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:P

1. The rounds are way shorter than I thought they'd be. Rather than one big showdown, it's best of three, with each round being less than five minutes (Since Majors drop three motes, and there are a lot of them). This makes it difficult to catch up to an enemy that gets ahead, and makes death super costly, so if you go in with a single not-great teammate, you're probably going to lose.

2. When you bank 15 points, and the Portal opens, anyone can take it to the enemy side. Ostensibly, this means that your team's best PvP player can be the one who runs in, but for us, it meant that our random stayed by the portal and took it almost every time, only to get killed instantly.

3. The screen turns red when an enemy invades, which makes it difficult for them to get kills if they're not packing a Super, and makes it easy to know when you should make an emergency deposit, just in case. This means that before you send someone through the portal, make sure that you send a Blocker AI first (banking ten points). That makes it so they panic better and focus on multiple targets.

It's fun, but I imagine that teams will become pretty exclusionary before long, due to the very costly PvP aspect of it (at one point, the enemy team almost had their Primeval dead, only for me to hop in and completely refill its health because one of them missed their rocket shot at me).

Seriously, this game mode is extremely fun and intense. There's a lot of strategy, a lot of things to keep in mind. The risk of trying to collect 15 motes to deposit at once, when to send invaders through, using heavy/special ammo and supers to clear adds or saving it for blockers and primevals.

Xenos, Blacktiger, INSANEdrive, and I just played three matches. We won all three of them, but two were close. The final match was intense--we got steamrolled in the first round. They killed their Primeval before we even summoned ours. The second round we were nearly in the same position, but we sent an invader over to heal their boss up while we summoned ours and made a great comeback, and then the final round was a dead heat the entire time.

Seriously, this mode feels special. It feels new and fun and just incredible.

Gambit seems almost custom made to create intense moments of awesome. I missed out on recording several, but here's a couple moments I did capture:

First, I played around quite a bit with being a Sentinel. It actually works quite well! Several times I'd either delay or outright kill an enemy invader just by advancing on them and blocking their shots with my shield until I could get in a hit of my own. But, in times I couldn't find the invader, the newly strengthened Ward of Dawn proved useful as well! (Watch Xenos' beautiful fusion rifle kill on that Warlock as well!)

And here... this wasn't my highest kill count as an invader (I got 4 once just by oh so calmly firing my Eystein-D across the map) but it was the most fun. Almost had the 4th but my timer ran out:

Yeaaah! It Rhymes!

[Link] Forsaken ships with 4 Gambit maps. Each map supports 3 races, with 3 encounter variations for each race, for a total of 36 Gambit experiences. The trial has only 2 experiences. So you should see greater variety starting Tuesday.

When asked: "What exactly is an encounter variation?"

[Link] What enemies you face, how they're combined, etc. Imagine if the Cabal sent warbeasts for you to melee, for example, or how different a wave of Fallen Exploding Shanks, which rush you and press you with AoE damage, feels from a wave of Tracer Shanks, which can one-shot you from across the map.

Best of all when asked: Can you guys change it so that players can join mid-match? It really sucks if someone leaves because the games are long and you're likely to lose because of it.

[Link] When Forsaken ships on Tuesday, join-in-progress and quitting penalties will be enabled for Gambit. ...

The Drifter is immediately the most annoying, dislikable NPC in the game. Screw that guy!

Invader pops in, immediately drops Infinite Hammer, yay everyone dies. 60 seconds later, portal opens, repeat.

I also love that Bungie doesn't tell me important facts about the game until after it's too late. XD

• Deposit your motes! Okay, deposit them where? (I figured it out soon enough)
  
• 14 motes, snuck up on by PVP player(same guy, by the way). Did you know when you die you lose all your motes? I guess I oughta be more careful then, hu--(gets killed by camper with kinetic shotgun)
  
• Use the portal to invade to your opposing team's side! Anyone see it? Oh, hang on there it is. Wait, why is it re--(gets killed by Infinite Homing Hammer from same guy)
  
• Invasion portal open! Jump on through to kill your enemies! You have thirty seconds to get three kills or get killed! So the one time I was close enough to jump through with a charged Stormtrance, I spawn SO FAR AWAY from the entire team, it takes 24 of the 30 seconds I have to make it to one of them, who was attempting to revive a teammate. Landfall kills one, doesn't even bother the other, and I fry through his shield for a quarter of a second before I get killed in two hits from one guy by either a hand cannon or scout rifle. Reduces incoming damage while your Super is active. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  
• Your primeval has been su—! All three teammates INSTANTLY dead. All three rounds. no freaking. joke.

Last round; So I figure, okay this game is screwed. Let me at least find some cover and shoot at the majors and prime from a distance, so I don't feed Mr. Instant Infinite Homing Hammer any MORE kills. On an offbeat, I manage to look at the killfeed, and in 12 seconds, three separate opponents kill my three teammates, two of them simultaneous. I try not to watch the streams so I don't get spoiled, but in the last round, can the entire team just come through at the same time and just decimate anyone they want?

All that was in one game, obviously. I couldn't figure out what was going on.

So I tried another game--this one we ended up winning. I noticed for some reason our portal stayed open for much longer than it should have. Does it close eventually, or does it stay open until someone uses it?

General Thoughts:
Motes being shared(or hogged) between teammates seems like a bad idea. I think it would operate better if motes spawned by kills appear only to the person that killed them, or assist-killed if it was a team effort. If a player can't get max motes because someone faster keeps bumping them away from them, only one player can contribute to the chaos, making it less fun for everyone else.
Also, I've only played two games so far and I can already tell from experience—if you're not carrying a sniper or shotgun kinetic, you don't have a chance in hell. Considering how much ammo the PvE enemies drop, you're literally guaranteed infinite ammo for it. Jump in the portal, exterminate everyone from a distance(or up close), and you don't even have to reload.
Speaking of Extermination, anyone with an Infinite Golden Gun or Infinite Instant Homing Gjallarhorning Hammer can jump in, activate it, destroy everyone instantly, and completely wreck the scoreboard, with little to no work. To be honest, so can a Stormcaller, but only if they're spawned in the same galaxy as the other team.
Additionally, turning the whole screen red when an enemy invades is excessive. Plus, it nearly makes the red team(or more importantly the one invading) invisible when that happens.

Ultimately, this mode is nice, but it's not impressive. It's also far too easy to exploit. It will take a little bit of convincing to buy Forsaken in the future, but as for Day one? Nuh-uh.

And another thing I just remembered—Emerald Coast!? How dare you sully the name of an iconic legend like some cheap whore! Back off, Bungie! That's our name! You will be hearing from my lawyers and their lawyers soon enough.

If you use Ionic Blink as an Invading Warlock right as the timer runs out, you don’t get taken back to your side, and the timer and red screen goes away, letting you stay on the enemy side indefinitely. What’s more, your teammates can still invade, and if they die, you can revive them, letting them stay indefinitely as well (or until you both die at the same time)

I have a feeling that at some point, Bungie’s just going to delete Warlocks from the game. We’re just too good at breaking it. :P

PS. In the reddit thread about it, One of the Bungie team commented, saying that they would try to have the exploit fixed by Tuesday... only to delete their comments. Ominous. I hope they don’t delay Gambit access.

Is my favorite part of the chocolate and peanut butter that is gambit. Most snipes I've had in a PvP mode in a long time.