Gen Con starts this week. The crush to get HoR3 mods in before the end of the campaign is on. I have something I could say about HoR3 now, but I might as well wait until the campaign is over in a week, and see if my perspective changes any.
I’ve been playing Shadowfist, just haven’t been doing session reports.
Speaking of Shadowfist …
Seems like kind of an ambitious Kickstarter since the last one was significantly less. Maybe, it’s because of the time of year, both Summer and Gen Con, though the last one was like 150 cards and this one is 300.
So, I got to talking to my group about the FCG (fixed card game, since LCG is a trademarked term) format versus the random pack format. The more I think about it, the more both suck for getting what someone like me wants. I just prefer random packs as it’s boring to know how boned you are.
Maybe other FCGs give you the correct amount of the cards in the sets. I’ve yet to see it with games I’ve bought. I just see that I end up with lots of junk and far too few copies of cards I want with a FCG format, much like a VCG (variable card game, sure, why not?) format. Now, when I started seeing the distribution of cards in the Lord of the Rings LCG, I pretty much figured neither format made much difference to a Mr. Suitcase type, such as myself. I spend lots of money to get lots of cards.
But, you know what? I have a lot of Eyes of Argus, a lot of Ashur Tablets, and pathetically few Pocket Demons, Violet Meditations, and Scroungings as most of mine come from Modern sets. Am I underbuying Shadowfist? I think it’s more that I don’t feel like buying more because I know I’ll get a lot of things I don’t care about. Again, how is that different from VCGs? I have absurd numbers of coasters from various VCGs. Perception. It’s not the perception that you will end up getting sweet boosters that only contain cards you want. It’s the perception that VCGs have a model where you buy a lot to get what you want, where FCGs have a perception (if one I’m trying to change) that you can get what you want with more modest investments.
Consider secondary markets, whether the trade market or the singles market. I actually have no idea what they are like for Shadowfist. I’ve traded nothing and only bought singles from IKG directly. It feels like FCGs are harder to trade than VCGs since VCGs will always have some sort of variance. I suppose I need to find out. It’s just that eBay and trading are both … effort. I was into them back in the day, but, once I stopped doing them regularly, I really lost any enthusiasm for them.
As for recent sessions, the last session saw me play two Ascended decks. The first did nothing before the game quickly ended. The second rushed out to an early lead with Solar Farm and Insurance Policy. I made a poor decision on whom to attack for the team win, and my allies never got strong enough to get us to victory.
Speaking of team play, which is our standard since we usually have five players. I think it was more fun when people focused more on trying to get their decks to do their thing. Now, it has become very much a political game of determining who to help be strong. May not be actually different in terms of how long games last or how unbalanced they can be, but it does feel more like a competitive thing rather than a game of amusing transactions.
I also played V:TES a couple of times this month. What does it say that I have less that I can remember of those games than usual? Is it because of other things on the mind? Is it because my mind is deteriorating?
I played a rather amusing vote/bleed deck that brought out Zubeida and gave her superior Abombwe. Her +bleed ability kicked in! In the endgame, I Anarchist Uprisinged and Ancilla Empowermented in the same turn to oust my remaining opponent. Yup, do six pool damage to myself to do eight to my preydator for the win. Brandon’s Toreador not having AUS allowed a lot of Adana bleeds to land. Eric’s Kiasyd really should have ousted me, but Omme got torped blocking a nonlethal bleed.
In the other game, my Political Antagonist deck bombed again. I should have been in the game longer than I was, but nobody seemed to care that my Neighbor John was Pentexed. My Neighborhood Watch Commander did Shoulder Drop + Pulled Fangs Masika, but the deck really doesn’t put any pressure on its prey.
Oh, besides playing a HoR3 mod yesterday morning, I also played three games of Vegas Showdown yesterday. One of my brothers had gotten it for me, and I first played the boardgame at the local game store. Having never done the set up for the game or being that aware of the rules details, I rather butchered the explanation of play, and illegally placed the Dragon Room in the second game, with the winner illegally placing the Buffet. The third game we finally got things right, I guess. Renovation led to my victory in a fiveway.
So, yeah, stuff going on. The weekend after Gen Con, I’ll probably be playing three V:TES tournaments.
No rest for the righteous … they always say. Yup, that’s what they always say.