Icy Dice - A Podcast About Major Command

[riskyone]

Now I know what tapeworm sounds like.

You will only hear his voice. I know he is a CIA operative so you won't get a chance to put a face to that voice.

 

[ericjkline]

Great podcast! I really do appreciate the editing to get rid of the umms and ahhs. It seems like a minor thing, but when you listen podcasts that aren't edited versus great ones (like Icy Dice) it is really distracting. Sannheten, when are we teaming up? I think we need to play Tapeworm in Nukes I had been scaling back my play in recent months, but the podcast got me revved up and wanting to meet more people and play some great games here. Thanks everyone for making it a great community and something that has brought me a lot of enjoyment over the past 5 years (my anniversary is on Dec 14!)

 

[micky]

Tape & Bear! Excellent job! Everything positive has been said (which I second) so all I say is BRAVO!

 

[BearNecessities]

Great podcast! I really do appreciate the editing to get rid of the umms and ahhs. It seems like a minor thing, but when you listen podcasts that aren't edited versus great ones (like Icy Dice) I had been scaling back my play in recent months, but the podcast got me revved up and wanting to meet more people and play some great games here. Thanks everyone for making it a great community and something that has brought me a lot of enjoyment over the past 5 years (my anniversary is on Dec 14!)

Bear, this is great I am listening to it right now, and I love the review of the players. Great Job, welcome to MJ hopefully you will bring in some new players, and help the site keep rocking.

Amazing. Good work Fellas!

I didn't think I'd listen to all of it, as it is quite long, but I did. Nicely done, both of you!

I listened in the supermarket, at least to the first two groups. Nicely done! It's great hearing about players and remembering they're real people at the other end of the interweb.

Great job, bearnecessities!

:rock: Bear I have to say I really enjoyed the pod cast. Never listened to more then 5 minutes of the other two I was exposed to. I easily got to the end. ... How fun:cheers::tee::biggrin::thrasher:

I really enjoyed this! It was great to get "voices" to go along with the user names, at least for you 2. :laugh: Great job Bear and Tape!

great job guys, an asset to this site i think.

Thank you all for the kind words and the support. Listenership numbers and appreciation from the community have been more than I could have anticipated! I'm redoubling my efforts on producing additional episodes. Two are in the works right now:

1. Doubles Crown Series - Part 2:

A quick recap of the current standings, highlights and commentary from the most exciting games and groups. An in depth look at strategy on mars in head to head escalate format, with a specific discussion about Mars on those settings.
A quick look ahead to the Middle East matchups and "pickems" for the quarterfinal stage. Maybe even pickem's through finals if we are feeling ambitious.

What you can do:To make the best possible podcast, having details from you about your Mars games from the Doubles Crown tournament would be great! Wins, losses... If it's interesting, I want to hear it! If you came away from round 1 with some tips and tricks for 2v2 Escalate Mars, I'd love to include your thoughts.

Write me via private message! I'm also interested in getting 1-3 recorded interviews to include should anyone be open to that.
​

2. What is Major Command (episode 00):

A high level overview of what the game is - explained as if to my grandma (not the world's most game oriented or tech savvy person).
A look at the game's history of development, a discussion of where the game is going. An in depth look at the key differentiating characteristics of the game -- the huge variety of game attributes that contribute significant "re-play value."

What you can do:To make the best possible podcast, I'm going to need a lot of background about MC that, as a fairly new player, I don't have. Tapeworm will be helping fill the gaps, but even our astute Tape is unlikely to know everything!

This episode wont be going deep into strategy, but it will be looking at what makes the game fun. I'd love anecdotes from the community about what they love about the game.

Write me via private message! I'm also interested in getting 2-4 recorded interviews on this episode from members of the community (and dev team!)
​

Thank you all, again, for the encouragement!

 

[th-child]

I'm going to need a lot of background about MC that, as a fairly new player, I don't have.

I'd like to suggest two topics.

First, as for the background of MC, I'd be happy to hear a summary of the demographics of MajCom. How many active players, age, gender, nationality, etc. I know some of these would only be educated guesses.

How many players did we have in total over the time, how many of them got banned, how often do we expect to encounter multis? (My hunch is it is much less common than one would think.)

What are the favourite maps/settings? At what time of the day/week do we play the most (i.e. at what time should you start your real-time games)?

Stuff like that. I understand it would be mostly guesswork, but I find things like that interesting.

The other topic would mostly be about variance, or rather what results would be reasonable to expect. How can we determine if we are good at a particular game setting?

Here is what I mean.
One of the most succesful duelist of the site was called iLoveBadDice. She played the least luck-based setting (1-border, flat rate, dragon map). She played that setting 324 times, won 260 times (if I counted correctly), hence her win ratio is ~80%. So that's a kind of a maximum that one would expect. Whatever you play, you will lose at least 1 out of 5, and the other side of the coin is, whoever you play against, you will win at least 1 out of 5.

(I think that's mindblowing btw. I know how to play chess, but I don't think I can win 1 out of 5 against even a 10 year old from a local chess club, let alone a grand master. Luck in risk sooo huge. Examples: MobusDorphin (games played: 13, opponents defeated: 5) and guti44 (games played: 12, opponents defeated: 3) both defeated ILBD.)

I also checked the Cardinals-Chilly duo's last 200 2v2s. If I counted correctly, they won only 103 of those. At first glance it is an underwhelming result (though Cards and Chilly were truly excellent), but they played all of those against other veterans, so it looks like if you have an edge (and they did), on the long run you should expect to win only 52-55% of your games against other experienced players, maybe 65-70% percent against random opponents -- and on the other hand, even newbies will beat you up 15-20% of the time.

I think we are not aware of this in our daily battles.

Conclusion 1: everybody can be beaten, just as Tape said in the podcast. Low-ranked players shouldn't be afraid of going against the monsters.

Conclusion 2: we shouldn't beat up ourselves or lose confidence when we lose. DDrider's complaint about the dice is usually based on her losing 5-6-more consecutive games. The thing is, you should expect such streaks, even if you are the best of the best.

Conclusion 3: we are not nearly as bad as our lowest score, but not nearly as good as our high-score.

Ok. So how good are we then?

What percentages are considered 'good'? How many times are you expected to win a 12-player multi? At what score should you stop playing mercenaries completely?

What are the maximum points that can be reasonably achieved (without tournaments)? Let's say you only play ILBD-mode, and win 80% consistently against random players. What score will you have? What ratio do you have to win to maintain 5k points? 4k? 3k? 2k?

And so on and so forth.

These things are very exciting to me, but I know this is math, and math is boring, so maybe it's not a good topic. Just an idea.

 

[Tapeworm]

You will only hear his voice. I know he is a CIA operative so you won't get a chance to put a face to that voice.

Dude, shut up!

 

[BearNecessities]

These things are very exciting to me, but I know this is math, and math is boring, so maybe it's not a good topic. Just an idea.

I did study economics in college -- Reporting on math stuff excites me too! Let's see if we can make it interesting enough for the general public in podcast form!

 

[masterjskye]

Excellent job guys! It sounded really quite professional to me.

I hope this does become a regular thing. I'd listen

 

[F15FreeEagle]

I did study economics in college -- Reporting on math stuff excites me too! Let's see if we can make it interesting enough for the general public in podcast form!

I would listen to this. I would listen to ANYTHING TH says. Maybe I'd learn a thing or 2.

 

[riskyone]

Excellent job guys! It sounded really quite professional to me.

I hope this does become a regular thing. I'd listen

I will look forward to kicking back in a recliner and spending an hour listen two some friends talking MC. The tournament was a great jumping off point for this. Lots of positive feedback is all the other players tell me. We all enjoy it.

 

[riskyone]

:ahhhhh:fftopic:

I did study economics in college -- Reporting on math stuff excites me too! Let's see if we can make it interesting enough for the general public in podcast form!

I recently got into puzzles. Check out you-tube There are number and puzzle pages. I love the Dove Tail puzzle. th-, I got a headache half way through, but I watched a video on the Josephus number puzzle from 67 AD Jewish soldier solves puzzle to avoid death-pact with his people as Roman soldiers closed in.

 

[BearNecessities]

:ahhhhh:fftopic:

I recently got into puzzles. Check out you-tube There are number and puzzle pages. I love the Dove Tail puzzle. th-, I got a headache half way through, but I watched a video on the Josephus number puzzle from 67 AD Jewish soldier solves puzzle to avoid death-pact with his people as Roman soldiers closed in.

Links plz! I love puzzles. Just finished "Obduction" a game by the creators of MYST. It's very similar to MYST, but with a new story line and now built in a FPS gaming engine (Unreal Engine). Fantastic stuff, super challenging.

 

[once]

Links plz! I love puzzles. Just finished "Obduction" a game by the creators of MYST. It's very similar to MYST, but with a new story line and now built in a FPS gaming engine (Unreal Engine). Fantastic stuff, super challenging.

my computer is not nearly powerful enough to run obduction unfortunately - i did buy it b/c i adored the myst games. riven being my clear favourite. did anyone else play this? so elegant, so complex, so very hard.. but ages old now.

 

[BearNecessities]

my computer is not nearly powerful enough to run obduction unfortunately - i did buy it b/c i adored the myst games. riven being my clear favourite. did anyone else play this? so elegant, so complex, so very hard.. but ages old now.

I got stuck and never bothered to finish off Riven. Myst yes. I really enjoyed it.

 

[Tapeworm]

I will look forward to kicking back in a recliner and spending an hour listen two some friends talking MC. The tournament was a great jumping off point for this. Lots of positive feedback is all the other players tell me. We all enjoy it.

Thanks risky! I'm about to pore over the Mars and Middle East games of the tourney in anticipation of our next recording. Like Bear said, we'll talk about first turn advantage, doubles duel thoughts, the Mars and Middle East maps, and miscellaneous bullshit. I have a few other general thoughts to offer as well as our (hopefully usual) wide view Major Command flavor as well. I already scratched and scribbled notes on the tournament games (particularly how many rounds each game lasted) and I intend to elaborate and ramble without focus again. Thank goodness Bear can edit me into coherence!

 

[BearNecessities]

Episode 2 has been recorded and is now being edited and mixed. I expect it will be out before 1/10. Stay tuned!

 

[riskyone]

I got stuck and never bothered to finish off Riven. Myst yes. I really enjoyed it.

The first computer game i played was on the Atari 800. It was only words. It was called Zork. I couldn't finish it by myself, but a friend got a book that had the answers. So I was able to finally complete it. Before that there was Adventure on the first atari, it had a hidden feature room that you had to know the trick to enter. The arcade games by nintendo didn't originally come with bolts holding the face plate on. In those days. You could push your hands against the plastic lift it up a little. Get a nail file under and pull the piece out and give yourself 90 free games. the coin book is metal and locked. My bad friends would make me go with them to the local 7-11 and play free video Donkey kong or Popeye while drinking free soda. They didn't keep inventory of the styrofoam cups back then. So the guy didn't care. Winner played next up. While the loser checked out the new pre-plastic coated playboy magazine behind the games. Fun times, glossy pics, and mario bros

 

[riskyone]

Thanks risky! I'm about to pore over the Mars and Middle East games of the tourney in anticipation of our next recording. Like Bear said, we'll talk about first turn advantage, doubles duel thoughts, the Mars and Middle East maps, and miscellaneous bullshit. I have a few other general thoughts to offer as well as our (hopefully usual) wide view Major Command flavor as well. I already scratched and scribbled notes on the tournament games (particularly how many rounds each game lasted) and I intend to elaborate and ramble without focus again. Thank goodness Bear can edit me into coherence!

It nice to have something that you are actually looking forward to. This is great. I ramble all over the place and can't remember where i started.

 

[Tapeworm]

thats how i took it. as in: too bad we cant play tape & you sooner.

Are we there yet?

 

[clarkenfeld]

Episode 2 has been recorded and is now being edited and mixed. I expect it will be out before 1/10. Stay tuned!

No pressure but I'm looking forward to listening!