be a "wasted" slot for combat but yeah. Good way to add more diversity (since 3 free lords kinda already homogenize the teams a bit)
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How Jagens are handled normally just depends on game difficulty.
What I usually see is
Marcus in FE6 is free
Marcus in FE7 is either a normal unit in the pool, free for a short time, or banned from combat (but not facetanking or support tasks)
Seth is either free for a very short time or just outright banned
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This sounds really cool
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I have never heard of drafting FE but it sounds fun if you're not terrible like I am

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Updates:

Arenas band outright

We thought about imposing a relatively lax turn limit per chapter to prevent boss abuse, though then the point was brought up about farming supports which can take a lot of turns. Any ideas here?

We realized that it was pointless to establish a strict game over limit if we're just going to use fewest game overs as the first tiebreaker anyway. So it'll just be play until you beat the game (or give up) and whoever gets the farthest with the fewest game overs wins. Next tiebreaker is total sidequests completed. Haven't defined it beyond that.

I'd say just come to an agreement that no one will boss abuse, but if you want to farm supports go ahead. Unless you feel like you can't trust the group I wouldn't litigate it further or try to precisely define "boss abuse." Like, intentionally letting a few units get a cheap shot on a boss, sure. (what I'm saying here is say a boss has 10 HP and you have units that can do 1, 3, 5, 7, and 12 damage to it. Letting some of the small guys take a shot at him instead of only letting the 12 damage guy kill him immediately isn't boss abuse IMO. It's only when you're literally prolonging the fight by ending turns and passing up the kill for no tactical reason that it counts as it IMO.)

It's a "you know it when you see it" kinda deal.

Support farming there just really isn't a check on with the framework you've told us. Scoring by turn count makes it an automatic loser but that sounds far enough down your list of tiebreakers, if it's even still there, that it doesn't really sound like it'll come into play so I think you just gotta throw up your hands and allow it. It's not a huge deal anyway, IMO.
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Yeah I think we're just gonna say no need for a concrete rule, just stay within the obvious spirit of the challenge

Most FE drafts do allow you to restart stages. Drafts I've seen on Serenes forest usually have a clearer rule set. The winner is the one with the lowest turn count.

Edit: Also Bartre and Karla are drafted as a pair usually.

Also, are there draft rules for three houses?
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We're allowing restarts but counting it as a game over. And yeah like I said we are still drafting the rules.

None of us liked the idea of turn count. We aren't good at the game so it's heavily slanted toward survival and being extra cautious and meticulous. I'm sure turn count will end up on the tiebreaker list but it'll be way down there.

I did pitch the idea to them that we shouldn't enforce character limits and just let the auction play out however it plays out. If someone drops big money on a handful of good units and someone else spends chump change to have 6 additional shitty units, so be it. But the group didn't like that idea. They felt it made the draft strategy a bit too much to contemplate for what it's worth.

Its been like 10 years since I played FE7.

Auction might not be the best way to go then. I play super turtley (I know thats not a word, but whatever) in games without Casual mode and still usually get a reset or two every chapter.

I did do hard in Awakening. Might do hard in three houses. Could probably do classic in three houses due to Divine pulse.

Usually I find Snake order to be the best for drafts. Randomize the order of who picks, and then reverse the order every round. (that means people on the ends pick two)
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Alanna82 posted...

Usually I find Snake order to be the best for drafts. Randomize the order of who picks, and then reverse the order every round. (that means people on the ends pick two)

We talked through it. Started on snake but basically when you boil it down, an auction in every possible way raises the skill ceiling.

What we settled on:

-Randomize an order
-We take turns nominating characters for auction
-By nominating a character you automatically submit a minimum bid for them (so you can't start out by nominating crappy characters unless you're willing to have them on your roster)
-If you run out of money, you automatically pass on all auctions until everyone else is either out of money or at max character limit
-If a scenario happens where multiple people are in auto-pass mode but don't have a full roster yet, then they just continue in the same order except just claiming players outright as opposed to bidding

Oh I've heard of this before but forgot all about this.
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We talked ourselves out of guaranteeing matthew. He'll be auctioned like everyone else

Your rules sound like they are getting progressively worse!

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Disagree!

You are getting Merlinus for free, right? Because it's going to be a huge advantage if only one person gets a convoy.
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If youre going with the logic that, the auction will balance everything! then you should go all the way with that. Anyone who runs out of money shouldnt get any more characters, period. They should be forced to play with an undersized roster.

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Mewtwo59 posted...

You are getting Merlinus for free, right?

Yeah

redrocket posted...

If youre going with the logic that, the auction will balance everything! then you should go all the way with that.

I agree! But they don't

I think I managed to talk them into the asymmetric roster sizes rule

How do these games work? Do you normally have access to everyone at the start, or do you only unlock certain characters later on?
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You start with 1 or a few characters and recruit others as you go

I'm not sure I see the value in turn order for auction? Isnt it just you announce who is up for bid and start from there?

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Turn based bidding is just a lot simpler to manage than an actual live auction. It's the same way bidding works in a variety of other games.

Has this started yet. I would be interested in a play log of this.
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We're doing the auction Monday I think

Probably goes without saying but at least give us the auction results if not a play log. Would be interested to see em!
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Correction, we're doing it tomorrow evening

draft of the rules

(he left the 5 game over thing in there but I'm not gonna push it, I expect all of us to fail more than 5 times and just keep going for fun anyway)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mC2rbNEC_fzsCghbItx7ZDuUMXR1LSAKb_iOhk1MLhc/edit

I would not let Nils/Ninian be draftable. That's a pretty big advantage. Usually dancers are free or banned.
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That's a fair take, but we'll just see how this one goes. Not super serious business and we're all kinda tired of discussing rules and just ready to play at this point.

Well good luck!
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One guy is going to print off character portraits so that we can actually lay them all out and hold them up like a legit auction lol

I was envisioning it just happening in discord chat but I'm more hyped for it now that we decided to do it live.

turbopuns3 posted...

One guy is going to print off character portraits so that we can actually lay them all out and hold them up like a legit auction lol

Yessssss
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Alanna82 posted...

I would not let Nils/Ninian be draftable. That's a pretty big advantage. Usually dancers are free or banned.

It's a bit less of a problem when the criteria is mainly number of resets, though they're still a ridiculously strong choice. When the criteria for winning is turn count though, yeah having them up for draft is a bad idea.
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Damn the printouts are full page sized in brilliant color.

I fired up Lyn's Tale Hard Mode last night and tried running through using only her, just to get a taste of things to come.

On the Dorcas chapter, I obviously sent everyone else up into the room with Natalie and sat Lyn at the highest possible space to maintain the choke point. I only waited if she didn't take damage, and used a vulnerary if she did get hit. Eventually on a single enemy turn she went from full HP to dead, by repeatedly killing all the enemies who came up to attack her.

Like, I don't think there's a single thing I could have done differently to prevent that without using another character.

Because of this I am making sure to get at least Kent or Sain.

Actually. Hm.

I suppose I could trade away her weapons during enemy turns, and trade them back to her on my turn. >__>

But even then if she gets hit in my turn then I'm screwed.

Isn't that a delay X turns chapter

Just park her without a weapon in the choke once you've got all the exp you feel safe getting, vulnerary without a weapon on until the 7 turn limit hits, right?
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Yeah I guess passing on XP altogether is an option. Good point

Wait, actually no. Our rules say you can't use non-roster characters to trade except to take their starting items. Was forgetting that.

Hm maybe we need to discuss that point.

turbopuns3 posted...

Because of this I am making sure to get at least Kent or Sain.

Tbh this should be a priority anyway, Sain is arguably the best character for drafts (though more so when the goal is low turn count). Kent is a serviceable replacement if you can't get Sain, too.

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Kent, Sain, and Florina are all good choices for a high pick, so you should have someone else for that chapter. If you can't get them, you could probably get Wil for cheap late just to use him to trade items away.
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Yeah. I'm basically putting the characters into buckets and setting a minimum number of characters I want to get from each bucket. Sain/Kent/Florina is the first bucket with a minimum of 1, though it looks like Kent > Sain >>>> Florina

I favor Kent slightly just because it's more game over based as opposed to turncount based