Are we playing wrong?

[peak willow]

Hey Mindbuggers,

my girlfriend and I recently began to play mindbug because I saw a lot of reviews and youtubers mentioning this game so I couldn‘t resist to buy it. I read the rules and noticed that it is a light form of a traditional tcg like yu-gi-oh or magic, so i had no trouble explaining it to my gf.

After playing several rounds, we always end almost with the same outcome. Nobody nearly touched their life-points and one of us is running out of cards and actions, so automatically loosing the game. If we notice that someone might have the giraffe card (getting your „graveyard“ back) we know that whoever has the card will win this round if there are no mindbugs left.

I reread the rules now several times and could not find any errors we might have made. Every turn starts with 5 cards in hand, you either attack with only 1 monster or you choose to summon a monster. If you summon a monster, the opponent gets to choose if they want to activate a mindbug or not, after the monster is sent to the right field they trigger their effect.

I just can‘t get my head around that one of us is ending in a completely hopless scenario everytime. After all mindbugs have been activating you end up with either very strong cards or weak cards. The one with the weak cards is forced to attack strong monsters resulting in its own defeat.

Is there any form strategy I might have missed somehow? I‘m 99% sure I understood the rules and know how their activation and passive effects work. We played now about 10 rounds but end with the same endgame. I really hope missed something, because if not the game maybe just does not work out for me …

[frosty haven]

Why are you running out of mindbugs so quickly?which creatures do you use them on?

And have you tried watching one of the games from the YouTube channel? From one of the championships?

[floral valve]

+1. I strongly recommend checking out one of these videos.

[terse thicket]

Maybe it's not the rules (that are not very difficult to understand), but your strategies? At least for me, it took a while to get a feeling when and what creature to mindbug or when to play a creature and when to attack. That only comes with time and playing more games.

About the Giraffodile:
Just don't play with it. Nobody will judge you, if it's no fun for you 😉

[peak willow]

Thanks for the replies! Mostly we're considering if the creature would be able to cause significant damage/hurt us and then mindbug it if we think the played creature is too much of a threat. Funny, that's just what we did and it seems like the players also just play very randomly, it seems like I would have been able to defeat the world champion myself, since 90% of the matches outcome was determined by luck if the players got dealed the right cards and only 10% by strategizing (Selecting when to use the mindbugs, choose order in which the cards are played, select wich creature is used to block, ...)

[peak willow]

True, the rules are not difficult to understand. We've also played a lot of similar games extensively like like Magic, Yu-gi-oh, Hearthstone but mindbug seems so luck. As I said it's just playing out cards until both players run out of deck cards and hand cards and mindbugs and after that it's pure mostly luck who wins. Feels a little bit like tic tac toe to us, if nobody makes any mistakes you feel like the winner was already determined in the beginning. And that's how it feels with mindbug to us too. If before starting to play you have a look at both players draw-pile of 10 cards you can probably guess who will win the match with a very high accuracy.

I don't understand how this randomness could have slipped through the playtests, or is it an intentional element of the game? 🙈 It just feels so disappointing, now after 12 rounds played, to still get the feeling that everything is so random. I just won another game with the spider owl, just becaue my oponent had not a single sneaky creature or hunter to attack my my spider owl. I had only 2 creatures left, no hand cards while my opponent had 5 creatures, 3 hand cards left. That win felt just not satisfying since as every outcome so far it was just unlucky for the loosing player he could do nothing to attack or block my spider owl.

[spiral elbow]

@peak willow While it may initially seem that Mindbug is a large majority luck, it certainly is not (I initially thought so too). The better player will win most of the time. The players who are best in the world will beat newer players basically every time. While there is certainly an amount of luck involved, there is a tremendous amount of skill/strategy involved.

Baiting out your opponent's two mindbugs so that you can play the 'winning' card from your hand is a valid and often-used method to winning. In the Spider Own situation you mentioned, winning with Spider Owl shouldn't be seen as non-satisfying - you made your opponent use their Mindbugs and then capitalized by playing something they couldn't handle! If your opponent had played a Hunter earlier in the game, or if they had saved a Mindbug (knowing that their own creatures could not handle a Sneaky), it may have been a different game.

And the winner is certainly not only determined by the 10 cards you receive. The Mindbug mechanic means that even if your opponent has the better cards for the current situation, you can take it! A common strategy that may be worth considering is to only Mindbug if you have no way to deal with the card yourself.

There's also a huge bluffing element to the game. Let's say that you play a Sneaky creature, and your opponent counters by playing another Sneaky creature. Do you Mindbug it? Maybe that's the only Sneaky creature that they have, so you should Mindbug it! But wait, maybe the opponent has a Kangasaurus Rex (the card that defeats all small creatures) and they want you to Mindbug so that they can use this. As you and your opponent learn all the creatures in the deck and what cards each person might have, this bluffing only becomes more and more interesting!

And then finally, it's certainly not uncommon for someone to win or lose by the way you described. But that's not a flaw in the game, it's just an alternate way to win.

[frosty haven]

@peak willow I imagine there are number of folks in here who would be happy to play a few games with you and see if you can hold a 50% win rate with them. 🙂 I’m not great, and I went 9-0 in qualifiers locally. I’m willing to guarantee that your opponent wasted at least one of their mindbugs if they never saw a hunter or a sneaky that late (you’ve seen your entire deck at five cards in) and used them both. Two experts playing tic tac toe will produce all draws. But two people playing any game randomly will also produce random results. What did your opponent mindbugs so early, knowing they couldn’t stop a sneaky card?

[versed basin]

@peak willow i'm very surprised you run out of cards so easily, that's usually quite rare (1 or 2 out of 10) when playing with first contact. Maybe you are just not considering offensive options, I would be curious to see you playing.

About randomness, I would just say we have trained AI that proved the game is not more random than any other TCG. Is it impossible to win by playing randomly at Mindbug, while our best AI are easily getting a 80% winrate against new/not so experienced players.

[long tiger]

Yeah, please make a video of you playing the game. Would love to watch it, and come with feedback

[floral valve]

My main tips would be:

1. Use your MBs sparingly. Only use it if you think will lose the game without that MB.
2. Don't gather lots of creatures in your play. It just gives information to the opponent. If you have a chance to attack without your own creature dying, then attack.
3. Sneakys in FC are important. Make sure you have enough answers. Play a hunter early to setup your Sneakys or prevent opponent Sneakys.

Lastly, just practice. Check out some YouTube videos etc. The app is also active these days, you can sign up for the beta and play against other players to see what they do.

[floral valve]

I just re-read your question. I think you've interpreted the rules correctly. I would suggest leaving the Girrafodile out for some games.

Lastly, it sounds like you end up playing all your creatures out and use up your MBs fully before the whole board is laid out. It's an acceptable way of playing but not necessarily strong in all situations. This mistake could be because of interpreting a creature "play" as a "draft". Ideally, you want to avoid attacking weaker creatures into stronger ones. And I think a creature is only strong in context of other creatures. A Rhino Turtle is overall very strong, but countered by Luchataur or Plated Scorpion. A poisonous creature would often stop all aggressive attacks, but Elephantopus prevents that. A Lone Yeti can solo the game, but is vulnerable with allied creatures. So I don't think there's a clear outcome simply based on the cards you get randomly. I would say that once a many rounds have passed, and with most information revealed, one can math out the outcome (which could also happen very easily if one plays out all their cards very quickly). But there's also the human mistake factor in late game.

Thank you for starting this thread. Hopefully the tips presented by everyone could help make the game more enjoyable for you.

[peak willow]

Thanks for all your replies and your valuable feedback! Based upon that we have tried to change the way of playing and I see the outcome already varies more than before. 🙂 Overall I think the key factor is to play more offensive, which to me is a main difference from other Card-Battlers where you often try to facilitate a build up phase towards the endgame and then execute final strikes and combos, where in mindbug every and each creature on it's own can be very mighty and be used on their own and your actions per round are very limited. I will come back here and eventually update information when I have found new insights in further plays.

But after all, I very much hope that other new mindbug players who are in the same situation, being initially irritated how mindbug plays out for them, will find this thread and see your helpful replies! 🙌🏻

[lunar anvil]

another thing i tought of is if you got access to the online beta to play a few rounds against the ai which gets harder the more you progress. then you can see what plays the ai makes and adapt from there. it is how i am doing it right now