End Game Slaughter Moves

[DonCorazon]

1. No consensus but at least with a least you can choose to join a game based on rules. And I think there is some common sense involved.

2. Agree, archer screens and skelly spams seem fine based on common sense - these are things that are just effective tactical plays

3. Fairness is not necessarily the deciding factor. Getting mind hunted is fine, even though it is killing me. Now that I know to expect it, I can find ways to deal with it. Same thing with calvary with archers - that is just why it sucked to be an archer in medieval times. But scripting rules (something I don't even know how to do, nor have any desire to learn) seems clearly wrong - it is a strange technical move akin to hacking the game. Maybe its just me but the line does not seem so hard to draw, and again, at least with a list the host can select what rules they think make sense.

4. I guess every game has some strategy that is more powerful than others, that is just unavoidable. Hopefully there are tradeoffs though, so that by gunning for Con 8 you run the risk someone else gets there first or your early game is limited by lack of magic diversity.

[Baalz]

You're missing my point. By all means any game can and should have house rules as to whats allowable in that game based on what the game host thinks will make a fun game. Likewise obviously common sense needs to factor in (I just thought of another exploit fairly universally banned involving filling up another players lab). I don't like the fairly common statement though that the game rules are "no exploits of bugs on the short list" for a couple reasons. One, it's completely unenforceable and leads to accusations of cheating. Two, I have no intention of keeping up with the bug list and I think it's unreasonable to expect everyone to. Three, several of the bugs are unavoidable.

I understand why you'd say copying Bogus' scripts is akin to hacking the game, but I think you're off base. What it is, like so many things in this game, is understanding the game engine, noticing how it works and taking advantage of it. How is this different from understanding the turn sequence and timing a teleport to catch an army trying to leave a castle? Killing somebody in an assassination attempt by frightening them off? Frightening an enemy army while cutting off their retreat so they all die? Trapping people so they can't auto route and eventually die (ala Vengance of the dead)? Using archer screens because you understand the targeting AI? Leveraging the fact that stealth resolves before rituals so your raiders can avoid retribution? Taking advantage of a global spell on the first turn so your opponents have no opportunity to dispel it? Using the communion mechanics to let some of your communion slaves cast spells? How about fooling the enemy communion into casting too many spells and killing their slaves? etc. etc. etc.

These moves all seem strange, unfair and technical if you don't know about them and your opponent unexpectedly pulls them off on you. Several of them are no less silly from a real life point of view than copying Bogus's commands (really, you died because an assassin said boo?). Likewise theres lots of stuff you could do "in real life" that is unavailable within the context of the game. That's because we're playing a game, not real life. There's things we can do inside the game, and things we can't. Strange and technical moves are part of the game.

All that being said, I don't personally use anything that I know irks most people. I'm just here to have fun and hope my opponents do to.