Mirror mirror

Discuss pet battles, strategy and theorycrafting.
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Poofah
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Mirror mirror

Post by Poofah » January 14th, 2014, 3:01 pm

This is my new hobby, and I wonder if anyone else does this:

Basically, I angle for mirror matches. When I queue for pet PvP, I make note of the opponent's team. After the match, I copy it as precisely as I can (same pets, same abilities, usually the same breed* but sometimes this isn't possible). At the times I'm queueing, I can generally get the same team again about 50% of the time.

This has led to some of my more fun matches. Obviously I have a little bit of an advantage because I've already seen your team in action once. But I also find myself playing with totally unfamiliar pets a lot of the time.

Of course, occasionally my opponent will catch on. One person decided to 'counter' my strategy by playing pets they thought I wouldn't have -- eventually we were playing Netherwhelp/Quilen Cub/X, and they eventually settled on Frosty for the third, which I don't have. Curses!


* The big exception here is if you play a Valk. In that case, I am going to play BB Valk no matter what.

3wd
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Re: Mirror mirror

Post by 3wd » January 15th, 2014, 2:06 pm

Playing a mirror match in the current stage is very boring in most cases.

Because most of the useful PVP teams are build around skills - that means who get to use that skill first or hit first will basically determine the outcome.

2 snakes or 2 valks against each and who will win the first roll of the dice basically will be the game there.

It's not fun at all.

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Poofah
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Re: Mirror mirror

Post by Poofah » January 15th, 2014, 3:17 pm

Same pet vs same pet is indeed annoying and dull because of matched speed. But same team vs same team is much different. You almost never want to fight same pet vs same pet, because you gain no advantage this way. You want to figure out what they're trying to accomplish with their team and consequently what pet they'll choose; then choose the pet that matches up best with theirs. Obviously in a non-mirror match, getting favorable matchups (or occasionally, conceding a bad matchup for a longer-term goal) is generally key to your strategy. When both players have exactly the same tools to play with, I think there's even more pressure to make those decisions well.

Also, obviously if I see a triple-Fossilized Hatchling or whatever triple-X team, I'm not going to copy it. I agree that that kind of mirror match is dumb. The closest I've seen is a frog and two crabs (Cleansing Rain team). I confess I didn't mirror that team.
3wd wrote:Because most of the useful PVP teams
This is the other reason I like doing this. I actually end up fighting a lot of teams that I wouldn't necessarily call 'useful PVP teams', or at least not the ones I know about. Sometimes these are really just random teams, but maybe sometimes my opponent has figured out something that I haven't. So it's fun to try them out and see what makes them tick. I haven't come across a really super new team doing this yet, but I've come across a few individual pets that I had underestimated -- Nexus Whelpling is my favorite so far, and also Infected Squirrel.

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Shikon01
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Re: Mirror mirror

Post by Shikon01 » January 16th, 2014, 7:22 pm

I haven't tried your method yet though I have been tempted w/ so many of the repeats I get and the 2 pets you mentioned I had a recent experience w/ and was surprised by their performance in battle because usually my anubisath idol, fiendish imp and lil bling takes out most I have come across but, every time I see 3 crows or 2 crows w/ volk I wanna just slit my throat lol !!

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