Get Out of Jail cards

[awall]

I haven't made any interesting posts here recently. I attribute this partially to my being busy (hah, when am I not?) and partially to nobody having responded to my last post like two weeks ago about Charm Person. But I had an interesting thought the other day and I figured I'd share it.

So I was hanging out with some of my friends the other day. Several of them are big fans of Guilty Gear (a 2D fighting game), so that was the activity of the evening. I don't really play myself, but I'm familiar with most of the mechanics, and one of the ones I find the most interesting is the Burst mechanic. The way this works is that every player starts out the match with one "Burst," and can spend this anytime (even while they're in the middle of being hit by a combo) to knock their opponent back and gain what passes for initiative in that game. There's a whole art to using this effectively, including techniques for trying to get your opponent to panic and fire his Burst early when it's not particularly effective.

Being a warlocks player myself, the first thing this made me think of was a Banked Antispell. In many respects, they're the same; they can be used defensively to stop whatever killer attack your opponent is about to smack you with, or used offensively to put even more pressure on your opponent. It's also generally the case that whoever uses their Burst or Antispell last will come out ahead. For a while, I toyed with what would happen if both players started out a game of Warlocks with a banked antispell, although I wound up getting convinced that the game would probably degenerate into "first one to fire their antispell loses".

However, I'm still sort of curious about this concept. Perhaps the same idea could still work if both players started out with a banked counterspell, or a banked Amnesia, or even a banked Protection. I think I like the counterspell idea best, as I'm looking for something that gives you a one-time save-your-butt against a devastating attack, but is only situationally useful (so that getting your opponent to fire his at the wrong time can give you an edge).

Anybody have any thoughts about whether this would or wouldn't be interesting?

[taliesin]

Having played the banked Antispell or more typical banked double Magic Mirror game in the past, it's not always the case that the last to fire it wins. People often hang on too long, and find that after their opponent fires their spell that the situation is too dire for their banked spell to save them. I do find these games interesting, but in the Magic Mirror case they're sometimes a little frustrating, with neither side willing to commit wholly to an attack.

[Slartucker]

With two banked antispells, the general case is that the first one to fire it loses. This is for the very simple reason that the other player can fire theirs the following turn and end up ahead on initiative. Obviously, there are a number of special cases -- as T points out, if the situation is remarkably dire, this fails (along with every other axiom of general play).

A more precise statement might be that you lose if you fire it first and don't have a really good reason for doing so.

I agree there's no need to procreate double banked antispell games, but I think double banked mirrors and counterspells would be frustrating, as T said. It would make most decision points tediously haphazard.

[toyotami]

The two antispell thing, I'd like to disagree abit...though i really find myself in this position anymore, i think if you use it offensively with enough grunt behind it (say a ready to summon ogre or a fireball next turn, the first to let off should be able to score enough points and keep initiative enough to force the opponent to spend his and still recover enough to have made a healthpoint/initiative gain?

As for the magic mirror, that comes down to old fashioned psychology...nothing worse than wimping out of an attack thinking a mirror might be coming. I think iwould play my usual style, imagining the mirror wasn't even there...though that could never be a permanent rule to be successful.

[calicojack]

mirrorred banked magic-mirror showed up with some frequency before the D/P loop became popular. (e.g. if neither party goes for the ogre, then both parties end up anti-spelling each other in the turn after the delay, which leaves you with just 2 gestures to come up with something useful. The loss of initiative is probably worth it, and thus both for the banked mirror. But this is now worthless as the ogre is always better).

From the few games i played in that situation, it's basically like confusion: It just adds randomness. At least this time the randomness has elements of psychology involved, but on the flipside, the randomness has game-ending effects. A correctly guessed mirror in the face of e.g. a lightningbolt swings the game 10 health in your favour. This almost neccessarily slows the game down to a crawl.

[BioLogIn]

Sorry for ressurecting this thread, but I just wanted to mention that playing Warlocks did improved my own Guilty Gear skills (I'm a Guilty Gear player myself), helping me to see some initiative forks and command throw fakeouts more clearly.

Unfortunately, the next step for me was to abandon GG training for a while in favor of playing Warlocks, so I can't say I've gotten some real help from Warlocks after all )