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Storybrook Brawl
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Author:  Banedon [ Sun Aug 29, 2021 9:03 am ]
Post subject:  Storybrook Brawl
Several MtG streamers are also playing this, and I'm wondering if anyone here has tried it and if so what they think about it.

I've personally never played an autobattler since it doesn't look like a complex-enough game to hold my interest. Deckbuilding is great, but it's only still half a MtG draft. Nonetheless the game is free, so I could try it sometime.
Author:  Banedon [ Thu Sep 16, 2021 9:35 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Storybrook Brawl
I went ahead and installed this game because I was bored, and am pleasantly surprised at how good it is. The point is that deckbuilding in autobattlers is a LOT more complex than MtG limited. There are tons of possible synergies, way more than in MtG.

If anyone enjoys deckbuilding more than playing I heartily recommend this game. In the meantime, I'm learning how to play it from scratch :)
Author:  neru [ Thu Sep 16, 2021 11:26 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Storybrook Brawl
I've been playing this for about a month. It's been fine, good for one or two games a day. I don't know about more complex about MtG.

Shouldn't this be posted in Other Games, rather than the Magic Arena section?
Author:  Banedon [ Thu Sep 16, 2021 10:25 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Storybrook Brawl
I spent like 8 hours on this over the past couple of days and I think you're right, the complexity I originally saw is overstated. Once one knows the main archetypes the game, knows what one is looking for when rerolling, etc, the game becomes a lot more understandable. Annoyingly as well there is no "find the open colors" ala Magic; you are at the mercy of what you roll and it's possible you never see your synergistic pieces. But speculating in other pieces might not work well too since you might not see any more of those as well. It's annoying.

I've yet to finish last and have five trophies :D But my rating is about 400 so yeah. It's possible I will take up this game seriously, but it's also possible the novelty wears off. We'll see.

It's certainly possible this should be in Other Games but who still plays Magic Arena on this forum? ;)
Author:  Banedon [ Mon Sep 20, 2021 6:20 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Storybrook Brawl
So I played a ton of this game - I have 16 trophies after only three days - and it's more random than I thought. Yes, you make a lot of choices, but sometimes you just get lucky/unlucky and that overrides everything. For example in one trophy I got today, I was Peter Pants. This character can only stay at level 3, which is a large disadvantage because level 4-6 units are stronger, and besides you can't get level 4-6 treasures normally. But then I got the level 3 treasure Treasure Map, then upgraded Three Blind Mice which got me a level 6 treasure, and was lucky enough to roll Embiggening Stone. This level 6 treasure gives all level 2-3 characters +15/+15, and since I got it around the midgame I just roflstomped everyone. To think I was not doing well before this gamble paid off too.

The fights can also be frustratingly random. Some of the earlier fights are the best example - who goes first is already random, and sometimes if character X attacks character Y then the first player wins, but if character X attacks character Z then the second player does, and it's 50-50. I've had my Slay monster both hit and fail to hit the monster that would have triggered Slay, and the repercussions of that trigger are large and long (especially with the Adventurer card).

Finally sometimes the draft just comes together or fails to come together. Like, I had Gepetto one draft which obviously makes creatures that leave other creatures when they die desirable, but I also failed to see any of those. A draft can often be salvaged, but it's also possible one is never offered synergistic pieces. I had two train wrecks this way, finishing 8th for the first time (although I am positive I could have played better). Speculating on triples is also highly random; sometimes I just don't see the third copy in spite of rolling for it like 6+ times, when getting the third copy provides a large power boost.

That said - I still find when one game ends I am strongly tempted to play the next one. It's fun. I'll probably continue playing it until it's no longer fun, which could be very far in the future.
Author:  Banedon [ Tue Sep 21, 2021 5:36 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Storybrook Brawl
Ok I think I enjoy the genre, but the randomness is annoying. The card Adventurer is the biggest culprit. Quite often when I use that card, there's a 50% chance I go first, and then there's some % it will trigger the Slay. Conversely there's a 50% chance I go second, and a ~25% chance I don't get to trigger Slay. Because the Slay effect is so strong, this single roll of the dice can decide a match. It doesn't decide it immediately, you still get to make some decisions afterwards, but it's still annoying.

Other annoying moments are when my 1/4 support decides to attack and die, when if it had just passed I would have deterministcally won the fight.

The solution could simply be to play a different autobattler where the units are "intelligent", e.g. "characters with Slay actively attempt to attack units they can kill". I wonder if such an autobattler exists. Anyone know?
Author:  Banedon [ Thu Sep 23, 2021 10:32 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Storybrook Brawl
Well that was fast. I've lost a great deal of interest in the game, with the main underlying reason being the randomness. Some games I just cannot win, like the time I ran into a level 6 opponent with multiple upgraded T6 units while I was still level 4.

I want to play a game where the better player wins most of the time. I don't know how much "most of the time" is quantitatively, but Magic's 60% in 1v1 games (as measured by the win rates of the best players on the Pro Tour) was too low for me, and Storybook Brawl's must be even worse.
Author:  sixty4half [ Fri Sep 24, 2021 7:23 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Storybrook Brawl
Banedon wrote:
Well that was fast. I've lost a great deal of interest in the game, with the main underlying reason being the randomness. Some games I just cannot win, like the time I ran into a level 6 opponent with multiple upgraded T6 units while I was still level 4.

I want to play a game where the better player wins most of the time. I don't know how much "most of the time" is quantitatively, but Magic's 60% in 1v1 games (as measured by the win rates of the best players on the Pro Tour) was too low for me, and Storybook Brawl's must be even worse.


Randomness sucks. It's why I hate Risk. and monopoly




Thanks for sharing though. Def will avoid
Author:  Banedon [ Fri Sep 24, 2021 11:06 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Storybrook Brawl
I don't hate randomness per se. Playing to your outs and landing the 1-in-30 topdeck to win the game in Magic is pretty fun, and when it happens to me it's something to laugh about, not cry. Still, games where you get crushed and it doesn't feel like you could've done anything different are disappointing, and it seems to happen quite often in Storybook Brawl. I just spent like 36 gold rerolling a shop looking for any of three T6 units (I had two copies of all three). Never saw them. Meanwhile my last-round opponent had literally seven upgraded units. What.

Maybe the sweet spot is Pokemon Netbattle. I played that game seriously for a while and I can say a top player beats an average one >90% of the time. Luck (known as hax by the community) can swing a game, but it's often still possible to win in spite of hax. I don't know how much you know about Pokemon Netbattle, but I remember this great article analyzing the role of hax in games: https://www.smogon.com/smog/issue11/battle Early in the game one player (Earthworm) used Fire Blast, a move with 85% accuracy, and missed. Obvious hax. Yet that player was never at a serious disadvantage till later in the battle. To quote from the article:

Quote:
Although Scofield got quite lucky at various points in the game, no single event allowed him to gain irreversible momentum over Earthworm. There aren't many instances of hax in Pok'emon that appear more unlucky than missing an attack on the turn your Pok'emon is OHKOed, or getting critical hit OHKOed on the fifth-to-last move of a match. But as we can see from the commentary in the match, Earthworm was never at a significant disadvantage until the last few turns of the match, and you could even say that he had an advantage in the mid game after he missed Fire Blast. As you can see, looking merely at the "hax" that happened in a match is not really conclusive if you don't take into account what actually mattered, or how the course of the match might have changed without the hax. It also shows how the very best players are able to adapt and respond to hax and also take steps to minimize hax wherever possible. Instead of jumping the gun and complaining about how unlucky you are next time you are "haxed", take a step back and analyze things fully. Who knows? Maybe you weren't as unlucky as you thought you were!


(Emphasis mine)

The big problem I have with Pokemon Netbattle is I hate the community. Oh well.
Author:  neru [ Fri Sep 24, 2021 11:43 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Storybrook Brawl
The game definitely rewards being open and being willing to abandon what you've been doing for several rounds to grab the strong lynchpins you find. Some cards exist really only to allow you to stall and not lose too much life until you get to Level 6 and start figuring out what Level 6 cards you can grab and build around.

But yeah, it does feel like a stark difference between when your cards come together and when they don't and it feels random between the two and random when you can get the strategy that also fits what your character does. I know they're also rebalancing as they go, but it also felt like some strategies are obviously better in the end game than others.

I also just enjoy playing the games of Magic when drafting more than the drafting portion, and Storybook Brawl doesn't have that. LSV I think actually joined the team that makes Storybook Brawl, but autobattlers just have limited appeal to me.
Author:  Banedon [ Sun Oct 03, 2021 2:45 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Storybrook Brawl
I feel like in Storybook Brawl, you can speculate on powerful level 6 units, but you still might not see the cards to go with them. For example you could draft Good Boy and don't see the strong T6 good units. This doesn't apply to Magic's drafting where you typically don't build around your bombs, or if you do, the cards you draft are playable even if you don't draw the bomb. Comparatively in Storybook Brawl, you can buy these useful standalone creatures, but you will get overpowered by synergy-driven builds, and you can be sure someone has drafted a synergy-driven build because there are eight players.

I will say the game is still decently fun, and even though it is highly random it does a great job of making you think you have agency. You do make a lot of decisions after all. However, my last run is symptomatic. I missed a 50-50 shot to flip Polywoggle on turn 1, and then another 50-50 shot to flip Polywoggle a few turns later. The bugger never flipped and I eventually scrubbed out at 6th place. But if Polywoggle had flipped my position would be a lot stronger, and I would probably have ended above 6th. So the 50-50 on turn 1 had an impact way later into the game, in spite of the other decisions I got to make.

Other problems: you often just do not know what opponent is playing and therefore you cannot counterplay them. (Actually often even if you know what they're playing, you still cannot counterplay them, because the price to switch is too expensive.) The drafting is difficult because you could snap up a big payoff and look to draft that comp, then never see the pieces, so you never actually develop your board. Comparatively in Magic draft, you could snap up a big payoff P1P1 and never see the colors to go with it, but you could still end up with a playable deck since you still draft a card every pick. In Storybook Brawl, rolling has a cost to it. You can never tell if you will be able to find what you need if you roll, but not rolling could equally mean getting crushed by someone who high rolled successfully. That makes the draft sort of a crapshoot.

A final problem I have with the game is that you can't tell what is open or not. Say for example Dwarves, which is one of the strongest mid-game comps right now. I draft an early Princess Wight and therefore look to find Dwarves. If I roll a few times and don't see Dwarves, it could be RNG, or it could be there's someone else drafting Dwarves. But there's no way to tell if someone else is drafting Dwarves. The closest is to play the brawls themselves and see if you run into any Dwarves opponents, but you only play one of seven opponents and any of the other six could be Dwarves.

Frankly I think it's very probable I quit the game once I reach 4000 MMR. That's the one thing that's holding me back - because I've never been 4000 MMR, I can't say I am good at the game, and there's a part of me that wants to refrain from criticizing until I am good at the game. It's possible I quit before I get there as well, if the game stops being fun (which it is certainly shows signs of right now).

Everything said, there is one big advantage for the game compared to the others that I play: it doesn't take very long, and it's possible to semi-AFK while playing it. That makes it possible to attempt to play this and another game at the same time. Performance suffers, of course, but it's nice to be able to do something while queuing for another game.
Author:  Banedon [ Mon Oct 25, 2021 10:10 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Storybrook Brawl
Might be hard to believe, but I watched Zvi Mowshowitz (I follow him on Twitch) play this game and eventually reinstalled. I've quit many similar games in the past and this is the first game which I reinstalled, surprisingly. Yes, all the things I dislike about the game are still there, but somehow I just keep wanting to press that "play" button after every match. The game is also more difficult and skill-intensive than I gave (give?) it credit for. It's why the top players have such high rating. With the "legend reset" (i.e. the rating at which all legendary players are reset to when a new season starts) at 3000 rating, I'm currently about rank 2000 with 3700 rating; the top 10 players have like 5000 rating. It's amazing since if I'm not mistaken at the very top of the ladder you only gain rating if you finish in the top 2. With 8 players per lobby, it takes an extreme amount of consistency to climb.

Only regret right now is how much time I'll probably end up spending on this game since I'm so tempted to press "play" :(
Author:  sixty4half [ Mon Oct 25, 2021 7:45 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Storybrook Brawl
*cough* addict *cough*
Author:  Banedon [ Tue Oct 26, 2021 7:19 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Storybrook Brawl
Don't mention it, limited Magic is very similar, there's always the urge to press "next" :D
Author:  Banedon [ Mon Nov 01, 2021 6:45 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Storybrook Brawl
Ok so just before the ladder reset I spent several hours attempting to hit mythic (4000 rating). I couldn't do it. Instead I bounced between 3400 and 3800 while other people climbed above me - my absolute rank went down, and I ended around the top 6000 of all players. I've never had this happen before in all the card or pseudo-card games I've played. I've been Legend in Hearthstone, Grandmaster in pre-homecoming Gwent, Mythic in MtG: Arena (both constructed & limited), and yet I can't reach mythic in Storybook Brawl. I have definitely not given Storybook Brawl enough credit.

I gotta "git gud", then I can think of quitting.
Author:  Banedon [ Thu Nov 11, 2021 10:27 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Storybrook Brawl
I made it to mythic for the first time! Woohoo! I definitely think I improved, since it took some time but I worked out some of my weaknesses:

- I tended to overvalue +permanent stats spells. Not by much, but I definitely overvalued e.g. Blessing of Athena.
- I tended to overvalue support characters and small synergies, and would e.g. run Mad Min + Black Cat way past their sell-by date. The combo is good, but by level 3.2 one should really look to upgrade.
- I had the tendency to grab the first good unit that came my way. Not always bad, but especially when the upgrade is minor it makes sense to look for better.
- I didn't understand certain comps, e.g. it took a while before I realized how vital Grim Soul was for slay comps (it's gone now though).
- I learned more about the game. One thing that took time to internalize was which treasures are which level, and whether it's worth trying for them.

The game is significantly less random than I made it out to be, and good players can indeed beat not-so-good players a lot of the time. In-fight randomness is very annoying especially when luck can destroy a strategy entirely (e.g. getting your Good Boy hit by Piggomorph - a 1-in-7 chance - is often an instant loss and by a big margin to boot) - but it averages out. Still, it's also possible to high-roll and/or get the entire comp served up to you, when the not-so-good player can win; also when it gets to good players vs. good players, then luck plays a big part.

Still, the game is hard, and it's probable that even the top players make subpar plays in every match. It's a sign of how hard the game is when people disagree over how to rate certain units or strategies. There're enough decisions that I'm certain that no two players will play the same game identically. Furthermore even though one can high-roll to #1, good players playing against weaker opposition should still fairly reliably get #2-4. Another good thing to say about Storybook Brawl is that it is usually well-balanced - several top MtG players are developers.

sixty I think if you enjoy Magic but hate the randomness, then Storybook Brawl is likely to be enjoyable. After all it is significantly less random than Magic. I don't know if I will keep playing it, it's decently fun and the ~20 minute duration of a match is a sweet spot. I will probably play less to spend time on other games though. We'll see.
Author:  sixty4half [ Thu Nov 11, 2021 10:59 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Storybrook Brawl
Banedon wrote:
The game is significantly less random than I made it out to be, and good players can indeed beat not-so-good players a lot of the time. In-fight randomness is very annoying especially when luck can destroy a strategy entirely (e.g. getting your Good Boy hit by Piggomorph - a 1-in-7 chance - is often an instant loss and by a big margin to boot) - but it averages out. Still, it's also possible to high-roll and/or get the entire comp served up to you, when the not-so-good player can win; also when it gets to good players vs. good players, then luck plays a big part.


sixty I think if you enjoy Magic but hate the randomness, then Storybook Brawl is likely to be enjoyable. After all it is significantly less random than Magic. I don't know if I will keep playing it, it's decently fun and the ~20 minute duration of a match is a sweet spot. I will probably play less to spend time on other games though. We'll see.


Gratz on Mythic!

I'm not exactly understanding how those two statements work together. If there is a 6-in-7 chance that my kill spell (piggomorph) is going to miss the opponents best creature (Good Boy) you can count me out. Example; If my Murder had a 6-in-7 chance of missing a Primal Titan in Magic, Murder would be a bad card and magic would be a horrible game.
Author:  Banedon [ Thu Nov 11, 2021 7:43 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Storybrook Brawl
It's because missing that key unit doesn't mean you lose. It just means you don't disable your opponent's strategy. You lose only if their strategy beats yours.

Maybe a Magic comparison is, say you're playing Doomsday in Legacy and have drawn one in your opening hand. Opponent plays Thoughtseize on turn 1 and Surgical Extraction on your Doomsday. You concede, because the game is over.

On the other hand say you didn't draw Doomsday but did draw Dark Ritual. Opponent plays Thoughtseize and Surgical Extraction on Dark Ritual. Now that is obviously not ideal, but you haven't lost, there is still game to play especially since opponent did commit serious resources to slow you down.

I personally dislike the first scenario much more than the second because it's an instant win. That goes for what I describe as well - there is a 1/7 chance of an instant win, but a 6/7 chance that the fight will still be contested. Your opponent will be doing powerful things, but hopefully so should you. The cost of casting Piggomorph is a substantial one as well, although you should still always cast it if playing against Good Boy (since the 6/7 "fail case" is still very favorable for the amount of gold invested - sort of like how you can always get value out of T3feri even if doesn't disable opponent's deck).
Author:  Banedon [ Sat Dec 18, 2021 10:26 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Storybrook Brawl
Okay, I way underestimated the complexity of this game. Even though I'm now holding 4200-4300 mmr easily, around rank 150-200 on the ladder right now, there are people who are much better than me and reach 5k+ mmr. Why? On thinking about it I think much of it comes down to unit valuation given the hero/comp you are already in, and understanding of comps.

Some differences between my playstyle and my opponents:

- I find I'm seldom able to resist a treasure. Exceptions are when my current treasures are already so good I certainly will not be replacing them, or when the upgraded unit will not see play even on my current board. Otherwise I will usually triple. This goes hand-in-hand with ...
- I find I go for safe upgrades (i.e. the ones I can already see without rolling). This playstyle is undoubtedly conservative, but it might also be too conservative. It could be that I get small upgrades instead of roll for large ones. It also means my midgame comps tend to be goodstuff. So do most midgame comps admittedly, but it's rare that I'm in
- Finally, and very importantly, I think of all the end-game comps I really understand only one: the treant comp. With the other comps I know what they look like when complete, but find it hard to tell when to transition into them. I get caught with train wrecks rather often as a result whenever I try to play them.

I've got over 100 trophies at this point, and I still don't understand the game well. So it's undoubtedly much more complicated than I thought. It's less random than Magic, and not much more random than Pokemon netbattle. Will recommend.
Author:  Banedon [ Fri Jan 07, 2022 7:38 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Storybrook Brawl
I'm playing in the tournament this weekend. Wish me luck :) I don't expect to win, but I am hoping to make day 2.
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