Evolution of Your Openings

[succat]

While I realize that there are older threads out there which talk about how well some openings stack up against others, and even what have been some of the most popular openings... I was curious how everyone's opening gestures has evolved (or hasn't evolved) over time for them personally, and the reasoning behind it (if there is any). And I realize that probably many of you open with gestures that you expect will be better than what you think your opponent plans to open with, so in those cases maybe you are just trying to open with the right gestures for the right occasions. But, besides that, has there been a tendency over time to prefer one set of opening gestures over another, and actually get into the habit of opening the same way a lot in your evolution of Warlocks, and if so, what opening patterns would you say became dominant for you in your evolution of the game?

Myself:

Started out experimenting with a lot of different opening gestures. I was fond of D/D ;D for a while as I got a couple wins that way (at least my first win in Firetop Mountain)...

S/P
Eventually I settled into S/P because it was what my friend, sillig, used effectively against me all the time (mainly, Firetop Mountain again), and that's when I started to have success in Warlocks. I'd summon a lot of monsters, and I'd say the S/P is what got me into the 1700's...

D/P
After playing against xade a lot, he encouraged me to use D/P as my opener, and that gave me even more success than S/P, and I'm pretty sure it propelled me into the 1800's. Course I was using more and more para at the time as well ...

F/P
I gradually left D/P and started using F/P because I believe I had lost a game against BioLogin where he had opened F/P, and I liked the way it seemed to work against D/P. So I started having even more success opening with F/P, made it into the 1900's, and found that I could just start using para right from the beginning of the game and it could be pretty powerful, whereas before I didn't like opening with an F on one hand because I thought it was a weak opening ...

F/S
Well, then Bio wrote that thread on F/S as an opening, and I saw from a lot of my own games that F/S had a lot of power against F/P, although F/P is still very solid (as Awall also pointed out in that thread). So for a while now I have been switching over to F/S a lot, but have recently sunk back into the 1800's in the meantime (mainly playing against other players who are using F/S against me, and using it better than me ). I'm still debating whether or not to just go back completely to F/P, or try to be a little smarter when opening with F/S, or try something new to counter F/S. So that's where I'm at for the moment, and I'd say a rough evolution of my opening gestures has been:

S/P ---> D/P ---> F/P ---> F/S ---> ?(back to F/P maybe...? F/?)

Anyone?

[freesoul]

At first, i think i just picked my opening guestures out of the wind. And then i think i moved to S/P for quite a while... until i realized that i kept losing to D/P. Then I switched to D/P as my consistant opening. And then being my lazy self, I just opened D/P for every match as a default... to avoid thinking.

But once we ran into the D/P mirror, I started to switch up my openings again, since other people were.

In all honestly, I usually spend less than 2 seconds when considering openings.

[toyotami]

Can't remember the early days but was on the D/P train for a while but when it became common knowledge to go into invisibility Delay Effect (before that loop was uncoverred) i think i switched to S/W for ages...may even have gone to 2025 with S/W, playing a very defensive patient goblin friendly style and waiting for mistakes, inspired by the Taliman. Then lost alot for some reason. Wait, i remember the reason...Exdeath came back and handed me my arse a bunch. Then roamed around...got into S/P to escape that stupid loop and won a few. Then Succat came along and everybody started F'ing me up. Dropped my ELO 100 points while i suffered ParaFod defeat after ParaFod. Now i tend to open S/P half the time and S/F the other. Might get back into S/W for a bit...

Have to say...looks like i like opening with an S. Which i do...best versatility. Got Fear and goblin on turn 3 or a counterspell on turn 4. Go S. errr. wipe the floor.

[succat]

Hahaha, sorry Toyo you had to feel the wrath of the Paraholics firsthand ..

[BioLogIn]

Jul 20, 2008 8:00:57 GMT -5 toyotami said:

Then Succat came along and everybody started F'ing me up.

I insist. I started F'ing everybody up a few months before our beloved para king =))

Which makes me
mostly everything including D/W and S/W -> mainly S/P -> almost only F/P -> mix of F/P + F/S + D/P + S/P

[xade]

Like Toyo, the early days are a blur - Though I seem to remember DSFFF/PSDFW being the bomb.

Jumped on the D/P line somewhere there, and once the loop was obvious to all (I think I was slow on that train ! duuuuhhh), I tried the novel, and suprisingly successful D/S opening.

However, with other people branching into S/P as a D/P alternative, and S/P handing D/S it's ass, I only rarely pull that guy out anymore...

Succat pulled F's to the fore, and I used to go F/P with him, before finding success with the S/F and D/F varients.

So now my openings and quite diverse.

D/P for sub 1800 warlocks.
F/(D/S) for Succat
and any of the above for anyone else.

[Dubber]

It's really too bad that ExDeath's S/S opening battles is mostly missing from the archive (at least I remember that being ExDeath's signature opening for a good long while).
The F/S & D/S are good options against the F/P opening but S/S looks like it has some potential, too?

[Derfel]

I tend to open P/P these days. Gets me better results than any other openings...

[rasteroid]

I tend to use the opening that will ultimately defeat my opponent's opening.

Unfortunately I have a bad(?) habit of getting stoned and/or drunk mid-match and making costly errors. :\

[nawglan]

Nothin wrong with that... unless ya don't pass... bogart!

[rasteroid]

up in sunny BC there's no need to share.. everyone has their own!

[Derfel]

BC was certainly sunny the past two weeks... were in town visiting, and it didn't rain ONCE. Nice trip it was...

[Slartucker]

D/P -> S/P -> S/S -> S/W -> D/W

[succat]

Slartucker, you ended up D/W? Wow, maybe I'll give that a try. Maybe I'll go F/W though...

[Slartucker]

When ExDeath repopularized D/P with the DSF/PWP open against S/W, I spent a laborious while going through other possible openings until I found something besides D/P that could face D/P without a disadvantage. D/W was the only thing I could find, and I spent a shorter while developing it afterwards.