A study in initiative (long)

[ExDeath]

The following is the analysis of a position that was reached in my recent game vs BioLogIn. After my choice was made, he seemed incredulous, although I myself found it to be a fairly simple decision. Perhaps others would also benefit from understanding why I made this decision so readily.

Keep in mind, this is a VF game played with the Panic variant, so para is SFFF and FFS is Panic (target can't use either gesture submitted by the caster this turn). The game started:

BioLogIn (13 health):
LH: BFFSDFPWPWWWSFW
RH: BPSFFFSWDSFWPPW

ExDeath (14 health, goblin):
LH: BDSFWPPWSWWSFWP
RH: BWWPFDDWSPSDSFW

So basically we both just summoned a goblin, mine killed his and was shielded, and Bio is threatening Invis. The interesting thing is, in this situation, beginning players counter the Invis intuitively. Average players ask "how often will he actually follow through with it?" and since the answer is "not often", they dummy out of the counter fairly often, but may still be scared enough of the threat to be safe and counter. But an advanced player will ask, "how good is Invis here anyway?". Well, really, it's not. I might get caught by an antispell or a charm, I might find myself on the receiving end of an FoD (but having no para chain makes this much harder), but even if he does go invis I'm up 2 health with a goblin in play. The initiative he gains from Invis may be worth around 3 health on average, making it an even game. Furthermore, he'd be taking a risk since if I do counter it, he's down on health and initiative, and my goblin is still alive.

What happens if I just play safe? I've got the monster, so the natural reaction is just to protect it and squeeze in some damage, right? Is it really the end of the world if I go P/x and he dummies out of the invis? Yes, actually it is. Making defensive moves like P/F here is so passive, so reactive..you're giving away all that goblin's initiative for nothing. I call these moves "half-empty" because they defend against everything but they're not good against anything. The only time to play such a move is when you have an overwhelming element in play, such as disease on your opponent, or an ogre, etc. Goblins are not ogres. They are very temporary, and therefore the intiative they provide must be capitalized on immediately. Ogres are to be protected, but goblins are to be pushed.

Take a look at this:

SFWW
PPWP

FWPP
SFWF

Where is my advantage? My spellflow is completely dead, I'm not threatening anything. The F might be better as a D, or even an S, I don't know..but no matter what, he's doing just fine here. It wouldn't even be the end of the world for him if he had gone for invis, since it's awkward for me to shield my goblin next turn and he can easiy just go D/P to zap it. My choice doesn't lose, but it gives up a tiny bit of ground in all situations. This is what it means to be positionally pessimistic, or half-empty.

So, if I had played in this way, I would not have seen the move that nearly locks up a win so long as he doesn't go invis. Again, I didn't think it was too hard to find, but it does look very funny at first glance. I played F/F.

Now, the game turned out differently, so let me demonstrate why F/F is so obscene here. First, the natural P/W I suggested earlier leaves us with this:

SFWW
PPWP

FWPF
SFWF

Believe it or not, he is getting massacred here. The point of playing F/F is that it does not under any circumstances allow him to cast Protection. Protection is the one spell I can't let him cast. As long as he can't cast Protection and my goblin is alive, I will have the intitiative. The matrix here gets fairly complex, but I'll just show my basic plan (remember, FFS is Panic!):

FWPFDPPS
SFWFFSSD

What happened? The junky-looking easy-to-counter threat of double Cause Wounds has turned into a line which could only have been constructed from the innermost bowels of a dying man's darkest nightmares. He has no way to prevent this line, and so at this point the game is basically a joke. He has far too many spots where he can go wrong and either get fireballed, or charmed, or allow an ogre, or counter my fireball/charm only to have it dummied into an amnesia. Or a maladroit. It doesn't matter anymore, nobody could come out of this unscathed.

So, he really needs to allow me to Cause Heavy, in which case we would have something like this:

FWWP
PWPS

WPFD
FWFF

He's down 4 health and I have a goblin. I'm threatening Panic, but he's threatening Charm X or Summon Ogre. A lot of things can happen, but overall I can probably play it safe with S/F and defend both charms next turn. He can kill my goblin, but I'm still up 4 health, and I'm getting another one soon. You might ask, isn't S/F a defensive pessmistic horrible half-empty type move? Yes, it is. But at this point with a 4-health advantage and no initiative, it's probably best to play suboptimal moves to guarantee getting that initiative back and make my health advantage mean something. Remember in the last example, the half-empty move lost initiative, whereas in this example it actually equalizes the initiative. So it's fine.

Ok, quickly I'll go over a few more alternatives that he could have played. Admittedly I haven't looked at everything. Remember on my hands is WPF/FWF, and I have a goblin. Here are some things he could have played:

PWP
FWF

Looks bad.

PWP
FWD

After S/P, we have a similar situation to the example shown earlier, except he can't counter my Panic unless he throws Amnesia at himself. Also, it looks like he's taking a fireball to the face. This doesn't work either.

PWW
FWW

After P/W, he gets massacred as per the first example (too passive). S/W doesn't look much better either. Busted.

If I missed something, feel free to point it out, but at least the most obvious choices seem dismal at best.

So, yeah, I didn't really see any defense for him besides going invis, which is something I thought he probably wouldn't do, and him doing it didn't scare me too much either. Although he actually surprised me with a dubious third option in the game, I still wanted to analyze this, and I hope this post sheds some light on the decision which looks strange for a second (but only for a second).

[BioLogIn]

Should I have seen possibility of your F/F I could have done something like

PPWFP
SFWWS

which would have allowed me to kill gobbie at cost of 1 HP, and then block your FSS\DPP combo. But I just didn't see it.

I must admit, it's pretty hard to adapt to changed rules.

[ExDeath]

Sept 22, 2008 6:32:38 GMT -5 BioLogIn said:

Should I have seen possibility of your F/F I could have done something like

PPWFP
SFWWS

which would have allowed me to kill gobbie at cost of 1 HP, and then block your FSS\DPP combo. But I just didn't see it.

I must admit, it's pretty hard to adapt to changed rules.

Yeah, seems like that line dodges all of the bullets due to the surprising annoyance of the Fear on your RH. But, that line is also pretty terrible against anything but F/F.

PPWF
SFWW

XWPS
XXWF

S/F is probably a more "standard" continuation and it looks like you're in pretty bad shape there. I guess you would take 2 and continue F/P. Even if I had P or W on my RH it would be good for me, since I can counter your protection. So yeah, F/W does work against F/F, but it loses to anything else.

For what it's worth, and no offense, but casting Invis on a goblin has to be the wrong decision in 100% of all cases. I'm not sure how you justify such a huge loss of initiative, whether we were playing Panic or not, an S or F on my LH just ruins you. Better just to soldier on and kill it with a missile later, even if it costs you 2-3 damage, it's better than the position you put yourself in.

[awall]

There are some spells that I find it particularly difficult to make effective use of, even when you get them off undisrupted. Invis is one of these spells; getting hit with almost any disruption on the way in (other than, perhaps, para) severely limits the number of options you have. Furthermore, I find that you're very likely to take a few damage from a goblin or WPFD on the way in, and you aren't necessarily guaranteed to get any sort of compensation out of it. Yes, invis gives you the potential to score a huge lead if you land the lucky antispell or whatever, but fairly often the invisible player will struggle just to make up the damage he took coming in.

[xade]

I tend to think that Invis is a good spot to hide. usually entered off the back of a counterspell when you're already on the defensive, but you've managed a reprieve on the W/W turn...