story/block rant

[Walrus]

ok so the game starts he has a bomb form, sends his witch up and kills 1 of my clerics, but loses his witch from the inevitable LW strike.
next he goes after my other cleric, and sacrifices 2 pyros, a knight and nearly his scout in doing so...but eventually the other cleric falls. i finish off his scout, meanwhile our assassins fight each other on the other side of the map...this is where i begin to realise its time for some block rant. his assassin gets 3 consecutive side blocks, mine fails 2 side blocks and a front block. (though blocks once from the side in between. i manage to let my assassin escape, and lure his assassin into my forces. meanwhile my 2 knights + scout fight one of his knights...who gets 4 side blocks, whilst hitting my scout from the front and side. this is where it becomes annoying.

i forget what happens in between, but it ended up me having 2 knights (one full life, one about half life) and my 2 wards, against his assassin (17 life) and full health knight, and a cleric and chanty sitting on the other side of the board, posing no real threat to the situation. 1st i do a back attack on his knight, who is positioned such that if his assassin tries to hit my low life knight she also hits his own knight from the side. she attacks anyway. her allied knight gets a side block, whilst mine FAILS a front block. i was like WTF???? anyway he finished off my low knight, and loses his assassin.
the situation is now 1 full life knight and 2 wards against 1 30 or so life knight, a chanty and a cleric. not so much to my advantage. he begins to march his chanty up so i run at his cleric. i kill it and escape at the cost of -17 life. so my knight has 33 life, his has 33 too, he has a chanty, i have 2 wards. OK i think, ill just run him around the wards and wait for my opportunity. sure enough i strike his knight while his chanty is recovering from her move. his knight is now on 10 life, he tries a side attack on mine, and my knight decides to block for a change. meanwhile his chanty has gotten in and immobilised both my wards...i get a back attack finishing his knight, but a fatal misjudgement on my part means my knight becomes in range of the chanty, who goes and paralyses him, finishing the game.

OK so i lost, it was a closish battle. however, i stand by the fact that my blocking that game was apalling, the most important hits (like his assassin trying to finish my knight with a front attack) was where my blocking screwed up. and at times when i wasnt bothered, my troops decide to actually block. grrrr.

[Walrus]

block rant part II


wow, just played another seriously nice game...cant remember much of the start, cept that he killed both my clerics and got a side block with his witch.

then came the wrath of uber-knight. it was a nice little 1 on 1 battle my knight vs his. he side attacks (SA's) me, i dont block...i SA him and he does...OK i think, thats feasible. however, when the same thing was repeated twice more, i began to get slightly annoyed. after that my knight was dead, with his still on full life. he then proceeds to get another 3 side blocks in a row, bringing the total up to 6 in a row. ridiculous. finally i managed to kill uber-knight, at the cost of 1 cleric, 1 witch, 1 knight and 1 scout. -.-


the battle ended up something like this:
me : 1 knight (full life), 1 LW (full life), 1 BW (8 life)
him : 1 pyro, 1 cleric, 1 chanty, 1 non-uber knight,1 LW.

this was due to the stupid blocking i was a victim of the entire game.. he took out my BW pretty quick, and gradually started wearing down my LW with his pyro, his chanty and knight were chasing my knight. after a nice fight i killed his knight, and ran down the flank, evading his chanty. i got to the pyro and got a front attack while chanty was recovering from move. my knight was hit by LW, i waited my turn then did another front attack and killed the pyro. id made sure the chanty wouldnt be able to get in range, and nor would the LW recover in time to finish my knight. he now had only a LW, a cleric and a chanty against my knight + LW. after a brief run around my LW, he surrendered, and i was honestly gobsmacked.

[Walrus]

phew, just finished my 3rd consecutive game of bad blocking.


cant remember too much about this one cept my knight died from 2 front attacks and a witch. 2 front attacks!! both failed!! i mean.....pfff

sadly, i didnt manage to pull a win outta this one, as my other knight failed 5 (YES 5) consecutive side blocks. meanwhile his pyro got 3 front blocks, his witch got 1 front, and his assassin got 4 side blocks.
i was then destroyed by his mages.

[radmobile]

I cannot take this game seriously because the blocking is so erratic. I play plenty of dice games and never have the kind of luck that goes on in this game. Sadly, there ain't a thing we can do about it. They'll "never change it". For now, all I can do is keep complaining and put my money where my mouth is.

That's right. I used t be "gold".

Game on!

[Shaman]

Originally posted by Walrus
phew, just finished my 3rd consecutive game of bad blocking.

cant remember too much about this one cept my knight died from 2 front attacks and a witch. 2 front attacks!! both failed!! i mean.....pfff

Your complaining of two missed frontal blocks?
Come back when you have had a game with 0!, and yes I mean ZERO blocks.

[Walrus]

0.2 (20%) * 0.2 = 0.04


that means there is a 4% chance that a knight will fail 2 front blocks. now, in my books, 4% isnt something id be confident about...most ppl are happy to risk attacking a witch from the front (20% miss chance) and take that risk as they have a 80% chance to hit it...most ppl feel unlucky or hard done by if an enemy witch blocks a front attack. if a 20% block = unlucky, my 4% failed block is pretty bad too.


in an isolated incident that wudnt matter TOO much to me, i can survive with a knight getting battered a bit, however, when theres other stupid blocking things happening too...it becomes something to complain about.

the blocks were as follows:

my team:
2 failed front blocks, 5 failed side blocks
thats 0.04 * 0.01024 = 0.0004096 (0.04% chance of these happening, i think that math is correct)
meanwhile on his team:
3 pyro front blocks,1 witch front block, 4 assassin side blocks
0.33^3 = 0.35% for pyro
20% witch
0.35^4 = 1.5% assassin blocks
0.0035 * 0.2 * 0.015 = 0.0000105 = 0.001% chance of that happening

however ill be fair in that i DID hit his units occassionally in that, so we can chance that to a 0.01% instead, and his units did occassionally hit mine, so ill chance my 0.04 to a 0.1

regardless, 0.01 * 0.1 = 0.001% of all that happening

seems quite unlucky to me...though i probably got the math wrong somewhere

[Thargor]

There's nothing wrong with your math, but you are making a couple assumptions. You need to remember a couple things about statistics.

1) order means nothing. So getting three big blocks IN A ROW, means no more in statistical terms then getting three in the game, separately.

2) Statistics are pointless without sample size. when you pick out say, the three worst blocks of a match, there is not enought data to prove anything.

3) If you really want to see how you've done in a match block-wise, you need to keep track of each hit and miss (and the percentage chance of each) and get a match total. Then your probability percentage will be much more statistically significant. I might do that out of curiosity a couple times, just to see.

4) the percent chance that the winning lottery combination will be the same as any chosen set of numbers is very small. FOR EVERY COMBINATION. heres an example:

1. My knight hits another knight from the side (60%) chance. no sweat. Then my Scout scores against the enemy scout on a side shot (70%) and my knight follows up with a side shot on a Pyro (84%) and my assassin a front shot on a witch (80%). Do the math, and you'll see that even though getting each individual shot in this series is favored, you have only a 28% chance of getting them all. And that is the most common result! every other hit/miss combination for this series of hits is less common then that! And in the end I haven't included enough results to make it really significant anyway.

Maybe i should make a "Statistics of Blocking" post :p Or maybe not, would likely bore everyone to tears....:rolleyes:

Originally posted by Walrus
0.2 (20%) * 0.2 = 0.04


that means there is a 4% chance that a knight will fail 2 front blocks. now, in my books, 4% isnt something id be confident about...most ppl are happy to risk attacking a witch from the front (20% miss chance) and take that risk as they have a 80% chance to hit it...most ppl feel unlucky or hard done by if an enemy witch blocks a front attack. if a 20% block = unlucky, my 4% failed block is pretty bad too.


in an isolated incident that wudnt matter TOO much to me, i can survive with a knight getting battered a bit, however, when theres other stupid blocking things happening too...it becomes something to complain about.

the blocks were as follows:

my team:
2 failed front blocks, 5 failed side blocks
thats 0.04 * 0.01024 = 0.0004096 (0.04% chance of these happening, i think that math is correct)
meanwhile on his team:
3 pyro front blocks,1 witch front block, 4 assassin side blocks
0.33^3 = 0.35% for pyro
20% witch
0.35^4 = 1.5% assassin blocks
0.0035 * 0.2 * 0.015 = 0.0000105 = 0.001% chance of that happening

however ill be fair in that i DID hit his units occassionally in that, so we can chance that to a 0.01% instead, and his units did occassionally hit mine, so ill chance my 0.04 to a 0.1

regardless, 0.01 * 0.1 = 0.001% of all that happening

seems quite unlucky to me...though i probably got the math wrong somewhere

[Walrus]

its all about teh binomials. having recently taken a Statistics 1 AS level exam, i know most of what u said (no offense) just couldnt be arsed to put it into practice. just one thing though:

order DOES matter, assuming the sample size is simply the game between the 1st and last block. 3 blocks in a row in a sample of 3 is not the same as 2 blocks and a hit in a sample of 3, with a block later on to make up for it. u seem like an intelligent person so ill leave it at that, though i can understand what ure saying.

anyway, the point is i had terrible blocking in those matches. rurgh.

[MtSlayer]

Don't worry Walrus I feel your pain. I have had some incredibly bad luck recently.

[Thargor]

I hear ya walrus, bad blocking sucks.