Podcast 8: Spinning!
In this week's episode of The Reserve Pool, Dave, Katie, and Evan talk about the friendliest of local game stores where we get our game on. Then, we dig into a discussion of a mechanism that is unique to this sort of game - spinning! Also included - Mailbag, and FAQTalk!
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Nice podcast, although it cut off at the end I think - although that may have been my phone acting up. I want to say I TOTALLY 100% !!! YES am in agreement with Katie about actions. The inactive player should be able to save the action until the "use globals and actions" phase of the attack step. I think the designers must have originally intended this as, like Katie pointed out, actions like Take Cover sort of have no point otherwise (yes there is a global but come on). Also, Rogue uncommon would be a REALLY awesome card if she could steal actions right out of your opponents reserve pool and a) prevent them from using it and b) fire it right back in their face! In fact, I find it extremely hard to believe that wasn't the original intention! Oh well, maybe I'll house rule that and see how it plays. t's things like this that lead me to believe that MDM is just a big "rough draft" of a game instead of a really tight, finished product.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that there's a debate in the subreddit about whether an attacker with multiple blockers can assign overkill damage to one blocker in order to avoid KOing the other(s) is a sign that the Rules As Written need quite a bit of work to make them indistinguishable from Rules As Intended.
DeleteI dunno, I find that many rules debates end up being about "the rules as they are" vs. "the rules as someone else wishes them to be." Not in all cases by any means, and there a plenty of things that have been unclear (as we've discussed).
DeleteLet me reiterate - not ALL of them are like that. Actually, the one about assigning damage is a good question, though I suspect based on what the rules do and don't say that the excess damage doesn't necessarily have to go anywhere.
DeleteI guess the argument I'm making here (and on the subreddit, and on BGG... yep, I've been busy) is that I don't think it's truly "excess" damage if there's still another guy standing in front of your attacker when you're done. That and trample effects on certain cards are worded in such a way that makes me fairly certain that "ignoring" a blocker in a multi-blocker scenario isn't the intent of the rules.
DeleteWe pretty much all agree that the rules currently have gaps you can fly a jet through, yet some people are citing the rulebook like it's infallible Scripture in this particular instance. ^_^
Dave, I know it's not your intention, but your point sounds awfully like "if people were as smart as I am, there wouldn't be all this confusion." Now, that very well may be, but that point doesn't seem very helpful. And is it any surprise that where there is ambiguity, people will tend towards conclusions that make intuitive sense to themselves, that indeed they prefer? The fact remains is that there is a LOT of confusion about the rules of this game. You can dismiss questions as to the clarity of the rule book and the card text, and further, you can wish that more people understood them with the depth that you claim to have, but the fact remains that many many people are confused, and, with a clearer set of rules and more consistently worded cards, this would simply not be the case.
ReplyDeleteNo, and as I said, there are PLENTY of things that have been unclear - and I'll be the first to say that I've been on the wrong side of multiple rules issues, and that I've been guilty of the same behavior that I describe.
DeleteIn fact, in our very first podcast, I said pretty much the same thing that you do here about ambiguity. Of course not everything is going to be obvious to everybody.
I'm not claiming, nor have I ever claimed, to know more than anyone else in regards to this game. In fact, we've pretty much tripped over ourselves on the blog and on the show to make it clear that we just like this and we're going to talk enthusiastically about it, and we might be right, we might be wrong. Please don't put words in my mouth.