Here it is... the Teana Open!

[Lord Ludwig]

As I said, what happens in the campaign is not really relevant, or at least not decisive. I think it's best to follow through with the tennis analogy so, if the executioner kills the chosha but is subsequently killed by the gobots, I guess it's like a tennis player winning his match but then giving forfeit due to excessive fatigue or injury. There are proposals to grant the losing player a ticket for the next round, but at present in pro tennis the next opponent just gets a walkover. So I guess the green dragon won't have to fight his 4th round. Anyway, I suppose there's no doubt the EGD would rip both the chosha and the executioner to pieces.

So here is the fourth round:

Black Dragon (1) 3
Alchemist (16) 0

Ancient Ent (9) 3
Bone Dragon (8 ) 0


Ancient Vampire (28 ) 1
Royal Thorn (12) 3

bye (see discussion)
Green Dragon (4)



Red Dragon (3) 3
Royal Griffin (14) 0

Ogre (11) 0
Archdemon (6) 3


Cyclops (7) 3
Troll (10) 0

Demon (15) 0
T-Rex (2) 3

Only one result against ranking - just. The ancient ent ranked 9 defeats easily (at least so I see it) the bone dragon thanks above all to its poison resistance. Keeping distance fails against swarm. Also only one slightly uncertain result. The ancient vampire can beat the royal thorn, but would have to be extraordinarily lucky to do so. First of all, if he goes to bat form to close distance, he risks to be killed right away before shapeshifting again in two blows if the RT scores one critical. So there is about a 35% chance that the fight is over before it starts. If the AV can get near the RT he does about 8 to 15 points of damage, 22 on a critical, thus he needs about 30 rounds on average to finish off the RT, 17 at minimum if scoring an extremely unlikely row of criticals. The RT needs at least 104 thorns to finish of the AV (immune to criticals while not in bat form), 116 if he wants to play it safe. he can get those numbers respectively at round 16 and 19 if he's unlucky, at 10 and 13 if he's lucky. Thus the combination of an extremely lucky AV with an extremely unlucky RT could give the win to the AV, but - unless I am again wrong - the chance of this happening is so close to 0 as not being distinguishable.

[TemjinGold]

Wait, shouldn't the AV be killing off the thorns as they're getting summoned (and sneaking in hits on the RT in between)?

[dashcunning]

The royal thorn generates, on average, 28 thorns (warrior or hunter) every 3 turns. The AV can kill, on average, 9 warriors or 15 hunters every 3 turns. Not even close to keeping up.

It's a bit of a shame both vampires ran into and got offed by the same thing that their gimmicks (regen and high init/speed no retaliation) wouldn't help against. Otherwise they were capable of beating any sufficiently slow melee. Guess it doesn't matter that much as they would have been dominated by a dragon eventually.

[Lord Ludwig]

Originally Posted by dashcunning

The royal thorn generates, on average, 28 thorns (warrior or hunter) every 3 turns. The AV can kill, on average, 9 warriors or 15 hunters every 3 turns. Not even close to keeping up.

I agree that the vampires were quite unlucky with their entry rank, and that without germination the RT wouldn't stand a chance. However it gives 150-300 worth of leadership in thorns, which translates into a minimum of 18, a maximum of 37, an average (as you said) of 28. The point is not how many thorns the AV can kill, because indeed he can't keep up, the point is: does the AV have even the tiniest chance of finishing the RT before enough thorns are around to kill the AV in one round? Indeed he DOES have a chance, but that would require the RT to constantly summon the bare minimum of the 150-300 range and the AV to score 17 criticals in 19 rounds. Such event is clearly so unlikely as to be close to impossible. Once again, a 3-1 does not indicate that team A wins 75% of the matches, only that his victory is not completely and utterly guaranteed.

Ah, and let's not forget the AV DID beat the only top ten player to be eliminated early on, the giant.

[MaroonMaurader]

Once the Royal Thorns have at least 3 stacks of thorns, and at least one of them is thorn-hunters, they can use their minions to wall themselves in against the side of the map. The ancient vampires can try to maneuver themselves to lengthen the royal thorn's path to the wall, but starting with turn 4 the royal thorn can use summoned thorns to hold a path open and the ancient vampire can no longer stall; even before that the royal thorn can advance one space by tacking around the ancient vampire on turns 2 and 3.

So it's actually less likely than at first glance - the AV must get 17 critical hits in 19 rounds, at a 17% chance of a critical per attack; the royal thorn must summon no more than 21 thorns in any given germinate, AND those thorns must always be thorn warriors, not thorn hunters (~8% chance each). Giving total odds of success of roughly 3 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000.

[Lord Ludwig]

Originally Posted by MaroonMaurader

So it's actually less likely than at first glance - the AV must get 17 critical hits in 19 rounds, at a 17% chance of a critical per attack; the royal thorn must summon no more than 21 thorns in any given germinate, AND those thorns must always be thorn warriors, not thorn hunters (~8% chance each). Giving total odds of success of roughly 3 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000.

Indeed, as I said it's so unlikely as to be virtually impossible, just not mathematically impossible.

[Lord Ludwig]

Ah, and here are the quarter-finals.

Black Dragon (1) 3

Ancient Ent (9) 0


Royal Thorn (12) 0

Green Dragon (4) 3



Red Dragon (3) 0

Archdemon (6) 3


Cyclops (7) 1

T-Rex (2) 3

All quite settled matches, I think, now that the bigguns are starting to mix together. The ancient ent doesn't stand much of a chance against the black dragon due to double fire damage; the royal thorn who caused so much discussion goes down to the green dragon in a few rounds; the red dragon may have higher ranking (due to leadership, remember) but the high fire resistance of the archdemon makes the dragon's bite quite ineffective, and so we have seeded player nr. 3 not reaching the semi's. The only match I think could require some deeper analysis is cyclops vs t-rex. There are a lot of variables here (the t-rex being tyrant and terrible, the resistances and special attacks of the cyclops) but my opinion is the cyclops is the first one to go down.