It’s Tricky to Rock a Joust

Today seems to be all about trickery and trick plays. I took a shot at the 3v3 Joust mode in SMITE and tricks were all over the place with the enemy sneaking around behind us almost non-stop and my two partners not seeming to realize the issue. In Strange Tales, the Human Torch gets tricked into becoming captured and letting the Wizard impersonate him, and in my Scoresheet Root league, I pulled off some tricky draft strategy to post a 4–2 record the first week of the season.

Trying out the Joust Mode

The Joust mode features a different map than I am used to with essentially a single lane. Only 3 players are on each team and the jungle is really weird. It’s a truly different game but I figured it’d be good to give this mode a shot.

As you can see, the setup is quite different but it makes sense when you consider there are only 3 champs on either side.

Here’s a trailer for the mode but I’m not really sure it applies to this season.

From what I can tell, the current season is 4 and it seems the trailer is from season 3, but it seems to be what I experienced in this mode.

The one match I had a chance to play this morning was interesting. The opposing team had an AFK which would usually lead to a surrender or slaughter as 2v3 is pretty tough. That was not what happened though. These 2 guys knew what they were doing and they dominated the 3 of us. Of course, my inexperience in the game was a liability as was the fact I was trying a new champ – Artemis, but I don’t think I played that poorly. It was bad enough though and my teammates weren’t very good either and we got wiped out.

The mode seems fun and I’d like to see what it’d be like with even teams of the same skill level. One thing I noticed though was that the two guys we were fighting against seemed to nearly always try to attack us from behind. Similar to the conquest map, there are multiple ways to move “outside” the main lane. This gives opportunity to circle around and come at the other team from the direction of their base. This seems to be a good strategy at least against noobs like myself. By attacking from the unexpected direction CC works real well and while inexperienced players are focusing on shooting the minions, sneak attacks seem to take down rival gods quickly.

Strange Tales #102: Prisoner of the Wizard

Tricked by the Wizard, the Human Torch has to fight for his life to clear his tarnished name. In a similar move to what I saw in SMITE, the Wizard lures Torch into a bad situation and captures him. First he draws the Torch into saving him with a fake tunnel collapse then he sprays fire retardant on him as he’s giving the Torch a tour of his wonderful home. With an asbestos lined room prepared to hold him, the Wizard takes over the Human Torch’s identity and goes on a crime rampage.

Of course Johnny escapes the Wizard’s room, but now the authorities are after him because they think he’s been robbing banks and destroying statues. Seeing no alternative, Torch agrees to meet up with the Wizard for a final contest of power. This proves to be the Wizard’s downfall though as he was too full of himself to consider all possibilities. Johnny asks his sister, the Invisible Girl to help him and they steal incriminating photos showing the Wizard impersonating the Torch.

Interestingly enough, before that final battle, the Wizard was always thinking many moves ahead of Johnny, but in the end, he was stuck in the moment and didn’t even consider the Human Torch could beat him.

If the Wizard had prepared for all eventualities like he did here when he let himself be trapped in a safe underwater, he might have actually defeated Johnny. In the end though, he failed in his attempt and failed at his ultimate achievement.
As for a rating, I’ve kinda grown tired of these villains who insist on proving themselves against our heroes just for the sake of showing how great they are. And beyond that, this guy seems to forget everything that got him to his super villain status when he tries to tackle the Human Torch. With that in mind, I rate this a C.

Scoresheet Root League – Angels

No trickery was involved in my Scoresheet Root league this week, though I suppose during the draft I targeted players I figured would cover the holes in my Angel team. For the week, I went 4–2 which was pretty good, I think. And I think my draft strategy worked out.

Since I really am not certain the Angel’s starting pitchers are all that good, I targeted starters from other teams in the Draft. I grabbed Quintana, Iwakuma, Duffy, Gaussman, and Kennedy as my primary starters and while the real MLB Angels had no pitcher finish 6 innings, my fantasy team starters all pitched at least 6.

With those pitchers and a league leading .333 battling average, I was able to throw together 4 wins. It’s a long season but starting out on the winning side is definitely a positive in my book.