You There, In The Woods

Perhaps a better title for a different sort of post.  If you’ve never seen the comic strip in Scrye Magazine about Dragonball Z where this comes from, well, missed out on hilarity.

Interaction.  Is a game a game if you don’t interact with anything?  Solitaire?  Interacting with random draws or layouts.  Too esoteric, maybe.  Interaction with opponents in a game with multiple people is a necessary element to a game.

As I often say, I once thought interaction was the key to making a CCG good.  Then, I realized just how much interaction in multiplayer CCGs is crap.  Player A trashes player B and either C or D wins, just because A’s deck only does the one thing of trashing another player.  If you did a cost/benefit table of two-player CCGs vs. multiplayer CCGs, I’d put something down on the two-player side about how two-player CCGs don’t have to worry about the kingmaking effects of negative interactions.

Which led to the idea of “quality interaction”, however subjective that is.

But, this isn’t a post about quality interaction.  This is a post about something I more clearly realized due to helping design a CCG/LCG style game.

You want to minimize m-… self-play.  The more time you spend dealing with your own “board” is that much less time you are spending engaging your opponent(s).  Seems obvious, but it also seems like designers forget about this when trying to come up with mechanics, especially when doing top-down mechanics, i.e. simulating the flavor of whatever the game is based on.

At least, if you are looking for enjoyable play.  For effectiveness, it’s something of a truism that the less you interact with your opponents, the better off you are.

I’ll run through the CCGs I know best.

Vampire: The Eternal Struggle

I hadn’t thought about this until yesterday.  The increased number of effects that happen during untap always struck me as being off, but it was only yesterday that I realized that at least part of this was because it was purely administrative functions that had no interactions with other players’ boards and card play.  (Burn option is not remotely interactive, just in case it bothers anyone I don’t mention this.)

To get kind of sidetracked already, people bitch a lot about Imbued, and a lot of the carping has to do with how long they take.  Then, you get counterarguments that people who know what they are doing don’t take very long.  It’s clearer to me now that it isn’t the actual time spent, but that the Imbued deck is doing lots of things that don’t involve other players.  Much like Freak Drive decks play with themselves for far too long.

There are some benefits to expanding the untap phase, such as helping people remember optional untap effects like taking pool for the Edge or using a hunting ground.  But, overall, it’s just more doing stuff that isn’t “playing a game” (interacting with people).  Similarly, expanding the master phase, the influence phase, and the discard phase all involve expanding phases where you aren’t playing with other people.

Which obviously brings up the minion phase.  The minion phase is the heart of the game.  A lot of people like combat because they see it being the primary interactive element to the game.  I see stealth versus intercept, bleed mods vs. bounce, actions vs. wakes being the primary interactive elements of the game.  But, I can see how some wouldn’t find those quite as compelling as the subgame that is combat as they like the feeling of more directly interacting.

Either way.  The point is that actions are where we engage other players.  Of course, it’s not just actions but the possibility of interference with actions.  Unblockability, such as from excessive amounts of stealth, is obviously less engaging.  I hate playing decks that don’t wake because being tapped out means not being involved in the game, even if all I’m doing is waking and bouncing – bounce is actually a pretty good form of interaction in the game, which is yet another reason I don’t see why people hate it so much.

Where Imbued are masters of the untap, Girls …, et al, are annoying for their abuse of the master phase.  No wonder people can find them more obnoxious than decks that do things I find far worse, like minion destruction.

Babylon 5

A lot of my observations about interaction have come from B5.  There’s no requirement that you interact with opponents, like there essentially is in V:TES.  B5 is a race game, so you can sit back and gain your influence/power as efficiently as possible and hope you outspeed everyone else.  This was one of the great criticisms of the game – that everyone could play multiplayer solitaire.

The whole beginning of the game, outside of some speed/hyperspeed openings was predicated on doing infrastructure work … which is why people so often hated the beginning of B5 games.  Sponsor, build, promote, build, build, build, build, okay … now we start interacting.

Then, as the card pool got bigger, it became easier and easier to spend more and more actions.  It wasn’t like those actions were increased participation in conflicts.  Those actions were often more infrastructure building.  It’s hard to choose one card as the worst card ever printed for B5 – too many options, but in terms of making action rounds as dumb as possible, Bogged Down has to rank up there.  The intention might have been noble – to force people to do important things, but the real result was to encourage people to do numerous trivial actions to prevent the inevitable Secret Strike that would guarantee a successful conflict if everyone else had passed.

Did B5 have a problem with too much administrative stuff outside of the action round?  I wouldn’t say so.  The game emphasized the action round as it should.  Possibly too easy to have a full hand of cards (20, 30), which slowed things down.  Probably too many ways to dick around for a while before doing important things.  And, often, lots of problems with conflicts being the focus of the game.

Wheel of Time

I enjoyed WoT a lot, so why don’t I ever try to argue for its greatness?  Because hardly any of the game involved interacting with your opponent.  Not to say that interaction never mattered.  Challenges could easily decide games depending upon deck matchups.  A basic Pattern Challenge contested might nuke enough resources to decide a game long before the Last Battle.  But, usually, the game was heavily oriented towards recruit, recruit, recruit, Last Battle.

It was particularly bad before the expansions added more brutal challenge cards.  Outrecruiting almost always won games.  The primary form of interaction was actually forced, random discard with Thom Merrilin, Liandrin Sedai, Sabotage (which I underplayed).  That’s not terribly fun, though Thom was the Light’s only hope.

Even after Invasion, Genocide, and the like got published, there were still many games where it was just recruit, recruit, recruit, Guarded by Fate not to die, see what happens in the Last Battle.

There wasn’t a lot of administrative nonsense.  However, there was a lot of time spent just on recruiting.  There was way, way too much time spent counting up symbols – an argument for turning WoT into an awesome electronic CCG.  Lots of card drawing and card searching.

Then, even if you did actually contest challenges, the system for determining who went to which challenges or wussed out was horribly clunky.  Possibly exciting in the rare cases it mattered, but just so clunky that playing with people you trusted was completely different from playing with strangers.

Magic: The Gathering

I think Magic “wins” this category in a couple of ways.  First, while there are ways to do things during upkeep or draw or end of turn, the game is focused heavily on the main phases and the combat subphase.  Second, Magic has lots of ability to interfere with what opponents are doing.  Counterspells might annoy me and be a general source of unfunnity … people like to have their cards do something … but they and things like instant speed creature elimination or responding to effects with card play or board effects all mean that the game has lots of ability to require players to be paying attention to what is going on.  Third, while I consider Magic’s draw one card a turn the primary reason it’s not as fun as it should be, limiting cards in hand does mean that each individual play has more relevance – compare and contrast with games where playing several cards might have no greater game meaning.

On the other hand, Magic does have interaction issues.  Creature combat may be far more important these days, but it’s historically been a minor part of constructed play.  My swarm of 2/2′s beat, your 5/5 flyer swings back, Bolt/Terror/Swords is more of an answer than Giant Growth.  Magic’s more open nature when it comes to card interactions also means far more combo decks than other CCGs, decks that just want to go off and you either can interfere or you can’t.  Can also be ground out by graveyard decks recursing creatures.  Can be hard locked or soft locked out of games a host of ways.  Armageddon or targeted land destruction to prevent being able to play cards, discard to destroy the hand, counterspell everything, whatever – all means games that suck.

In fact, as much as Magic should have better interaction due to its structure, it often has worse than other CCGs due to card effects.  Creature removal is far too easy, making any given creature unreliable.  Planeswalkers, which are awful for the game, become cardless ways that are hard to get rid (to the extent that anything in Magic is hard to get rid of) of that produce obnoxious, repeatable effects.  Equipment tries to solve the problem of creature enchantments being the suck, but they are a much more difficult way to interact with an opponent outside of environments where artifact removal is prevalent.

Ultimate Combat!

Why talk about Magic first?  Well, UC! is Magic.  UC! also has much less relevance to others.

UC! had far fewer effects to interfere with opponent card play, but it did have a lot of lockdown effects.  It had Time Walk.  It had a Time Walk variant.  It had Mindslaver.  It had Winter Orb (as a “sorcery”).  It had Armageddon.  It had lots of scary, scary things it could do to you and very little ability to stop those, mostly “Memory Lapse”, … in theory.

In practice, aggro plays are so strong that a lot of the control mechanisms just aren’t reliable enough.  One wonders whether it would be fair to compare UC! to a Magic format more like Legacy, even given the differences in curve and options, just because of the brutal nature of how decks won.

One thing I vastly prefer about UC! is that “creatures” are one-shots.  It may seem odd that I hate creatures in Magic as much as I do because of how easy they are to remove, but an undealt with creature just wins, often in a tedious fashion.  At least with UC!, you feel like you can recover permanentwise.  Though, I do find that Favorite Technique undermines this immensely.

UC! has about as many administrative needs as Magic, so nothing much there.  The combat subphase is far more important in UC! due to how few other ways there are to win and technique interaction is the norm rather than an accident.  Giant Growths are ubiquitous, which is a lot more interesting to me than Swords to Plowshares effects.

While I concede that proper Magic play requires a lot of thinking and that my numerous bad experiences often come down to poor planning (deck construction metagaming) or huge discrepancies in player skill, I’m quite the believer that proper play in UC! is a massive factor.  So, while the interaction may seem more limited and just generally less present, I find that I have to pay a lot of attention to the game state and making good decisions does get rewarded.

Tomb Raider

Sure, why not?  So, I didn’t play a lot of this game.  Who has?  I probably played my share through playtesting.

Two-player Tomb Raider never felt all that interactive.  Well, maybe starter versus starter was okay, though it wasn’t that hard for one player to get locked on one side of the board.  Multiplayer had a very different problem.

We often playtested multiplayer scenarios where you had to return home with your prize.  Not unexpectedly, it ran into the problem of people behind just waiting for someone to return and ambushing, much like you might see in RoboRally.

In addition, much of Tomb Raider had nothing to do with your opponent.  Getting stuff, overcoming board effects, deciding where to explore – the game was probably much better suited to solitaire play since decks designed to nuke your opposing adventurer(s) weren’t exactly fun for people who wanted to do things like tool up.  The balance of adventurer destruction just wasn’t really there.

Even worse was the intended interaction of card play obstacles.  A core mechanic of the game was supposed to be to throw obstacles in front of your opponent(s).  But, as with other games that had similar mechanics, like Shadowrun, obstacles didn’t do anything to help you and may just end up helping an opponent.  Nevermind that it was a major hassle to even be able to play an obstacle.  Again, I can think of how the game could work better as a solitaire game with there being an obstacle deck that randomly spit out additional obstacles to add to inherent ones on locations.

Just a strange entry in the history of CCGs.  I’m sure a far better game with much more appeal could have been created stealing a lot of elements from Tomb Raider.  Even reasonably likely such a game already exists as TR always reminded me of random dungeon games.

The Next Big Thing

So, if going to try to make some money off a new CCG/LCG or any sort of game, it may not seem like a key concern, but I would pay attention to just how much of the game is not designed around doing things that opponents are involved in.  Bookkeeping – bad.  Lots of plays that can’t be affected – bad.  Lots of phases to a turn where things must be addressed that don’t really engage the players – bad.

“Liveliness” in a game is tied to enjoyment.  I can think of boardgames that have similar problems, in fact very possibly a greater issue with boardgames, where there is lots of dead time for other players, but I think I’ve hit a reasonable word count limit.

Enjoy?

So, I was reading Starcitygames.com’s front page, free section.  (All the articles in this section are Magic related.)  One person’s post talked about what he enjoyed in Magic.  What prompted the thought for him, Matt Elias, is interesting in other ways since it was a game Matt played where his opponent played a land and a one-drop, Matt won on turn two, and his opponent asked him if he enjoyed playing decks like the one he was playing.  Matt goes on to explain that the answer was “yes” because he enjoys drawing lots of cards and not, assumedly, because he likes having games that don’t qualify as being an actual game.

When it comes to Magic, I also like drawing cards, though it’s probably not as important to me.  The reason why card drawing is important to me has more to do with how I believe Magic’s greatest problem is the draw one card a turn mechanic.

Anyway, I want to talk about more than Magic.  I want to think about what I enjoy most in the CCGs I have played or have been most invested in.  I’m going to try to go in order of what I’ve played the most.

Vampire: The Eternal Struggle

I’m sure I’ve spent more time playing this than anything else, perhaps as much time playing this as all other CCGs combined due to longevity of play and relative  consistency of play.  It’s also my largest CCG collection from a straight card quantity metric.

What do I enjoy most about V:TES?

Not deck construction.  I may be prolific, but I dislike many of my decks, certainly don’t have the same attachments as I’ve had with decks for other CCGs.  I don’t even consider deck construction all that important.

Not the source material.  I was once fond of Vampire: The Masquerade, back before I played much of it.  I have some connection to the source material, I guess.  Though, I’ve always had separate interests.  For instance, I actually enjoyed playing cards that require Dominate for many years whereas … to give an idea how little interest I had in Dominate in the RPG, my two main characters were a Tremere and a Ventrue – neither had any dots in Dominate.  I could go on about the differences, but there are so many examples that it would likely just be tedious.

Not the politics.  Funny thing is that politics was far less important in my early years of play – 1996 (when I started) to maybe 2002.  People were much more focused on either the player to the left or the right and doing what their decks did, which was often lots of bleeding.  My style of play, which is far more concerned with what the crazy people across the table are doing than with my natural partners to the left and right, developed in reaction to that.  Now, of course, I often lament how much table management is a consideration over having people get ousted.  I have a basic view that any table can be talked to victory, and that’s just annoying.  What interests me the most seems to be …

Card interactions?  I stress context.  For everything.  There is no meaning without context, an argument I remember making in a college philosophy course.  Card interactions, in and of themselves, probably don’t do it for me.  I think it’s because games, more so with some CCGs than with other CCGs or other games, have a feature to them besides just the numerical values of the components.  I’ll come back to this when I get to Babylon 5.  But, as a V:TES example, I find it hilarious to Shattering Blow someone’s Assault Rifle in constructed play.  It’s not so much the flavor, it’s that there’s a game context that Shattering Blow is a bad card and that the odds of being at close range against someone with an Assault Rifle are negligible, after all, the odds of even playing against someone with an Assault Rifle while running Shattering Blow are minute.  It’s these sorts of odd/surprising card interactions, where odd/surprising is determined within the context of how a game plays, that floats my boat.  Because they are so much more varied in CCGs than in other games is likely why I value CCGs so highly.

What about on a more tree level than forest level?

I enjoy having lots of minions, though I seem to forget this a lot.  I enjoy being successful at actions.  I enjoy surviving when survival seems implausible.  I enjoy guessing at what is in my opponents’ hands at any given time.  I enjoy discarding master cards to Pariah.  I enjoy lots of sound and fury signifying nothing – lots of cards played with little of consequence occurring, to an extent, anyway.  Far more than other CCGs, V:TES is the game where I can accomplish the least in results and still be enjoying playing.

Babylon 5

For a game that I didn’t start playing until the year after it came out (1997) and which I haven’t played in nearly a decade(?) at this point, I sure did play a lot once upon a time.  Once our group started playtesting, it was crazy how much we had to switch between living in the future and going back to what was already in print.

Far more so than V:TES for me, Babylon 5 was about the connection to the source material.  I didn’t start out a B5 fan.  I was far more interested in Deep Space 9 as the look of season one and the terrible acting of Sinclair were so offputting.  I only saw a couple of season one episodes and gave up on the show.  Then, I saw season two, and I became a fan.

Where V:TES is much more a “game” CCG, B5 was definitely a “genre” CCG.  You were required to play with main characters and numerous cards were recognizable, obviously virtually all of the character cards.  For me, this was an opportunity to mess with people’s expectations, a common theme throughout my gaming.  I think the first tournament I ever won was with a Centauri Diplomacy deck, pumping B5 influence.  That would have been the Fall of 1998, just a tad (3 sets) before Centauri Diplomacy was legit.  I played Minbari Intrigue before Shadows.  Londo got Vorlon Marks.  Sheridan, Shadow Marks.  I often played Centauri Military, in part to counteract obnoxious Narn war decks, but also because … well, there were a number of reasons, so maybe not a great example.

Some characters I liked better than others.  I kept trying to get a Walker Smith card created, including when I was working on the Anla’shok design team.  Again, the point is that B5 was a CCG that lived within the context of the flavor of the show.

Other things I enjoyed:  Non-player influence, especially B5 influence – Shadow and Vorlon influence could get annoying due to the major agenda, but even so, to me, the best part of the show was the Shadow War.  Marks – I loved me my marks, even Conspiracy Marks, even Doom Marks after they became far harder to convert to Destiny Marks and Seizing Advantage got rewritten.  I loved me my hyperspeed, especially hyperspeed military – unlike the V:TES players who virtually always see me screw around, my Spike-ness came through with trying to win major victories in 20 minutes with Conscription openings, even though it was incredibly unfun to play against.

Which brings up something deserving of its own paragraph.  Precedence CCGs allowed you to choose your opening hands.  This was huge, potentially large.  Choosing optimal opening hands was its own subgame.  I agonized about it more with Wheel of Time, but I spent more time (because I played more) on it with B5.  The Great Machine openings, Military Build-Up openings, Gambling Londo being all about not having an opening hand – I think it was a major fun factor to these games that one had so much control *and* so much variety with how to play the early game.  Of course, as B5′s early game was often anti-fun to play, it was likely essential to have something fun about it.  Also, this would be why any sort of aggro opening, like Conscription, was so much more fun – avoid the tedious building actions and taking entire turns just sponsoring or promoting someone.

Magic: The Gathering

I’m not so clear what the order should be after B5.  I think this is where Magic falls in how much I played a particular CCG, though with all of the playtesting we used to do for Precedence games, it’s hard to be sure how much Wheel of Time I actually played.

What do I enjoy about Magic?  This would seem to be yet another opening for me to rant about how frustrating it is that I don’t enjoy the game more, but that’s not the spirit of this post.

I enjoy building limited decks.  I hate building constructed decks for Magic as there are simply too many options.  Yes, the complaint that I’ve seen by others for various CCGs I’ve played where I built tons of decks of it being too hard to complete one deck without thinking of a bunch of others is exactly the problem I have with Magic constructed.  But, limited doesn’t have that issue.

Similarly, I enjoy drafting.  I don’t love it.  But, having a plan for what sort of limited deck to build is interesting.  Drafting Magic is a lot more interesting than drafting V:TES since Magic is designed to be drafted and may be the only good CCG for drafting.

I like burn.  I especially like burn that can go to the dome or nuke critters.  I very quickly developed a distaste for creatures given how easy it was for one to die to Terror, Lightning Bolt, Swords to Plowshares, or whatever.  On the other hand, Spitting Earth doesn’t kill your opponent.

I like multicolor cards and non-basic lands.  A lot of this might just be aesthetic appeal due to coloration and layout, but for some reason, I’ve always been attracted to lands that didn’t just tap for mana or that tapped for multiple colors of mana.  I think it’s because basic land is the most boring part of Magic.  Similarly, multicolor cards are rarer, thus more exotic.

I enjoy the ability to come out of nowhere for unexpected victory.  Pretty much the only thing I ever enjoy about a game of chess is when I make some unexpected sudden win move.  It’s a bit more likely in Magic.  I was playing Zak Dolan, that would be Magic’s first world champion, with sealed Tempest product when I had him shut down offensively with Humility, but I had to jump through a bunch of hoops with Capsize with buyback and pinging until I could get enough land in play with the last card in my deck to burn him out with Rolling Thunder for exactly how many life points he had left.  The game was dumb for him for quite a while as it looked like I’d just deck with the board choked with creatures, but I knew that the game was winnable for me.

I enjoy thinking about all of the various card combos.  Well, not all, I’m not that Johnny.  Some, with cards I think are cool.  And, that’s the thing.  Magic has so many cool cards.  In a more general sense, I enjoy thinking about deck archetypes and how to win the metagame.  I hate how Magic relies on hosers and I’m no fan of sideboards, but sideboards do enable vastly more metagame choices.

Magic, more than V:TES, where I don’t think it matters, more than Babylon 5, which is more about doing “what if” riffs on the show, is a CCG that appeals to my sense of efficiency and effectiveness.  Now, for two others.

Ultimate Combat!

I’ve probably played more Wheel of Time than Ultimate Combat!, but UC! is more important to me, and it makes sense to put it next to Magic, considering that it’s basically Magic, with the awesome flavor and variety of Magic replaced with fun game play.

I feel compelled to mention, yet again, that UC! was the first CCG I ever played.  My first game turned out to be frustrating after the fact, but it’s quite possible that failing to win that game after taking away 19 of my opponent’s 20 hit points in one turn motivated me to learn more about the game.

It’s an impossible sell.  For those who like UC!, it’s preaching to the converted.  For everyone else, can’t get past the art, the theme, and/or the card names.  Nevertheless, UC! is the most fun CCG to play.

Why?

Well, what makes games fun to play?

I’m fairly sure that the single most important thing to a game being enjoyable is closeness of result.  In other words, that every player had a good chance at winning the game.  A huge turnoff to me is when I feel like a game is unwinnable, including for an opponent.  Similarly, the sporting events I find most compelling are the ones where the winner barely wins.

This is why Magic is a vastly inferior game to UC!.  Sure, there are blowouts in UC!.  There are games where you can get a lock.  They are rare.  Or, at least, they are so much rarer than other games that I always think of UC! as the game where “if I don’t get you this turn, you win next turn”.

UC! is the CCG where games play fast, players get beat down hard, and both players are always in danger of losing.  It’s also a game where tight play and subtle moves matter.  Deciding whether to throw a Speed/Strength in defense may determine the game.  May deck one turn before putting an opponent away (decking is easy and has the same result as it does in Magic).

As for the limited variety that comes with only having two sets, I still believe that there are plenty of decks for me to build.  Sure, some day, the variety won’t be there not just because of the small card pool but because so many cards are functionally the same, but it’s sad that the game was never given a chance to be played out to that level.

Wheel of Time

A strange entry in that it was never particularly popular, I only had two regular opponents, and it didn’t last that long, but I was incredibly invested in the game.  Can I call myself a designer?  Maybe not.  I’m in the game credits as of the second expansion, but whether that’s because I helped enough with design or whether it was because I was doing things like art requests, I’m not so sure.

B5 introduced me to the awesomeness of choosing an opening hand for a CCG.  Wheel of Time was where I spent hours deciding on an opening hand for one deck.  While the dice mechanic was full of problems, some of which were fixed with the expansions, the probability calculations and permutations of results meant that a tremendous amount of analysis could be built just around the first few turns of the game.  This for a two-player game that often took us two hours.

I enjoyed the brokenness.  Typically, I get tired of brokenness quickly, but WoT was different in that it embraced brokenness to where it was the norm rather than the exception.  Okay, admittedly, a couple of card drawing cards got fixed as they were absurd, but the game was always a battle of broken card drawing, searching, and discard.  I really liked the different starting character possibilities.  Yes, this is just a subset of opening hand, but I became highly knowledgeable about the source material and the Forsaken options were particularly flavorful.

On a more general level, I can probably say that Wheel of Time was the one CCG I took seriously (most of the time) and really put my analytical skills and interest in efficiency/value to the test.  I can’t say I was a great player.  The one major I played in, I was screwed in the one game I lost because I was playing with a proxy, but I also didn’t feel like a great player during the event.  I was never top 10 in the world like I was with three other CCGs.  But, our playtesting was by far the best playtesting I’ve ever seen.  I still can picture sitting in Dave’s apartment, proving to ourselves that Forsaken.dec had no game against Maidens.  The level of analysis I read about with Magic is the level of analysis we were doing for WoT.

Tomb Raider

Yes, Tomb Raider.  What’s interesting here is that almost all of my Tomb Raider play was playtesting or demos.  I just really wasn’t that into the game.  So, why bother bringing it up?

I’ve defended Tomb Raider a lot.  I’m not an art guy when it comes to CCGs.  I appreciate great art, but it doesn’t determine whether I enjoy playing a game or not.  So, it’s hard for me to relate to people who will only get into a game that appeals visually, even if I did pass on checking out Magi-Nation because of aesthetics.  In terms of game play, Tomb Raider is not a strong CCG.  It’s not even that much of a CCG.  It’s really more of a boardgame with CCG elements.

Sure, I thought about opening hands with Tomb Raider.  My best recollection of one was running two copies of the “draw two cards” card.  And, I’m sure the CCG elements were important to having the game be something more than just a boardgame.  But, I think the main takeaway from my experiences with the CCG is that it could be a fun boardgame that could handle a range of players that, with a different genre (or much hotter Lara Croft art), could have been something as appealing as the HeroQuest boardgame, which I see similarities between.

Other?

I had a Netrunner collection once upon a time.  I could include Dragon Dice.  And, so forth.  But, really, this has gone on long enough and none of these were comparable to the above (except, maybe, Tomb Raider).

Con-vex

So, we had two game conventions on Labor Day Weekend.  That’s not actually unheard of, though it hasn’t been an issue for me in around 20 years.  I decided to try the one I hadn’t been to as the bar was set so low from the one within walking distance of my house that I’m getting to the point of rather just not going to these things at all.

Was it better?  I guess.  It was maybe similar to two years ago for the con I usually go to.  I didn’t do a whole lot, but that wasn’t entirely the con’s fault … well, no, actually it is.  I get grief for not being more into the local conventions, but really, if they had more interesting sounding events, I’d be more into them.  If people actually showed up and played CCGs I wanted to play, ran RPG systems/genres that didn’t leave me uninspired, and so forth, maybe I wouldn’t take days off or game outside of the cons.

Friday, I tried to get into a game run by a GM I know, someone I played with years, many years at this point, ago.  Twelve people signed up and I wasn’t one of them.  With my usual Friday night GM running a game at the same time, I played in his game.  So, it was a lot like any old Friday for me, except we started earlier and the players were far more cooperative.  We played until 1AMish.

Since I knew that the only game I signed up for on Saturday was cancelled, I went back to bed Saturday morning to recover.  I had arranged to play V:TES Saturday night at someone’s house, so I built a couple 4cl decks and headed for the con around 3PM.  I demoed Battleground – miniatures combat with cards instead of minis.  It was fine.  I hardly ever play wargames or miniatures, but it’s not because I have anything in particular against them; it’s just I’d rather play other stuff.  Well, I do have something against games that last forever with a winner clearly decided early on or by chance, but that’s not a lot of games.  Battleground could have been simpler, not the demo which was simplified, but even the rules posted at the booth.  I wasn’t sufficiently motivated to buy what they had at the booth, unfortunate that they had neither Conquistadors vs. Aztecs, which would have been funny for my Solomon Kane game, or stuff from Your Move Games that wasn’t Battleground.

Played two long games of V:TES.  One was funny for my Lucretia, Cess Queen being too “powerful”, effortlessly employing and equipping past +1 intercept and surviving every combat with the powers of Celerity and Fortitude.  Kostantin showed up to threaten to steal my prey’s Ivory Bow, so I discarded my own.  My prey bringing out Miguel Cordovera made the game goofy, with my prey Bowing his own Miguel.  I’m pretty sure he never used Miguel to bleed his prey, while I ousted him by rescuing Miguel from torpor and bleeding him out with him.  The second game was less silly, but I won the metagame by playing a deck with Guardian Angels and Flak Jackets and Merrill Molitor against two decks that did aggpoke, including one where Basilia got the Ivory Bow.  It was a long grind, but early into Sunday, my final opponent played Frontal Assault when I had four minions and he had four pool.

Went to bed at 2AM, set my alarm for 6AM.  Rolled out of bed at 5:45AM.  Even though I knew I was in an 8AM game (my second choice on my priority slip), I gave up and slept for a while.  I built a couple of Ultimate Combat! Decks in case my sealed UC! event at Celesticon turned into casual play and headed to the con.  Allergies, from lack of sleep and probably the dust on my UC! boxes, annoyed me.

I ran into P-ers immediately, who had come over from the other con, and after playing a game of UC! and Magic while my friend built a Traveller character, I played a match of P.  Then, with only the two of us for UC!, I played a couple of constructed games of UC!.  We cracked starters and drafted a couple of boosters from the expansion – first UC! draft for me, ever.  He got power-hosed in game one and got me just before decking in game two with his vastly superior card pool.

What makes UC! such an oddity is just how close so many games are.  It’s why I believe it’s the best balanced and most fun CCG ever made.  My game early in the day saw my opponent on one hit point when he knocked me out.  The final limited game saw us both at two cards left when I took exactly enough damage for the KO.  I do believe that you have to have fast power generation in the first couple of turns, assuming your opponent does.  Monday I started contemplating mulligan rules since you can’t use Magic style mulligan rules very well.  I think allowing a mulligan for either 3 hit points of damage or 4 hit points of damage per mulligan might be worth trying out.  The other possibility is, of course, to just discard your opening hand since decking is such a huge threat in the game, though I wonder if Instant Replay or Favorite Technique decks can abuse that too easily.

The game also involves precise thinking, but analyzing UC! in greater depth is probably better as another post.

Suffering from allergies, tired, and with my UC! opponent off to do other things, I went home and had no intention of going to either con on Monday since my planned Solomon Kane game didn’t have enough players to make it important enough to run.  (Hope Tom recovers from his surgery.)

So, Monday was a lot about thinking about the need to do something for my HoR2 campaign and a lot about sitting on my sofa watching TV or lying on my sofa sleeping.

It should be interesting what happens next year.  A lot of folks want there to be only one con, either because they want to see people they see at cons or because it will make for better gaming.

Ramp-le

I don’t feel a compelling need to keep commenting on each week’s various activities, not even my experience yesterday playing an online LARP (LAORP?) which was, on balance, negative, even though it was predictable that the rewards wouldn’t make sense to me.

I was trying to think of five V:TES cards that hate me.  Not cards I necessarily hate but cards that don’t work when I play them and work well against me.  Major Boon was the inspiration for trying to think of a list, but I was struggling to think of other cards, even though I know they exist.

I might have continued to ponder such, but I decided to read Mark Rosewater’s Daily Magic column for Monday, 5/23 – http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/mm/144

Mana Action is all about how the cost system in Magic makes the game what it is.  I find this topic interesting in two ways.  First, as much as Mark defends the system as making the game better, I don’t agree with some of the details.  Second, the article does bring up an area of CCG play that is worthy of a lot more consideration.

Difference of Opinion

Taking each of his sections, let’s begin with #1.  Mark is saying that the cost system is a necessary point to making Magic a CCG.  I agree.  When we look at CCGs, we typically see some sort of costing system.  CCGs that don’t try to tie power to cost (I can’t think of one off the top of my head, but I recall ones that at least felt that way.  Wyvern?) come across as primitive and/or broken.

Moving on to #2.  Here is a quote of a section I have problems with:

Now you can start to see what the mana system is preventing. Magic is more fun if only one or two cards get cast a turn, especially in the early game. The mana system allows a slow buildup as players get to cast larger and more powerful spells. The mana system serves as a release valve that helps ensure that something happens each turn, but not too much.

While I believe that there should be a control on the flow of the game, what I find to be the largest problem in my Magic games is how little happens in many turns.  Sure, there are times when flurries of cards get played that twist the game in all sorts of directions.  And, yes, certain formats where you see more cards, have more exciting turns.  But, I am completely against the idea that only 1-2 cards should be played a turn in a CCG.  That’s far too dull.

The question, though, is how many cards should be played a turn?  What other CCG is better for card flow?

For whatever reason, maybe because it’s the game I playtested the most, I tend to think about how Babylon 5 does things first when these sorts of questions come up.  Babylon 5 can easily have too many actions, if not necessarily too many cards played, in a turn.  That was less true earlier in the game’s history when influence replenishment was less common and there wasn’t the ability to do the “I gain 20 Shadow Marks in one turn” deck or a lot of the other engine decks.  I like Event cards.  I like how they make games unpredictable.  But, many are sufficiently cheaply costed that it’s reasonable to say that too many can be played.  At least card play is more interesting than the supporting/opposing/attacking mechanic that takes up numerous actions.

Anyway, I’m getting away from card flow.  Babylon 5 clearly has a problem with hand size, in that there’s no maximum, so it’s easy to have 30+ cards in hand.  The card draw rate seems fine, but if you think about how expensive it is to put permanents into play and how easy it is to have a lot of permanents in play, there’s something off in the math of the game.  Perhaps the problem with permanents is how hard they can be to remove from the board.  Still, I often find that I have too many conflicts in hand or other cards that I never have any need to play.

For comparison, as a relative of Babylon 5′s, there is Wheel of Time.  Wheel of Time was not a great CCG.  I never would argue that it was.  But, I liked it.  What I didn’t like was random resource generation.  That the early game generation was subject to very high variance was particularly a problem, at least for the enjoyment of the game, even if better decisions could mitigate the pain of the randomness.  That the first expansion brought in starting characters who were far more consistent was huge.  Anyway, at first, resource generation was massively important because certain cards were card drawing engines and fed off of extra symbols; as well, the game was always exponential in growth, so small differences at the beginning meant large effects by the end.  However, after the first expansion, I’d say the game was more about how many cards you drew or searched out.  Playing cards as fast you could draw them became easier, in general.

If I were to complain about one thing in Magic, it wouldn’t be mana.  It would be card drawing.  Magic’s one card per turn is a lot of the reason you see so few cards played.  Wheel of Time is far ahead of Magic in having two cards per turn, though card drawing or searching is easily the most broken thing in Wheel of Time.  Getting back to costing, that you should generally be able to play your hand in Wheel of Time shows that the costing system is wrong.  Constraints are mostly about card draws and the inequality of strength of cards, which also supports that the costing system is off.

What of Vampire: The Eternal Struggle?  Is the card flow appropriate?  While getting it right for different decks can be tricky, this area likely being one of the most crucial to building better decks, I don’t find that the flow seems off.  Perhaps the restrictions on when cards can be played are so great that there’s really no fair comparison.  Constant replenishment of one’s hand is to me one of the better ways to do card drawing, but that in certain ways there’s no resource cost associated to many card plays means that the game is highly reliant on game mechanics not relevant to Magic.

As for Ultimate Combat!, which is only minimally different from Magic in basic structure, it has a very similar cost ramping system, with similar issues of how hard it is to correctly cost cards so that there’s a balance throughout the curve.

What I find amusing about reading #3 in his article is that his description of how things should be sounds okay for a CCG, great for a RPG, and is pretty much the opposite of how most Magic games turn out.  There’s rarely a sense of things building up.  Rather, some early play may be so much better than another that the disfavored side struggles to ever get back in the game.  Or, one card pretty much decides the game.  On the other hand, I don’t really see other CCGs capture the idea of fights getting more serious with interesting twists in what is happening.  V:TES is more about attrition of resources to where the “fights” become more serious as blood and pool get taken off the table.  WoT may build and build and build, but without any sort of meaningful removal, the game becomes one of whoever has a more optimal build with not a lot of endgame surprises.  Actually, this is a case where Ultimate Combat! is clearly superior to Magic.  Attacks get more brutal, yet the ability to win off the back of a single card is so much less.

Too many options, #4, is overblown with other games.  Sure, Babylon 5 has too many cards in hand and can easily put too many permanents into play that may be used.  But, it’s far better to be able to play multiple cards in a turn then not.  Of course, the two games have very different types of turns.  In B5, early game turns are generally simple and boring while everyone is building and the heart of the game is only a small number of turns after everyone has spent time building an infrastructure.  Now, that might have only been two turns early in the game’s history when going from 10 power to 20 power might have been two conflicts, some cheese, and 5 power off of an agenda.  Or, it might have been many more turns later in the game’s history when the ability to stop people from winning was greatly increased.  But, on average, the turns you cared about in B5 were a few epic ones of many plays, while a Magic game had more turns with fewer things happening, even if epic things happened on occasion.

An interesting question, which #4 really brings out, is:  how many cards should be played in a turn?

To me, the breakdown in the article shows a clear flaw in trying to have fun in Magic.  Late game, there shouldn’t be few cards.  Playing off the top is one of the most annoying features of Magic as it smacks of randomness.  While I can see limits, I would think a correlation between length of game and volume of cards played would be better than trying to have some sort of flat curve of card flow.

Many a CCG has around 7 cards in a hand.  If I were to put a number on about how many cards should see play in a meaty turn (midgame on), I’d probably say about six cards in a turn.  Some games have mechanics where you end up playing more than you should; I vaguely recall Buffy seeming to be like that, but I could be mistaken.  Obviously, some games have different card types that have very different frequencies.  B5 has conflicts, which are usually no more than one a turn.  In a B5 turn, I figure I’d want people to play 1 conflict, 2 permanents, 2-3 events, 1 aftermath … rather close to that 7 number, even though those numbers are highly variable and fall under different types of game restrictions.

Another way to look at it, still keeping in mind hand size, is how much of a hand should change from turn to turn.  Should you essentially have a new hand every turn?  In which case, that’s again about 7 cards a turn.  Or, should there be some holdover?  In V:TES, at least with my playstyle, there tends to be quite a bit of holdover from turn to turn.  I played a tournament round where I averaged half an hour a card played.  On the other hand, with V:TES, easily the most common horrible situation to be in is being handjammed.  Seven combat cards, for instance, tends to be a pretty awful hand that will get you ousted.

A typical CCG sees 60 card constructed decks.  If a game lasts 10 turns, 6 cards a turn would see running through the entire deck (ignoring the opening hand or saying that your initial draw is a “turn”).  What does this tell us?  Again, with Magic, it’s easy for a game to be decided in the first 20-30 cards.  That’s clearly not going through enough of one’s deck.  On the other hand, the norm with WoT of drawing your entire deck may not be optimal, either, as it seems like a good thing to have some inconsistency in what you draw over the course of a game to where maybe about 25% of one’s deck being undrawn sounds more right.  So, with an average of 5 cards a turn, with a 60 card deck, that means 9 turns is about how long the game should last.  What does this mean?  I don’t really know.  But, it seems fairly interesting to see how different CCGs fall on number of turns and percentage of deck remaining as a way to back into how many cards get played on average per turn.  Of course, that still leaves the question of variance in card flow.

I don’t find cutting down on the number of unique cards in a deck, #5, being all that meaningful.  First of all, there is an argument that card limits are a crutch, not only in V:TES, a game that didn’t design with them in mind, but in any CCG.  Magic didn’t originally have card limits and it could have remained without them by designing new cards without card limits in mind.  If you look at pritnear any CCG with card limits, you will find that people max out better cards and only run inferior cards because of card limits.  I find Magic decks that are something like x24 lands and nine x4′s to be pretty boring from a deckbuilding standpoint.  On the other hand, I do agree that having 40+ different cards in one’s decks is too much text that people have to process.  Note that Magic, and other CCGs, could easily reduce the number of unique cards by having lower deck size limits.

While I’m all in favor of variance, #6, I find that Magic has far too little variance in good things.  Redundancy is a big deal in Magic because you will only see a third to half of your deck much of the time.  Really, playing lands is not interesting.  The reason I play CCGs is to play cards, and I don’t consider basic resource generation to fall under “playing cards”.  Games would have a lot more interesting things going on if it were actually reasonable to play 6 cards turn after turn.  Meanwhile, the game has far too much variance in bad things.  Mark is trying to suggest that mana screw is a feature, not a bug.  Whatever.  Not being able to play what you draw because it’s too early … and late will never happen because you have already lost … is not in any way fun.  Rather than the typical game where even something like a 6-cost card may never get played because you are dead (or essentially dead) by the time it would come down, I want to see the tradeoff being playing at least one high cost card and other stuff going on or multiple lower cost cards that have significant impact turn after turn.

I don’t dispute that understanding how cards flow in CCGs requires skill, #7, so I’ll move on.

The Right Answer

I got somewhat into questions of how things could be or should be done to make for better, more fun CCGs.  Given the length of this post so far and how much there could be to say on this subject, I think I’ll try to do a part 2.  Of course, how motivated I’ll be to continue on with this topic I’m not so sure.

Ultimate Combat! – Scott’s Analysis, Part III

Now, let’s talk about cards that suck.  Really, that’s always more fun, anyway.

Top 10 Cards to stay away from

#10 (Kevlar Vest)

 

Cons: this game is not about holding off you opponent it’s about kicking ass. Kevlar vest only works on holding someone off and if I did want to hold someone off (maybe I’ve made some type of control deck) for some point in a game I would use the other the armor and or armor type cards shown above

Pros: +3 defenses is good but to slow with a cost of 6 with -1 attack

ICL:  An interesting choice to start us off.  There are plenty of awful cards in the game that should never see play that wouldn’t make for interesting analysis, so it’s nice to start off with something controversial.  I’ve seen this played, I’ve also played it.  Putting aside Counter decks, is there any reason to play this?  Not really, at least not in constructed, whereas in limited, it should be a house.  There is a big, big cost difference between this and other defensive cards that could be played, like Healing Mantra.  Not that I’m a fan of Warrior’s Helmet or any of the other (cheaper) armor, either.  However, Counters, the advantages, exist in the game and this is just the sort of thing you want out of a permanent for such a deck.  It is rather blatant to the point where you can’t get a surprise knockout with a tactical Counter (something that maybe I should explore more).  It’s also a big annoyance to Combination decks, though Combination decks should really take you out before or about the time that this comes down.

#9 (Beijing blitz)

 

Cons: ok so this card seems like a great card at 1^st, but it’s really not. You can get a good attack out of it but the other cards like it can do better. Unlike the combo cards as seen above BB can only be blocked by one tech which is what the card does, well what’s wrong with it #1 it cost too much <two power points would be good>. #2 speed X and strength X will make for a big attack as well and not kill two techs killing your defenses

Pros: It’s still an ok card but better cards are out their

ICL:  Why ever play with this?  It’s cool in what it does and has an amusing name.  As Scott says, maybe if it were half the cost it wouldn’t be so bad.  There are only certain circumstances when you need massive amounts of extra force, like trying to punch through a Counter deck that has tooled up.  But, it’s so rare that you can’t put someone out with the +2 from movement, the +2 from Speed/Strength (or +4 from both), or whatever that the effect rarely matters.  Then, how often would a deck ever have two good technique in play at the same time, anyway?  Decks just don’t run that way.  You either tend to have multiple cheap technique or one good technique.  If you have multiple good technique in play, it’s probably from multiple Favorite Techniques, and the game is basically over one way or the other, anyway.  Note that if advantages were less good in power to cost ratio and technique better, then cards like this might mean more.  While Ancient Fighting Arts of China tries to move the game away from advantage based beatdown to some degree, it only really succeeds with Drunken technique, and Drunken would stop Beijing Blitz, anyway.

#8 (white belt foot sweep)

 

Cons: a 3 under cost attack, yup it’s sucky

Pros: Unlike its Brown and black belt counter parts this foot sweep is only pretty much sucky not super awful. The fact that it’s only 3 under cost and a white belt and it’s a throw. In a well built throw deck this is not a bad card…But it’s not great

ICL:  Footsweeps are hilarious.  As a game designed by real world martial artists, I guess footsweeps are weak sauce in actual use.  One of the Coach cards from the expansion makes them less horrendous but not really any less laughable.

#7 (Intimidation)

 

Cons: yup [] pic and [] card… This card is really just pointless. If you are play some one whom has a lot of advantage cards in their deck, all this will do is delay them one turn for a cost of 3 if you are that close to losing this card will not save your day it will just delay your demise one turn. *Body Odor is a much better card and at a better cost.*(see above) and has a generic casting cost.

Pros: none I don’t like this card… but if it had been an Environment card it may have been a real game breaker

ICL:  Sounds better than it is.  Advantages are a beating in this game, typically turning a 2-4 point attack into a 12-20+ one.  But, it’s too hard to control, it has a funky cost, and it’s too narrow when compared to alternatives.  While there is a concept of stalling attacks in this game, it does kind of pale next to Body Odor.  Then, Drunken technique is way more annoying than this.

#6 (Black belt Uppercut & Throat Jab)

Cons: 3 under cost that’s all you have to say.

Pros: none

ICL:  Can’t remember if there is a Coach card for Throat Jab.  Anyway, while you would never see these, or lots of other technique, in constructed play, I wouldn’t cut them from a sealed deck.

#5 (Sumida’s Misdirection)

 

Cons: the idea is good but its cost is too high, if its cost was 2 or lower maybe even 0 it would be a good card. But with the cost of 5 and you have to discard one card per point of damage I don’t think so.

Pros: good if you have to use it can save your life from a really big attack but you would kill you hand at the same time.

ICL:  Yeah, the idea is interesting.  It’s really easy to deck people in this game even without a decking deck, so the costs are rather significant.  The total power cost should be no more than 3, otherwise might as well put way more powerful cards in your deck at the same cost level, or, at one less, play Suppress (opponent can only do a build phase on next turn) to get a free turn because free turns are in no way better than questionable damage prevention.

#4 (Leaping Ax kick)

Cons: 3 under cost its just bad and it’s a jumping attack un like the throws the jumping attacks have a lot of cards that attack the fact that you are jumping. Or cards that make you jumping and then adds more power to the attack but those cards don’t do anything for cards that are already a jumping attack.

Pros: none

ICL:  It’s funny that the best Jumping strategy involves technique that aren’t jumping.  This is bad, but it’s hard to get too excited.  More amusing is that I had an ax kick deck that ran no advantages and it was bizarrely functional – all ax kicks except maybe one are fairly awful, not that it ran this card either.

#3 (Banana Peel)

Cons: When are you really going to use this card? It’s a (filler card) that should have a better card in its slot that could be used more often. Look if you opponent doesn’t have any speed advantage cards in his deck this card does nothing.

Pro: don’t get me wrong this card could fuck up a big speed X card but it’s not likely to happen.   

ICL:  I don’t have a lot of UC! stories as the game wasn’t living for very long and there wasn’t much of a player base.  Nor did I play a lot of tournaments; well, I might have played a lot relative to other players but not relative to other CCGs.  I only won one tournament.  I went 7-0 and decked four of my opponents.  It was sealed deck, which unlike other CCGs meant just playing a starter.  Deck I faced that I feared most?  Had Speed X.  My Banana Peel never played so well … MVP!  MVP!  MVP!

Now, let’s get back to reality.  This is a perfect example of why hosers are stupid in CCGs.  Threats are superior to answers by the nature of threats causing you to win and answers not.  It’s a maxim of CCGs that answers should cost less than threats.  The Speed threats in the game are primarily of the 1 or 2 cost sort.  While someone may have Speed X, since it’s completely awesome, may just as well have Strength X or Combination X or even Counter X.  Hosers almost never work the way they were intended because of any one of – they don’t actually hose what was intended, what they are hosing isn’t common enough to run the hoser, they don’t cause the opponent to lose such that you would play them instead of cards that always help you win, they hose the wrong thing.  Even if they do something approaching what was intended, they just tend to make games less fun by making games too swingy when the correct answer in CCG management is to address what is so unbalancing in the game that deserves hosing. 

Then, this eats up a precious black belt slot that only a gold belt deck could ever justify.  Now, I can see someone running this in a gold belt deck as metagame tech, and I can see it as a sideboard card.  Except, I never played with sideboards, ever.

I’m happy that it made this list as it gave me an opening to tell that story.  It’s not nearly as bad as other cards and it’s vaguely amusing, but it is nearly pointless.

#2 (Gold belt Multiple Movement cards *not shown*)

Cons: 1^st off Multiple Movement are a waste of a gold belt card in a any deck but a master’s deck and even then its still a sucky card. The white belt movement cards are ok because for 1 power point you can get +1 or maybe +2 if you’re lucky. But that’s what sucks about all movement cards… if you play movement cards and your opponent does not then they work good but if you opponent plays them too then they suck look at the card above if you move left and your opponent moves left, front, or back your move did nothing or it took away 1 attack point from your attack. Only if your opponent does not move or (if he has shit for brains) moves right which he wouldn’t do you get a + on attack. With Multiple Movement cards you use a gold belt slot for a card that cost 2 and may give you only 1

Pros: None unless you are playing someone with shit for brains

ICL:  Gold belt movement was a case of flawed design.  Movement, as a concept, is something that sets the game apart and grounds it a bit more in reality.  If a (pure) fencing CCG were ever invented (I wonder if anyone in Europe ever did one), it would likely be missing something without movement effects like UC!’s.  Anyway, getting back to the design mistake, multiple foundation are strictly better than basic foundation except in absurd situations, which makes sense in a CCG with deck construction restrictions based on rarity, i.e. you only ever play them in gold belt decks and you probably run as many as you can, which means buying more cards, which means selling more product.  But, gold belt movement isn’t strictly better, it’s in fact frequently worse because it costs twice as much.  One may not think that costing 2 vs. costing one is a big deal, but it’s major, important enough that I rarely play Speed/Strength 2.  I’ve played with gold belt movement a decent amount because there are some cards to help movement, not good cards but cards, and I like playing with harder to get cards even if they suck.  Yet, consider what you could be playing instead of cards that aren’t really any better than the common versions.

#1 Cards to stay away from (foot sweep black and brown belt)

Cons: Ok so these cards are both not even at cost for attack and are 3 under cost for defense making them 4 under cost making them the worst cards in the game.

Pros: The maker’s of the game knew how weak these cards are so in the 2^nd set they fix it with a card caller Professor Uchida. Making them less [], with Uchida out they cost only 4 and become 5/2 for attack and defense…

ICL:  I think I built a footsweep deck.  Where the ax kick deck, and the spinning deck, and the other “let’s see if a coach can make these terrible cards less terrible” decks occasionally were amusing, I think the footsweep deck didn’t actually function at a level where one was actually playing the game.  Note that Shaolin technique are so dumbly costed and Coach Chung’s effect is so ludicrous, that I couldn’t even bring myself to build a deck around him … there are plenty of candidates for the worst cards in the game, just as there often are in every CCG, though Magic’s worst list is surprisingly consistent.

Ultimate Combat! – Scott’s Analysis, Part II

In Part I, I comment on his top ten technique list. In Part II, we get into the more interesting stuff – all cards.

Best cards UC! 1st Set
#1

Pros: The best card in the game, great at any point in the game really great in your 1st hand one generic power point that gives you 3 power points of anything you want. Helps to get big cards out quick a must have in every deck!!!
Cons: none

ICL: Yeah, easily the best card in the game. For Magic players, it’s like a Dark Ritual that costs one generic mana, because it wasn’t like Dark Ritual was broken or anything. Should also be mentioned that it fixes power types. I’m extremely happy to use one to have a first turn of: foundation, gi patch, Mantra, gi patch.

#2

Pros: the best card in your 1st hand a great setup of any kind, helps to get bigger cards out quick and its cost is 0 always a plus
Cons: It’s restricted to one per deck, and it dies in 5 turns

ICL: I don’t even know where to look for my top ten list. I think it’s on a piece of paper somewhere. I should make some token effort, but the day is passing. I do recall that my #2 for both sets was Psychic Delay even though I don’t actually play it that often as so many heinous things can happen to you from a psychic action card … and Mantra of Power is a psychic action card. I don’t recall what my #2 was for just the initial set. Anyway, I don’t really have an argument against Elixir of the Gods. It’s funny how it was one of the first two gold belt cards I opened, I didn’t think much of it for a long time, then realized just how explosive openings can be when on a first turn you can: foundation, gi patch, Elixir, Mantra, Yamashita’s Belt, Bear’s Jaw, gi patch, … opponent concedes to your overwhelming power advantage.

#3

Pros: A great card at the start of the game, good in the middle of the game & great at the end of the game those 5 hit point can save your game. Helps to get bigger cards out quick
Cons: None other then it’s restricted

ICL: Some of the cards in the game have an extra story to them. This is one, though I’m not the best person to give the backstory on it. This card was super in demand when the game was new. I tend to view Elixir as more important if I can only play one because of rarity limitations. In the best tournament I ever played in, the only game I won involved my being purely defensive with my aggro deck due to too slow a start, blowing my Bear’s Jaw to survive my opponent’s last attack, and then hitting him for 26 with my first attack of the game.

#4

Pros: It lets you play any attack from any place in the game (deck, discard, hand) for the cost of 5. If you set your deck up for it you can play big attack cards quick. You can even play cards out of suit that you do not have the right foundations for. Oh and theirs what the card was made to do, it lets you keep an attack out in play after it is used.
Think focus+ instant replay+ Relentless all in one card but better.
Cons: It’s the only card to become restricted after the game was made but it’s less of a restriction. For it’s based off of your deck’s belt color (white 1 per deck brown 2 per deck black 3 per deck). The 3 counters that are placed on the attack before it can be used again is a bit much

ICL: Really broken card for reasons I talk about in here. Even more broken in limited play where the smart player will stall the game until repeatedly using one’s best technique proves decisive. The main cost I see is that it’s often too slow for an aggro deck. For a white belt deck, it’s costly as it requires an additional fat technique, but, then, white belt decks against non-white belt decks should be going aggro.

#5

Pros: It’s all in the wording; psychic read does pretty much the same thing as its brown belt counter part Morale boost. At 1st they seem about the same they both cost 3 power points to put out and they both add +2 to all your attacks which makes them an awesome combo with the cards combination (0,1,2, and X). Then you see that psychic read also adds +2 on defenses as well, is that it… No there’s more and it’s all in the wording. #1 psychic read works on weapons #2 psychic read also stays in play until you make an attack or until your oppent has an effective attack on you so it also doubles as armor, and cheap costing armor at that. You don’t see armor that cheap until the second set. #3 it doesn’t count as armor.
Cons: No in game cons just that it’s a rare card to get your hands on!!!

ICL: Hey, I disagree. The cost is annoying. Sure, it can stick around on defense, maybe, before giving a +2 on attacks. But, as soon as one attack deals any damage, which is 90%+ of the attacks that people care about, it’s gone. +2 is not minor, but it’s not major either. It’s stackable (as is Morale Boost). So, yes, there are defensive decks that can try to load these up with other defenses and create a wall of invulnerability, but the cost makes it hard to get enough out in play fast enough to not take any damage. To me, it’s just a niche card for a Knowledge/Experience decking deck or counter deck. Combination decks can beat far faster and with far less power headaches with just technique, movement, and Speed/Strength.

#6

Pros: think of this as a copy of any and every card in your deck for the cost of 3
Cons: None other then it’s restricted

ICL: Awkward power cost for a lot of my decks. It does make building the Adrenaline monster attack easier, assuming you have six power and a Mantra or seven power available. I do probably way underplay it. I think Scott correctly evaluated it higher than I did. On another note, a surprise is not having Instant Recall on this list. Tutoring up a card is generally a more broken mechanic in CCGs, but getting back any card is utterly broken as well.

#7

Pros: A talisman that adds any foundation that is not restricted and it adds two at that!!!
Cons: it cost four so it’s bad in the 1st hand and is really only good in the middle of the game. By the end of the game you should have all the foundation you need.

ICL: I definitely want it in the opening hand as it hopefully comes down no later than turn two with a Mantra. Pretty much required for any deck I play except certain white belt decks and hyperaggro decks. Will play multiples as well, even though only one can be in play on one’s board at a time, just because power generation is so crucial.

#8

Pros: It lets you play a big attack again or for the 1st time from the discard pile. For only 4
Cons: bad card to have in your 1st hand you also have to get an attack to the discard before you can play this card.

ICL: For the cons mentioned, I see this being a niche card. Could just have played another big technique instead. More importantly, it doesn’t help decks that don’t play big technique, which are common, it’s outclassed by Favorite Technique, and it’s outclassed by Favorite Technique.

#9

Pros: Dragons fire looks like the same type of card as its Experience costing speed boosting talisman counter part Amulet of Kwai Chang. And, it is, but its ability to fit into a theme deck with its Dragons fire / Amulet of Kwai Chang combo with one-time use counterpart Adrenaline makes for a quick game winning combo.
Cons: none other then it’s pointless unless you have strength advantage cards in your deck

ICL: See above about doing 26 damage with my first attack of the game for how I used these three cards together. How many Strength cards to play? I’m not much of a fan of the brown belt Speed/Strength cards as they are just expensive enough to produce curve issues or to have enough power left on an opponent’s turn to throw out some defense. Multiplication is broken, but I think there are more broken things in the game. Is this more broken than multiplying power generation? Actually, my real issue is that Dragon’s Fire and Amulet of Kwai Chang both tend to be “win more” cards rather than “I win” cards (like Adrenaline); awesome cards, but decisive enough?

#10

Pros: The best in delay…at a cost of 2 you can open up a can of whoop ass and you don’t have to fear being left open for attack Or you can let your self get attacked to allow for a set up on your next turn
Cons: none

ICL: In a game where a single turn of attacks if often decisive, I don’t rate this. It’s a bit too much of a random annoyance.

Third on my list, I think, was Instant Recall, but somewhere in the top 5 was Mental Domination. No game effect is nearly as broken as playing your opponent’s turn for obvious reasons. Cost a crazy amount? Sure. But, that’s not why I’d downgrade it if I were going to redo a list, methinks. I never noticed that it caused games to end when played, which is what you would expect. That’s certainly a good thing for game balance, but that someone can survive through a turn of this game where your opponent does whatever desired is fascinating. I’ve even hit someone with two, with Instant Recall, and still lost.

Speaking of extremely expensive action cards that hate Psychic Delay, Shake Up is just a beating, possibly as bad a one as Mental Dom. My ubercontrol deck these days is Shake Up based.

Healing Mantra is a control deck’s superobnoxious friend, also insanely annoying in limited play. But, I can’t make a big argument for it in the top 10.

I can make an argument for Speed I and Strength I. These are ubiquitous and I probably underplay them. The ultimate support on offense and defense, probably more important on defense as defending is harder.

Collectively, gi patches are essential. Everyone will play the ones in their foundation type, but will they play multiples like I often do? Ones they don’t have the foundation type for, like I might do? For Magic players, they are close to being Moxes … common Moxes.

Interestingly, there are multiple cards that either do say or essentially say “take an extra turn” and they don’t seem that out of line, even at half the cost of Mental Dom. I wonder why that is.

No time today, but in Part III, we look at the other side of the coin, cards that suck.

Ultimate Combat! – Scott’s Analysis, Part I

Scott sent me three files of his analysis after learning of my interest in UC! from this blog. Part I is looking at his list of the top ten technique (I believe out of the initial set).

BEST Technique
#1 Black Belt Shoulder Throw

Pros: the only card that gives you 3 above costs and it’s a throw mixed with cards from the second set (coach Long, Professor Uchida, Kama Chigi, and Grip of steel) throws become more powerful
Cons: none

ICL: Could say a con is that throws are trivially less desirable out of the initial set. As a reminder, UC! is often a game where deck construction is limited by rarity. With that in mind, this is just so below the cost curve, even though there is a 6/6 for 5. Also, not like anyone is likely to remember, but this is the key to my Instant Replay- Shoulder Throw decks; besides being the most undercosted technique per the system the game uses, the cost exactly matches Instant Replay, meaning that a deck typically has eight 6/5′s for CE2 (Conditioning, Experience, two generic).

#2 Black Belt Inner Thigh Throw

Pros: 2 above cost that happens to be a big attack most 2 above cost are small attacks and it’s a throw, so mixed with the cards of the second set throws become more powerful
Cons: none

ICL: Speaking of which …

#3’s

Pros: all the same but suit, all 2 above cost great in your 1st hand
Cons: Poor defenses

ICL: The con to me is that they are only likely to see play in certain decks. First, due to rarity, we are talking about black belt and up decks. At those levels, it’s easier to build control decks; or, maybe, it’s better to say at lower levels, it’s harder to build control decks. I play these in an extremely aggro combination deck, but I usually play either more control oriented technique or the 2/2′s for one below as speed bumps while I bring online bigger beats.

#4’s

Pros: the same but suit, both 2 above cost great in your 1st hand good attack and defenses and they are both brown belts which is a plus
Cons: not as good for attacks

ICL: The grading curve in this game is that black and gold cards need to have points deducted, unless you always play gold belt decks which is counter to every group I’ve ever seen. These two technique are the most commonly played in the game by far because rarity doesn’t factor and because they have so much synergy with each other and with Adrenaline.

#5’s

Pros: the same but suit, both 2 above cost great in your 1st hand good attack and defenses
Cons: not as good for attacks and they are both black belts unlike their counter parts from other suits (see #4)

ICL: As mentioned above, I am apt to use these as chump blockers in controllish decks. Where I might be concerned to some degree with movement direction with the 3/1′s, I’m not likely to be running movement in decks using these, so I’ll just pick based on predominant foundation type.

#6 Black Belt Barrel Roll

Pros: 2 above cost good attack it’s a throw, so mixed with the second set throws become more powerful
Cons: Poor defenses

ICL: I think I overplay the 4/2′s for two in my higher belt aggro decks. The tight foundation requirements are often annoying and I hate to waste Mantras of Power to fix my foundation to get them out. Anyway, I actually play the 4/2 kicks far more often as I’m not concerned with comboing with throw cards as much as not wanting to run into random anti-throw stuff. Then, there’s some theory to diversity of ranges in attacks when not playing with Close the Gap or Keep the Distance to avoid being unduly affected by decks that do run them.

#7’s

Pros: all the same but suit, all 2 above cost
Cons: Poor defenses

#8 Black Belt Lifting Sleeve Throw

Pros: 1 above cost for attack & it’s a throw, so mixed with the second set throws become more powerful it’s also a mono suited big attack… most are made up of two suits ex the 4 big attacks that each suit has all which are 8/4 (they are the biggest attacks in the game but don’t make the list for poor defenses at a cost of 7 making them 2 under cost)
Cons: none

ICL: I play the 5/5 with the same cost more often because it’s a brown belt card.

#9 Black Belt Cyclone Elbow Smash

Pros: 1 above cost for attack it’s also a mono suited big attack… most are made up of two suits
Cons: it’s not a throw

#10 Black Belt Jump Crescent Kick

Pros: 1 above cost for attack
Cons: not as good as the other attacks on this list

*Other cards to Note*

Pros: Ok so they didn’t make my top 10 but these 3 are also good cards the 1st two being some of the best defenses cards and the last one an at cost mono suited brown belt throw nice not great but nice.

ICL: I’d much rather play a Drunken technique than the Charging Front Kick, but even without the Ancient Fighting Arts expansion, it’s just too expensive to be a blocker, where any of the ()/5 technique above would be far better. Right Cross is more interesting because of other Knowledge and/or Experience technique that are reasonable for defense, like the 3/3 for three at white belt. Sweeping Leg Throw is the sort of solid, midrange plays that can make a difference in limited play, but outside of mono-foundation decks (generally not a good idea), I don’t see squeezing these sorts of cards in.

For constructed play, across belt levels, I expect to mostly see one cost technique, three cost technique of one foundation type, or undercosted beatsticks, or something massive for Favorite Technique or Instant Replay. There’s one more type that I’m increasingly believing in. I used to disdain 2/1′s for two as it was so easy to upgrade at the three cost level, but for aggro decks at lower belt levels, (power) curving and foundation cost simplicity is more important than a +1. A 3/2 for XY1 can’t be Mantra of Powered out with one available power, another consideration in this tempocentric game.

As an aside on limited play, the interesting thing that limited play teaches is that even bad technique may be important. While starters have too much technique in them, including often ludicrously overcosted junk, there’s only so much you can do about your power curve and you need to be putting numbers on the table. That being said, the limited player who puts two technique in play every turn to the opponent who puts one in play should crush.

I Hate Permanents

I could have come up with a different title, but they’d all be pretentious.

I think I actually do generally disdain the concept of winning off of permanents in CCGs. What is a permanent? Any card that will continue to have a game effect while it remains in play and which will remain in play for a significant period of time unless removed by some other effect; exceptions in terms of what I’m complaining about could be made for cards that you need to have in play to play the game, such as land in Magic, foundation in Ultimate Combat!, minions in Vampire, etc. Let me muse over some CCGs.

Magic, The Gathering

Oddly, I disdain creatures because of how easily they are removed. However, close to my central complaint with Magic is that permanents have way too much game impact. I’d much rather get hit with a Fireball for 11 and three Lightning Bolts than be hit with the same 4/4 five times. While I can understand those players who consider such things as discard, land destruction, and counterspells being far greater problems, consider how much more annoying all of those are when they come from a permanent.

Magic has tons and tons of removal, especially for creatures, yet what’s typically frustrating for me in my games is single cards that I can’t get rid of. I especially hate equipment. Of course, I never really played tournament constructed where other problems with the game might be much greater. Still, as a sometime limited/casual player, I grew very tired of games coming down to single cards. … but, wait, I like single cards turning the tide – it’s dramatic. That’s the thing about permanents, they aren’t dramatic. I like having to guess at what I have to deal with, not see that the table says I lose. While the best decks for me to play might be things like Sligh, Red Deck Wins, Fires, and the like, when I think of Magic decks I want to be known for, it’s usually something along the lines of creatureless counterburn.

Ultimate Combat!

As much as I consider UC! the most balanced and fun CCG I’ve played, there are two types of permanents that I can see be concerned with. Power generating talismans can greatly throw out the balance of games and, in my modern thinking, are essential to every deck. While they won’t directly decide a game, a significant imbalance in how many players get out should be decisive. Then, there’s Favorite Technique. The beauty of UC! to someone like myself who hates losing to a single creature is that technique go away when they are used, except of course for one’s Favorite Technique(s). Well, there’s weapons, but weapons have the silly breakage rule and making them unbreakable involves building a very, very specific deck that I may have only seen once from an opponent. While I must admit I enjoy creating UC! prison-style decks which rely on Favorite Technique, it’s only because this sort of control deck is so rare. When I think about what it’s actually like to play against a deck that you can’t get through because three or four Favorite Technique including a Drunken are cycling through, I start thinking about what it’s like to play Magic.

Vampire: The Eternal Struggle

Cards in V:TES tend to have much weaker effects than cards in other CCGs. Even what I consider the best weapon in the game, .44 Magnum (Ivory Bow may be more annoying to play against, but it’s far less flexible), doesn’t bother me so much. Yet, I do find that permanents often irritate me. There aren’t many cards that by themselves are unfair or overly annoying. No Secrets From the Magaji comes to mind as one of a few that might qualify. It’s when a deck can assemble enough permanents in combination that you can’t do anything anymore that I just want games to time out. Imbued are the worst offenders in that Conviction are essentially permanents and Imbued decks don’t have much recourse for plays besides permanents.

The thing about decks that tool up is that any drama gets snuffed out of the game. If they succeed, then their plan for victory is to be unassailable, which is boring. If they fail, they often fail early, which wasn’t interesting either. Not that I advocate more or better removal, as I often find removal unfair. I don’t think much can be done since there are other problems in the game which are more important and counter issues with decks achieving unoustable positions.

Babylon 5

Not at first, but eventually the card ideas I pushed the most for were cards that gave temporary power and/or influence. When the game was young, there was drama from the cheese agenda even if everyone knew they existed. A Centauri or Narn player at 14 power might win that turn. Over time, a lot of drama was removed because sudden victory was either difficult or was incredibly annoying, e.g. Secret Strike a We Are Not Impressed conflict. While B5 had a general problem with predictability as all of the agenda were known to all of the experienced players and one could accurately determine whether a player could win this turn or not almost all of the time, besides avoiding further attempts to make it difficult to gain power off of agenda, I really badly wanted to see “bid for victory” cards.

I proposed a number of cards, mostly aftermaths, with varying requirements, that would give one turn changes to power (whether through influence or just power), to try to attack the predictability in the game. Now, you don’t want games to be so unpredictable that you never know whether someone can win in a turn or not as that makes good play impossible, but what was exciting in B5 and what’s exciting in all games is when everyone makes a bid for victory that has a limited window rather than someone just grinding out victory or everyone ganging up on the leader until so many resources are expended that the third or fourth leader can’t be stopped.

As another example, and one more relevant to my topic, of how my interests are reflected in deck design, my B5 decks tended to be very high in events, reflecting how I preferred cards from hand deciding things rather than cards in play.

Ultimate Combat! – Basic Deck Construction

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.

ConQuest 2009

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.