Plateau or ceiling? Can't move up Master ranks any farther!

[Alvendor]

Good analysis, this is what you need to be doing for every game you loose. Figure out why you lost and try to formulate it in words to a principle that you can use in future games.

(12-06-2012 11:15 AM)jaxxinjr Wrote:  1. In general (in all matches), I undervalue the power of wits and the import of holding wit spaces.

Yep, letting the opponents take the tile and you retake it directly can be ok. If you let the opponent have the wit space for several turns you will loose the game.

(12-06-2012 11:15 AM)jaxxinjr Wrote:  2. I thought he would be underpowered due to spending six or eight wits on Thorns. So I attempted a lightning strike, but as viva fringes guide makes clear I chose a bad path, straight at the heart of his spawn spots and defense.

Now this is one of the principles you should be collecting:
"If the opponent spend too much on thorns I could just attack as he will not have enough wits to defend."
When you start using the attack paths from viva fringes guide your skill level will take a huge leap forward!

So one part of the game is having these different principles/strategies how you handle different situations. The other part is the tactics, the exact moves you do to implement your longer term plan. You need to learn how to value different units at different situations in wits. By doing that you can calculate if you can kill a unit profitable or not. This became much harder after the wit-for-kill change, but start small.

On turn 4, why did you kill his runner? Can you add up how many wits you lost on the trade, and how many wits the opponent lost including his runner and killing you?

Turn 14 is a bit worrisome, why did you first kill the thorns on you spawn space and then move the soldier to kill the parent thorn when you could have done that directly. If the answer is, "oh I just had a total brain freeze" that's ok, I have those too =). But if not, this is something you need to fix, you can't make those kind of mistakes if you want to compete with high masters. Could it be that you don't spend enough time thinking about the situation before you move? You should either have all moves planned out before you move, or have a couple for variations planned out but move out with a unit for more vision before you choose between them.

Good Luck on climbing the ranks!