I’ve posted a lot in a lot of CCG forums over the years.  One of the reasons I was motivated to do a blog was to consolidate my more verbose thoughts.  I’m currently looking through the UK V:TES forum – http://www.anarchfreepress.com/vtesuk - for my favorite posts.  Here’s the first “classic” post.

In response to Shroudfilm’s post about the preview of Durga Syn …

“Yeah LSJ,why hasn’t she got votes?!? Or Necromancy?!?!? Or Flight?!?!?!?! Why isn’t she 12-cap?!?!?!?!?!?!?!? Why can’t she have an ability which wins me the game in one turn?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!? I hate VTES now, this one card means the game is doomed!!!!!!1111one!!”

… http://www.anarchfreepress.com/vtesuk/viewtopic.php?p=1729&highlight=#1729 …

I imagine the discussion went something like this:

[LSJ.1] Why don’t you give Durga some votes?

[LSJ.2] Too hard to become an anarch which would waste all of those disciplines. I’d piss off millions of anarch lovers.

[LSJ.1] You could make Orpheus happier if you gave Durga Necromancy.

[LSJ.2] Then he might notice how good Chimerstry is when you don’t pay full cost for it and would want highly flexible Necromancy cards … with no cost.

[LSJ.1] Durga seems to be lacking flight.

[LSJ.2] Does anybody even remember what any of the flight cards do anymore?

[LSJ.1] She could be a 12 cap.

[LSJ.2] Without PRE? Are you insane? Uh, don’t answer that.

[LSJ.1] Durga is a good choice for one of those win in one turn decks. You know, turbo, et al. You should give her FOR, a capacity increase when she’s in play, and NEC. And, the ability to play Baali cards.

[LSJ.2] What makes you think she can’t win in one turn? Besides, the text box font would be so small that no one would know that she would combo with every card in the game.

[LSJ.1] Aren’t people going to hate the game because of cards like this? Won’t Durga doom the game?

[LSJ.2] I keep trying, but they keep playing.

[LSJ.1] Local 1111?

[LSJ.2] Should be played by !Trem with Rutor’s Hands to see if it doesn’t suck. But, Eric Chiang keeps travelling.

Scourgewar, the 1st of 3 sets from the newest World of Warcraft (WoW) TCG block is finally out and I have information & pictures of the complete set for you to use!

Scourgewar contains 270 cards broken down into 120 commons, 60 uncommon’s, 60 rare’s, 10 epics & 20 heroes.

Additionally, the latest expansion places heavy emphasis on the class of your hero.  Scourgewar is also the first set to fully integrate the Death Knight class!

The new set will have 3 new keywords as well; Mend for the healing classes, Assault for the DPSers & Deathrattle which allows you to interact with the graveyard.

Now on to the image gallery!:

Yesterday, we had our first Eden’s Legacy event – http://white-wolf.com/vtes/index.php?articleid=1157.  I was quite pleased.

First, having five players from Castro Valley/Hayward show up was huge, not just for the numbers but for the refreshing attitude that tournaments are a good thing, an opportunity to be part of a larger community of players.

Second, people metagamed for the storyline rules.  Far too often, I see players just bring some normal deck and put no thought into how to leverage the special rules to one’s best advantage.  What a wasted opportunity to think about the game considering that people don’t really need to metagame in standard constructed play around here.

I hear the !Brujah are doing well and they certainly need help, not that winning storylines really means jack, but we can pretend it does.  So, I considered playing them, but with a bloodlines set coming out soon, I also thought about reminding people that bloodlines are functional currently (with a few exceptions) and I’m always for promoting the more obscure clans.

I ended up building three decks before the tournament.  One was to lend out, so I didn’t stretch very far – Kiasyd.  One was insanity – Abomination rush.  The one I ended up playing was a ripoff of a Harbingers deck I played in this year’s qualifier.  The one that got borrowed was the Abomination deck and somehow he got a VP.

There were several features of this event I focused on, but one that had a lot of resonance was bleed reduction.  I don’t play bleed reduction much.  I don’t think it’s that good since it doesn’t oust my prey like bleed bounce does.  I also just have a general aversion to strategies that make games last longer since we have such a problem with games timing out.  The beauty of bleed bounce is that it doesn’t preserve the amount of blood in the game.  Specifically to metagame to these rules, three of the four Motivations require having the edge, so not letting the edge go to one’s predator is actually important.

For the Kiasyd deck, that was easily achieved with Folderol.  It’s too bad it didn’t see play as it would have been interesting to see how many Folderols went crosstable.  For the Harbingers’ deck, it meant a bunch of Telepathic Counters and Ancestor’s Insights …

… So, Laibon get a searching mechanic and searching is broken, so it would be kind of lame not to check out what it would mean to have easy search.  Top off with Motivated by Knowledge, yet another broken mechanic, and the synergy is all there.  Group 3/4 Harbingers have Laibon, two of three of those Laibon can play Ancestor’s Insight and TC for mucho bleed reduction.  Freak Drive is a natural complement to Perfectionist to maintain blood to burn for card draws while Mina’s special might go off.  While, Necromancy provides a means of recursing cards discarded in the pursuit of knowledge.

What was amazing, especially after playing a round, was how little people were interested in the Codex of the Edenic Groundskeepers.  I won off of the back of this one card, sweeping my first round game, coming back from 1 pool in my second, and getting the last two VPs in the finals because of numerous bleeds for 4 and 5.

Round 1:

Jeff (my Abomination deck) -> Ian -> Eric (Malk94) -> Andy (Guruhi rush)

With a ludicrous deck as my predator, I was never successfully bled the entire game by my predator.  With a huge table threat as my prey, Andy had no choice but to rush backwards all game.  What was amazing was how long it was before Eric started doing any pool damage.  A bit less pool and Andy would have been toast.  Instead, I got through Eric without having to expend too many resources and Heidelberging the Codex killed Andy and Jeff.

Round 2:

Brandyn (Lasombra bleed) -> Oliver (Lasombra vote) -> Brandon (Nos weenie Obf) -> Ian

This was a brutal game, especially for the typical NoCal environment where everyone would rather stop people from being ousted than oust folks.  Brandon hit on one of the ways I think the environment can be broken – weenies.  Oh wait, the normal game can be broken by that.  Well, he had Motivated by Jyhad to nearly double his bleed output.  Course, what he should have done was grab the Codex right away as that’s what I would build a weenie deck to do for this event.

Brandyn and Oliver contested a vampire for the second straight game, but it almost didn’t give me the table as I was being pounded.  On the other hand, I had the deck to deal with Brandon’s.  Bleed bounce wouldn’t have done much, but bleed reduction kept me alive.  What completed the keeping me alive was Oliver bouncing some bleeds into Brandon and then ousting him right before Brandon would oust me as I had burned through my reduction.  I dropped Brandyn with a Codex bleed on a Strange Day and the endgame was a tense affair with my finally being able to pay for Heidelberg and bleeding Oliver out with some bleeds of 2 and ending the game with zero blood on my four vampires.

This game really brought out how annoying Motivated by Knowledge is.  Oliver had gone with Presence for Voter Cap to pay for card drawing.  Fortunately for me, he also tried to shoehorn in Laibon, so his vampires weren’t natively Presencetastic.  Still, I couldn’t stop the votes, so he had a blood engine to dig for useful cards, which meant there was rarely a chance I wasn’t going to run into a wake for my bleeds at negative stealth.

Finals:

Eric -> Grant? (Giovanni bleed) -> Gerentt (Malk wall) -> Ian -> (Oliver)

Gerentt’s deck was truly a wall.  Oliver questioned my sitting in front of it, but he didn’t realize what a huge threat Eric was.  There were only two spots, in front of a wall that would mess with my tooling or in front of the only vote deck and behind the bleedmonster which would likely get a lot of pool before I’d get help from the table.  Gerentt never bled me, which was kind of annoying as I was choking on Eyes of Argus, TC, and TM.  I was afraid to discard bleed defense in case Eric’s bleeds or Grant’s got bounced around the table, but I don’t think Gerentt ever bounced a bleed.

I was yet again able to get the Codex, though Oliver at least argued that it was a bad idea.  Not sure why he cared so much since he had bounce.  I didn’t care if my predator got it, my prey got it, or my grandpredator (who I urged to take it) got it.  Eric getting it would have likely given him the game.  So, somebody needed to care.  I almost took it with a first turn Tupdog just to take it out of the game, but I figured I had a decent shot at it and my predator or grandpredator having it would have helped through bounce while my prey having it would have gotten the threat off the table.

As it was, Eric reasonably quickly got to the point of blowing his prey off the table, but as I hoped going into the finals, ran into the wall and sputtered while also keeping my predator busy enough to not block my actions.  This was hot for Oliver who had vote lock and a table without Delaying Tactics.  I went forward out of not drawing any toolup actions and Eric’s pool evaporated between Oliver and my bounced bleeds.  With Eric gone, Oliver was in a sick position for timing the game out.  Going forward, the wall stood fast and beat his guys down with Sniper Rifle.  Along with losing blood in combat, blood wasn’t coming back as none of Oliver’s vampires started with Presence, which was huge for preventing “I draw cards until I win.”  I kept swinging on Oliver, time was growing shorter, Gerentt couldn’t draw enough wakes to stay in the game.  Fortunately, there was still just enough time left as I figured Oliver couldn’t do much in his depleted state as his library was getting thin, partially from Zygodat milling, and his blood was thin, plus he couldn’t bounce in the endgame and had no intercept to stop mundane bleeds.  With about 5 minutes left, I finally ousted him.

Let me step aside and talk about winning since I never seem to get a chance to accurately explain my take on it.  Above, I say I was quite pleased and lots of folks would figure it was because I won.  And, yes, winning had something to do with it.  But, as I try to explain to people for why I could never be a great player of a competitive game, winning and losing, in and of themselves, do nothing for me.  Pleasure out of winning for me is derived from pleasure overcoming challenges.  It could be the deckbuilding challenge.  It could be the challenge of playing well.  It could be winning when winning is unlikely due to a sheer stubbornness to keep trying to win or, at least, not get ousted.  I don’t know that I played particularly well, oddly, my games, even with Motivated by Knowledge, weren’t that complicated for me most of the time.  I did survive and go on to victory in the second round through tight play, I guess.  The deckbuilding challenge was playing Harbingers and metagaming properly to the rules and what I expected out of opponents.  But, mostly, it was winning close games.  Winning easily is a complete bore, much like watching sporting events that are close are so much more entertaining than ones that aren’t.  On the other hand, if I’m going to lose, I’d rather get blown out than lose a game I think I can win.

I want to run another storyline.  I think there’s a lot of metagaming possibilities without too much obnoxious stuff to deal with.  I have some ideas for !Brujah decks, so maybe I’ll actually go through with that.  Still, really trying to abuse either the Laibon search of the Knowledge draw mechanics might be interesting.  Alternatively, blood denial might be cute in this format to screw with the Knowledge seekers.

During my family leave, I’ve gotten some time during 2.0’s sporadic sleep schedule to play a ton of games. The majority of those games features a common, popular gameplay element – set collection.  You know what I’m talking about, right?  It’s that optional gameplay element in which you’re invited (usually unsuccessfully) to “collect them all” or “find them all”.  A few examples:  Okami’s stray beads, Gears of War’s COG tags, Fallout 3’s bobbleheads, Ratchet & Clank’s golden bolts, Super Smash Bros.’s trophies, Pokemon’s… pokemon.  There are also other, more subtle forms of set collection that you may not have thought about: multiplayer titles, skill sets, armor sets, crafting recipes, beastiaries, codexes (I’m looking at you, Bioware) – even Xbox/PS3 achievements/trophies can fall into this category.  Since I’m a bit OCD and somewhat of a collection nut, I spot these collection opportunities rather quickly.  I also tend to determine rather quickly that the vast majority of such opportunites are not worth my time investment.  And I’m sure many of you have done the same thing – shelved a game without even giving a second thought to those things you left uncollected in that bygone world.  There’s a reason for that – it’s because most games implement set collection badly.  In this series of articles, I’d like to use personal experience from playing various games to examine how other games could improve the quality of these collection mechanics and give players more incentive to participate in these peripheral activities.

First, let’s define what comprises a “set collection mechanic” to restrict the scope of this article:

• Players must be able to complete the set: this rules out procedurally generated things (eg. Diablo/Torchlight loot) or a continually growing set of user-generated content (eg. Spore creatures or Second Life sets).
• Completion of the set should be a peripheral activity and NOT be required to progress through the game: otherwise, our examination of the player’s motivation to complete a set overlaps with other motivating factors; so this restriction prevents applying our study to things like the various mandatory devices in Zelda games – technically, it’s a set of devices that can be collected in its entirety, but (excepting upgrades to bag sizes, etc.) it MUST be completed to progress through the game; heart pieces, however, qualify as a valid set.
• The set must have some easily accessible, manifested representation in the game: in other words, the set must be an intentional collection placed by the designer; this rules out user-defined meta-sets.  Such sets are contrived by individual players who have clearly already conjured up the necessary motivation to attempt collecting the set.  For instance, in Animal Crossing: Wild World, I attempted to find and purchase all of the instruments in the game to make a music room – nothing in the game actually lists the set of instruments; neither are they denoted by some special icon.  It’s an arbitrary set I made up for which I had already mustered the necessary motivation to collect.

Now that we’ve defined the bounding conditions, I’d like to start this series with an examination of a game I only recently had the opportunity to play: the original Assassin’s Creed (and just in time for part II!).  As much as I enjoyed playing the game, I ran into a rather irksome collection mechanic – the city flags.  Of all the collect-them-all mechanics I’ve experienced in games thus far, the city flags are probably the worst of the bunch (at least as far as I can remember).  It didn’t take long after leaving the confines of Masyaf for me to swear off the entire collection altogether.  Here’s why:

• There don’t appear to be any gameplay or narrative rewards for procuring flags except for meta-rewards (i.e. Achievements and 100% completion with the filled “Additional Memories” DNA bar).  Even if such a tangible reward existed at the end of the tunnel, it’s so elusive that it doesn’t really factor into the typical player’s drive to collect the flags.
• Aside from their location, flags are indistinguishable from one another, making the experience of finding one identical each time.  This was exacerbated by the fact that there are 420 of those indistinguishable things!  So finding one was an altogether insignificant and homogenous (read: boring) experience.
• Flags are not particularly challenging to acquire.  Reaching them is simply a matter of hidden knowledge rather than a test of skill or logic.

I’m going to take a look at each of these three points and examine how other games have remedied the problems with Assassin’s Creed’s flag-collection gameplay.

Collection Rewards

One could argue that completing an in-game collection is reward enough.  That may very well be true.  I think that such collections generally fall into the category in which each individual item in the set is distinct enough to provide sufficient player motivation (see the Collection Distinction section below).  But in any case, it doesn’t hurt to provide some extra incentive to the player to collect a set of things.  These extra incentives can typically be categorized as either a gameplay reward or a narrative reward.

Gameplay rewards consist of additional skills or abilities (or some currency toward the purchase of skills or abilities) that expand and augment the player’s gameplay experience.  The most recent example that comes to mind is Brutal Legend’s bound serpents, which, when found, each provide a small amount of fire tributes that can be used to purchase upgrades at the motor forge.  Furthermore, for every ten bound serpents that are freed, the player character Eddie Riggs gets an upgrade to some element of his stats.

Alternatively, collections can grant narrative rewards in several different forms. Again, Brutal Legend provides a convenient example of such a collection: the “legends” scattered across the landscape.  For each one the player finds, another cutscene detailing the Brutal Legend mythos is revealed.  Coincidentally, I also discovered that Halo 3: ODST contains an identical mechanic in the form of the audio logs that follow a story indirectly related to the main plotline.  Yet another example of a narrative collection reward is BioShock’s audio diaries, narrated by multiple characters related to the main story.  However, ODST and Brutal Legend’s narrative collections differ in that each piece of the collection is not associated with a specific piece of the narrative reward.  In other words, whether you find piece A before or after piece B, you’re always going to get story reward A before story reward B.  This is not true for BioShock’s narrative collection, in which specific audio logs are found in specific locations.  This is an important distinction that we’ll revisit in the next section.

There is, of course, no reason why a particular collection can’t give both narrative and gameplay rewards, as is evident in Brutal Legend’s “legend” collection (which I neglected to mention also gives fire tributes for each legend discovered).  Another game I’ve played recently (after putting it off long enough) is Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, in which every five pieces of treasure nets the player medal points that are used to unlock various metagame rewards (tweakable game modifiers like infinite ammo, faster run, and weapon select) and bonus content such as concept art and development videos.  I’ve lumped extra-game content into the category of “narrative rewards” in that they don’t actually augment the game experience.  In all of these examples, I think it’s safe to say that these various rewards can often be an effective incentive to the player to collect the entire set.

Collection Distinction

There is an important element of set collection that seems to be a no-show in many of its incarnations: distinction.  Each element of a set should be easy distinguishable from each other, via its textual, iconic, or geometric representation and/or some titular or numeric label.  As I’ve already observed, all of the flags in a particular area in Assassin’s Creed are identical except for where they are located.  This makes collecting each and every one the exact same experience.  There’s no sense of novelty in finding another one.

As I mentioned earlier, collecting a set of objects can be reward in itself – but this is generally a strong enough motivation to the player only when a distinction is made between the elements of the set.  The word “collecting” carries the connotation of collecting distinct elements.  How often do stamp collectors attempt to find every copy of only one type of stamp?  Or how often do card collectors try to acquire every copy of one particularly rare card?  While these real-world examples present collection goals that are obviously marred by real-world obstacles and impossibilities that don’t exist in the virtual space, art reflects life.  And in life, the appeal of set collection is in the diversity of the set’s various elements and in how those elements complement each other.  The set is a puzzle whose pieces, as they come together, become a clearer and more magnificent picture (even if that picture’s got a few missing spots).

I’ve always liked Nintendo’s first-party approach to collections.  I’m specifically referring to the trophies of the Super Smash Bros. series.  Each trophy is fan-service at its best – each with a unique, nostalgic 3D model of some Nintendo character, object, or setting and a short description of the subject.  All of the player’s trophies are displayed together in one place, literally becoming that magnificent picture I described.  It’s like looking at that Edge Magazine cover with all of the video game shoutouts.  I also played The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker recently (picked it up on the cheap a long time ago and only got around to playing it a few weeks ago).  In that game is a similar collection that the player can complete by using a camera to take pictures of the game’s enemies and NPC’s and showing them to a particular sculptor, who crafts figurines of the photographs’ subjects that are put on display throughout various trophy rooms.  Each figurine can be viewed in three dimensions and contains a short description of the subject’s place in the game universe.

And then, of course, we come back to Pokemon.  While each captured Pokemon simultaneously serves as a gameplay reward (with the new pokemon’s abilities at the player’s disposal), I would argue that the vast majority of pokemon are caught for the sake of completing a player’s Pokedex.  After all, the catchphrase (at least in America… not sure if it’s translated from Japanese) is “Gotta catch ‘em all!”, right?  And since the distinction between each pokemon is both visual and interactive, the drive to collect each one is that much more powerful.

Which reminds me of Endless Ocean (which I’m not ashamed to admit is one of my favorite games on the Wii).  At some point in the game, the player is allowed to populate a personal aquarium with creatures that he or she had already discovered.  It’s yet another fantastic Nintendo example of an interactive collection.

In fact, it appears that the common factor between these Nintendo games’ collections is the extent to which the player is allowed to appreciate his or her collection.  3D models that can be viewed from all angles, textual info and categorization, and in some cases, interactivity all contribute to the player’s connection to the collection and his or her drive to complete it.  It sure beats a little check mark or a line in a book or even a little icon.  And that is why, when Sony announced Playstation Home, something inside me grew giddy at the thought of 3D trophy displays.  Too bad it didn’t turn out that way…

There’s also one oft overlooked property that distinction imparts to a collectible set – it allows each element in the set to be described individually.  The reason this is so important is this: FAQ’s – of the GameFAQs type.  Not everyone can be expected to find every single element of the set on their own.  For those collectors that don’t wish to invest the required time, they should at least be able to look up the locations of the missing pieces.  This is impossible to do when the individual pieces are indistinguishable from one another.  This is especially problematic in Assassin’s Creed because in order to use a guide, you must use it for every single flag.  Otherwise, unless you have picture-perfect memory or you’re using a video guide (which I imagine would be ridiculously lengthy), you cannot possibly know whether you’ve already found a particular flag or you’re just looking at a slightly incorrect location on a flag map because there’s no way of knowing whether you already found “flag 53″ on the map – you only know that you’ve found 178 total flags, one of which may be the anonymous “flag 53″ in question.  I know this isn’t a purely ludological reason for set element distinction, but it’s a valid one nonetheless.  I’m rather confident that all but the most hardcore purists fall back on external sources (strategy guides, FAQ’s) to complete a collection.  I do it all the time.  So even if the “distinction” in a collectible set is just a numeric label or a dull identifier (like Okami’s stray beads), it’s still an important thing to have for the sake of simplifying the collection process itself.

Collection Gameplay

It’s important to ensure that the gameplay surrounding the collecting of objects is as solid as the elements of the collection itself.  I can group collection gameplay into at least three broad categories: steady-stream, challenge, and exploratory.

• Steady-stream collection: these are the sets of the type where the player gets a relatively steady stream of random elements of the set, and completing the collection becomes all about either trading for the missing elements or just investing enough into the game.  Examples: Smash Bros. trophies, Culdcept Saga’s cards (or any CCG’s cards, for that matter), Treasure World’s treasures, Animal Crossing’s fossils, a good number of Free Realms’ collection components.
• Challenge collection: these are the sets whose elements take actual gameplay skill to acquire.  Examples: Street Fighter IV’s multiplayer titles, Modern Warfare 2’s Spec-Ops mode stars, Braid’s stars (yeah, you might not have known about them; I sure as heck didn’t), Xbox 360 achievements and PS3 trophies.
• Exploratory collection: these are the types of sets whose elements are found by exploring the game space.  Typically, you’ll find these kinds of collections in shooters and action games.  Examples (there are tons of them but I’ll just name a few): Gears of War’s COG tags, Modern Warfare’s intel, ODST and Bioshock’s audio logs/diaries, Fallout 3’s bobbleheads, just about everything in Brutal Legend.

Assassin’s Creed’s flag collection can basically be classified as an exploratory collection.  It is this class of collection that I believe is most often (and most disappointingly) implemented.  The big problem that I’ve experienced with these collections is this: they break immersion by forcing the player to think not as the protagonist or the player character but rather as a designer.

For most of these exploratory collections, the elements are often placed with little to no narrative sense.  They’re usually either strewn about randomly or hidden in obscure corners of the map that oftentimes don’t even seem accessible.  As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, completing such a collection is an excercise in hidden knowledge more than anything else.

When searching for elements of such collections, I almost always find myself thinking things like, This corridor doesn’t lead to anywhere meaningful – there must be something there, or, This ledge is out-of-the-way, but it’s accessible – there must be something there.  The only logic behind these thought processes comes from putting myself in the designers’ shoes rather than doing what makes sense in the context of the game and the narrative.  My wife can even attest to this fact as she watched me play Uncharted, exclaiming, “I smell treashuz!” whenever my designer sense started tingling.  And it netted me 50 out of 60 treasures on my first run-through.  I had similar moments in ODST.  When a path led indoors and to some seemingly irrelevant balcony, I could usually count on finding an audio log.  And there’s no reason to think this Sophie character was actually at any of those audio log locations.

Brutal Legend, however, contains a great example of an exploratory collection with at least some measure of contextual sense – the landmark viewers.  They’re around landmarks!  If I saw something in the world that looked like a landmark, I knew there was a landmark viewer nearby.  I didn’t have to go probing the mind of some sadistic designer.  Another simple way of limiting the breaking of immersion would be to give the player character some in-game way of “sensing” nearby elements of a collection – some blinking UI element or controller rumble feedback to indicate the proximity of the element.  I can’t immediately think of any games that have really done this, although I’m absolutely sure someone must have.  The closest example I can think of is Ocarina of Time’s use of the rumble pak to signal to the player that something was hidden nearby.

Application

So how could Assassin’s Creed have improved its flag collection gameplay?  Personally, I think the most unintrusive way would have been to tie flags to labeled chunks or chapters of historical info (fictional or otherwise) about the city.  Such a change wouldn’t involve adding abilities or tweaking/rebalancing character progression to accommodate gameplay rewards – and the change would fit well with the game’s prominent narrative delivery and historical setting.  Of course, this would probably involve cutting the number of flags down significantly – a most welcome change.  In fact, why not change the flags altogether and instead make them distinctly crafted relics in the vein of Uncharted’s treasures?  They would probably fit into the world a little better that way.   (Really – why are there random flags all over the place, anyway?)  Along those lines, the seeding of these “relics” could be in more logical locations: at the top of notable landmarks or inside obvious places of importance rather than in the shadows of some inconspicuous alley or atop a nondescript rooftop.  Furthermore, the designers can spread clues regarding the locations of those relics throughout lesser “eavesdropping” opportunities in the game.  I found the eavesdropping mechanic to be rather contrived, as the player can only eavesdrop for an investigative mission.  It would have been much more interesting if there were other groups of conversations on which the player could eavesdrop to get clues – much in the same way that pickpocketing is used for both investigations and for acquiring throwing knives.  And, being the valuable relics that they are, some of them can be guarded by hostile templars who must be circumvented or defeated, while others can be locked away in trap-laden rooms requiring a touch of finesse and dexterity to traverse.

And for the record, I have not yet touched the second title in the series.  So now someone who’s finished playing Assassin’s Creed II can tell me whether Ubisoft did, in fact, add a more compelling collection mechanic.

So that covers the shortfalls I noticed in Assassin’s Creed’s flag collection and how one might possibly improve that segment of gameplay. In my next post, I’ll be exploring the importance of community and recognition and how those things have strengthened the player’s drive to collect – especially with the most recent console generation’s emphasis on online play.

Dog Fight: Starship Edition profile on Board Game Geek

Do you have what it takes to captain a starship in combat?

This customizable sci-fi tactical/strategy game is as much about moving on the board as it is the cards you choose. You have simple actions to choose from and without the need of an RPG scoresheet you can manage your crew, your weapons, movement and your ship’s special abilities. With 32 cards in each starter deck, choose your ship, chase down your opponents and see if you can out Captain the enemy.

In Dog Fight: Starship Edition each player controls only one ship rather than a fleet of ships or horde of characters. For 2 or more players. Three levels of game play, booster packs available.

Restricted list and card rulings and the FAQ can be found at http://www.feltd.com/games/.

CCG, board games, card games, combat games, games, sci-fi, science fiction, strategy games, war games

This is more of a memory than a typical fantasy.

Within a few months of meeting my future husband, I arranged my work schedule so I could have three to four days a week off. Since he lived 150 miles away, this allowed me to visit him for half the week.

During these visits we played games (among other things). One of these games was Magic: the Gathering, a collectible card game in which each player uses their cards to try to reduce the opponent’s life score from twenty to zero. Being horny, we soon began playing strip Magic. I forget the rules, but I suspect whoever lost a match lost a garment. Once naked, a player could then wager a forfeit, meaning the winner got the loser to perform a sexual favor. Now that’s the kind of game everyone wins!

Tags: Ada, MfM, games, Magic, MtG, Magic the Gathering, CCG, stripping

A combination of two things inspired this post.  First, there’s the newsgroup topic about how someone’s group isn’t having fun wherein I emphasize the need for people to build new decks regularly.  Second, there’s the ongoing conversation with Azel in the comments section of the first Virgo post.

One distinction paramount to framing the discussion is whether we are talking about building any deck or building a good deck.  Building any deck can be a matter of slapping together the minimum number of cards and promptly being eviscerated by someone who built a competitive deck.  The extreme, therefore, is irrelevant; however, as with most things, there’s a spectrum and I’m more concerned with people building passable decks than with them building some sort of masterpiece.

There’s a line, somewhere, between the desire to build a masterpiece and the general desire to build decks well.  I think these get confused in people’s minds even when there’s no real interest in trying to build the best deck.

Different CCGs have different thresholds of viability.  Even choosing the opening hand wrong for a Wheel of Time deck means losing an hour or two later (if you are quick).  Rather than take the approach of looking at a number of CCGs, I’d rather focus on the one that makes a difference to me these days and one that people often complain about in terms of length of time building decks.

Yes, it’s time for another V:TEScentric article.

What seems to give people trouble with building V:TES decks is … I’m not sure what it is for any particular person.  I could guess, but I don’t think it matters.  Nevertheless, here are some possibilities.

1. Most cards have small effects and the game in general is about building off of numerous small effects, whereas many other CCGs have cards with more obvious strengths.
2. There are a lot of disciplines, and there are tons of ways to combine disciplines.  Other CCGs may have deckbuilding components with more obvious themes.
3. The lack of card limits radically increases the number of choices.  With a four card limit game, most good decks are likely to play four copies of the best cards and look for support elsewhere or specialty plays elsewhere.  With V:TES, whether to play 6 copies of a card or 8 copies may be agonizing.
4. There are lots of clans and multiple sects.  I don’t know that this is anywhere near as troublesome as the number of disciplines because it’s just so easy to build monoclan or like-clan decks.  Most people don’t build a deck for each clan in the game, so a simple place to start in one’s deckbuilding career is to build decks for clans never played before.

There are different types of deckbuilders as CCGers have a large variety of desires and eschews.  It’s amazing sometimes, actually, how stubborn some people can be about what they won’t build.  Anyway, I can’t cover every personality type and what they are looking for and what they aren’t, so my focus is on helping people who aren’t terribly experienced with the game build rather ordinary decks.  Even if ordinary doesn’t cut it, maybe there’s something about philosophy that will help.

Fortunately (as I left this hanging above), building a viable V:TES deck isn’t terribly difficult.

Bleed Bounce

The single most desirable element in a V:TES deck is bleed bounce.  Yes, it’s arguably not the best defense in the game.  Even if it isn’t, bleed bounce isn’t (just) a defense.  Bleed bounce is the most efficient way to win the game being both an extremely powerful defense combined with an, on average, medium level of offense.

Any deck without it better have a great reason why.  As to quantities, an old belief was in minimum six in a 90 card deck, but I’m more of the minimum eight or 10% of the library.  There is a maximum that makes any sense, of course, even for bounce that doubles as intercept.  I ran 20 bounce cards in a major tournament and discarded a number in the finals, though that was mostly due to using ones that didn’t work against larger vampires.

But, what about bloat?

Bloat

Some argue bloat is the best defense since it doesn’t limit itself to any particular attack strategy (well, ignoring that combat stops your ability to act and most bloat comes from actions).  What do we mean by bloat?  It matters.  I tend to think of the term referring to substantial bloat, such as Tap & Cap, Con Boon, and the like.

If we are talking about any level of bloat, then only the most aggro weenie decks can get away without it.  If we are talking about substantial bloat, then there are pros and cons to relying upon it instead of something else.

One of the dumbest things I’ve ever done was to forget to put Blood Dolls in decks.  Whether it’s BDs, Vessels, Minion Taps, or Villeins, there needs to be a strong reason not to play with the blood management masters.

I put the number of Blood Dolls at five, i.e. in an eighty card deck, a minimum of five slots should go to them.  If I play Vessels, I’ll probably play more or combine them with Villeins.  Back when Minion Tap was worth playing, I’d play at least six or play less and add some BDs.  With Villeins, I’ll tend to run four or five and play some BDs.

Wakes

I started with bleed bounce because it is both offense and defense.  Bloat can turn into offense by enabling bringing out more minions.  Waking is squarely in the realm of defense, the realm of not getting ousted.

In certain environments, I can imagine not caring a lot about wakes and certainly some deck types don’t gain much from them.  But, if there’s anything that boggles my mind more than why people so often short the number of wakes they play, it’s probably just why people continue to play Elder Library.

Unless you think you are a better deckbuilder than I am, and you probably do, minimum 10% wakes.  The days of six WWEF in a 90 card deck ended for me at least five years ago.  Even for my unordinary decks, it’s unlikely I’ll play few wakes.  After all, the wakes in the game worth playing are either Freak Drives that cost no blood or give +2 intercept.

Stealth

Moving from how not to get ousted to how to oust, it was probably after Bloodlines came out that I really thought about how important stealth is in the game.  I was trying to decide how to best win with !Salubri and realized that Kennies (Embraces) with Dominate (this was before Camarilla Edition made Embraces something of a specialty play) was not the best way to go about it.  Kennies with Obfuscate made a lot more sense because it doesn’t matter how good your actions are if they don’t go through

While I’ve done many, many things with !Salubri and finally decided to play !Salubri vote in a major (2007 NAC, day two), my current view on building a !Salubri deck with comfortable viability is to graft/splash Obfuscate.

Stealth enables victory.  Given an infinite amount of time and an infinite amount of your predator not killing you, getting actions through will eventually oust your prey.  Contrast with bruise and bleed’s philosophy.  There’s a reason evasion bleed has been many times more effective in the history of the game than B&B.  Okay, smash all of your prey’s vampires, now watch the table rescue empty chump blockers.  Not to say that there aren’t good B&B decks, weenie B&B decks have that winnie magic.  But, it’s so much less work to just not have people block.

Other evasion can be as good but rarely is.  Crocodile’s Tongue is not Lost in Crowds.  It’s not even Resist Earth’s Grasp.

The other reason to stress stealth (delivery) over payload (+bleed or whatever) is that it’s actually really easy to find payload.  Computer Hacking, bleed retainers, bleed equipment – common like dirt.

Many decks aren’t going to be stealthy.  It’s just not worth forcing stealth on every deck.  But, if trying to build a viable deck is an issue, it’s better to start by looking for where stealth is easy than where it isn’t.

Enchant the Unaligned Spirits

There’s a reason that Govern the Unaligned, Kindred Spirits, and friends show up so often in successful decks.  In one card, you get offense and defense, sort of like bleed bounce only bounce doesn’t require a successful action.

I don’t play these much anymore, but then, I don’t play ordinary decks much anymore and too many of my decks aren’t really viable.  While I’m no fan of Social Charm and Legal Manip, even Enchant Kindred makes a huge difference over not having these sorts of two-way cards.

Voltron

Putting it together, my idea of an ordinary deck is going to have 10% wakes, 10% bounce, 5-8 blood management masters, 10-20 stealth cards, and …?

Maybe a better way to envision the process is to thing about where to find the things you want.  Bounce only really comes from two sources.  Stealth is best from Obfuscate, but there are other possibilities.  Govern is Dominate, Kindred Spirits is Dementation, Enchant Kindred or Public Trust or Undue Influence are Presence.  Dominate + stealth, yeah, that’s a winning combination.  Auspex plus bleed plus stealth – I think that has worked, too.

It may sound like I’m being overly limited in how to quickly throw together new decks.  The reality is that AUS and/or Dom are everywhere in this game.  Evasion is pretty damned common as well.  What about vote decks, you say?  Combat decks?

Vote Decks

I think too often people play too many votes.  I have two ordinary tournament winning vote decks (Mellow-Yellow Drama, Pale Panda Warriors) that have a fair number of votes – 17 out of 80, 14 out of 75.  I’m not thrilled with having an ordinary deck be more than 20% vote cards.  Vote decks can (almost) always bleed, and vote damage is often pound for pound much higher because a successful vote won’t be bounced.  If you want an idea of an absurd vote deck, check out the Guruhi precon.

Stealth isn’t as important in vote decks and room needs to be devoted to things like establishing vote control, but the other principles of bleed bounce, wakes, blood management masters still apply.

Combat Decks

I think of two sorts of decks when I hear someone say combat deck:  rush; intercept combat.  B&B is a bit different in that it’s far more successful if it never gets into combat.

I would imagine that building a decent rush deck is one of the harder things for people to do.  I don’t feel qualified to dispense advice as I’ve never had any tournament success with rush.

Intercept combat, I’m much more comfortable with, whether people who play with me agree is questionable.  The main problems I see with people playing intercept combat are relying upon too few minions and putting too little ousting power in.  It’s possible to win games by not dying, but it’s a hard way to advance in larger tournaments.  It’s still worth considering stealth since, at some point, you are likely to need to get actions through to be successful.  Propping up empty chumps works against an intercept deck that destroyed its prey’s minions just as much a rush deck that has.

The problem is striking the right balance.  If you don’t run enough intercept, mighty stealth will annoy you; if you don’t run enough combat, fighty decks will annoy you; if you don’t run enough preykill, not getting any VPs will annoy you.  Judging the metagame well is a big help, where a stealth bleed deck can pretty much hope for the best against anything.  A low stealth, high combat environment means very different card choices from a high stealth, low combat environment.

Good Stuff

V:TES has tons of good stuff cards – cards that are just generically useful in lots of situations.  Information Highway, Sudden Reversal, Wash, Direct Intervention, .44 Magnum, Ivory Bow, Heidelberg, Parthenon, Carlton van Wyk, Mylan Horseed, and on, and on, and on.

Once you get the basics of your deck in, made sure you had enough blood management, made sure you had enough wakes, made sure you had enough bounce, top off with whatever good stuff you prefer, there really isn’t a whole lot (or any) space left.  Bam!  New decks just roll off the assembly line.

Then, if you don’t like your decks, well, changing them shouldn’t take that long or be that painful.  There are a lot fewer things going on in this game mechanically than people seem to think there are.

But, what about ideas?  First, if you haven’t built a deck for every clan, do it.  If nothing else, it will force you to think about the strengths and weaknesses of each clan and make you familiar with a lot more cards.  If you haven’t built a deck with every discipline, do it.  Same reasoning, plus since you probably aren’t going to be using just one discipline, the number of combinations means building an absurd number of different decks. 

Honestly, there are some really terrible deckbuilders out there who post decks publicly.  I find that they focus way too much on flavor, specific vampires, convoluted strategies, and the like to where they miss that even unique decks should be viable and play good cards.  I’m not going to worry about how someone wants to build their one vampire, nine discipline deck that wins off of The Path of Lilith and Leadership Vacuum.  I’m concerned with those people who really can’t seem to frame basic deck construction to where somehow they are discouraged by the idea of building 1+ new decks a week.

DragonBall Clash of Sagas'

Clash of Sagas’ is the fifth release for the Dragon Ball CCG and introduces over 100 brand new cards with all new artwork never released in the United States.

This set has been completely redesigned from previous sets so it will be an interesting mix of retro cards.

Additionally, I have a complete set of pictures for you take look through…Awesome, right?

Oh yeah, take a look at the Clash of Sagas’ singles (opens in a new window) on our main site.

Hello All,

Today I have a gallery of all of the Pokemon Arceus pictures! In this set there are 100 cards in total.

Additionally,  according to Go-Pokemon.com here are the features of the new Pokémon Trading Card Game: Platinum—Arceus:

• Introducing new Pokémon Arceus!
• Collect multiple Energy types of Arceus cards
• Discover new Pokémon LV.X cards, including 3 Arceus LV.X!
• More than 100 different cards

You can also check out the Pokemon Arceus singles (opens in a new window) section of our retail site to tie the pictures with the names.  I am just too lazy to do it here.

The second season of Weiss Survive, called Weiss Survive R, was announced on the Weiss Survive card game’s website.

The series is a collection of 16 3-minute videos that ran with the live action Card Gakuen series. The story centers on two kids who get lost in the card game’s world and have to battle their way back home.

Want to check it out? Watch the first episode of the series here: (Weiss Survive),

The newest Pokemon trading card game dubbed Arceus releases on November 4th, 2009. The new set goes back to the ancient age of the Pokemon universe and allows you to harness new powers such as lightening, grass & fire.

Pre-release events will start soon as well.  According to the official Pokemon TCG website “Get a first look at the new expansion when you attend a prerelease tournament near you. Plus, receive cool prizes including an exclusive Raichu prerelease promo card just for participating!”

For more information on the pre-release tournaments in North America you can take a look at the dates, times & locations available at go-pokemon.com

Additionally, you can check out our Arceus singles.

The Warriors’ Strike Structure Deck (Starter Deck) released today and I am totally prepared to show you some pictures and information.

Warriors’ Strike Structure Deck contains 37 common cards, 2 super rare cards, 1 ultra rare cards, 1 rulebook, 1 deluxe game mat & 1 dueling guide.

Additionally, I have some pictures of the starter deck to share with you in gallery form, check them out:

We have the Warriors’ Strike Structure Decks (opens in a new window) available.

In theory, Heirs to the Blood will be out soon.  Has me thinking of building bloodline decks.  Unfortunately, I’m bored with most of the bloodlines.

Why?

Ahrimanes

I’ve pretty much always been bored with Ahrimanes.  Spiritus is a workman’s discipline, but it’s so dull.  Animalism and Presence lack synergy.  The vampires don’t have any interesting abilities.  If High Top wasn’t unique, there might be something interesting to do with the clan cards.

Other than the tedious intercept combat variations, the evasion bleed deck was funny for about half a game, and voting is blah.

Need:  Not bleed, not stealth, not intercept, not combat, not untaps.  Something interesting to do with actions, like a non-unique ally (they are sterile after all, so no babymakers).  And, of course, the game needs an Animalism/Presence card that does something useful for the clans with the disciplines.

Group 4 is shafted with one vampire with no Animalism and another with no Presence and a 6 cap with inferior Spiritus.  Some group 5’s with clan disciplines or who share nonclan disciplines would help.

Baali

Interesting things to do, terrible vampires to do them with except the 10 caps and their mighty combo deck potential.  Not a fan of combo decks.

The clan cards are wild and crazy and not generally unplayable, except they require Baali.  They would be so much more interesting with noninfernal vampires.

Daimoinon just isn’t that strong.  Certainly not as strong as it should be.  Conflagration is okay but seemingly overrated.  The other two combat cards are way too narrow.  Sense the Sin has to do too much of the work and the inferior has synergy problems with the clan.

Need:  In terms of vampires, it depends upon how you envision using the clan, I like all clans being viable for clan decks, so I see them needing filler vampires who make it worth playing multiple Baali.  Daimoinon needs untaps, real combat defense to go with Conflagration, more cost reducers than Nergal, a better disciplineless bounce card.  Blood gain would be interesting, something like a Darkness Within card for Dai.

Blood Brothers

Painfully boring.  Sure, there are the joke decks – stealth bleed, voting.  But, every time I go to build a serious BB deck, I end up with the same archetype, an archetype with the same vast problem of being able to survive real predators.

Unwholesome Bond is so abusable, assuming nobody interacts with you all game, which happens all of the time in competitive play.  Rest of the stuff is vastly inferior to other cards in the game.

What’s up with the lack of clan cards?

Potence/Fortitude is an option, except they tend to suck in terms of having those disciplines at superior.

Need:  Non-unique ally that isn’t overcosted.  Reason to play more than one circle – there are already plenty of reasons to focus on a circle, assuming you find any reason to play them at all.  Pool defense (preferably) or bloat.

Daughters of Cacophony

Often my favorite bloodline.  One that I have thought has had the most options.  I’ve done those options.  Legacies of Blood didn’t open up anything new for them to do.  Melpominee, for some reason, has all of these cards based on capacity when the oldest Daughter is 8.  Better used in superstar trick decks.

Choir decks are best when you play no copies of Choir, which I’m fine with as it’s a completely uninteresting mechanic.  Tourette’s Voice and Death of the Drum sit out there with no support.  Voting gets old, in my case, old fast.  Without vote bloat or Dominate, pool retention is a huge issue.  Done the Dominate thing to death.

Need:  Reasons to care about Death of the Drum and Tourette’s Voice.  Since intercept is mostly out of flavor, stealth reduction would be something to support TV while getting into combat for DotD.  Fat Daughters would be useful, though out of flavor.  Clan card that did something different.  Where I usually hope for non-unique allies because playable ones are cool, I could see a unique one in their case.  Roadie would be a good title for a non-unique.  Demanding Producer could be unique.  Could do instruments as equipment, since burdening the game with a bunch of guitars, keyboards, et al would be inane, some unique magic, clan-specific harp would be more plausible.  A babymaker would make Choir fans happy but emphasizes too much the idea of generating tons of Daughters for their open ended cards.  Cards that key off of a Choir being in play might be interesting, but the reality is that DoC aren’t important enough in the game to completely develop the Choir mechanic.

Gargoyles

When Gargoyles first came out, I couldn’t believe Visceratika.  It would have been a sexy discipline for a clan that didn’t have two combat disciplines.  Combat ends, continue action, stealth – yeah, those are precisely what you need when you have Potence and Fortitude.

There’s all sorts of interesting things to do but not the vampires to do them, except in annoying Tupdog decks.  The slave mechanic annoys me as I really am not interested in Tremere/Gargoyle decks.  I like my crypts to have all of my disciplines (and Flight).  Independent Gargoyles is doable and grafting Dominate plugs one pool defense hole, but really, lots of combat potential with sketchy intercept on vampires that are above 4 cap is weak sauce.

Besides, Potence and Fortitude are boring disciplines.  Visceratika and Flight would be much more exciting if there was bleeding or voting or bloating or permanenting going on.  All of which can be done for the short time before you get ousted.

Need:  Vampires in group 5 that are worth playing.  Good disciplineless bounce card.  Cost reduction of Visceratika, more cost reduction for their incredibly expensive cards.

Harbingers of Skulls

They seem like they wouldn’t be bad, until you go to play them.  Pool defense is there, multiaction is there, bleed is easy to find in the game.  While bleed is easy to find in the game, group 2 HoS aren’t cheap.  Group 4 HoS are better than I thought but of mixed sects and have discipline holes.  The big problem I see these days is that Necromancy is no longer a stealth discipline.

Back in the day, Necromancy was even kind of stealthy with just Spectral Divination.  But, intercept started showing up everywhere and Necromancy didn’t advance in the path of stealth.

So, HoS have to worry about generating pool damage and getting actions through.  No meaningful offensive combat in their disciplines.  The Aus/Nec card was a waste – should have done something cool … and good.  Clan cards are surprisingly weak.  I rarely get any value out of either Erebus Mask or Lazarene Inquisitor.

The specials drew a lot of attention for my groups once upon a time, but they are all over the map.  Agaitas is fine for people who like combo, but I’ve never gotten any value out of nuking weenies, everyone having Necromancy, etc.

Need:  Stealth or combat.  Thing is they lack a unique discipline, so anything in disciplines tends to help better clans more.  Nec/For card would make sense.  Better Aus/Nec card would make sense.  Playable Aus/For card would be interesting, especially if it had something to do with voting to prevent helping !Ventrue, Stickmen type decks.  Reason to do blood denial would go with Lazarene Inquisitor.  They have their own discipline in the RPG, so there must be something to draw upon.  Maybe a Nec card with a clan requirement.

Kiasyd

I’ve always struggled with how the Ahrimanes have been more successful than the Kiasyd.  The former I see being Tzimisce-lite, the latter being a Lasombra variant (less vote, less breed, more fight).  I can only chalk it up to people not finding the Kiasyd more interesting.  Dominate plus stealth?!?  Who woulda thunk?

I’m bored with the Kiasyd as well as I’ve run out of new things to do that would be remotely interesting.  Cards that do stuff and The Crutch* does not for an exciting cavalcade of possibilities make.  It’s too much like so many of my other decks.

*  Dominate

Need:  Changeling allies, one that’s not unique.  Further separation from Lasombra, like more fight or something.  Expensive Mytherceria cards so that cost reduction actually means something.

Nagaraja

Yes, I’ve played Nagaraja decks, couple of times at least in storylines.  Just pointless.  The “wow, we’d be better as Giovanni” clan.  The LoB clan cards do nothing for them, which is sad.

Need:  Remove scarce rule from the game.  Reason to play existing clan cards.  Good Aus/Nec card that separates them from Giovanni.

Salubri

I want to like them.  I was a huge fan in the RPG, but then, I like Fortitude in the RPG.  Spirit Marionette is obnoxious.  Too many Obeah cards are silly.  I don’t know that anyone else has ever played a Peacemaker deck, certainly, there’s no reason to.

Renewed Vigor just doesn’t thrill me.  It’s great and all, but it’s a dull mechanic that we saw with Fifth Tradition back in the day.  I don’t like playing obnoxious decks, yet there’s little else to do offensively besides SM.

Need:  Remove scarce rule from game.  Allies.  Lots of allies.  Maybe those ridiculous ally relevant cards will see play.

Salubri antitribu

I’m probably more associated with the dorks than any other clan, yet I like far better clans like Tzimisce and Daughters.  I just don’t play good clans in tournaments.

Things I’ve done with the dorks include Obfuscate stealth bleed, Necromancy casual Smiling Jack tap bleed, vote.  I’ve even built the god awful normal !Salubri decks that play Valeren and do melee weapon combat.

Need:  Valeren still sucks, needs useful effects.  Vampires suck, need vampires who have the clan disciplines.

Samedi

One of the few clans in the game that still interests me at the clan level.  The thing about Hag’s Wrinkles is that it just gets better with every new piece of playable equipment.  Plus, I rarely see people do anything interesting with Samedi.

Of course, Little Mountain Cemetery opens up some interesting possibilities that don’t involve Dominate.  Reanimated Corpse is so totally my kind of card, but I’m not interested in building Fletcher’s decks.

I could continue working on my Samedi vote deck as it’s kind of amusing.  Obfuscate makes things possible.

Unfortunately, group 4 Samedi are unbelievably awful, so it’s just more of the same group 2/3 (or just 2) stuff.  I can’t see how group 5’s will make 4’s playable unless there’s a 5er with the special “Samedi get 3 free levels of clan disciplines, so you know, you might have Fortitude and superior Thanatosis.”

Need:  Cost reduction, i.e. Path for Than, Than cards that are playable instead of the mindbogglingly bad ones that currently exist, reason Samedi would want to avoid getting smacked in combat, e.g. “Opposing minion gains +3 Strength for the remainder of combat and burns 1 blood each round.”, to justify Ashes to Ashes and Dust to Dust, For/Obf card, playable vampires.

True Brujah

Amazingly cool cards, horrendously awful disciplines for them.  No stealth, no intercept, no bounce.  Scarce penalty to make sure you get ousted as quickly as possible.

The Descent Into Darkness thing has never worked for me.  Almost nothing has worked for me except vote bloat in a deck that didn’t need Trujah for anything, even if I did get off Rewind Times and used Synesios’s ability to get extra master phase actions.

Just makes me sad to go to build Trujah decks as there are so many things I want to do and they all end up equaling doing nothing in practice.  The multiaction ability is a trap that leads to decks with way too many actions and not a coherent plan for winning.

Need:  Remove scarce rule from game.  Good disciplineless bounce card.  Stealth and/or intercept and/or evasion.

Because.

Why am I bored with the bloodlines?  I’m bored because I’ve built so many decks.  It’s hard to find things I haven’t done *and* that other people haven’t done too often (I hate building other people’s decks, don’t mind playing them, but hate building them).  On the other hand, there are tons of things I haven’t done with bloodlines, most of which are horrendous nutpunchers but some of which aren’t.

I hope that new cards address needs and don’t just add a bunch of wallpaper to the game.  The important thing is trying to dewallpaper old cards by making new cards that make the old much stronger.  Salubri allies – c’mon, how hard is that?  Not that crap like giving life to an ally is ever worth a card slot, but one can try.

Libra
“I balance”
positive: justice, intelligence, charm, gentleness, emotional balance
negative: laziness, procrastination, indecision, argumentativeness, pleasure-seeking, temperamental  -  Linda Goodman’s “Love Signs”

I wish I had more time these days.  I’m actually quite partial to Libra, though I believe I only have one planet in it.

Balance

When it comes to games I don’t preach anything like I preach balance.  So, why bother ranting about how better game balance makes games better?

So, Heirs to the Blood is the next V:TES set and it’s a bloodlines set.  I considered the ludicrous idea of taking one of each original bloodline (no Abomination) and making a 12 vampire, 12 clan crypt – perfect balance of clans.  Fortitude should be the easiest crossover discipline.  Cool concept for a theme deck (my theme decks are almost always mechanical themes rather than flavor themes) and just painful in practice.

Enough with the joke decks.  Balance could be refering to a balance of elements.  Maybe a deck inspired by Libra should be toolboxy even in a way I’m normally opposed to, which is toolboxy without any core.  If I go down this path, I could say a balance of bleed, vote, and combat, except I’m tired of vote decks right now.  Could balance stealth and intercept.  Aus/Obf for … nah, been there, done that.

There’s trying to balance tables.  Some decks are much better for that than others.  Eagle Sight, voting, crosstable bleed reduction, intercept locations, etc.  The history of the game for me is one of no effort to table balance to one of too much effort to table balance.  Build a deck just to table balance?  Bah.

There’s always trying to find balanced cards, except that way seems a path of madness … ooh, The Path of Madness.

Going beyond balance as a theme, for some reason, I get to thinking about True Brujah when I think of Libra.  I note that there are at least two decks I wrote out and never built.  At least one is awful as it has no meaningful pool defense or bloat.  I have the hardest time getting Trujah decks to be functional.  The only time I ever had one that seemed to work I hardly played it and it was only running Trujah for some Free States Rant/Rewind Time action.  An interesting thought I just got was to build a balanced crypt of Trujah and Guruhi with Guruhi Animalism providing intercept and Trujah independentness providing independent voting while the two clans sharing two disciplines.  If I find some time, maybe I’ll remember to build this.

Actually, the whole idea of two clans, one doing one thing for a deck, and the other doing something else for the deck (probably offense from one and defense from the other) is always so appealing in theory, but I can never justify it in practice.  It’s too awkward when I consider how easy it is to find multiple elements out of one clan or a particular discipline mix shared by all.  For instance, finding bleed these days is simple, so any deck can have offense.

Of course, mashing two clans together to play the clan toys of each of the clans may make more sense in my card limit games.

This is probably the last day of Libra this year, at least in my time zone.  Procrastination rears its ugly head again.  Well, off to some pleasure-seeking sleep … as soon as I write part two of Libra.

Décidément beaucoup de nouveautés dans les JCC (CCG en V.O.), après WoM dont je vous parle ci-dessous, c’est Upper Deck qui va une nouvelle fois frapper un grand coup en lançant un jeu de cartes basé sur les héros Marvel (Iron Man, Hulk, Captain America,…) : Marvel Superstars
Ils ont même fait un petit trailer qui “déchire”, j’ai déjà envie d’avoir la carte Iron Man dans mon jeu

Je vous ai déjà parlé de Wizards of Mickey (WoM) un nouveau JCC (jeu de cartes à jouer à collectionner) basé sur l’univers de Mickey. Il est désormais disponible dans différents points de vente. Je vais essayer de me procurer le starter de démarrage aujourd’hui pour me faire une idée de la chose.
La question est WoM fera t’il un carton ou un bide? Mickey sera t’il plus fort que les Orcs, Humains, Mages, Planeswalker, Dragons,… qui pullulent sur les tables de jeu?

Really should stop missing my astrological windows.  In some parts of the world, I couldn’t even get these in in September.

Virgo
“I analyze”
positive qualities: clarity of thought, discrimination, courtesy, service to others, practicality, self-honesty
negative: criticism, crankiness, timidity, pessimism, inferiority, hair-splitting

The one thing I can remember about Virgos is being analytical.  I know some quite analytical Virgos.  Ah, analysis – that’s something I can relate to.

What Is Good vs. Why It’s Good

Is it more important to know what is good or why something is good?  Sure, the goal should be to understand both.  It’s interesting how sometimes someone, including myself, can get lost in trying to answer one without taking the bigger picture into account.  Of course, any decent analysis of what is good begs the question as to why and studying why things are good generates a list of what is naturally.

Taking CCGs …  I quite enjoy rating cards.  I don’t do as much of it as I once did, but then, I don’t write articles anymore or playtest anymore.  And, with V:TES being the only CCG I regularly play, it’s hard to care as much about analysis.  Okay, this whole paragraph was an aside.

Why is Govern the Unaligned better than Scouting Mission?

It’s not always the case that more effect for higher cost is better in V:TES.  I don’t rate Pushing the Limit as better than Undead Strength.  Could argue that there’s greater diminishing returns with dealing combat damage than with bleed or “banking”.  Rather than try to get technical when I’m tired, I think there’s an intuitive basis for why the former is better.  Card economy, action economy.  Two Governs do as much as three Scouting Missions.  You pay for it in blood but save it in actions.  Clearly an action isn’t worth just one blood.

Why isn’t an action worth a blood?

Both are finite resources, but I’d put actions as (usually) the greater constraint in a game.  I could talk about hunting.  Some players are aware of how seriously I take hunting.  Probably not the time to go into it, but I’d note that the power in hunting has little to nothing to do with gaining blood.

Why is Enchant Kindred a better card than Scouting Mission?

They have the same text, yet the former is far better.  Sadly, the answer is one that people either get or don’t get and so probably isn’t all that exciting.  Ban Govern and they might end up being equal or SM might end up being better.

Does analysis make players better?

Anecdotally, I, myself, could point out many instances where people who just do and don’t think do better than those who think.  I certainly think far more about the CCGs I play than a lot of better players.  Then, I find that some strong players do analysis and the analysis is wrong.  What’s going on?

Well, obviously, there’s more to success than thinking.  How many sports fans think they know better how to run a team than the professional coaches?  And, we see all of the time in life how some people have better instincts than those who may know more.

On the other hand, there’s the theoretical analysis that I tend to favor versus the practical (ooh, used a Virgo word in this article) analysis that a strong player may do.  No matter how brilliant the former may be, it’s the latter that is likely to pay off.

I can get back to the earlier question.  I’ve known good players who didn’t think about why something was good but just knew what was good based on such things as how often they saw stuff played or the like.

Thinking About Winning

For all that it seems like some people succeed whether they have any analytical sense or not, I’d still put forth that for most of us, the better we understand why things are good or bad, the better we can do (under the grand assumption that someone applies what they know to maximize results … I can’t imagine anyone who wouldn’t be interested in maximizing results, can I?).

As if we needed another reason to get excited about Magic’s newest set, word came in late last night via the twitterverse and sites like mtgsalvation that Zendikar packs contained random inserts of Vintage cards like the original Dual Lands.  Not reprints…the acutal 15+ year old cards likely hand added to the print run.  This is an incredible move really and quite unexpected, I’m not sure what is more surprising…that WotC is doing this in the first place, or that they managed to keep it a secret until basically the pre-release.

Apparently there are approximately 90 different cards in the mix, and supposedly the “power nine” could be in the mix (or maybe are in the mix…rumor has it an original Unlimited Mox has already been pulled)…but true distribution numbers are still up in the air.  The current theory/conventional wisdom points to 1 pack in 20 boxes, but that seems too low considering the number that have already surfaced PRIOR to the actual pre-release, but I’m sure the Magic community group think will come up with better numbers by Monday when I’m sure there will be some sort of public article about the whole deal.

So…here is to pulling Moxes this weekend at the pre-release.  I’ll be live Tweeting my event tomorrow night, you can follow me on webofwebhead on twitter.  If I pull big, you’ll be sure to hear about it. – B

I think I’ve mentioned that I’ve gotten some of my reading inspiration over the past year or more from the reading selections of The Sword and Laser group.  I don’t participate in their discussions very often, and I’m a pretty slow reader and am usually behind their pace, but I’ve read quite a few things I would not have looked twice at before because of the The Sword and Laser group.  One of those is A Game of Thrones, Book One of A Song of Fire and Ice by George R.R. Martin.

It’s been made into a board game, a LCG, a CCG, an RPG, and soon an HBO pilot, but somehow it all slip past me.  So is the novel worthy of all the attention?

LIKED

Epic Story.  The book has everything that an epic story should have:  love, fear, hatred, war, death, betrayal, conspiracy, innocence, intrigue.   A world that seems to have as much history in it pre-novel as it may have going forward.  A story in which so much happens, and yet you barely scratch the surface.  It’s no wonder that Martin has been called “The American Tolkien.”

Diverse Characters.  Characters coping with situations they are unsuited for.  Unlikable characters you grow to love.  The diversity of character types in this book astounds me.  The bastard son.  The crippled boy.  The drunken ruler.  The clueless snobby sister.  The dwarf.  The incestuous royalty.  The driven wife and mother.  The exiled prince.  The court liar.  The tomboy sister.  The savage’s bride.  The boys who would be kings.  The all-knowing spy.  The rescued wolf pups.  Martin weaves these characters together almost flawlessly, and nearly every one of them believable.

NOT SO MUCH

Slow Start.  It took me awhile to really get into the novel.  I listened to the unabridged audio, and it normally takes me a little time to adjust to a new narrator.  But probably no more than a half hour…  Roy Doctrice does a masterful job.  But the story itself took me 3-4 hours to get into.  About 2 hours in I almost gave up.  I think there are so many characters and plotlines that you jump back and forth between that it feels very disjointed when it’s all new.

Lack of Foreshadowing.  Maybe I’m used to a lot of Stephen King.  King will write something like “John thought it was a perfect summer morning.  Little did he know it would be his last.”  Then as you read the next 200 pages, that plays on your mind and your anticipation builds.  Martin doesn’t ever really do that, instead going for the instant shock value.

Chapter Structure.  One thing that struck me while reading was that I felt a little cheated by the chapter structure.  Every chapter is told through the third person point of view of a major character.  The problem with that is that when something happens, or is about to happen, to that character, and the chapter ends, you don’t really find out what happens until that person’s POV comes back around in a chapter, even as time passes in the world.  Now, all authors control the flow of their stories and will read the reader on with little cliffhangers and such.  What bugged me is that the chapter format sort of emphasizes that you’re being led along, because with each passing chapter that doesn’t return to the character in question, you get pulled out of the story by noticing that it didn’t.  For instance, one character has 14 of the first 49 chapters, meaning you switch to that characters point of view roughly every 3-4 chapters.  Then something happens to them, and you don’t see their POV again for 9 chapters.  It really jumped out at me and dragged me out of the story.

RECOMMEND?

Despite my misgivings about the way some of it was written, it’s the story that makes the novel.  And the story is so rich and full that once I hit that 3-4 hour mark, I was sucked in and there was no stopping.  It was probably one of the fastest 33-1/2 hour books I’ve ever read on audio.  I started the second novel (which is 3 hours longer!) the next day, because I wanted the story to continue.  There are four books published to date, out of a potential seven, and at the rate I’m going, I may just blow through all four (the release of a fifth book was pushed back several times, and may or may not come this year).

With the HBO pilot looming on the horizon, now’s your chance to start reading where it all began.  If you like epic fantasy, you owe it to yourself to start this series.

Bueno, ya está aquí, y aunque la entrada se haya retrasado un poquito no habrá sido tanto como el juego en sí… porque sí que se ha hecho esperar.

La verdad es que volver a comprar cartas de La Llamada de Cthulhu es retomar algo que empezó hace unos añitos. Por desgracia, mi colección de Mythos, aquel mítico juego de cartas coleccionables (JCC) que comercializara la extinta JOC aquí en España, desapareció en mi última mudanza… hace ya más de dos años… Aprovecho el comentario para rogar al alma caritativa que se encontrara tan magno tesoro que lo restituyera ra a su legítimo dueño. Gracias.

Cuando hace algunos menos años apareció el nuevo JCC, volví igualmente a hacerme con un par de mazos de inicio y compré sobres durante un par de expansiones. El juego organizado ni lo olí y, aunque éramos unos cuantos  los que nos reuníamos a jugar algunas partidillas cada semana, todo se diluyó con la desaparición de las ediciones en español. Supongo que al no ampliar nuestras colecciones de cartas los mazos y estrategias eran más que conocidos.

Y ahora llega el LCG (Living Card Game). Un formato que para muchos ha sido una gran campaña de marketing para tratar de salvar/relanzar aquellos JCC que habían perdido en gran medida su potencial de ventas. Para muchos, también ha sido una especie de fiasco, sobre todo a la hora de hacer cuentas. Claro, que como siempre ocurre, todo depende de quien cuente la historia. Conozco a jugadores de JCC que se pueden gastar cada tres meses un total de 160€, a la búsqueda de las 3 “magníficas” copias de esa carta rara “indispensable” para el mazo. Si un jugador de cualquiera de los LCG actuales quisiera tener tres copias de cada una de las cartas que se incluyen en cada set mensual con el mismo sistema (renuncio a hablar de la compra de cartas sueltas), sólo tendría que gastar 90€ (3 x 9′95€ al mes x 3 meses).

Y ya me he ido un poco del tema… retomémoslo.

Decía que ahora llegaba el LCG, y yo he vuelto a caer. No en las “garras” del LCG, sino en las del mismísimo Cthulhu. Supongo que como otros muchos por lo que veo en mi entorno.  Que volviera a aparecer algo en español implicaba hacerse con ello, y creo anima a quienes ya jugábamos a que volvamos a hacerlo. creo además, que las posibilidades del juego organizado son mucho mayores que en Juego de Tronos, y que podría funcionar. Ya veremos.

En cuanto al Core Set/Caja de Inicio, la verdad es que todas las cartas son reediciones, abarcando casi todas las ediciones anteriores del JCC. Gracias a eso, he podido reunir 3 copias de algunas preciosidades cthulhuidianas. Existe además la posibilidad de jugar con todas las cartas existentes bajo el denominado formato Legacy. Aunque se me antoja un poquito demencial, digno del mismísimo Hastur. El sistema no varía practicamente nada, y el primero de los packs mensuales introduce ya la mecánica Día/Noche.

Por ahora, estamos volviendo a disfrutar del juego, del sistema y de la ambientación. Tardaremos más o menos en tener mazos tal y como nos gustaría tener, pero espero que el juego (y los jugadores) aguante(n) el tirón y que no se diluya(n) una vez más. Aunque no importaría mucho, de sobras es conocido que hasta en los rincones más inhóspitos de la tierra hay sectarios ocultos dispuestos a llamar de nuevo al gran Cthulhu.

Iä Iä Cthulhu Fhtagn!

I can’t imagine going to this year’s V:TES North American Championships.  I used to not care, but after the 2007 experience, I’d really like to go.  Still, I’ve missed every year except when it was in Los Angeles.

But, I’m very interested in a question thrown out to the newsgroup about what to expect.  Hey, metagaming.  It’s part of what makes CCGs fun even if it ends up being counterproductive when you actually play in an event.

So, what do I expect?  Maybe, the better question is:  what concerns me?

Weenie Animalism or Auspex worry me.  Really, weenie Auspex should never get ousted unless it’s next to a weenie combat deck.  Weenie Animalism’s benefit is being a weenie combat deck while still having enough survivability to fend off the brutal pool-removing decks.

Dementation bleed is probably more likely than Dom/Obf or Pre/Obf or, these days, even Ser/Obf.  Doesn’t matter a huge amount, the defenses remain much the same.  A deck that doesn’t have some sort of plan for brutal bleed is a bad deck, so I wouldn’t be specifically worried about these.

Stealth vote can get by walls and can wreck weenie/breed decks (Ancilla Empowerment, Anarchist Uprising) and Imbued.  I wouldn’t expect a lot of Imbued, but I could see about two Imbued players.  The reason for hating on them is less a function of the environment and more because playing against them is so tedious.

I agree with extrala – http://extrala.blogspot.com/ - about Ventrue Law Firm being popular again.  Yet another reason to play weenie intercept.  But, the more interesting thing to me is how many copies of Delaying Tactics to play to fend off voting.  If I really cared enough to metagame, I could see playing something straightforward, like weenie Obfuscate, since that will mean extra deckspace for hosers, and running a boatload of DT.

Fear of Mekhet?  If I were playing a vote deck, probably.  If not, maybe something more flexible.

Anyway, back to expectations rather than answers to those expectations.  Rush?  Somebody, I’m sure.  Deep Song rush is readily available.  But, I just can’t get too excited by the likelihood of having to deal with it.

Midcap or fattie wall?  Entirely likely to see something like Carna wall or maybe David Tatu will trot out Masika wall, so it’s worth considering.  But, since I’m already worried about weenie walls, it shouldn’t significantly affect my metagaming.  Does bring up the question as to how much antigun plays are worthwhile.  Always kind of questionable to get too esoteric with antigun plays.

Breed?  I see Nos breed/boon being highly likely.  Breed has so many dangerous decks whether Palla Grande, Clown Car, Death Star, or whatever that I’d rate breed decks a top level threat.  It’s why I see stealth vote being a desirable metagame choice or, again, weenies.

But, then, there’s Scourge of the Enochians and maybe The Fourth Cycle.  The latter I wouldn’t expect to matter in more than about one game, if at all.  The former seems necessary to me unless it will affect you as well.  Yet, as I’ve seen countless times with hosers, they don’t work as planned.  People will hope that others play them.  They will not show up at the right time.  They will punish the wrong decks.  People will cut deals.  Etc.

Combo?  Eh, I really don’t take combo too seriously.  Yes, there are decks out there that can all but win in one turn, but how often do they fail?

Ebony Kingdoms strategies?  Hardly.  I am all things variety and new and I can barely generate any enthusiasm for EK.  Maybe some will try stuff out just to do something new and different or to see if there’s real potential in Laibon strategies with the new cards, but I’d be utterly unconcerned.  For one thing, what do they do that causes a concern that other decks wouldn’t?

Tap bleed, a la Vignes?  Ruben is probably going, so it will probably show up in an at least one event, but does the possibility really justify something like more wakes or more bounce and justify them more than another deck may justify metagaming?  Then, I don’t like the deck in the metagame I envision.  Not that other people metagame as I expect, but I don’t like it against weenie Animalism and I don’t like it against vote.

Weenie vote?  I don’t see it being in these days, especially with the threat of Scourge of the Enochians.  Of course, breed vote decks have weenies, but I think they are less risky.

Weenie bleed?  Eh, it’s easy enough to get above 2 in capacity to avoid Scourge.  But, does weenie Presence really work differently than Vignes?  Does weenie Dementation, another of Ruben’s favorite decks, really work differently from midcap stealth bleed?  Are people really going to worry about weenie Dom with Target Vitals?

10 caps?  Yes, and 11’s.  People have got to trot out their Enkil Cogs, after all.  So many 11 caps now to choose from that people who like fatties will want to do something with them.

I don’t expect to see unusual amounts of certain disciplines.  Serpentis seems to be the only discipline underplayed where The Eternal Mask decks should probably be more popular than they are (if still not going to be hugely significant in the grand scheme of things).

Will DI2 be noticeable?  Probably not.  It has seemed to finally start leeking into decks.  Will DI’s, Suddens, and Washes fly fast and thick?  I don’t think they will.  I just have this sense that, as usual, the game’s counterspells will be woefully underplayed.

Is it worth olding one’s vampires to dodge Neonate Breach?  I’ve actually done such in a midcap deck and in a deck that ran some cheaper dudes.  But, if you can’t deal with votes in general, it probably doesn’t matter whether it’s Neonate Breach or KRC or Parity Shift or Reckless Agitation.

Mono-Daimoinon?  Sadly, probably not.  As much as some of the old D.C. crew may be getting back into the game, I don’t know if there’s the same temperament for wackiness.

My pick for winning deck?  It’s dumb to try to guess on decks, much more meaningful to try to guess on players since it’s players that win the game and not decks.  But, I’ll guess a wallish Ahrimanes deck.

Today I killed the kids Sea Monkeys
I put them on the windowsill to soak up the sun but I think I cooked them instead!

I didn’t mean to…HONEST! Poor little sea monkeys…I have been nurturing them for the last two weeks and now their gone I droppped Talissa off at Guides this evening and her first words to her troupe leader was…
“I’m very sad because my mum killed all my Sea Monkeys”
Thanks Talissa, as if I didn’t feel bad enough!

I have done a couple of LO’s over the week-end, one being for the Colour Combo’s Galore 132

Talissa at the Royal Adelaide Show this year had her face painted. I have used an Ann Lederhose chipboard feather and a Pumpkin Pink journal-it that I inked white.

I ‘was’ supposed to have a met up today with Tatum and Lou but both Conner and I are still struggling with this darn cold that we can’t seem to shake…I’ve got the blocked ears that make that swooshing noise with every heartbeat, runny nose and a yucky cough. I choose not to go today and I feel so disappointed too
I hope you girls had a great day

As I mentioned in my ConQuest post, I might be playing UC! more regularly in the future.  I’ve never seen any analysis on the game, but there are some principles I have in mind when going to build decks.

Belt Rank

UC! was one of the few CCGs ever to restrict deck construction by rarity.  There are four ranks of decks:  white, brown, black, gold.  I’m not that into building white belt decks anymore as I think I’ve covered enough archetypes.  While some deck concepts can’t feasibly work as white belt decks, I find that the real difference between belt levels is in consistency, in particular consistency of power generation.

Power

I didn’t get the overriding importance of power generation when the game had a playerbase (1995-1997, let’s say).  Now, I try to squeeze almost every bit of extra power generation into any deck.

There are similarities to Magic.  In Magic, you have mana ramp decks.  In UC!, every deck should be.  The difference is due to the importance of card advantage between the two games.  In Magic, it’s vastly important and playing cards to make mana may be direct card disadvantage for improvements in card quality; there are other aspects of mana generators that aren’t direct card disadvantage, but that’s getting off on a tangent.  In UC!, every card played is replaced and there’s typically a small enough window in which the replacement hasn’t occurred yet that really the limitations on card play have to do with limits of power generation.

Almost every deck, very possibly every single deck, needs to run x4 Mantra of Power.  Even if it’s blown on something it didn’t need to be used for, it cycles virtually for free.  Next up is having a minimum of x1 Gi Patch for each foundation type that the deck needs to play.  These days, I try to play all four foundation types as much as possible even if I have no cards that need a foundation type just to have Gi Patches for every foundation type to accelerate and increase power generation.

Then, we run into belt level considerations for other power generation.  A white belt deck can probably run Yamashita’s Belt and every other level should, possibly in multiples even though you can only have one in play at a time.  But, Elixir of the Gods or Bear’s Jaw, being gold belt cards, takes away ultrarare space from decks, crucial to white belt decks, significant to brown belt, and maybe not so important to black.

Speaking of Elixir of the Gods, it was one of the first two gold belt cards I cracked when I began playing UC!.  For a long time, I didn’t think much of it, certainly didn’t like it as much as Bear’s Jaw.  Now, I want it in every deck as it’s just such a hot first turn drop to accelerate into brutality.

On the other hand, for Magic players who are used to needing a significant amount of mana-producing land to hit land drops, I find that UC! decks can get by with lower percentages of foundation.  Besides the ubiquity of Mantra of Power and Gi Patches, there’s the discard rule that, in a pinch, can be used to help smooth out power generation.  On the other hand, that same discard rule means that it’s possible to unload excess foundation to get to kill cards, so the analyses of how much foundation to run is not straightforward at all to me.

Speed & Strength

Overrated?  There was a time when I was thinking that people probably overplayed Speed I and Strength I.  I was becoming more enchanted with control cards like Shake Up and, of course, things like power generators.  I was getting enough offense out of my core strategy, whether it was combinations, Favorite Technique-ing out something monstrous, or whatever.

I’m still not clear whether Speed and Strength are necessary to every deck, but it is extremely hard not to play them.  Not because of their cheap and easy offense – what I like them for is their cheap and easy defense that cycles me into the cards to support my core strategy.  There aren’t many ways besides Speed and Strength to defend oneself besides what’s in play.  UC! is often mathematical to where attacking or card play comes down to having just enough to knockout someone.  Speed and Strength makes the math of the game probability calculations which significantly enhances the skill aspect of the game.  Nevermind that defenses in the game are often poor and/or costly where Speed I and Strength I are absurdly cheap and okay in magnitude of power.

Deck Size

In most CCGs, you want a minimum deck size.  Cards aren’t equal in power, so you want to get to your most powerful ones as quickly and as often as possible.  Card draws become more consistent the fewer cards that could be drawn.

I find that far too often UC! decks are unnecessarily above the 50 card minimum.  While decking is fairly easy, the fat in larger decks only makes the kill less likely, forcing card digs that ironically make decking easier.  The game does have room for undeckable decks that just try to survive until the opponent decks.  I saw one player play a deck that must have been 200+ cards in a tournament with this goal in mind.  That can work in white belt on white belt matchups where control cards are much rarer, but against higher rank decks, it’s not the 26 point attacks that even white belt decks might throw out that will get you but having your board annihilated by Shake Ups and having a 8/4 Favorite Technique beat you down over and over again that makes such a strategy sketchy.

Technique Amount

You have to have enough technique to get attacks in when you want to attack, assuming your deck relies upon technique based offense (as most do).  But, what that means for particular decks is so different.  Combination decks have to get out enough technique to do combinations (I know, shocking).  My Instant Replay deck, I think, only runs x4 Black Belt Shoulder Throw for technique.

Technique Cost

Always go with cheap.  Cheap is way more important than what movement direction(s) the technique has.  The only reason to play the expensive and costly gold belt technique is Favorite Technique where you pay FT’s 5 power cost rather than the 6+ that gold belts cost.  Black belt technique are typically ideal, but brown belt decks may have issues fitting them in and white certainly will.  Black Belt Shoulder Throw is worth it as a 6/5 for 4 and the basis of repeated attempts to abuse Instant Replay.  But, most of the time, going to be looking for the 3/1’s for 1.

Then, there are the two 2/2’s for 1 at brown belt which have to be the most commonly played technique in the game.  Superefficient, obviously so, so not that interesting to talk about.  What is of much more interest is what white belt technique are worth playing.  A lot of the 2 cost technique are 2/1’s, which I used to have little interest in.  But, I’ve changed.  Tempo is too important in the game to be throwing out a 3/3 for 3 when an opponent drops two 2/1’s for 4. 

Three cost technique is often an unfortunate necessity to a particular deck but not something to fall in love with.

Drunken Style technique is one exception.  While cheapest is usually going to be bestest, cheapest for Drunken is 4.  But, the only real reason to play Drunken is in a control deck that needs to shut down brutal advantage based attacks, so you pay what you got to play.  By the way, the rest of the expansion styles suck, having a bunch of overcosted technique with questionable special abilities.

Recovery

Are Oxygen Burst and Healing Mantra worth it?  The latter definitely is to some decks – control decks.  I have a real hard time justifying the former.  It’s fine cost to effect and cost in general, it’s the taking up a deck slot in the deck that usually causes me to leave it out.

Broken Cards

How important is it to play broken cards like Mental Domination, Instant Recall, and (arguably) Focus?  I tend to forget Instant Recall and Focus, which is bad.  I can see an argument for “casual” use of broken cards like Mental Domination.

By the way, the single most important card in the Ancient Fighting Arts of China expansion is Psychic Delay.  It’s so important just for annoying stuff like delaying a Mantra of Power that I can see an argument for x4 in every deck, though I typically don’t even play x4 in some decks.  How often PD shows up may have a metagaming effect on how desirable broken (psychic) action cards are.

Favorite Technique (and Weapons)

Favorite Technique is insanely badass.  It’s much more important in control decks, which I realized when I got off aggro decks and started making more control decks.  The restriction on number of copies by belt rank of the deck is actually quite important.

Weapons are not insanely badass.  I just find them to be too much effort for something I could do without them.  But, they make for interesting challenges.  In limited play (sealed deck anyway as I’ve never drafted the game), they are insanely badass, though.

Movement

I’m fairly neutral on Movement.  Gold belt Movement is almost never worth playing (thus, why I like building Mark of the Cheetah decks to have an excuse).  White belt is key to combination decks, but other decks can fairly often take them or leave them.  Great cycles, cheap offense, but like cards like Oxygen Burst, there’s only so many slots in a 50 card deck.

Tempo

A topic for another post since tempo has to do with play strategy and tactics and not deck construction, except in how cheap cards and mighty power generation should result in having tempo more often.

Could call it PacifiCon these days, too, though I was quite fond of PacifiCon back in the ’90’s, where this con to me is just so “ConQuest”.  One of the three gaming conventions I go to locally.  It was the second year of its latest location.  That should have been a plus.

Maybe it was the economy, but it seemed awfully uneventful.  The RPG schedule was sad and CCGs even sadder, though CCGs are just dying at local cons as the major events all happen at stores or hotels or whatever now.

I really enjoyed last year and enjoyed the previous year, too.  Low expectations are a wonder.

Wargaming, boardgaming, and miniatures seemed to be doing okay, but, then, that’s what this con is known for – DunDraCon is RPGs and KublaCon used to be CCGs.  Having limited interest in any of these in general, I almost hoped we’d have a HoR mod during the weekend.

Friday, I blew off the con.  I had an opportunity to play in a HoR mod.  Originally, I figured it was about six of one, half a dozen of the other whether to do that or sign up for a convention RPG event in the evening, but further thought resulted in my realizing that any HoR mods I miss with the online group I’m fairly likely to never get to play as the campaign only has one more year and there aren’t enough people in the group seemingly to rerun mods.  When Gen Con rolls around next year, I’ll probably want to do whatever is new and maybe get in only a couple older mods, yet there are lots of mods I want to do out of the 30 that currently exist that I haven’t done, nevermind new ones that come out before the end of the campaign.

Ignoring the intro mod for the campaign, it was the first mod of the campaign, and it flew by.  We only spent 2 hours on it when I figured 6 was more likely.  It went so quickly that one of the players volunteered to run another mod for us, so we did another early mod and finished about 11PM.  Too late for me to go to the con.

My main character did finally rank up, “only” took 20 modules and 83 XP.  Now, I just need to get that Emerald Magistrate cert from the GM of an earlier mod, and my character will be … uh … different? than what he was just a couple of weeks ago.

Saturday, I headed over in the morning and checked the event schedule.  Nothing I wanted to do in those times when I wasn’t running anything.  Awesome.  Maybe I could get some stuff done at home, like work on the RPG adventure I was running Monday.  I played a bit of Type P Magic and went home.  Built one V:TES deck for my “tournament” that evening and took a nap.

As expected, the tournament never went off, but unlike the norm for the cons, we didn’t even get enough people for a pickup game.  I didn’t see a number of the usual suspects at the con, though hardly being at it didn’t help.

I played some more Type P, we went out for dinner, just missing hitting the local burger grill that has half-priced burgers on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and I was dropped off at home.

Sunday, I built a new Ultimate Combat! deck in the morning as there was a nebulous plan for me to play with the one-time top ranked player in the world (actually, he still would be if there was such a thing as rankings anymore).  I found him, he had some stuff he needed to do in the morning, I played some more Type P, got lunch, we played six games in the afternoon while he was monitoring an Acquire tournament’s finals.

My brown belt, Instant Replay/Shoulder Throw deck traded games with his brown belt Knowledge/Fighting Spirit deck.  In each game, I pulled off 22 pt. attacks, but he had enough defense in the second game to survive and I couldn’t deal with the counterattack.  I pointed out that one of the things that makes the game so great is how you have incredibly swingy plays, but they seem fair and correct play is rewarded.  I probably made a mistake ceding tempo to his deck by not putting out more technique.

I played my brand new black belt, Mark of the Cheetah deck, a rebuild of an archetype I had done long ago (everything with UC! is long ago).  The build was horrid.  That probably had something to do with not being as familiar with all of the cards as I was back when I played the game every once in a while.  He played a white belt, Adrenaline deck.  I sucked first game and decked myself second game trying to dig for a card that wasn’t left in my deck.

We, then, played our gold belt decks against each other.  Mine seemed much better tuned, a straightforward combination deck that tries to KO as quickly as possible.  I swept the two games as my power generation was more consistent.

We talked about playing about once a month.  Huzzah, guess I need to remember how to build decks for the game.

Played some more Type P.  Went home to get my V:TES stuff for my “draft tournament” (aka second excuse to play some pickup games).  Of course, there was no actual tournament, but I did demo to somebody.  Played some more P.  Played a pickup game of V:TES late in the evening, which I totally wasn’t in the mood for as I needed to do a lot of stuff for my game the next day.  Got ousted quickly, waited around for the game’s end as someone was borrowing a deck (Imbued) from me.  Went home about 12:30AM.

Monday, got up at 6:30AM to get stuff prepared for my Solomon Kane game.  Wandered over to the con.  Ran my game, which was okay.  As my Conan GM pointed out afterwards (his being a player for a change being one of the two drivers to my GMing), the intent was for the party to do some investigating (and, well, more generally, interacting with the world), yet there wasn’t a lot of motivation to do so.  One of the ways I figured the party could figure out what to do was used, so things didn’t bog down too much.  A combat ran long – I just have to remember that combats with lots of participants always will, so I stopped things at something like a cliffhanger.

I’m still not strong on the rules, but running twice in a month rather than twice in six months helped immensely with getting some sort of handle on them.  Might actually have a pretty good grasp by next month as it looks like we will do part two of the adventure in October rather than February.

It’s funny.  On the one hand, I want the game to have more of a Solomon Kane feel, where the characters are more down to Earth and the tone more horroresque, but on the other hand, I want the game to be more lively in the flow of events.  There are some things I need to think about, including tone and types of challenges.

And, that was it.  Barely like being at a con at all.  Actually, for comparison, DunDraCon has gotten so terrible that it isn’t like being at a con much anymore either.  I’ve started wondering whether it’s better to skip DDC in the future, though I think I have enough planned for next year’s to justify going to it again.

So there I was, early Saturday morning(OK that’s a lie – I was up until 5am! Dead Space FTW!) hunting through boxes of stored items in my garage and loft. I had hoped to find my poetry collection that I had carefully stored away but my hunt lead to a dead-end – maybe that’s a good thing for you, dear reader.

I did however re-discover my collection of Perlexcity cards – I have 21 of the total 256 cards that make up season 1! OK so not a big collection but am happy that I kept them. The cards I have are from the 1st wave which had 4 waves in total and hail back to 2005. Since then season 2 had been put on hold – I think it was due out in 2007 – but it looks like there are now 86 cards that have been produced for its first season.

So what’s the idea behind these cards? Are they just another CCG or something more like a ARG?

Here’s a promo blurb from the official site:

A city obsessed with puzzles and ciphers. A game that blurs the boundaries between fiction and reality.

Begin an incredible, immersive adventure that spills out into the real world. Interrogate suspects over the phone, search police files for evidence, decipher coded emails and check newspapers for clues – working with tens of thousands of players around the world.

I’ll be looking at each of my current cards, in turn, here on my blog very shortly. I have solved some but many still need some detective work . Do you feel up for a challenge? We could work together on the cards I have and maybe you have these too? Many hands and all that Jazz – don’t be shy!