This has definitely been a good dynasty, and I’m not just saying that because I won. It very quickly settled into a good rhythm of bouts that only started to tail off in the latter half of the dynasty in the absence of a second win condition (until the tournament was proposed), and each bout was an interesting puzzle of rules and mind games. I’d definitely want to see more of this style of dynasty in the future.

Thank you for doing so much work this round, Josh! Congratulations, SingularByte!

On the one hand, it’s bittersweet that Dark Lord’s only loss cost me the dynasty. On the other, I am delighted that such a dramatic finale led to a new first-time emperor! (Also, let’s be real, my run had a lot of luck in it—I never had to face a House Bot, for instance, and I almost always managed to delay completing my loadout until I got to see what my opponent was bringing to the table.)

I think the solid base design of the rules and the opt-in structure of the matchups had a lot to do with fostering camaraderie in this dynasty, but I think this also confirms my hypothesis that Mantle Limitations helps lead to less sniping and suspicion among players in general. One of my first proposals in the next dynasty will be to take the Rare tag off that rule.

Also, it was a pleasure to be mentor to Habanero, who truly did not need my help to come within inches of victory—perhaps they’ll drop the infinite-money scam they discovered and never needed to use in this thread?

I will absolutely support moving Mantle Limitations to non-rare.

I don’t think that it even removes Cabal play, it just makes it more complicated: more like an alliance on Survivor, perhaps.

But yes, I’ll agree that the delight of this dynasty has been the way that the players approached it: celebrating success and failure together, enjoying new strategies and collaboratively figuring out counterplays, appreciating the close bouts and the blowouts.

Has there been much / any back channel stuff this dynasty? I obviously nudged Snisbo after she threw her match against TDS to remind her that Mantle Limitations was on, which I think put paid to that, but were there any other, less object-oriented, chats? (I expected some of the top seed players to support bottom-seed players in their matchups against potential rivals - did any of that kind of thing happen?)

I did throw one match against TDS to hand over a single banner name, just to make it riskier for Brendan to try get a banner victory right before the tournament. It’s the one where I “forgot” to change my script. Once the tournament itself started though, I went back to playing to win.

The two people that threw their matches to me were the only behind the scenes collaboration I did.

@SB I thought that might have been the case!

The money scam’s main loophole was that systems’ passive effects applied in the workshop. Therefore, the trade-in value of a engine in poor condition was higher with a Back-Up Battery equipped, but the battery didn’t matter for engines in perfect condition. Since engine trade-ins received full value and detaching and reattaching the battery was free, this straightforwardly allowed a player to gain money in both directions of a trade-in.

This was a very good first dynasty to have, I had an amazing time and will probably be sticking around for a while!

@Brendan, thank you for all your mentorship help! It was nice having you to answer any questions I had about the game. As for the infinite money scam, it involved using the fact that Back-up Battery still applies its effect outside a Bout, allowing you to sell an engine at 0% condition as if it was at 25%. It was a shame it never saw any use; maybe I should have voted against the cash infusion proposals for that reason but hindsight is 20/20 :P

@Josh, I was actually considering giving Darknight the ‘warp zone’ for use in his tournament bout against Brendan so then if he managed to win with it my round 3 Bout (where the result is quite uncertain because of the house bot) would be against him, a much easier opponent than SB! I decided against it though because I figured I’d keep it to myself in case I needed it.

Oh, interesting. Yeah, that would do it.

That last comment was @Bucky

@habanero lmao, that would have been quite a message to get and I wouldn’t have blamed you at all.

I was too busy to participate in this dynasty so I can’t comment much on the gameplay, but it was fun to check the blog every couple days to see the match descriptions. :P