Dealing with monsters

[Slartucker]

I agree about goblins, and I shield myself at least as much as my goblins. While it is almost always better to accept PSDF than risk my ogre being charmed, the same thing isn't true if I have a goblin. Goblins are also much easier to disarm with missiles and maladroits, and the threat to my opponent is much less. So they really aren't as much of a big deal as the other monsters. An ogre is a big step up.

[awall]

I've realized recently that my play tends to be very poor when it comes to monsters, and I'd like to try to improve at it. Here are some places where I notice myself making the wrong decision a lot of the time:

1) When do you or protect yourself vs. the monster? I know common wisdom is that getting charmed yourself isn't nearly as bad as getting a monster charmed, but there are also a lot of situations where getting charmed leaves you unable to protect your monster from your opponent's subsequent PSDD. It's still better to protect the monster because having the monster stay on your side for another turn or two can sometimes lead to a few more damage and a chance to prepare a defense (WWP or invis, perhaps), but I wouldn't say it's as obvious a choice as the situation where you know you can defend the Ogre even if you're charmed.

1b) How does this change when you've got a (non-charm) disruption rather than a counter, so guessing wrong on who to protect will hurt badly? If you can get away with shooting the disruption at your opponent (i.e. if doing so will allow you to charm the monster back even if he steals it) then that's probably the safest play, but what happens when it's a tradeoff between missing out on some damage with the monster and getting charmed vs. mindspelling yourself and losing the monster?

2) Say you have PS/xP against your opponent's monster (Ogre). If you continue to double charm, you'll have a decent chance of stealing it, but it's not a sure bet and you'll take a lot of damage in the process. Barring one of your initial P's finishing WWP, you'll take 2 damage on turn 3, another 2 on turn 4 if you charm your opponent or else your charm gets blocked, and if you don't wind up stealing or killing the ogre, you're in no better a situation than you started out. If my opponent has a W on turn 2, I find myself often switching to PSPPx/xPSDx, which strikes me as not actually very good.

3) When you go for a charm, you get a missile along the way. When do you direct these at your opponent's monster (again, let's say an Ogre) and when do you send them at your opponent? Sniping the monster gives you a chance to kill it if you can't slip a charm through, but it weakens it enough that your opponent can probably kill it easily if you do manage to steal it. Furthermore, a lot of warlocks shield their monsters, so you may be better off going for the damage to keep the life differential from getting too huge.

[Rycchus]

About #2, I often go PSDP/xPSD, taking one turn's worth of damage but still giving me a fairly strong spellflow (unless you're in a position where you can't afford to lose 2 damage). I think this is somewhere balanced between the two. An alternative, particularly if the second hand started with a W (or D or S) is PSDx/WPPS.

It's hard to say what's the best play as it's not a great situation to be in and it'll depend a lot on what your opponent's hands are.

3) I'd throw it at the monster, unless I was playing someone crap who was likely to just give me their ogre with a nice bow tied round it. Most of the time, your opponent will be able to defend the monster, and if they're a reasonable opponent, they will. Any gestures will let them defend it. W they can counter it, D they can disrupt with DPP or DSF, F they can disrupt with para, S they can disrupt with SWD. P they can't but they can charm it back the turn after and their other hand will have one of the other gestures anyway. Claps aren't really worth discussing, as it'll either be a weak opponent or a special situation.

So the only way you could know you could get it would be if you had them disrupted with something else, or if they'd just been antispelled or something.

So usually I wouldn't avoid targetting the monster in order to preserve it for myself. On the other hand, if I thought my opponent was going to shield it anyway, I'd throw the missile their way. Cut your losses.

1) As for protecting yourself, you've basically said all there is to it. Protect your monster, unless them charming you means they'll get it anyway, orr you have some amazing spellflow that is much more powerful ogreless than the disrupted spellflow + ogre is.

1b) This is pretty circumstantial and hard to generalise, but I'd just say that I wouldn't risk disrupting myself and losing the monster. That would suck big time.
But the reason it's circumstantial is because it depends on which disruption it is and how easy it would be to fit into your spellflow - or your opponent's. If it'll whumph either of you, don't aim it at yourself, but balance it up between the risks each way for the other two targets.


Uh, yeah. Now I'll just pretend I answered that in a nice, ordered, logical fashion.

[ExDeath]

The best way to deal with a monster is to counter it.

The best way to defend a monster is to force your opponent to choose between casting protection or countering something deadly. Or, just spam FFFFFFFF like a noob (that's what I do).