Possible Proposal: Arena Should Only Be For 500+ ELO

[illy831]

Wingspan's not chess, it's a lot more luck-based as one of the top-rated players noted in another recent thread here. And the crow isn't the end-all. It's useful especially for playing expensive birds with uncommon food cost, but you need to 1) draw those birds and 2) find another useful meadow bird so it's not just one food, one egg per turn. Not to mention it may or may not align with bonus, EOR, etc.

Anyway — if you want to call it quits early in any game that's your call of course, but are all your opponents in such situations the same level as the top player? Even if they are, YMMV, but I'd say make them prove they can win. If they do, you should be losing relatively little ELO, while if they don't, you stand to gain in big chunks. It also feels pretty good to win one of those!

I personally do not consider 300-400 ELO "beginner". I think once you get to 300 (or even mid-200s), these are players who are pretty familiar with the game, and capable of dropping big scores when the circumstances align. I would consider them credibly challenging opponents for most players, so IMO it is nothing to feel down about at all. (And sure, there is clearly some room to improve from there — but to get there, finishing games for a start would be good practice)

[Archisian]

Wingspan's not chess, it's a lot more luck-based as one of the top-rated players noted in another recent thread here. And the crow isn't the end-all. It's useful especially for playing expensive birds with uncommon food cost, but you need to 1) draw those birds and 2) find another useful meadow bird so it's not just one food, one egg per turn. Not to mention it may or may not align with bonus, EOR, etc.

Anyway — if you want to call it quits early in any game that's your call of course, but are all your opponents in such situations the same level as the top player? Even if they are, YMMV, but I'd say make them prove they can win. If they do, you should be losing relatively little ELO, while if they don't, you stand to gain in big chunks. It also feels pretty good to win one of those!

I personally do not consider 300-400 ELO "beginner". I think once you get to 300 (or even mid-200s), these are players who are pretty familiar with the game, and capable of dropping big scores when the circumstances align. I would consider them credibly challenging opponents for most players, so IMO it is nothing to feel down about at all. (And sure, there is clearly some room to improve from there — but to get there, finishing games for a start would be good practice)

What kind of chance do you think I had here?

https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=860419458

[illy831]

By the time you resigned at the end of Round 3? Pretty bad in that one. Opponent had a hummingbird to support the crow, so a pretty good food engine out of the meadow. And then the Grebe in the wetland to supply cards for that engine. On top of that, you had a hummingbird to help their food engine. And then they saw you going all-in on your meadow (why? you *didn't* have the draw or food engine to support it) and added a cowbird. Oh, and later they added a Barrow's Goldeneye for good measure (I have to say, you walked into that one).

So it's not the crow alone and it's not early.

To my eye, you did some weird stuff early in this game although I didn't watch all of it. I would have picked the same starting hand you did, but drawing the violet-green swallow out of nothing did not seem called for (and it looks like you never played it? And later spent a turn drawing the purple martin alone?). It's a nice bird, but you need some way to get food, and you need some way to cycle cards.

What you could do is play the robin, get food, play the nighthawk in the wetland, lay eggs, and draw two cards (using an egg) and move it to the forest. Now you can gain two food, you have two cards, and you can cycle a card in each gain food action until you turn up something really worth playing in the wetland or meadow. Once you have a bird in each, then you can lay 3 eggs or draw 2 cards at leisure and use whatever other brown powers you get there. Ideally, you pick up some bonus-matching birds or ground nest birds for the round 3 goal along the way. Who knows? You could turn up some nice cards.

In this case, if the opponent sticks with hummingbird, you just reap the benefits, and you don't hand them even more food. And they would have less cause to play the cowbird and hurt you.

Later in the game, you played the Belted Kingfisher for a reason I couldn't figure out, but it was getting hopeless by that point.

[Archisian]

By the time you resigned at the end of Round 3? Pretty bad in that one. Opponent had a hummingbird to support the crow, so a pretty good food engine out of the meadow. And then the Grebe in the wetland to supply cards for that engine. On top of that, you had a hummingbird to help their food engine. And then they saw you going all-in on your meadow (why? you *didn't* have the draw or food engine to support it) and added a cowbird. Oh, and later they added a Barrow's Goldeneye for good measure (I have to say, you walked into that one).

So it's not the crow alone and it's not early.

To my eye, you did some weird stuff early in this game although I didn't watch all of it. I would have picked the same starting hand you did, but drawing the violet-green swallow out of nothing did not seem called for (and it looks like you never played it? And later spent a turn drawing the purple martin alone?). It's a nice bird, but you need some way to get food, and you need some way to cycle cards.

What you could do is play the robin, get food, play the nighthawk in the wetland, lay eggs, and draw two cards (using an egg) and move it to the forest. Now you can gain two food, you have two cards, and you can cycle a card in each gain food action until you turn up something really worth playing in the wetland or meadow. Once you have a bird in each, then you can lay 3 eggs or draw 2 cards at leisure and use whatever other brown powers you get there. Ideally, you pick up some bonus-matching birds or ground nest birds for the round 3 goal along the way. Who knows? You could turn up some nice cards.

In this case, if the opponent sticks with hummingbird, you just reap the benefits, and you don't hand them even more food. And they would have less cause to play the cowbird and hurt you.

Later in the game, you played the Belted Kingfisher for a reason I couldn't figure out, but it was getting hopeless by that point.

I drew the Swallow because I did plan to use it later on once I established my engine. My plan was to use the Nighthawk, the Robin and the Hummingbird to draw cards I needed for the Forest and then I'd have time to drop the Swallow later. However when I saw their Hummingbird and the Crow go both down, I panicked. My mind then shifted that I needed to take away cards that my opponent would probably take with the engine, like the Swan and the Martin (since their engine would be in the grassland, laying eggs every turn would be devastating). I needed to get cards that either helped me with point value or try to keep up with the end of round goals, hence why I drew the Kingfisher. But I think it was all in futility from the moment they dropped those two cards down.

[FrankJones]

What kind of chance do you think I had here?

https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=860419458

I keep the American Robin and 3 cards, a cherry and a worm.

turn 1, play the robin in the first using a cherry. Turn 2, gain a worm, then discard one of your other 2 cards for an extra food, and then tuck and draw the violet-green Swallow.

That would leave you with only the Violet-Green Swallow and a random food, so maybe don't throw away the card for a food.
Then you can play the Violet-green Swallow wherever. Having that and the robin in the forest isn't terrible. Or you could go grassland and then lay eggs and swap until you get a wetland bird. Or, just play the Swallow in the wetland; now you have a powerful tuck and draw in the forest and wetland. Ideally one or both would be in the grassland, so it's not entirely clear to me which sequence is optimal.

(Note that by playing the robin as your first card, you might have ended up with the Swallow and the hummingbird.)

(This depends on whether the RNG deals out a deck in a fixed order, or calls the RNG function each time a card is needed, in which case the next card in the tray could have been any card.)

[FrankJones]

With the robin in your starting hand and 3 food, I cannot see a justification for doing a naked card draw and a naked food gain.

[Edit. Now a third consecutive unsupported action to start the game. You have the Robin, a card anyone would love to have in the starting hand. Play it, and then use it to gain new cards while scoring tuck points and gaining eggs or food.]

Your opponent kept 5 birds in the starting hand. Were you worried your opponent with 5 cards and no food was going to do an unsupported wetland card grab?

This just gets weirder and weirder. On your final turn of the round, yet another naked card draw? That's 4 unsupported card draw or food gain actions in the first round when you had the Robin in your starting hand. This defeats the purpose of keeping a migratory bird in your starting hand.

On your 8th turn, you could have laid 3 eggs, traded a useless card for the purple martin, and moved the migratory bird to the wetland to gain 1 extra point for the EOR goal. So, that would be 5 points while still gaining the purple martin instead of zero points while gaining the purple martin.

And, starting round 2 with the migratory bird not in your wetland is questionable. What if there are two cards in the tray you want?

The trumpeter swan is an end-game card. I would prioritize getting your strong brown-powered birds on the board. Granted, you're not getting the right food from an unhelpful bird feeder, but your hummingbird could help with that.

Belted Kingfisher - Meh.
And then you had a chance to get Barrow's goldeneye. Take it. No rush on playing the hummingbird. Or rather, there wouldn't have been if you hadn't burned all your food on the trumpeter swan.

End of round 2 and you still have not played the two birds you cold-drew in R1.

Start of round 3 you are ... drawing cards? You have 3 birds you want to play, and a 4th (pine siskin) to use as a tuck and draw. So, again, you could be laying 3 eggs and doing a tuck and draw, but instead you did a zero-point action to draw 2 cards.

What does the black skimmer accomplish?

Opponent uses hummingbird and you take a fish. Why? Take a cherry. Let's get the rose-breasted grosbeak into the grassland. You'll need grain and cherries to play the purple gallinule, giving you 3 cherry birds and setting yourself up for a big play if you find a good-scoring 4th cherry bird.

Now a non-scoring gain food action to gain ONE food, not even discarding the useless pine siskin? What is happening here? You have a way to lay eggs, gain food, and gain a card while gaining a tuck. instead of playing the purple martin, you could have laid eggs, then played the grosbeak, then gained two food while gaining eggs and a tuck and draw, while scoring 6 points for the grosbeak, and then play the Martin.

[Archisian]

With the robin in your starting hand and 3 food, I cannot see a justification for doing a naked card draw and a naked food gain.

[Edit. Now a third consecutive unsupported action to start the game. You have the Robin, a card anyone would love to have in the starting hand. Play it, and then use it to gain new cards while scoring tuck points and gaining eggs or food.]

Your opponent kept 5 birds in the starting hand. Were you worried your opponent with 5 cards and no food was going to do an unsupported wetland card grab?

This just gets weirder and weirder. On your final turn of the round, yet another naked card draw? That's 4 unsupported card draw or food gain actions in the first round when you had the Robin in your starting hand. This defeats the purpose of keeping a migratory bird in your starting hand.

On your 8th turn, you could have laid 3 eggs, traded a useless card for the purple martin, and moved the migratory bird to the wetland to gain 1 extra point for the EOR goal. So, that would be 5 points while still gaining the purple martin instead of zero points while gaining the purple martin.

And, starting round 2 with the migratory bird not in your wetland is questionable. What if there are two cards in the tray you want?

The trumpeter swan is an end-game card. I would prioritize getting your strong brown-powered birds on the board. Granted, you're not getting the right food from an unhelpful bird feeder, but your hummingbird could help with that.

I wanted the Swallow, but yeah, I felt that if I didn't draw it, they would have drawn it. I thought them keeping 5 cards was fishy, but since I didn't know their starting hand, I thought I would at least grab it first before laying down the Robin. But once I saw them lay down the Hummingbird and the Crow, realizing they had both in their starting hand, I panicked. I legitimately didn't know what I could do in that situation. In my mind, I was thinking "Oh crap, he has his engine in the Grassland and can play anything he wants now. I need to keep up somehow." The entire plan I had fell apart, so I was scrambling. I took the Swan because I needed the points because of their constant use of the Grassland and it fulfilled an end-of-round goal. I also took the Martin because I couldn't have them take it and just rack up the points since they were going to exclusively use the Grassland.

That was my thinking. It was probably the wrong thing to think, but as I said, I panicked and didn't know how to overcome it.

[FrankJones]

Second-to-last turn, move the migratory bird to the forest and then play Grosbeak in the grassland.

And nooooo, why throw away the Heron?

[FrankJones]

ok, so the opponent played a crow and a hummingbird. So what?

Opponent gets 2 eggs and a food, and a hummingbird activation which can help you too. You had the American Robin. You had cool stuff you could have done. Don't panic. Don't go card grabbing. If your opponent wants to keep 5 cards and no food and then go grabbing cards from the tray, so be it.

Instead of conceding, try playing the final round. Because you rarely finish a game, you have little experience managing end-game situations. Your opponent has 1 card and 2 food. Maybe the bonus card is a dud. You have some big cards you are ready to play. Finish the game and see what happens.

[illy831]

There’s a theme here of giving too much respect to your opponent, I think. Some cards must be prevented from going to them — Goldeneye on top of Cowbird comes to mind — but the Swan was just one of many ways to score decent points in the endgame, and to pay for it they would need some combination of giving you food and sacrificing eggs to do it.

It is always the case that your opponent might score high. You have to take care of your own setup first, and wasting turns naked drawing hurts your chances of that. So don’t panic and just put your best foot forward. At the end, you get to see the full game point totals and develop a sense of “how good” each setup was. I also concur with the importance of practicing endgames. A handful of points here and there can matter a lot.