LogFAQs > #877390271

What is Mercenaries?

Mercenaries is at once a game of resource management, creativity, and charisma. Ever participated in a 'who would win in a fight?' topic? Imagine a game mixing those with grand strategy, where you hire videogame characters to fight for you. Those characters then fight the teams of your competitors, and the victor is decided by those reading along and voting. It's up to you to craft an argument as to why your team would come out on top, and win the hearts and minds of the voters.

Sounds cool! So what's this about a 'draft edition'?

Traditionally, Mercenaries has an economic side to it - you get a certain amount of gold to spend on hiring mercenaries, deciding the terrain a fight will take place in, and paying down strong characters to fight in matches where only weaker ones are allowed. This game will instead have players select mercs in a draft, snake style (that is, first to last, then last to first, then repeat), until the proper number of mercenaries have been chosen. You'll start the game with a fully-prepared army and get straight to fighting wacky battles with your fellow leaders for supremacy!

I've heard Mercenaries is a horrible project that makes everyone hate themselves, the game and life itself. Why should I sign up?

Because this game was created precisely to remove a lot of the pressures that make a normal Mercenaries game so stressful and difficult to play. In vanilla Mercs, you must win to grow your team, as your victories grant you money and experience, and winning early matters much, much more than winning late - so right when you know the least about the game, you're expected to do your absolute best or you're doomed. It's also really long. The last Mercs game lasted about a year and a half, to give you an idea. Not so with this one - Draft Mercs lets you build an army as you like it within the set size constraints, and winning will not change anything except your final spot in the rankings and possibly your qualification to the playoffs. It's also going to be short - I'll be taking eight players, and each one will face the others once in round-robin format before proceeding to a best-of-three playoffs involving the top six teams in single-elimination format. All in all, even if you keep winning, the most this game will take will be four months, a quarter of the average game's duration.
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Shine on, you crazy diamond.