Warmachine, Brokenness and Counters

I was recently at a Warmachine tournament. I finished with an undefeated 3-0 record, splitting the first place prize with the other undefeated guy. I had fun, but I noted that some attendees-- most particularly, three other members of my local gaming scene-- did not seem to. And that made me mad, because we play this game for fun, and especially if you're paying for entrance you want to have some fun that makes it worth it. I'm not even going to go into the story of the guy who was turned away, because that's a separate set of issues.

The thing is, tournaments always bring out powergaming. And powergaming in Warmachine is very much focused on a set of counters. That's why we bring multiple lists. "How to be a good player" is a topic I could write about for days and never finish, but I sincerely want to help my friends (and even though our relationship is sometimes a little difficult I consider all of the local game store guys my friends) to be better players.

In Warmachine, to win, you must 1) identify the threats your opponent's army is capable of projecting 2) identify the threats your army is capable of projecting 3) identify the weaknesses in your opponent's list 4) identify the weaknesses in your list. It is most important to do that in that order. I am going to use two games I played to illustrate that. No names will be named.

The first game was against a Cryxian force led by Asphyxious. I identified each threat in this list: first, the arc nodes that allow Asphyxious to cast his powerful spells; second, the bile thralls that could effectively clear infantry; third, the bane thralls that could kill my heavy beasts; fourth, the pistol wraith that could shut down a heavy beast for a turn; and fifth, the Slayer that could hit like a train with three Focus on it. Finally, the caster himself poses a significant melee threat.

Having finished Step 1, I went on to Step 2. My army is EXTREMELY fast, with Nihilators being capable of running up to 14" and having a 2" melee threat. They can't attack after that, but the ability to engage the enemy from 16" away is a BIG deal, since engaging on your own terms is an invaluable tool. More on this later. My second threat is Molik Karn, but he actually doesn't hit any harder or more accurately than a Slayer-- the Slayer's two POW 16 arms are about equivalent to Karn's POW 13 Weapon Master attacks, though Enrage changes that calculus somewhat. Karn does outdamage a Slayer due to his capacity to buy more attacks and the efficiency of being able to boost after rolling, but he also costs almost twice the Slayer's price point and is equivalently fragile (one more armor, several less hitboxes). Karn's threat is mostly due to his extreme movement distance. Attacking first is the most powerful threat of all, and he's great at that. So my army's threat is the extreme speed of movement.

Step 3 came next. Each aspect of my opponent's army had a different weakness: Bane Thralls, while excellent at dispatching beasts, struggle to deal with infantry, because of their low MAT, low threat range and one attack each. Bile Thralls can do nothing once engaged in melee. Arc Nodes have the same weakness as Biles, being unable to channel or shoot once engaged.
My own weaknesses include my reliance on beasts, of which I have only two, and my lack of ranged ability.

Having completed all four steps (last one was up there, checking own weaknesses) I settled on a plan of action. By accelerating my Nihilators via Road to War and running, I was able to engage the arc nodes and bile thralls, locking them down. By engaging the Bane Thralls on my own terms, I was able to deny them access to the kind of targets they want to hit. In order to prevent them from being killed by Hellfire, Banes and the Slayer or locked down by the Pistol Wraith, I held my beasts back. This plan was phenomenally successful. How could it have been countered?

Let's switch sides. How would I have dealt with that? The Skorne army I was running really only had two types of threats: tons and tons of Nihilators, who are Tough and Fearless but have low armor and average defense; and two beasts. I would feel confident that the Pistol Wraith could keep the Titan mostly locked down, so I would focus my efforts on Karn. I have a Slayer and Banes; either one of which can deal Karn a crippling blow. I could use one to bait him and the other to kill him when he took the bait. So that's the beasts planned for. Once I started the game, I would see that my opponent was going to head in with the infantry first. That changed the game a little. I would know that the Biles would be essential, so I would hold them back. Having brought four arc nodes, I would know that I could afford to sacrifice two of them to lure out the Nihilators.

In fact, that's very similar to what my opponent did. He simply moved his biles up a bit too far. Unfamiliarity with the extreme threat range of my army was a factor, certainly. But Warmachine is a game of trades, and making the trades go in your favor. By tossing out two Breath of Corruption clouds, he could put huge holes in my formation and block off charge lanes (indeed, only three Nihilators were able to charge on one flank because of the cloud). I could not afford to let this remain, so I had to send in the Nihilators to shut down the arc nodes. If the Biles were far back enough, my opponent could have waddled them forward and Purged my Nihilators. That would take care of one flank. The other would require a different approach. The Bane Thralls were ill-suited to that job, but he had two undamaged bonejacks. Unfortunately, they were both Ripjaws. If he had sent the Ripjaws up forward and held the Defiler back, then he'd have Bile Thralls on one flank and a boostable spray on the other-- easily enough to chew through a formation of Nihilators.

I have sort of rambled, but I hope I have made my point: what won me the game was identification of the threats my opponent could project, as well as the best way to shut them down. I was able to take the one resource in which I had a clear advantage-- speed-- and leverage it to victory. In an upcoming post (possibly tomorrow) I'll talk about another game, and how contingency planning can rescue a game that seems lost.

Back

Ok, so I've resolved to keep this thing updated. I have free time now, having graduated, so I can do that. I'll start by posting a little parable I wrote.

Lots of injokes in here. Names have not been changed because nobody is innocent.

Say we all live in a village called PVCCopolis. There are 100 people living in this village.
Say we each have $100, exactly the same amount of money. Say that we could buy generators-- one generator provides enough electricity for one person and costs $90, because you have to construct an electrical line to your house and set it all up and buy the generator and fuel and whatnot. We each only have $10 left. Let's assume that a generator is an indispensable utility, so everyone wants one-- and in any case, everyone has to pay, because anyone can get benefit from the generator by running a line to their house.

Now say we could buy a big generator for $8000 that provides enough electricity for everyone. This cost would cover the generator, fuel, hooking up everyone's house etc.
The liberal solution is to tax everyone for $80 and buy the big one, giving everyone electricity and $20 left each.
The conservative solution is to let the market figure it out. Now, in this village, naturally the market would decide to buy the big generator, netting the same result.

Now imagine PVCCopolis has lots of different kinds of people. There's the town doctor, Shogs, whose medical practice and musical career have made him wealthy. There's Prince Ali, the son of the king, who lives in luxury from his inheritance. On the other end of the scale there's Georgeson who is poor and stupid and spends his welfare checks on Old Crow. Say Shogs and Ali have $200 and Georgeson only has $40. In all other respects the situation is the same as before.

Why don't we buy the big generator? Well, no one person can afford it. Furthermore, Georgeson can't afford to pay the $80 required. He can only pay $40. "But wait!" cry Shogs and Prince Ali. "Why should we have to pay the full $80 when Georgeson is only paying $40? Also, will we have to pay more to make up the shortfall? Screw that, we're buying our own generators!"

As a result, some people go without electricity and some people buy more expensive, less efficient generators.

The liberal solution is progressive taxation. Sygerrik, the town's long-suffering accountant, puts it this way: "Well, Prince Ali, you use a lot more electricity than Georgeson. He just runs his lights and electric stove and maybe a TV. You have all that plus your blender, your stereo, and the electric nipple clamps for your erotic homosex torture dungeon. Maybe you should pay more since you get more benefit out of it." Some people are so poor that they just get given electricity for free, so nobody has to freeze or starve. We get a big, efficient generator.

The conservative solution is "let the poor die in the streets if they can't afford to live." Or alternatively, Georgeson spends $40 on a terrible generator that shorts out constantly and he's still cold and hungry, and now too poor to afford enough alcohol to let him forget that.

We could expand this parable further-- discussing what happens when we can prevent poor people from using the generator if they haven't paid in-- but that involves making the situation much more complex and adding in variables like Prince Ali's Egg Farm, which employs Georgeson (he is a trustworthy worker, since he won't eat any eggs), and thus how Prince Ali and society as a whole are negatively impacted by inefficiencies such as expensive, crappy generators.

Haven't updated in a month

DEAL WITH IT

Pepper

Marky got with Sharon
And Sharon got Cherese
She was sharing Sharon's outlook
On the topic of disease
Mikey had a facial scar
And Bobby was a racist
They were all in love with dyin'
They were doing it in Texas
Tommy played piano
Like a kid out in the rain
Then he lost his leg in Dallas
He was dancing with a train
They were all in love with dyin'
They were drinking from a fountain
That was pouring like an avalanche
Coming down the mountain

I don't mind the sun sometimes
The images it shows
I can taste you on my lips
And smell you in my clothes
Cinnamon and sugary
And softly spoken lies
You never know just how you look
Through other people's eyes

Some will die in hot pursuit
And fiery auto crashes
Some will die in hot pursuit
While sifting through my ashes
Some will fall in love with life
And drink it from a fountain
That is pouring like an avalanche
Coming down the mountain

I don't mind the sun sometimes
The images it shows
I can taste you on my lips
And smell you in my clothes
Cinnamon and sugary
And softly spoken lies
You never know just how you look
Through other people's eyes

(In Reverse:
I don't mind the sun sometimes
The images it shows
You never know just how you look
Through other people's eyes)

Another Mikey took a knife
While arguing in traffic
Flipper died a natural death
He caught a nasty virus
Then there was the ever-present
Football player rapist
They were all in love with dyin'
They were doing it in Texas
Pauly caught a bullet
But it only hit his leg
Well it should have been a better shot
He got him in the head
They were all in love with dyin'
They were drinking from a fountain
That was pouring like an avalanche
Coming down the mountain

I don't mind the sun sometimes
The images it shows
I can taste you on my lips
And smell you in my clothes
Cinnamon and sugary
And softly spoken lies
You never know just how you look
Through other people's eyes


Used without permission.

Truth

What does it do?

Today I'm going to talk about the other thing in my blog's subheader. You know, economics. If you just read this for toy soldiers, it may bore you, but I hope not. The other day I found occasion to explain what the Fed does. I thought I'd repost that here and expand a bit.
Basically, I was asked why I think Ron Paul's idea to abolish/audit the Fed was a bad idea. My response was that a central bank needs its independence to prevent pressure from lawmakers to pursue a pro-cyclical monetary policy at the expense of the nation's financial stability. The response to that was two pronged: first, that the board of managers of an independent Fed could "print money" for themselves; and second, that they could loan money to the government for bad projects. I tried to address both angles here.

The Federal Reserve controls the money supply through open market operations. What that basically entails is buying and selling government bonds on the open market. Imagine the government wants to expand the money supply. Why might they want that? Well, if the economy is booming, demand is rising. That is, people are buying more, making more loans to each other, etc. Prices rise due to increased demand, which is inflation. We don't want that, let's say. Some inflation is not a bad thing, but too much is really bad. Usually there's a target rate. In order to get the inflation rate to this target rate, the government will buy a bunch of bonds. People give the fed bonds, and the fed gives them money; that's how buying things works. By "people" here I mean banks. This injects money into the economy-- that's what "printing money" means in this circumstance. The increased supply of money counteracts the increased demand and inflation slows.

Say on the other hand the money supply is growing TOO fast. There's deflation, which is just as bad or worse. The Fed sells bonds, that is banks buy government bonds and give the Fed money. This money goes out of circulation. The money supply drops, which helps.

Basically, the Fed wants to affect the Federal Funds rate, the rate at which banks loan to each other. This is effectively the "cost of money," since lots of people will take up a low-interest loan but not many will want a high-interest loan. In that way the Fed can make the market speed up or slow own. The "price of money" for banks, that is, how much they have to pay to have access to more money to loan out, is the rate at which they can borrow. This depends on the supply of money available for loan. By using OMOs to increase or decrease the amount of money banks have on hand to loan to each other, the Fed can control this rate. Most of its transactions are what we call "repos," that is, they are agreements to buy and later sell back (or sell and later buy back) which can be renewed, so the Fed can make micro-adjustments to just how much is out there day by day.

Note that all this money goes to banks. Banks have what is called a "leverage requirement," that is, they have to keep a certain amount of capital on hand. They loan out the rest. If the reserve requirement is 10%, then for every $10 a bank loans out they have to hang on to $1 in reserve. This means that by buying $10 in bonds from a bank the government increases the available money supply by $100. This makes more loans available, which is called increasing liquidity in the market. The market is more liquid, there's more money around to spend on stuff.

The central bank conducts the aforesaid open market operations to change the money supply. It also (rarely) changes the reserve requirement-- the 10% mentioned above. Finally, it changes the discount rate, which is the rate at which banks can borrow from the Federal Reserve in an emergency. Not so important. Those are its three functions.

So a person can't just walk home with their pockets full of money. When the Fed is "printing money" what it is really doing is "buying securities" which are debt instruments and worth money anyways. Usually the banks sell them to each other to make loans but sometimes the government buys them and that adds to the amount of money in circulation. A Fed chairman could sell a bunch of securities to the Fed but that would be impossible to hide and he'd quickly be fired.

As far as the debt goes:
When the Fed creates money, as seen above, that money is used to buy securities. These securities are actually the national debt: they are US government bonds. So when money is printed, it is being used to pay down the debt. Because the Fed can safely print X number of dollars per year (because the economy is expanding at X rate, so it can print them without risking inflation) the government can run a deficit of X dollars per year but not actually gain any new debt. Of course we are running deficits far above X, so we have some foreign debt as well, but that's a completely separate issue (and technically a fiscal and not a monetary one). The Fed doesn't loan money to any particular part of the government, they just buy securities and hence reduce the size of the debt, which has roughly the same effect (e.g. gov't can spend more). But you can't steal that money if you're a corrupt government dude because it's not being sent to you.


Now, some more thoughts I had since writing this:
The economy is growing at a steady rate. It's not important what the rate is, just that it's positive (which it pretty much always is). As the economy grows, demand for money increases, since people are buying more stuff. The government can safely increase the supply of money (by printing it) at this rate without causing inflation. This does not cause the dollar to lose value, because the increased demand for dollars offsets the increased supply. Inflation is frequently considered to be a Serious Problem by Very Serious People, but the fact is it's simply not right now. The fact is inflation is near its lowest ever level right now. We can afford a bit more, it's only hyperinflation that causes problems.

The thing is, the Fed's hands are sort of tied. The federal funds rate is really, really, really low. In fact it's not really possible to slash interest rates any more. Thus, the Fed can't really increase the amount of loanable money (liquidity) in the economy by reducing the rate and making loans more attractive. That's why we have things like a quantitative ease, where the Fed simply buys a bunch of government bonds with printed money. That increases the amount of liquidity out there, but there's no guarantee that banks will lend it, because in a climate of financial uncertainty they may just sit on the extra capital reserves. Remember, for this money to create jobs and stimulate activity it has to be loaned out to people who start companies, buy houses and cars and boats etc.

The idea of fiat currency is scary to people. The idea of a small group of economic technocrats making the decisions about how much money is in the economy is also scary (I'm paraphrasing a friend here). The Fed sometimes seems to be very opaque in its practices and very arcane. They do a very difficult job and they have to walk a tightrope of people trying to influence them. An audit only makes their job harder and is not likely to uncover deep dark secrets. It is also dangerous because economics is all about confidence, and sometimes self-fulfilling prophecies will cause problems that wouldn't otherwise exist.

Ron Paul doesn't know anything about economics. He's a fearmonger who has a bunch of ideas that sort of make sense if you don't think hard about them but don't hold up to scrutiny. The people in power are not stupid. If something seems like a common sense solution to you, but still hasn't happened, it's probably because there's a hidden cost you haven't thought of.

Argh

It's been far too long since I updated, and it hasn't been substantial stuff, either. I do apologize to my reader, if he or she even exists. The fact is that I've been busy, but probably not too busy to update. I'm studying finance now, which is interesting to me, so maybe I'll do the inevitable economics post soon. I've also been playing TF2, and believe me, I have some thoughts on THAT.

Let's just do a nice simple post everyone can agree on: in games that are paid for and played online in a competitive fashion (that is, against other people), it is wrong to give people who afford to pay more an advantage. I'm not talking about the Mann Co. store. Valve has done a good job of balancing the add-on weapons and in any case they all drop randomly if you play long enough. I'm talking about servers that allow people to pay for "premium." That shit has got to stop. It's unbelievably frustrating, especially given the significant advantages it grants.

I will be more articulate about this later, but it's bedtime. Just wanted to get something off my chest. Real, informative blog posts returning soon, I promise.