Hi folks,
Here you’ll find the second part of my interview with Jake Scott, Volunteer TO at Patriot Games in Sheffield.
In the first part (Found HERE) I asked Jake to talk us through his recent decision to introduce a Ban List to his Dice Masters events, the reasons for the decision, and what he anticipated it acheiving.
The following interview took place earlier this week after Patriot Games held their first event with the Ban List in action.
Enjoy!
You’ve run your first event with your ban list in effect on a Limited Format – how did it go?
Well, we were expecting more people but 4 people turned up. With this being the first month of the new year everything is a little lax across the board, and there were also a lot of our players in Magic the Gathering, Pokemon, Star Wars Destiny, ETC. So we just had round Robin. Prismatic Spray appeared in a couple of teams as did an old favourite, Green Goblin – Gobby, but the most interesting team was an X-23/Flying car Combo.
As I watched the guys play, I noticed the P.Spray was extremely powerful versus static ability characters and Globals in general, being able to take your turn without hindrance is powerful enough, but neither of those two teams won. A bog standard Gobby team won that didn’t run what most would the best versions of certain cards, I.e. Wong, Captain America and Constantine. Mr. Shane Drake took our tournament with a very strong win streak, his team comprising of the powerful Gobby, an AVX Captain America and a few other less popular Gems of old.
What impact did you observe the bans have?
Overall, I believe people enjoyed this, but a note was made about WKO legal teams. So I threw an idea out, more events available with house bannings, but our “Once a month” op kit events being a WIZKIDS unlimited constructed event with their bannings only. And that was received with a much more positive result, people were even interested it paying for the weekly events too, obviously with support, but that’s something I have to talk to Patriot Games about.
What sort of teams did you see? Anything particularly popular?
The only two things that particularly stood out were a classic Gobby team with a newer twist, and a completely unseen, as far as I’m aware, X-23 team. I believe there’s something to come from the X-23 team. We just might see someone finalise it.
Other than that, I believe people weren’t too sure what to expect. I planned on bringing my Ultraman Smash team to really bring the phrase “One turn kill” to life, unfortunately, circumstances meant I couldn’t play, so I just TO’d. Hopefully there’s next week to try my team out.
What next? Will you keep the ban list in effect?
What I can say is that it felt good to not have to see people sigh and grumble as a Bard hit the field or a Parallax/”When fielded” Combo goes off and causes some serious damage. For casual events I think I’m going to enforce the house bannings ongoing. From time to time I will look back and research the possibility of adding or taking things away from the list, but for now, it seems pretty solid. However, we will be using on official bans whenever we play for OP packs.
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I wish Jake & Patriot Games luck with their experiments with house rules and look forward to hearing more from them in the future as they try it out more.
What do you think dear reader; will the house ban list help bring back the fun or aid driving player recruitment? What would you ban if you could? What teams do you think Jake will see in the coming weeks with his ban list? Let us know in the comments below…
