Post by awall on Jun 24, 2007 19:37:44 GMT -5
I've been thinking about this a lot in the last week, and I finally have time to post about it: How does one defend Blindness? There's a whole article written on the Refuge regarding useful tricks to do out of invisibility, but it says Blindness is too situation-specific to really allow for an analysis of what you can do out of it. Nevertheless, I'm pretty sure there are some standard weaves coming out of Blindness - I just don't know what they are or how to defend them. I've gone ahead and written out some of my thoughts below, but I'd appreciate hearing what some other people have come up with.
Offense
Lightning Bolt: It's generally accepted that if you get off Invisibility and your opponent doesn't follow you, Antispell is a decent choice to follow up with. In my experience, Lightning Bolt plays the same role for Blindness. It comes out the first turn after your opponent can see again, which means they don't have any chance at disrupting you. Also, while it doesn't grab as much initiative as Antispell nor does it set up a Permanency threat, 5 damage isn't to be scoffed at, and if your opponent doesn't have some sort of threat to hit you back with, it gets you a solid lead.
Repeated Blindness: Not as nice as bolt in my opinion. If it succeeds, you get a health back and set up Charm/Blindness (DPPSD/DFWFD), but it has the problem that the DFW gives away your intentions, and anything your opponent did to defend Lightning Bolt will also stop Blindness. You could be tricky and go for the DWFFd form of repeat blindness to avoid the DFW tipping your opponent off, but you still have the problem that it's likely to get countered. This seems most useful either when you get hit by Fear on the turn of the first Blindness, or if your opponent attempts to summon while blind, as they'll need to defend both the blindness and the charm to protect their monster (hence my opinion that summoning while blind is a terrible idea).
Poison: I like this one a lot. If your opponent prepares a counterspell for turn 5, they whiff with it and get Poisoned a turn later. If they don't have any other major threats coming out, you can prepare disruptions or counterspells with your other hand probably force Poison through. Of course, I shouldn't talk, given that the one time I tried this, I botched it... but I think it's inherently a decent weave.
Delay Effect: Like Poison, it gets around a turn 5 counterspell, and puts your opponent in a bad spot. It's not guaranteed the same way Delay Invis is, but it's fairly unlikely to get countered I think.
FoD: Dunno how this would work. Antispell/FoD doesn't seem that likely, because the double shields and lack of Amnesia give away your DPx/DxP. ParaFoD seems like it might have some merit though... if they prepare two counterspells for turns 5 and 6 and get paralyzed on turn 4, defending the FoD seems rather difficult.
Charm->Antispell->Blindness->Permanency: I'm sure everybody knows this combo, so I won't elaborate on it. I mostly mention it because threatening it allows you to feint into some other fun tricks; see below.
DPSDFWFDx
DxSPFPSDW
Charm combo -> FoD feint: Almost considered using this in a game I was recently in. The two weaves below both display the same visible pattern as the above Charm combo, so your opponent is likely to counterspell himself on turn 5 to prevent it.
DPSDP
DxSPF
--or--
DxSDP
DPWPF
On turn 6, he knows that you aren't going for the Charm combo, but he has no way to tell whether you're about to hit him with a Charm/Permanency attack, or whether you're preparing FoD. Exactly how this plays out really depends on what your opponent did while blind, but guessing wrong seems like it could really hurt for him here.
Defense
Defending against blindness seems very difficult, considering that your opponent has a decent selection of weaves that all have the same visible pattern but must be defended differently. Bolt, Poison and Delay seem particularly tricky:
- Two counterspells will protect you from Bolt and Poison, but leaves you wide open to delay.
- Attempting to Dispel on the turn of the Poison/Delay offers no defense if your opponent goes for a Bolt and possibly a disruption a turn before the Dispel goes off.
- Counterspell + a disrpution on turn 5 stops bolt and can potentially stop Delay, but your opponent can protect themselves and hit you with Poison the next turn.
As far as stopping the Charm combo feint, xxWWSWD seems to work pretty well (counterspell on turn 5 stops the threat of Charm combo, SWD stops FoD and nerfs Antispell if it lands) but it needs a bit of backup to handle the case where the FoD player hits himself with Amnesia the turn of the Fear. It shouldn't be hard to stop, but then again, the attacker can replace the turn 5 P with an S if the defender threatens Fear, and the possibility of Maladroit makes this a much worse bet for the defender.
Anyway, this post has gotten pretty long, and I'm not sure how coherent it is (I've been figuring out a lot of this as I go), so I'll go ahead and stop now. If anybody has any tricks they've figured out for using/defending blindness, I'd be really interested to hear what they are.
Offense
Lightning Bolt: It's generally accepted that if you get off Invisibility and your opponent doesn't follow you, Antispell is a decent choice to follow up with. In my experience, Lightning Bolt plays the same role for Blindness. It comes out the first turn after your opponent can see again, which means they don't have any chance at disrupting you. Also, while it doesn't grab as much initiative as Antispell nor does it set up a Permanency threat, 5 damage isn't to be scoffed at, and if your opponent doesn't have some sort of threat to hit you back with, it gets you a solid lead.
Repeated Blindness: Not as nice as bolt in my opinion. If it succeeds, you get a health back and set up Charm/Blindness (DPPSD/DFWFD), but it has the problem that the DFW gives away your intentions, and anything your opponent did to defend Lightning Bolt will also stop Blindness. You could be tricky and go for the DWFFd form of repeat blindness to avoid the DFW tipping your opponent off, but you still have the problem that it's likely to get countered. This seems most useful either when you get hit by Fear on the turn of the first Blindness, or if your opponent attempts to summon while blind, as they'll need to defend both the blindness and the charm to protect their monster (hence my opinion that summoning while blind is a terrible idea).
Poison: I like this one a lot. If your opponent prepares a counterspell for turn 5, they whiff with it and get Poisoned a turn later. If they don't have any other major threats coming out, you can prepare disruptions or counterspells with your other hand probably force Poison through. Of course, I shouldn't talk, given that the one time I tried this, I botched it... but I think it's inherently a decent weave.
Delay Effect: Like Poison, it gets around a turn 5 counterspell, and puts your opponent in a bad spot. It's not guaranteed the same way Delay Invis is, but it's fairly unlikely to get countered I think.
FoD: Dunno how this would work. Antispell/FoD doesn't seem that likely, because the double shields and lack of Amnesia give away your DPx/DxP. ParaFoD seems like it might have some merit though... if they prepare two counterspells for turns 5 and 6 and get paralyzed on turn 4, defending the FoD seems rather difficult.
Charm->Antispell->Blindness->Permanency: I'm sure everybody knows this combo, so I won't elaborate on it. I mostly mention it because threatening it allows you to feint into some other fun tricks; see below.
DPSDFWFDx
DxSPFPSDW
Charm combo -> FoD feint: Almost considered using this in a game I was recently in. The two weaves below both display the same visible pattern as the above Charm combo, so your opponent is likely to counterspell himself on turn 5 to prevent it.
DPSDP
DxSPF
--or--
DxSDP
DPWPF
On turn 6, he knows that you aren't going for the Charm combo, but he has no way to tell whether you're about to hit him with a Charm/Permanency attack, or whether you're preparing FoD. Exactly how this plays out really depends on what your opponent did while blind, but guessing wrong seems like it could really hurt for him here.
Defense
Defending against blindness seems very difficult, considering that your opponent has a decent selection of weaves that all have the same visible pattern but must be defended differently. Bolt, Poison and Delay seem particularly tricky:
- Two counterspells will protect you from Bolt and Poison, but leaves you wide open to delay.
- Attempting to Dispel on the turn of the Poison/Delay offers no defense if your opponent goes for a Bolt and possibly a disruption a turn before the Dispel goes off.
- Counterspell + a disrpution on turn 5 stops bolt and can potentially stop Delay, but your opponent can protect themselves and hit you with Poison the next turn.
As far as stopping the Charm combo feint, xxWWSWD seems to work pretty well (counterspell on turn 5 stops the threat of Charm combo, SWD stops FoD and nerfs Antispell if it lands) but it needs a bit of backup to handle the case where the FoD player hits himself with Amnesia the turn of the Fear. It shouldn't be hard to stop, but then again, the attacker can replace the turn 5 P with an S if the defender threatens Fear, and the possibility of Maladroit makes this a much worse bet for the defender.
Anyway, this post has gotten pretty long, and I'm not sure how coherent it is (I've been figuring out a lot of this as I go), so I'll go ahead and stop now. If anybody has any tricks they've figured out for using/defending blindness, I'd be really interested to hear what they are.