Blindness: Usage and Defense

[awall]

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.

[Slartucker]

The problem with generalizing about blindness is not that things are too situational -- I made that comment about Haste, not Blindness. The problem with generalizing about blindness is there's a whole lot less you can do with D/D than you can with S/S. S provides options for SWD, SPFP, and SPPFD which allow a vast range of unpredictable offenses and therefore make defending against the actual offense chosen quite difficult. D gives you DPP and DSF, and that's it.

The other problem, of course, is that blindness is cast much less frequently. There are a host of reasons for this and most of them are legitimate. Blindness usually requires more risk to cast successfully, due to its gestures, and its lack of offense and even defense (as monsters are a bigger problem) mean there is less reason to try.

On to the specific tacks:

Bolt - This is a good one to keep in mind, but I'd be wary of using it much. In the time your LH gestures DFFD, the chance of your RH doing much to disrupt your opponent is exactly zero - only DPP, DSF, SWD and FFF are available, and they all give away your spellflow quite royally. You can threaten various spells with your less visible hand, among them bolt, poison, or even fireball -- but the chance that your opponent absorbs them and still has a strong attack left to fire on you is pretty similar to the chance that your own attack makes it through undefended. You yourself write when discussing poison, "if they don't have any other major threats coming out." But why shouldn't they have one? You've done practically nothing to stop it.

I'm not clear why you dislike summoning when blind so much. Yes, something like DPPSD/DFWFD will almost guarantee the monster goes away, but you aren't actually getting a leg up at all (assuming your summoning opponent doesn't use unfortunate gestures).

Delay Effect out of blindness is interesting. It is indeed unlikely to be countered, which makes me like it a lot. However, delaying an antispell from D/D takes only one turn less than FOD from D/D does, and the delay seems more vulnerable to disruption, if anything. This has the same problems as bolt, poison, and so on, except that your reward is delayed (ha ha) and less certain.

With your FOD feint, again, you are wide open to disruption on turns 5, 6, and 7.

[awall]

It seems to me that Blindness is actually easier to conceal attacks with than invisibility. The problem is that almost everything you can do out of invis involves P, and that gives away a bit of what you're doing. Admittedly, it's still hard to tell the difference between SPFPx/SSPFP and SPPFDx/SFSSDD and SPWPF/SSPFP until it's too late, but I believe that similar stuff should be possible out of Blindness.

All of the weaves below are completely indistinguishable until your first turn out of blindness, and your opponent will have to have already committed to a defense by this point.


DFFDD
DPPSx

DWFFD
DPPSD

DWWFWD
DPPSxx

DWSSSP
DPPSPF

DxDWS
DPPWS

Dxxxxx
DPPWWS

If your opponent doesn't block the Amnesia, none of the typical big threat spells can hit you the first turn he can see again, and you can have a counterspell ready by the second, leaving yourself to do whatever (bolt, poison, etc.) with your other hand in the meantime.

If he does block the Amnesia and you're willing to be a bit gutsy, you could try:

DxxCW
DPPCW

Although I will admit to that play sucking about as much as the equivalent play out of invis.

Also, you mentioned that DFWFD/DPPSD wasn't as good a solution to monsters as I'd thought. Why not? If he counters the blindness and summons a monster, he probably isn't doing much else offensive, so stealing the monster should gain you initiative. Otherwise, you take a few points of damage but he winds up blind again and trying to deal with a monster that he can't see. If he's busy defending a monster, he's even less available to deal with your bolt or whatever you go for on the non-charm hand. Heck, even DFWFDSFW/DPPSDDSF will hurt him badly enough to make up for however much damage you took in order to steal his monster.

[Slartucker]

This is all fine and dandy if your opponent doesn't do anything until turn 4 or 5 of blindness. Just because D/D effectively resets your spellflow doesn't mean it changes your opponent's. Ogres are more likely to come out the turn of the amnesia, in which case you eat 2, and DPP doesn't disrupt the ogre hand at any rate.

Similarly, ...umption about the blindness/blindness/charm trick was that the monster was summoned prior to the second blindness. That means you're eating 4 damage before casting the second blindness. After that it's a question of counterspells, gambits, and targetting decisions, and ownership of the ogre could certainly go either way, not to mention its existence. However, you've already taken damage and the oncoming decision points don't really favor you more than your opponent. That 4 damage is one of the reasons blindness is weaker than invis, and that weave is weaker than Ogre Killer.

[taliesin]

admin said:

This is all fine and dandy if your opponent doesn't do anything until turn 4 or 5 of blindness. Just because D/D effectively resets your spellflow doesn't mean it changes your opponent's.

And bingo.

This is precisely why Blindness is considered relatively weak. People usually are summoning by about the second turn of Blindness.

You're assuming a defence based on shotgun counterspelling. The standard Blindness killer is summoning, or disrupting them on the Blindness turn before going for Invis or summoning. Just the threat of Invis or summoning kills a lot of weaves - they have to adapt to survive. Shotgun counterspelling is as foolish an approach against Blindness as it is against Invis or Permanency.

Against DPPSD/DFWFD specifically:
Assuming a second turn summon, you stand to eat damage on the DPP turn if you cast it at your opponent instead of the monster, on the PS turn, and on the second Blindness turn if you don't target the monster again. They can have a counterspell from the FWW lined up to block your blindness and start a disruption on the other hand to match your PSD, so if you let the monster live it could live a long time in your opponent's service. This is all horrifically bad for you.

Even if they're trying to summon on turn 3, your DPP turns SF into SFF in time for SFFF on the Blindness turn, killing your charm by turning it to Charm Monster. If they counter the Blindness too, you've lost all your initiative. You have signalled that you're going for Blindness by the DFW, after all, so they will be prepared.

Moreover, you're giving up a certainly landed WFP to take your certain Blindness. Given how uncertain the outcome is from Blindness, particularly if they summon anything, this frequently seems optimistic.

Blindness does have its place. The SPFP/DFW weave is one of the most studied weaves, and is very dangerous. Blindness is a stalwart part of many a FoD defence. However, I generally take the WFP instead, particularly if there's any risk of it being countered.

[awall]

Thanks for the explanation, Taliesin. I've tended to have rather good luck with Blindness in the past, but maybe that's just because my opponents haven't defended it properly. I'm not used to defending potentially crippling threats by being offensive in return (rather than going for counter + disruption or the like), but I do understand that it's typically a strong tactic; you just have to know when you can and can't afford to do it.

Here's a situation I found myself in recently involving Blindness. I've copied the entire game below, but the relevant turns are from when my Blindness landed on turn 10 onward. Freesoul went for a counter and a disruption the turn Blindness wore off, which I predicted and countered with Poison the next turn. I want to say that I was in a fairly advantageous position there, but I don't really see a better option that he could have taken; not countering himself would have been lethal if I'd hit him with a Charm and a Bolt that turn.

In case anyone's curious, the W's on turns 15 and 17 were because I kept assuming he'd gesture PD and try to cure the Poison. I had the lower ELO, so I decided I'd rather force a draw by countering an attempted Remove Enchantment rather than go for the Blindness to stop FoD. If I'd done the latter and he'd gestured F/D, I'd only have wound up with two turns of Blindness with Para on entry, which really didn't seem that attractive to me.

Freesoul, if you'd care to share, I'd love to hear what your thoughts on this game were.


Freesoul
Turn:012345678901234567890
--LH:BPSWWPWWSWDFFFFFFFF>P
--RH:BDPPPSDDSFWWWPPWPFSSP

awall
Turn:012345678901234567890
--LH:BDPPPSDWFFDPSDFWFWWSP
--RH:BPSDDPPWPSDWWFWDDDDDP

[Slartucker]

For one thing, you *couldn't* hit him with a bolt that turn as he hit you with Fear the turn of the blindness. Going W on 12 probably made sense facing either DPP or PSxx. I'd say Freesoul's big mistake was completing DSF on turn 19, as it wouldn't have much impact even if you had gone the DWFP route that turn. RH P there instead would have set up a troll and forced you to either abandon your poison to counter it, or be in a very sticky situation.

But why surrender? Unless you were at lower life than the spellflow suggests (game links are helpful for that kind of thing) you could easily have clapped on turn 20 and guaranteed a win.

[awall]

admin said:

But why surrender? Unless you were at lower life than the spellflow suggests (game links are helpful for that kind of thing) you could easily have clapped on turn 20 and guaranteed a win.

Er, right. I meant to post a link, and then forgot. Here it is:

games.ravenblack.net/warlocks?num=57637&full=1

If I'd remembered to post that, your above question would have been answered: we both surrendered on turn 20 by mutual agreement. After my LH:W on turn 17, it was obvious to both of us that he had no way to cure Poison and I had no way to stop FoD so, rather than a mutual kill that would have cost 15 ladder points between us, we elected for the mutual surrender. If we hadn't agreed to it he'd have kept me paralyzed until the FoD landed; I'd have had a brief respite on turn 20 because of my counterspell, but he'd have paralyzed me again on the turn I clapped and prevented the mirror from going up.

You're right that I couldn't have landed a Bolt; I obviously noticed that at the time, although it slipped my mind in retrospect. I think the three weaves I was considering at the for turn 12 time were Poison, Delay, and that FoD feint I mentioned above (I was expecting the DF to threaten Bolt, not go into Para... not the best analysis in retrospect, which is why I'm glad I didn't try for it).

[freesoul]

I think my mistake was that i didn't plan for potential blindness til a bit too late (hence the DSF). Probably, in hindsight, i should have started a summon, but i didn't because i knew you would be gesturing P and starting a possible charm. I wanted to avoid that guessing game. My second mistake was to underestimate your ability to throw the lethal play, since I haven't really played you before. Also, I really should have thought about poison since i knew you had the DW started.

I would have to say that one advantage of blindness is that it is relatively uncommon, which could catch the opponent unawares. Like me in this case.