Hi there,
a friend of mine and me recently started to participate in some smaller tournaments. Basically all of them had a drafting system, which included the option to globally ban a civ. I think this is bad, because it encourages playing meta civs and discourages preparing some special civs (and I would see variety as a good thing). Let me tell you why:
A global ban is a double edged sword. I get the remove a civ, but then I don't get to pick it either. it's just gone. So if I ban a strong meta pick, it's just gone for both of us and noone actually gets an advantage. That's also the reason why we sometimes see players (especially GL-player, because they think about this kind of stuff^^) banning low tier civs - because they want to strong picks to be avaliable, if they expect to come out on top with the given pick order. So banning a strong civ is only mandatory, if the opponent is first pick and there's one civ, which completely outshines everything else on a particular map. Or if you feel like you're not good with a meta civ - that would be a good ban too.
But overall, especially now that the balance of the game has gotten better and better, having a ban avaliable is usually not a big advantage.
What happens if one of the players is really good with a non meta civ? Let's say I played 500 games as Goths and feel really comfortable with them. The only thing it does is making the ban of my opponent much more valuable. Because now he gets to spend his ban on removing a civ, which would be really good for me, but he doesn't care about. While I still ban something we both are probably equally good at.
So if I wanted to do good in tournaments, trying to get good at something suboptimal (but with a surprise factor) is actually a waste of time for me, because all I achieve is giving my opponent a clear target for his ban. I would really like it if players who are good with a non meta civ would actually be able to use that.
Without bans avaliable, being good with a non meta civ would actually be very strong. Because either my opponent needs to pick it himself (while he probably doesn't want to, especially not early in the draft) or I get to spend a pick (possibly one of the later picks) on something I prepared and get rewarded for my expertise with something off meta.
Of course this in the end comes down to preference. But I feel like a lot of tournament host just include bans, because other people do so, without even thing about the ups and downs. So I just want to bring some awareness to this and hope to see some more tournaments without bans - especially if it's only Arabia anyway. Let the people play what they're good at!
...and let Hoang play Celts in a tournament xD
Thanks!
btw. I'd be really interested to hear about pro-ban arguments, I might be missing - I just can't see any, if there's no completely overpowered civ for a particular map (and then maybe just ban that civ in the tournament rules).
a friend of mine and me recently started to participate in some smaller tournaments. Basically all of them had a drafting system, which included the option to globally ban a civ. I think this is bad, because it encourages playing meta civs and discourages preparing some special civs (and I would see variety as a good thing). Let me tell you why:
A global ban is a double edged sword. I get the remove a civ, but then I don't get to pick it either. it's just gone. So if I ban a strong meta pick, it's just gone for both of us and noone actually gets an advantage. That's also the reason why we sometimes see players (especially GL-player, because they think about this kind of stuff^^) banning low tier civs - because they want to strong picks to be avaliable, if they expect to come out on top with the given pick order. So banning a strong civ is only mandatory, if the opponent is first pick and there's one civ, which completely outshines everything else on a particular map. Or if you feel like you're not good with a meta civ - that would be a good ban too.
But overall, especially now that the balance of the game has gotten better and better, having a ban avaliable is usually not a big advantage.
What happens if one of the players is really good with a non meta civ? Let's say I played 500 games as Goths and feel really comfortable with them. The only thing it does is making the ban of my opponent much more valuable. Because now he gets to spend his ban on removing a civ, which would be really good for me, but he doesn't care about. While I still ban something we both are probably equally good at.
So if I wanted to do good in tournaments, trying to get good at something suboptimal (but with a surprise factor) is actually a waste of time for me, because all I achieve is giving my opponent a clear target for his ban. I would really like it if players who are good with a non meta civ would actually be able to use that.
Without bans avaliable, being good with a non meta civ would actually be very strong. Because either my opponent needs to pick it himself (while he probably doesn't want to, especially not early in the draft) or I get to spend a pick (possibly one of the later picks) on something I prepared and get rewarded for my expertise with something off meta.
Of course this in the end comes down to preference. But I feel like a lot of tournament host just include bans, because other people do so, without even thing about the ups and downs. So I just want to bring some awareness to this and hope to see some more tournaments without bans - especially if it's only Arabia anyway. Let the people play what they're good at!
...and let Hoang play Celts in a tournament xD
Thanks!
btw. I'd be really interested to hear about pro-ban arguments, I might be missing - I just can't see any, if there's no completely overpowered civ for a particular map (and then maybe just ban that civ in the tournament rules).