Warfish Blog

You can now choose your own team in tournament games so you can team up with people you know to dominate a tournament. In order for this option to be available first the tournament host (i.e. the player who creates the tournament) must select the option when creating the tournament. Also remember to select the team size to be greater than 1.

Once the host has started the tournament in addition to the regular input field for in-tournament name players will see an additional team selection drop down on the Join tournament screen. This dropdown shows all the teams that still have available spaces in them. The dropdown just defaults to the next available team, so if you don’t have a preference you can just leave the team dropdown on the default setting. However, players who would like to cooridinate teams they can select an alternate team and inform their friends which team to join.

A new list of your teammates has been added on each tournament player info page so you can easily see all the teammates on a player’s team.

That is basically all there is to choosing your team in tournaments. Once you’re on a team just like in game message boards if you’re a Plus Member you can send private messages to “[My Team]” on the tournament messages tab. Good luck in all your tournaments!

Up until now ranked gaming was only available as a test feature for Plus Members, but now you can see how well you fair against others with any board that you have purchased. In other words, in addition to being able to [1] create private games and [2] create tournament games you can now [3] create ranked games using boards you have purchased.

You can start a ranked game using your purchased boards by following one of the new links that have been added to Warfish either on the board ranking page itself:

Or by clicking on the “Start Ranked Game” link on your Play Tab > New Game Table > Choose a game page:

Once you have clicked on either of the above links you’ll be on a special create game table page that will allow you to choose your name and color as usual, but also select the number of open seats you would like to include in your ranked game.

After you create your game your ranked game will appear on Warfish.net so that other players can join and fill the open seats you’ve created. Your game will automatically start once all the open seats are filled. That is basically it!

You’ll see and [R] next to the game title which links to the ranking page so you can identify which games of yours are ranked and it is linked to the board’s ranking stats so have easy access to check the ranking stats from any game that is ranked. When a ranked game finishes your ranking will be automatically adjusted based on if you won or lost. Now lets see what your ranking is!

The first mod-able game board component, the setup mod (aka starting scenarios) has been released to the site, it is part of a game board mod system I’ve been working on. Using setup mods you can create a variety of situations from recreating historic battles to simply specifying the location of neutral territories. You can create mods for any board you have access to play. Here is an example of a setup mod created for the Pirates of Malta board:

Notice that there are 4 predefined players on this board (one starting in Africa, Europe, Eastern Europe and the Middle East) and neutral territories have been placed covering the rest of the territories. Also you can see that the neutral territories in France all only have a single unit to make it easier for the player starting in France to take that continent. To try to balance the powerful territories in the Middle East some key territories in the Middle East have been designated to start with 5 neutral armies. Finally, Malta itself because of its high unit bonus and special attacking ability starts has designated to start with 10 neutral armies.

You can create mods for any game board you can play. To get started go to the Design > Mods Tab and click on “Create New Mod” where you’ll be asked first to choose which game board you would like to mod.

A modder can control many details of the setup including choosing players names and colors, what cards they have and how many units they have in reserve. As the mod system is new more changes will be introduced to it in the next couple weeks to make it easier to share and play others’ mods also more aspects of the game board design will be openned up to modding. Please be sure to send any feedback you may have.

When using the Browse tab you can now also browse finished games which can be useful if you want to study your opponents’ strategies (aka “watching film/tape”) or just to find out more about how you know someone. There are three locations under the Browse Tab for browsing game tables:

[1] User Profile Page. On this page you can see all the games you have played with a user, games played using that user’s designs and tournaments that you have played with that user. You can click on the links shown here with red dots to bring up game or tournaments listings.

You can also see in the above image, displayed next to the number of finished games/tournaments is the number of currently active games (i.e. [finishedgames](+[currently active]) so you can also see if you are in any active games with the user whose profile you are viewing.

[2] User Profile: Rankings Page. Here you can browse any ranked games a user has played in. You can view a users ranked games played and wins for each game board by following the two links next to each game board on the user’s Rankings tab.

[3] Game Board Rankings Page. This page provides a listing of the top 50 ranked players for a game board. From thsi page you can either view wins/played games for yourself or for any of the top 50 ranked players:

Once you click on any of the links shown above you can view individual games and also review the game histories/movies just as you would any game in your own games list. Hopefully, we’ll be able to learn a lot more about our friends and foes and won’t be caught off guard as easily by their wily strategies.

Get to know your enemy… You can now customize your profile and browse the profiles of your opponents, so in larger games / tournaments you tell your opponents more about who you are and you can find out a little bit more about who they are.

Customize your profile

There are several ways you can customize your profile: choosing a profile display name, uploading an profile image, adding about me text, adding links and enabling profile id based game or tournament invites. You can customize your profile by going to your Settings > Account tab.

[1] Choosing a profile display name. Your display name is displayed above your profile image and on various places on Warfish.net

[2] Upload a profile image. When you upload a profile image it will be displayed not only on your profile itself, but in various other locations on the site, for example as a thumbnail on the browse profiles, in tournaments, on your game board reviews and in game board rankings.

[3] Adding about me text. You can use the about me text to provide an easy way for other players on Warfish to find out a little about you and your interests.

[4] Adding links. When you add links to your profile you can share more about yourself by linking to your blog, homepage or profile. Warfish remembers the number of times your profile links are clicked on so that later if you’re curious you can check your Settings > Account page to see how many times your profile links were clicked on.

[5] Enabling profile id based invites. This allows you to open your account to game and tournament invitations using just your profile id instead of requiring people to know your email address. This can be more flexible if you are trying to coordinate with friends of friends for a game or tournament and you haven’t played them before directly or when organizing very large games / tournaments.

Browse Profiles

By clicking on the Browse tab you can browse your opponents profiles. Opponents who have added a profile image display first in your opponents profiles list.

In addition to simply browsing profiles you can also leave comments on other players profiles:

Leaving comments can be a nice way to thank a game designer for all the hard work they’ve put in to building games, to thank other players for helping figure something out on Warfish or just to let someone know you like their profile. In order to leave a coment on another players profile you have to have played a game or a tournament with that player or played using one of that user’s game designs.