Welcome to the Wizard101 Message Boards

Basically, title. Was playing my Lv 35ish Storm character against a Life character in Ranked PvP, we both ran out of cards and just ended up sitting there. I had to win via Text Chat, that is to say, I discussed the irony of our situation to the point of tedium, and the other player finally quit.

Why is there no 'auto-draw' function built into PvP? Seems to me that passing for X rounds without any player making a move should prompt some kind of stalemate situation, similar to Chess' three-round repetition rule regarding stalemates.

What's worse is there's an obvious way around this problem; Reshuffle. But Reshuffle is very much a Balance spell (outside of Treasure Cards), meaning that Balance wizards have Yet Another Tool to use in the PvP arena. And with the apparently ever-present issue surrounding Treasure Cards in PvP I would submit that simply stocking up on Reshuffles is a temporary situation. While there are admitted staple cards in PvP, those have to do with the actual gameplay, not the lack thereof associated with getting decked.

So I'm curious, why is there no contingency in place for wizards with no cards?

Bombfish wrote:

Basically, title. Was playing my Lv 35ish Storm character against a Life character in Ranked PvP, we both ran out of cards and just ended up sitting there. I had to win via Text Chat, that is to say, I discussed the irony of our situation to the point of tedium, and the other player finally quit.

Why is there no 'auto-draw' function built into PvP? Seems to me that passing for X rounds without any player making a move should prompt some kind of stalemate situation, similar to Chess' three-round repetition rule regarding stalemates.

What's worse is there's an obvious way around this problem; Reshuffle. But Reshuffle is very much a Balance spell (outside of Treasure Cards), meaning that Balance wizards have Yet Another Tool to use in the PvP arena. And with the apparently ever-present issue surrounding Treasure Cards in PvP I would submit that simply stocking up on Reshuffles is a temporary situation. While there are admitted staple cards in PvP, those have to do with the actual gameplay, not the lack thereof associated with getting decked.

So I'm curious, why is there no contingency in place for wizards with no cards?

You can train for reshuffle (not only as treasure cards). It cost one training point for non balance since it is free for balance. It is in the hidden store in Colossus, near the girl that gives quests.

I totally agree with you though about "draw" option. I battled on my life wiz against a life too and for hours there clearly isnt a clear winner. We just cannot finish each other. Both of us have reshuffle and we keep doing that until we agreed one has to lose. we would have both opted for a draw but thats not available.

Reshuffle is an easy fix. Yes, it is balance, but can be bought without having to buy any other balance spells.

Ok this was a BIG problem for me back when i was level 30 and dueling. Now this was in the Old Arena, But the Problems were the same. Now one duel i found a friend who WASN'T balance using Reshuffle, I was curious to know what i did, And my friend explained that it gave you back your Discarded Cards,etc. So i now keep 1 or 2 in my deck for PvP.

There is a Place in Collosus Boulevard. You don't even need to be a Balance Wizard. It is a 'Free' Spell for them, but it will cost you 1 Pip, So i suggest ONLY get it if you intend on PvPing a lot. Otherwise you might miss out on a Secondary School Spell.

My wizard is Level 50 now, So i Mainly Duel. I learnt a lot of things in beta, So i knew when i would get training points and when to spend them. So i think you should first consider and think if you mainly PvP. This way it won't be a waste of spells.

The place is Hidden in Collosus Boulevard in a place no one notices partly because they just run right past it. A hint is it is in a Circle Junction, Like the one Mindy Pixiecrown is in. I can't really explain properly where it is, so just ask one of your friends maybe if they know.

If you happen to see me, Just ask. My name is James Swiftmancer in the game.

For what it's worth, I really don't want it to devolve into a thread about "Balance vs Everything". It's worth mentioning the school that Reshuffle belongs to, though, for the simple fact that the school with the most applicable cards in PvP arguably has a greater level of freedom in investing their Training Points, since they have the highest number of 'competitive' spells.

(Somewhat relevant example: In Magic the Gathering, it's difficult to deny that the best color is Blue, as its cards empower decks to do the best things in the game. There's hardly a deck in Type I that won't play Blue, and even the designers of the game have admitted that, yeah they probably gave Blue too much power in the early days of the game. While many of the dynamics of Wizard101 are clearly very different from M:tG, the underyling principle remains the same - Blue has the best toys, and so it dominates deck design.)

It's my feeling that while a game such as Wizard101 will, by nature of the freedom to pick and choose your spells, have cards which are definitely staples of Player Vs Player, the closer that number gets to zero, the better. Obviously this won't happen, spells like Tower Shield, Feint, Pixie, Spirit Armor, the stun spells, etc.... these things define our 'metagame', they're powerful spells with effects that the other schools don't easily mimic.

It's natural to have staples. However, the more cards that are seen as 'required' by the format of PvP, the less freedom exists in deck design and to a lesser extent, the competitive capacity of different schools is impacted.

Beyond the fact that Reshuffle is only one Training Point to invest in, I find it interesting that there's not a game rule that allows for draws. There's no guarantee that Reshuffle will resolve, there are accuracy decreasing spells so theoretically, however unlikely, a player could have all their Reshuffles fall victim to Black Mantle. Not likely - but possible. I mean for the simple reason that no spell is 100% guaranteed to resolve when considering Black Mantle effects, there's no reason to say the problem is easily avoided by using Reshuffle.

It's easy to say that a player would simply quit upon being decked - my Myth wizard has run more than a few players out of cards while I control a Cyclops so the winner there is obvious. Many players have simply conceded the match when they run out of cards, whether or not I control a minion, and to be honest that's part of my Myth character's devious plan, lol. But there's no reason to assume that any player will just concede without being set to 0 health, and there is no reason to force either player to simply take a loss when neither player can actually win, as would be the case with a match between wizards with no Reshuffles.

Look, I hope I don't sound militant. The main point of my argument is that, as long as there's a possibility that duels can end in a dead stalemate, the rules of PvP should include an option to draw, either by mutual concession or by lack of player options.