Off Court

As in court-ier.  And, more strained thematic tie-ins.

Let’s get out of the way something which led me eventually here.  I was rereading Odyssey:[bunch of letters], the book I mentioned before about campaign management.  When I first got the book, it was an inspiration to try managing another campaign.  Now, it’s a reminder of how painful trying to manage a campaign is and how I’d like to get back to being one of those players who makes the GM’s life more difficult.

But, one of the sections I reread got me thinking about L5R.  Mentioned was 20 questions for fleshing out characters.  More interesting was getting into the group questions template concept where you figure out why parties are parties and not just a bunch of characters created in isolation that should never adventure together.

As a player of a lot of 4e, I’ve ignored many times the 20 questions part of character creation.  4e actually has multiple sets of questions.  Questions like what clan you are are, of course, silly for fleshing out characters since they are part of the mechanics of building characters.  Other questions like who you trust the most are weird.  Weird may not be bad as it gets you thinking about something besides what cheese disad you are taking to make sure you can afford three ranks of Luck.

It’s not that I haven’t read the questions before, it’s that they are so often irrelevant to my play because, here’s something about GMing – I don’t have the time or energy to worry about a dozen different things for every PC.  As a player, I’m a filler-innerer.

There’s a mention somewhere about how there are three different types of players.  One type builds backgrounds before play.  One fills in as a character gets played.  And, one type doesn’t bother with a background.  Or, something like that.  I’m a filler-innerer, where the more I play the character the more I’m interested in the character.

I only mildly thought about what questions would actually be relevant to unformed PCs.  For instance:  “Are your clan’s interests, assuming you are playing a clanner, more or less important than the law?”  The law is less vague than saying whether your allegiance is to the Empire or to your clan.  This question is actually relevant to situations I’ve run across a bunch.  Antagonists who do illegal things do so because it’s beneficial to the clan, often beneficial to themselves too, but that’s not so relevant.

“Would you use outside aid in a duel to defeat an asshole and/or an oni who happens to fake Void enough to duel?”

Etc.

But, I got into reading long threads on 4e, including this really long thread about how overpowered shugenja are.  Who knew?

Some good points are brought up that tend to get lost in how incoherent Rokugan can be.  I’m going to dwell on one, up until the point that I jump to another topic.

Bushi are supposed to be the most fighty while not being all fighty.  Shugenja are supposed to the most spiritually oriented.  Courtiers are supposed to be the most courtly, which is a bunch of crap mechanically as a bunch of abilities have nothing to do with court.  Everybody can fight, shugenja better than most for reasons I’ll belabor.  Everybody is supposed to be socially competent, which is easy enough to do.  What got brought up is that non-shugenja, possibly non-monks have no influence on spiritual matters.

So, shugenja get to do things others don’t.  Tangenting, what bothers me the most about shugenja?

No, not in terms of playing them, which I can barely do because I hate godlike power even when I’m playing gods.  Lifecasting is a perfect example of how shugenja are playing a different game, which is also something forumites have brought up where L5R sells on part grounded samurai tragedy and part on high fantasy.  Shugenja Stance is also grating.  Importune would be more grating if I saw it more often.  Getting any sort of special snowflake benefits in adventures because they are more in touch with spiritual stuff than others is rather grating.

So, I was reading ideas for sticking it to shugenja.  They sound kind of terrible.  Limiting spells just sounds antifun and drags shugenja into being more mundane.  A common suggestion was eliminating raises for casting speed to stop higher rank spells.

Does nobody actually play this game when they talk about mechanics?

So, instead of reining in power, all a shugenja does is ignore anything that isn’t Tempest of Air, Fires of Purity, Jade Strike, Path to Inner Peace.  That sounds so fun.

Now, not allowing spellcasting in Defense Stance at least addresses one of the most annoying things about 4e in a combo of annoyance sense – that armor is absurdly good and that bushi constantly don’t get to use it because of social conventions but bushi can’t use Defense Stance while still murdering their enemies.

But, amazingly enough, I’m not writing this to come up with ways to stick it to the spellcasters.

Actually, it was a question I came to a few times.  Why do courtiers exist?

Like, every samurai is supposed to fight and socialize and venerate stuff.  So, why such specialized roles as courtiers when anybody can just buy up Awareness and C/E/S?

Which got me thinking about what it is the courtier schools actually do.  No, not ludicrous minors and imps.  I started thinking along the lines of how you can group the schools together to some degree.

Crab and Crane are bribers.  Lion and Phoenix are scholars (thematically, maybe less so mechanically, where they are both buffers).  Mantis and Scorpion are bullies, which is just the same as bribers, you know, carrot/stick.  Dragon are investigators.  Unicorn are sort of investigators.

Scholaring can be done by bushi/shugenja without thinking too much, though buffing others is not really a bushi thing and shugenja are supposed to be rare.  Investigating does seem like something that gets away from murdering or magic, even if magic solves investigations far better than anything else can.  But, consider bribers and bullies.  Yes, one can see how a court situation would lend itself to specialists in this area, but think about how … how … peasant all of this is.  Crass.  Not magic samurai but … peddlers.

So, could go back to a simpler time where courtiers weren’t a thing, after all, the rise of courtiering comes about as society becomes more and more specialized and sophisticated.  Or, since it’s funny to play a briber who visits the Shadowlands since there are rules for such, how to make courtiers actually matter in games where you don’t go into mind control and where murdering bandits/others is normal, how to make them less irrelevant?

Before answering that “question”, let me give rise to the bushi boosters – mechanics designed to allow shugenja to be fightfantastic yet give bushi more stuff without getting completely out of control.

Bushi bonuses:  Earth Ring adds to reduction at all times except when it’s silly; Water Ring adds to damage from physical attacks; Fire Ring adds to to hit for physical attacks; Air Ring adds to ATN (yes, this stacks with Defense Stance); Void Ring adds to magic resistance against any hostile magic.

Courtiers could get the Void Ring effect.  But, what I thought about for courtiers was that they just get 20xp extra only usable to buy advantages.  Sure, every single courtier will have 3x Luck, but, then, that’s hardly unlikely to begin with.

So, shugenja remain gods.  Bushi get a host of static bonuses without having SAAs at SR-1 unless maybe they could use that, too.  Actually, I was wondering if everybody should have SAAs, well, every samurai and every combat relevant non-samurai.  This would put more of an emphasis on physical attacks versus spells and prevents courtiers from becoming outclassed by both shugenja and bushi in an area of the game that’s both common and supposedly important.  Courtiers get +20xp.

Fair-er?

Of course, you could be more limiting for thematics and limit to social/material/mental advantages.  Still, 20xp.  One problem would be buying up Social Position if you viewed status discrepancies as a problem/thematic fail.  Nothing stops bushi/shugenja from buying Social Position, they just hamper their own prowess at doing stuff, so the courtier is really just a 20xp better character.

Now, does this scale?  +20xp to 40/45 starting is non-trivial.  +20xp to 120 is better than not.  Once you are at 200xp, did that +20xp have a noticeable balancing aspect?  Well, if you believe me when I say that most play is at lower ranks, then it probably did.

If Tatakisu had 20xp more for advantages, would I just pile it all into Wealthy?  Gentry and Servant actually become affordable!!  I’d probably do something besides Wealthy but mostly Wealthy.  In a home campaign, I could imagine doing some other things if the GM was on board.

Course, 20xp sounds way less cool when someone else gets +3 Reduction/Damage/Attack/ATN.  Using very rough math, that’s like 24xp worth of stuff, with some of those bonuses scaling way better than others.

20xp for material/mental/social advantages and 10xp for skills?

Anyway, none of this will happen in a living campaign.  Players who choose schools that don’t do anything are doing it to make a point or for humor value or whatever.  People who choose Daidoji Iron Warrior have … a different … philosophy.  Home play you can make all about crying or whatever.

Down with the tyranny of fairness!  Down, down, down into a burning Fire Ring …

Advanced Play – L5R & Gloomhaven

A break from ‘fisting.

Let’s talk character. Characters. My characters.

Wait, come back, this is going to involve L5R 4e mechanics, my most popular topic, and a Gloomhaven build, only one of a few games ever to hit #1 on boardgamegeek. Of course, the title should have given that away.

Since I plan on spoiling like a spoily mcspoilerite for Cragheart higher level cards, start with more Miya stuff, first.

Miya Tatakisu

We left off with my talking about Miya advancement on March 25th, 2019. 143xp character. Between then and end of Gen Con 2019, spent 31xp. I noted one change on March 31st, 2019 and the two important changes on May 4th, 2019.

Buys:

Void 3
Int 3
Medicine 1

The primary driver of the buys was insight. If I was playing Miya without path, I probably wouldn’t care about insight at all and could have done sketchier things. Since I still care about insight, some buys aren’t going to have payoff until I can get 20 more insight and hit IR-4.

Restating: current insight 180, Gen Con need 200. Gen Con is kind of far away, well, playing at GC is far away.

Have 17xp unspent. That’s like burning a hole through the soul, striving to be spent.

Option #1 – Agility 6

This sounds fun. Same cost as Void 4. Produces zero insight. Zero insight, not gut.

Why even consider this? Tatakisu’s key skills are Agility based. Playing to a strength [sic]. Make sure overkill everything except combat rolls, while always being able to call three raises for Horsemanship. It fits the character concept. I am fond of unbalanced characters after having played a lot of 4e with more balanced characters (and an important lot with an unbalanced character).

Option #2 – Void 4

More versatile than Int 4, if more expensive. 10 insight at a not horrendous ratio. Can get back to winning duels, again.

Why not Void 4? There’s no great reason other than opportunity cost. This seems highly likely as a buy either as next buy or follow up buy before GC 2020.

Option #3 – Intelligence 4

Vaguely funny to go from moron to brain. 10 insight at a moderate ratio.

Why not Int 4? Don’t have Sage, so not leveraging this well. In general, what’s the play gain from this? I’ve also played brains before, and I want to do something different. Maybe this happens someday because IR-5 is not impossible, but it’s really not interesting to me and is so much less appealing than Void 4 in terms of impact on play. If ring ranks mattered more, then there would be some added reason, but fire ring rank doesn’t really matter.

Option #4 – Strength 3

For reasons I mentioned before, STR-3 is actually quite appealing in terms of effectiveness with Tatakisu. +1k0 damage matters in his case as his base damage is such garbage. Athletics rolls improvements are welcome. Grappling should matter. It has some thematic amusement with my vision of meak dude, and it has some thematic mechanics amusement as it further moves into a very bushi style build.

Why not Str 3? Zero insight. Not going to ever increase Perception, so it’s just 12xp for various improvements to rolls. Other spends also increase rolls, if not in the same way. Double the cost for Agi 6? I think double the cost for Agi 6 is more true to my goals in general, though going to struggle with those all important Athletics rolls.

Option #5 – Skills

R-1 skills are easy. 1:1 ratio on insight is unbeatable at moment. Thematic reasons for Spears and Lore: Lords of Death.

Why not R-1 skills? Does absorb points needed for other things, but this will happen, of course, because I find it impossible not to keep buying more skills. As an ex-moron, stuff like Commerce becomes a possibility, as well.

Higher ranks? Some possibilities. With V-4, Iaijutsu starts making more sense. Craft skills, Meditation don’t seem as terrible as other buys. Could pretend to be talky and buy up social skills, but that’s a thematic fail.

Kenjutsu is amusing and does something, but the insight ratio is atrocious and the point costs are stealing huge xp from other buys, so I don’t know when this would happen.

Option #6 – Earth 4

Awful insight ratio. Impact is real but routinely too subtle. Just don’t have enough xp to do this and other things, and I want to do other things.

Option #7 – Reflexes 4

Very similar to Str 3 in many, many ways. Even more expensive.

Option #8 – Awareness 4

Worse in many, many ways from other options except in the realm of mod solving effectiveness where Awareness is one of the most important things for success. Just don’t care strongly enough and have little desire to go to Air 4. Instead, I plan on my next 4e character being an Air build, though I’m not sure I’ll ever have another 4e character at the rate things are going.

Decision 2020

Void 4 and R-1 skills seems the obvious buys to get 20 more insight. That’s like 34xp, minus the 17xp in hand, that’s five mods. Since there are already more than five mods I can play, the other xp can go into a different insight buy but more likely to go into unbalanced buys, like Agility 6, which might be able to do before GC and would be able to do during GC. Between Agility 6 and Kenjutsu 10, Agility 6 is more interesting as something I’ve not had an opportunity to do, before.

Cragheart

Yes, finally, for the millions … and millions of the Feld’s followers, we get into some details on how I’ve tackled rocking.

I started Feld Spar at level 2 and am likely to hit level 7 next session, with my personal quest being fulfilled the session after.

In the beginning, my priority was XP. I was mostly a ranged/obstacle build with sacrifices to ranged made to focus on XP as much as possible without playing terrible cards.

In the heart, the craggy heart, of play, the build made use of Rock Slide to do the only thing truly important to the class – obstacling everything. Cragheart is just a completely different class once level 4 is unlocked.

In the endgame, F. Spar gets actually far less focused and starts doing a mishmash of things or plays heavily to scenario needs.

Avalanche

Played fairly often, as I wanted some leaf generation for more XP. Obstacle creation, sadly, was relevant.

Backup Ammunition

I think I didn’t play this one time. Or, maybe I was going to not play it but kept it in because of the need for movement. The most important card to play with the usual situation being to never use the bottom half, as I needed XP and I needed more damage. In the endgame, while I still put it out fast, I don’t always finish it off due to the move away from ranged build.

Crater

One of the most interesting decisions for me.  I’m not sure how often I don’t run it, but I always wonder about it before including it.  Sure, the bottom matters to me some, just not as much as other loss moves.  The push got me a check mark in one scenario.  Decent card.

Crushing Grasp

Ignored for a long time, this has been my primary card since I got used to playing around with Rock Slide, as my goal shifted from maximizing XP to maximizing money to buy enhancements. While Poisonado was a plan, since achieved, the main buys were actually improving movement on cards that people would be playing all of the time.

Dirt Tornado

Necessary early.  Stopped playing at times mid due to lack of damage output.  Poisonado becomes necessary, again.  Why not Cursenado?  Boring.  But, I realized there’s an actual good reason besides boring.  I manipulate decks of cards all of the time.  I have to shuffle crap all of the time.  Shuffling in curses is tedious beyond tedious.  Before Poisonadoing, increased move to 4.

Earthen Clod

In and out, more so than Crater.  The damage output is so bad.  Immobilize means nothing to me strategically, even if tactically it could matter.  The bottom is terrible for almost all of our play.  I need to keep moving.  I can’t be using up precious bottoms on minor crap like healing.

Forceful Storm

Almost always run this, early on for the top and beaucoup XP, now I actually care about the bottom for times when I have to beat down.

Heaving Swing

Another tough decision much of the time that has seen less and less play.  Even though I can easily set up the top, I don’t really care about it at all, with it requiring effort I need to spend on thinking through other things.  The bottom is kind of good stuff, but it’s also fiddly.  This is one of the first cards I’m happy to lose through rest, which goes to how I’m not that excited by it.

Massive Boulder

I wasn’t running this at first.  Yup, that’s how geniusy I can be.  Doesn’t generate XP and I only cared about leaf … pretty quick.  I view this as one of like two primary cards to enhance.  Most important thing:  add jump to bottom half.  Probably won’t have the money, but PoisonBoulder is likely better than Boulder for 4.  Range isn’t a terrible idea if you are swimming in money, but I’m nearly tapped out after Poisonado.

Nature’s Lift

The only time I was ever going to run this was in the hyper-Heal build.  This is so awful I couldn’t even be bothered in that build.

Opposing Strike

Even though a repeatable XP, this card is so terrible I only used it in like one scenario, where I expected to get surrounded.  It was terrible there, as well.  Feld is becoming far more melee-oriented and still can never be bothered to consider this terrible, terrible card.

Rock Tunnel

Maybe easy to confuse in one’s mind with Rumbling Advance, but this is a completely different card.  I’ve run this a number of times … and left it to the side a number of times.  Ran for XP early on, use for movement these days when I expect to care a bunch about movement.  Generally pretty bad card once you have other options, but this is one of the things I’m liking about leveling up in Gloomhaven – just like CCGs see people run bad cards as tech, Gloomhaven cards can tech specific parties/scenarios/goals.

Rumbling Advance

Right there with Opposing Strike.  So awful, I think I only used this once in the hyper-Heal build for a scenario where murder meant little.  Healing meant absolutely nothing in my early play.  Brute was tank.  Sun was next most common played character.

Unstable Upheaval

An awful card I wanted to ditch sooner than I did.  I kept running this for initiative up until the point that I couldn’t even justify that.

My first selection was … obvious.

One card gives XP and the other doesn’t.

Explosive Punch

If all Explosive Punch had was move 4 and 28 initiative, it wouldn’t be terrible.  I need movement.  Move 2 does not cut it in my play, where I have goals to be met, like looting.  I get decent use out of the top.  I routinely get three attacks from it.  With Major Power Potion and/or Forceful Storm, damage is actually possible.

Sentient Growth

I was curious about this, even though it doesn’t really address any particular need of mine except having side healing while attacking stuff.  Everything it does is so weak that after playing with it a bit … yes, I chose this card later rather than a higher level card … I don’t really care about its existence.  A card that begs for enhancing every single thing it does, except why not play better cards and enhance them, instead?

Obvious choice.

Blunt Force

Good initiative considering how ranged/obstacle build for Cragheart becomes slow as d-.  The bottom is terrible – take away nonsense retaliate and give me two more move and I would totally take this.  Top is slightly tempting, but, then, you realize that it’s loss and it just doesn’t really matter.  If I were going for more of a versatank build with Cragheart, I’d question why this is a loss effect when Craggie needs more beats.

Clear the Way

Essential at third level.  This was one of my more common XP gainers for a short while.  Now?  Now, I care far more about the bottom, as there are all sorts of scenarios where I can help the party by nuking stuff, possibly my own stuff.  I pretty much always run it, but I often pass over the top when deciding how to play and don’t care if this gets lost to rest, anymore.

The most important level for what I consider the point of playing this class.

Kinetic Assault

Currently my favorite card to use.  I miss this so much when it gets loss due to rest or damage prevention.  Yup, I took the other olive meat at level 5.  Even though move 1 is so paltry, I still get so much mileage [sic] out of it.  I would love to enhance this to move infinite jump, but it will never be.  So sad.  As I said, over time, the ranged/obstacle/XP build has become an unfocused platform with melee attacks mattering more and more.  Replaces Unstable Upheaval in terms of my key initiative card, but I actually want to use one of its halves unlike that awful piece of crap.  Bottom has never been used and never will be, as top is too important to waste.

Rock Slide

Cragheart is all about obstacles.  If you aren’t into terrain modification, I don’t know why you want to play this class.  My friend who owns the game has had to keep working on painting more obstacles as it’s stupid how many you can generate when you want to.  The damage output is some of the highest available due to ignoring shields.  I don’t really use this as effectively as it could be to form snaking tunnels that monsters have to deal with or to set up Explosive Punch, but I almost never ignore this as an option when it’s not discarded, and I may short term to get it back.  Leaf and XP are additional reasons to recycle this more often than most.  The move is kind of challenging to set up.  I’ve had to move 5 with it before to let Brute multibeat.  I should probably plan movements more, but I’m so focused on getting loot these days that I don’t optimize for finishing scenarios.  Besides, I have essential things to do before the scenario ends.

And, then, the suck.

Petrify

Seems obvious, and I came extremely close.  I came extremely close because I knew what the scenario had and it would have saved a bunch of time … up until the number of party members changed and the monster became elite.  I have no plans to take this because it’s a loss that just doesn’t matter that much to me.

Stone Pummel

Though, I’d always take Petrify over this.  Craggie so badly needs damage pumps by this point, not more AOE attacks.  I can already hit lots of targets for a pathetic 3.  I need some 5’s in damage.  I’d rather enhance a level 1 card and play that.

For a bit, I basically saw no relevant cards above level 4 for Craggie.  There is a level 8 card I’d play a lot of, but it will never happen.

Cataclysm

Now, as much as I don’t like this card, even though it is a pretty easy move 6 with 26 initiative, it does actually have a bottom half.  The top does damage, which I was just whining about.  I suppose others will use it and think it’s effective for something.

Dig Pit

Sounds so, so bad unless you understand how to leverage invisibility.  If I had to, I’d probably take this just to be more familiar with making traps and invisibility.  I’d so much rather have a Kinetic Assault with move 2 …

I’ll take one of these.  Guess.

Brutal Momentum

Does or adds damage.  After playing with Heaving Swing a decent amount, I’m just tired of this schtick.  I have to work around other party members and what they want to do.  Plus, I need to position for maximum loot.

Meteor

Awesome bottom and elite initiative (it’s going to be bizarre to change to a class that isn’t slow as m-).  My plan is to pick it up and use the top once in my life for the humor value.  Should be like attack 6 if loss or just not be loss with how difficult dropping a three-hexer is likely to be compared to Rock Slideing all over the place.

My main buys were potions and the thing that allows for more potions, so I have little to say about how to advance through equipment.

I started with Ignore negative scenario effects.  I quickly added both Add two Rolling Leaf cards.  Making advantage not as good for me.  I did the Replace minus with plus three times.  I did the Remove four +0 cards.  Having nothing better to do, I added the Add one +2 Muddle card, and I will do that again.  I guess I Add two Rolling Wind cards if I simultaneously get the check mark when I level up next session, though the party doesn’t currently care about Wind.

And, that’s how Feld Spar has advanced.  I modify my play hand every scenario, adjusting based on what I think I want for effectiveness or what I want to try out.  At this point, maybe I drop the loot card as money is either a need for a lot or no need at all.  Maybe the next scenario, I run all of the best initiative cards just to do that once and confuse everyone as to what’s going on.

 

Eleven Decks, Eleven Notes – Part 3

Before getting into the latest … and some might say the latest … explanation of how it goes to play my recently created Shadowfist decks, let’s load the Elephant Gun in the room.

Crisis of Infinite Earths, Arrowverse style, was not good.  Finally, we get to parts four and five and I had Skywalker flashbacks.  Irrelevant characters, awkward dialogue, nonsensical plotting, writing that doesn’t seem to have any sense of what’s actually cool.  The last is particularly bizarre when you can just look at previous Arrowverse crossovers and, even in the weaker installments, see characters doing cool stuff.

Besides the massive overload of characters, I see a couple problems with this story that better writing, direction, acting, and writing needed to overcome.  Arrow ending.  There was so much Ollie worship that should have been done in a way that I’ll get to when I rant about something else that isn’t Shadowfist.  Second, the Anti-Monitor is not only a dull villain, the numerous fights against irrelevant wraiths was tediously bad.  Okay, some random dude can shoot a wraith that is somehow supposed to matter to cosmic level superheroes?!?

Needed to think through enemies.  Pariah was pointless, just a R2-D2 level fan service.

Roughly the same time, I watched something else on the television.  Something involving time travel.  Something with lots of different genres.

I watched Spyfall, Part 1.  Only the very end gave me any remote desire to watch Spyfall, Part 2.  Of course, if you don’t know what Spyfall is, you probably don’t care about any of these observations, anyway.

The various Doctors have routinely combined goofy with “I’m the Oncoming Storm” level mass murder.  Old Who was replete with supporting characters dying in various horrible ways.  New Who has cut way down on mass supporting character or entire planet murder.

Jodie needs to Destroyer of Worlds more often because her usual schtick is so repetitive, coming across like DW is trying to make sure everyone thinks of it as a children’s show.  I tend to think of DW as sci-fantasy horror, but, then, I’m used to the Third on Earth and Talons of Weng-Chiang level gloom.

The writing is obviously bad when you force her to explain everything constantly.  But, when is acting or direction the problem?  Even with bad writing and direction, the actor’s job is to sell believability of character and situation.  Jodie doesn’t do that for me.  The self-referentialism that DW has embraced also comes across in how she portrays the character.  The direction strikes me as a problem in that what passes for mostly forgettable stories just seem to progress in flat, uninteresting ways.

Lots blame the companions and/or the idea of a “fam”.  I see the main character needing some personality, which having some time outside the “fam” would help with.  I see the stories needing to focus more on something happening and less on “gee, this is something cool you should care about”.

Speaking of which, while I may be wrong about how severe the difference is, in older DW, I would expect a supporting character from history to get named and stuff to happen, then there be a denouement that explains how that historical personage went on to do important stuff later.  There’s far, far too much of stopping the action to have a lesson in spoiling people’s futures right in front of those people in Spyfall.  In other episodes, that I don’t really remember because 13’s adventures are so forgettable, there’s all sorts of explaining things in the moment and probably doing some of what Spyfall does with revealing things through the Doctor just spouting.  Sure, other Doctors can get into the problem of knowing everything that will happen, possibly manipulating events to play out a certain way – especially a problem in novels.  But, 13 just stops to tell everybody how she realized something, as if we are all in kindergarten and can’t be allowed to have something revealed/figured out later.

So, how does this all tie to Shadowfist?

Nothing vs maybe-not-nothing.  Rise, Crisis, Spyfall all suffer from too much nothing.  Screentime is being taken up with inconsequential content.  In Rise, you want to understand why the situation is the way it is and want resolution that isn’t 12 seconds long.  In Crisis, you want capes caping, which means using powers in some cool way like shooting an arrow at another cape for transitive impalement.  You want subplotting to take advantage of the often ridiculous nature of caping.  In Spyfall, it wasn’t so much that I wanted something different, as the main villain was fine, as much as I want 13 to have presence and to not have slapstick for seemingly zero reason and to give supporting characters a chance to exist beyond standing next to 13.  Just so much shrugworthy stuff kind of happening.

We played one game of Shadowfist.  One three-player game, that lasted 2 hours.

Don (Jammers Tech) -> Ian (Mermaid.dec) -> Joren (Monkeys)

Yup, Mad Scientist followed by Razor’s Hotties followed by Big Macaque Attack (after maybe something like Mad Scientist).  Joren showed me Chizu as an obvious discard, though I finally played a Chanting Monks while he still had it in hand.

M.A.D. happened.  C4 Sinkhole happened.  I think at least three, possibly more, FSSs were taken out by Orbital Laser Strikes.  We may have to ban multiple Jammers decks at the same table.  Though, no Nukeds went off, an oddity in a Jammers game.

Ba-BOOM! happened twice.  Thermobaric Explosion never did, though I expected it.

I had Simian Sanctuary as my only site in play at one point.  Me.  Simian Sanctuary.  I used monkeys to leap to their deaths in front of other monkeys.

In terms of other uniques, Don had Billy Zed (I had to attack him with Cyborg Mermaid), Titanium Johnson, and won with Steel Woolley played on the last turn.  The turn he ran out of draw deck.

Joren would occasionally do monkey things, spent a lot of cards bringing back Gorilla Fighter repeatedly.

Me?  I had a heavy Jammer draw with multiple Cyborg Mermaids in hand much of the time.

Old school.

My first one had Dim Mak, Deadly Fans, and Fortune of the Turtle.  She lasted a while before Fortune got removed and she got Turbo Boosted to jump in front of a Ba-BOOM!.

What I really needed was some support for my Cyborgs, as losing them meant losing any sort of meaningful fighting.  I mean, sure, I made a bid for victory sending a Chanting Monks and a Software Pirate in to a site before it got sacrificed, but that was made amusing due to Meteor Hammer and Fortune of the Turtle (on Software Pirate, of course) with Martial Focus in play.  But, what I might have enjoyed more would have been a 3-for-4 (this is how ‘fisters describe, I think, contrary to how Magic-ians would) to not have to rely on 5-Fers who temporarily got 7-Fed (well, often 8-F due to a state).

New (more desirable) school.

I played my first Daughter after I played out both Shared Interests “mermaid” and Stand Together “mermaid”.

I almost had a path to victory involving a Mad Scientist with an Elephant Gun.  But, this is yet another one of my virtually perfect decks that runs no character removal, so I became less and less relevant on “d”.

As a bloated 55 card mess with no power gain events, I might have to rethink the distribution of cards a lot for Mermaid.dec.2.  Still, I’ve wanted to build this deck for ages, and my random die rolls to pick what new decks to play finally came up mermaids.

Eleven Decks, Eleven Notes – Part 2

Bright but not the star.

The danger – I feel it.

Before dwelling on all things ‘fisty in the 2020’s, I was thinking about the possibility of making a non series post on Gloomhaven, since we’ve been getting back to playing it.

I’m not as fired up about builds and characters and party composition and rules as I was prior.  Still, Gloomhaven is my not-really-RPG outlet at the moment where I get to think about character advancement/build at all.  The more I play, the less, perhaps, I feel like it subs for a RPG as it’s not terribly openended.  The scenario by scenario rebuilding of my play stack, though, becomes more interesting as I level up and buy enhancements.  We played a really easy to accomplish scenario if you have good movement twice in a row.  The first time, I put all of my good movement in and it was stupidly easy.  The second time, there was poor communication on our strategy of looting and I failed the scenario by one card due to trying to fight through enemies on very hard difficulty.

The takeaway was mostly how not RPGlike it felt, especially when I contrasted with my thinking processes with RPGs on the same days.  I want to play more Gloomhaven.  I want to get back to playing real RPGs.

Thursday, we only played one game, which is our norm.  The ebb and flow was not normriffic, though.

Joren (Thunder) -> Justin (Purists) -> Ian (Turbo? Junk) -> Don (Purists)

So, what made this game different from many but not all of our Game Kastle Santa Clara games was that I got a fast start and got close to winning quite early.  I put out Solar Farm on turn one.  I get the first midrange with Sanctuary Protector (almost have to ban this card due to flavor text, but not yet).  I make a bid for victory with Kitty Kerosene and three Knightcaps with Sanctuary Protector just hanging out.

I figure there’s going to be stoppage to where I’ll have to play one or more of my three Turbo Boosts in hand to make the bid serious.  Chump Kitty, Math Bomb.  I save Kitty with Kinoshita House of Pancakes.  I lose everything else because look up Sanctuary Protector on chimpshack.org or wherever.

Kitty gets Auramancer/Stolen Thunder banged and Joren seizes KHoP.  I stop drawing meaningful characters as I’m pillaged down to no cards in play with one burned for victory.  Of course, my choosing to sit on multiple Turbo Boosts has something to do with that.  But, the other decks develop and The Gray and Material Transcendences and ambush all pop up to where I don’t really care about my board position.  The whole value in this post can be summed up by the CCG theory of “Fast, weak, win!”

I’ve seen it a number of times with V:TES and winnie decks or stealth bleed.  Come out fast, get clipped by table politics, seem under control, win off of the fact that what you do is just really good and uncomplicated.

Not that Turbo? Junk is uncomplicated.

Back to the story.

So, I have things like one location, two sites, one of which is unrevealed Valley of Ashes I never use even though Auramancing is in rage with a lone Software Pirate to defend.  Don is doing fairly well with The Unnameable attacking when Netherworld Returns starts a uniqueness auction of his own two copies.  I win the bid at one to smoke the attacker.  Note that I had like no cards in play and around 10 power at one point.

Justin goes for a win with half of an army:  Impossible Men, Echo Spirit, Mathemagician with Origami Handguns versus his reserves of Shards of Warped Reflection copying The Unnameable’s ability, The Unnameable(!!), and two other Echo Spirits.  He hits my Diamond Beach for one due to Origami.  He attacks again for the win and Math Bomb wipes his board except for Shards.

That same Math Bomb smokes two more Knightcaps as one came back from the Netherworld Returns.  Five lost Knightcaps due to Math Bombs!!  I chose to discard the fifth Knightcaps.  I did play four Turbo Boosts, so I did have four Knightcaps and four Turbo Boosts in my smoked pile.

I play Scrounging, naming the obvious … states.  I gain four power due to having one burned for victory.  I play Scrounging again naming, well, duh, states, and gain six power.  I finally draw characters and funny.

So, with Purists Bombing or Transcending people’s boards, there are only three characters in play when I play my star – Machine Warrior.  Now, why is Machine Warrior my star when I don’t exactly combo much with him?  Because I own at least the two copies of this promo and put them into the same deck, a deck created to have these two promo cards.

I attack where a Twisted Horror with Sword of the Dragon King, Origami Handguns, Amulet of the Turtle (6) is hanging out instead of an undefended site because …

Deadly Fans for the humor. Don Glimpsed of Brief Eternity.  Five cards were something like Scrounging, Salvage, The Hidden Grotto, Kowloon Gate, Software Pirate.  No Junk!

Justin had Chi Syphoned Kinoshita House of Pancakes twice and used his remaining KHoP copy to feed the junk-eater.  This was exactly what I was playing for as I drop Russ Razor, Laser Blazer and do exactly zero damage to the Twisted Horror (I had Payback Time and a Transcended Billy Zed), Wei Qing (Glass Dagger), Shards (one resource).  I attack the same site and play my second Deadly Fans for the win.

Was it a quality win?  Not entirely.  There was a card on the board that wasn’t copying Kinoshita House of Pancakes that should have been able to stop this lunacy.  But, it was a funny win, thus appeasing a tough crowd.

So, that’s the lesson for you all:  burn for victory when you have your first Scrounging in hand as you will Scrounging twice for states to gain lots of unneeded power to win off of Russ Razor, Laser Blazer wielding Deadly Fans.

Will I post about every remaining deck?  Stay tuned.

Eleven Decks, Eleven Notes – Part 1

I know it’s dangerous to do post series.  Have to be truly fascinated to want to read the subsequent posts.

Fortunately, nothing is more fascinating than a play on a movie title series all about Shadowfist decks.

Between start of Christmas Day and end of New Year’s Day, I built … by my cursory count … eleven new decks.  I also modified some other decks, but that won’t matter until Q2, when I’m done playing all of these new decks.

January 2nd, I played two of these decks, determining order of play through dice rolls.

Ian (Retiring Broke) -> Don (Feast Of Power) -> Justin (Ascended Financial) -> Joren (Thunder Returns)

I play Rebel Without a Cause.  I add Junkyard Crawler and realize the special ability is nowhere near as good as I thought.  I didn’t realize I had to move to the top or toast the card.  Still, I think I used the ability every turn the card was in play.  With some Close Calls, I was not owned by Don’s early Demon Whiskey.

Don hadn’t yet built the infinite power engine that is Feast of Souls.  He did get Haunted Tomb out and two Haunted Forests, with Palace Guards and Demon Whiskey being odd.

Justin got out multiple Insurance Policys and Treasure Cache.  Joren Auramancer, Thunder Maidens, Thunder Berserkers.

I shell out the first $10,000 Man.  Another 10G got a Netherflitter.  Then, the game gets Shadowfisty.  Joren fuels Don to infinite power by attacking Lotus stuff even though Justin stole one of Don’s Feasts of Souls with Cabinet Minister so that Don didn’t have 2x infinite power.  Don fuels Joren by continuously choosing to return Palace Guards to play with Auramancer out.

Don plays Long Shadows and Evil Twins.  Sure, Long Shadows doesn’t guarantee victory.  Just guarantees that you focus all of your efforts on killing that one card until it can’t undeadify the omniverse.

With $40,000 of Mans in play, I continue operation murder Obsidian Eyed Long Shadows with all of the rest of Don’s dudes done for.  Underworld Coronation.

Don puts out some stuff but doesn’t have it.  Justin Bear Markets.

Because I was the only one who could run out of power, Justin plays stuff and wins.

$40,000 non-banana eating Cyborgs.  $40,000 non-banana …

Justin (Back for Seconds) -> Joren (Soul Reaver Cruisers) -> Ian (Cattle Horde) -> Don (Commando)

Justin seemed to have problems with characters, as he got out Apprenticeship and didn’t use it a lot.  He kept Back for Secondsing to stop my assaults, much of the time using it on Don’s stuff.

Joren’s Soul Reavers were far more focused on murdering Don’s dudes, especially foundations.  So, Don rarely had much in play.

My first Demon Whiskey got Improvised Weapons up to four counters.  Fueled off of a long lasting Mah-Jongg Parlor, I got out two other Demon Whiskeys and two Bloody Herds, one of which got Haunted but also learned the power of Regenerate.  I played sites and swung for victories.  They were stopped.  One stopped by Tortured Memories.

With two 1-F dorks and a Ex-Commando with no weapons, Don swung and the most anyone could do was my throwing a 1-F Demon Whiskey in front of his attack on The Hidden Grotto.

Shadowfist.  From infinite power losing to five fighting for five winning.

Btw, since I kept not playing a particular “key” card, my deck name may change after I play this deck again sometime in Q3.

Tying back to yesteryears, no, not going to review Eleven Days, Eleven Nights even though I’ve actually seen it, what was the takeaway from this play?

My attempting to win makes for bad Shadowfist game endings.  Almost all of the times it seems like I should swing for a win because of the table state, the attack will fail and someone else will win.  My wins come from when I’m not doing much of anything and someone else gets stopped a bit too hard.

It always seems like part of the fun of the game is to try to win in the moment.  Maybe it’s not.  Maybe it’s just better to accumulate a full Herd and copy absurdly irrelevant text.

On the other hand, when I do swing for wins when it’s likely to fail, it does cause games to last less than 2.5 hours, which means I do get to play more than one deck a week.

So, it should be obvious to any V:TES player or Babylon 5 player or … not quite sure about the same hurdle with Ultimate Combat! or Wheel of Time … that it is far, far easier (for me) to build Shadowfist decks than decks for other CCGs, as the most V:TES decks I imagine I’ve ever constructed in about two full days of deckbuilding was maybe something like nine or only like seven for Babylon 5.

The wonders of having no minimum deck size are a factor.  Cattle Horde is 40 cards.  Retiring Broke is a bloated, 50-card menagerie.  Of course, also not caring what the decks do besides like one or two things which have no particular connection to winning helps immensely.  Rather than spend time thinking about how to build a better Cattle deck or a better Close Call deck, I can just put together a different, 30-card deck and call it a cold, lean, thinly sliced pastrami sandwich on a sourdough roll with sweet mustard, mayo, shredded iceberg, tomato, red onions, and, perhaps, a garlic spread.

What’s better than a great Morphic Spirit deck?  Two sketchy Morphic Spirit decks.

Though, to be fair to other CCGs, more decks = more fun, as a general rule.

New Year – Old Stuff

I got my hoops in this morning.  It occurred to me when I was walking out to the park in a t-shirt that doing this sort of stuff on Christmas Day or New Year’s Day is a function of living in California.

No, the theme of today’s post isn’t how different folks perceive the “world” differently, though that may have made more sense.

I was planning on posting something, perhaps related to continuing to build Shadowfist decks now that I’ve pulled out almost everything I use, when I decided to check out where my HoR4 character was at, character sheetwise.

Much to my continuing chagrin, I didn’t have anything on this laptop that was even from 2019.  I had to download an attachment from email (which is why I email my sheets to myself) to have a starting point for updating a sheet to the after Gen Con 2019 specs.

So, I did that.

I may have yet another plan for how to spend XP, which does get into today’s topic.  I actually could spend XP at the moment as I’ve done precisely nothing L5R/HoRwise since GC19.  I also updated such things as which certs the character has, as several things hadn’t been included on the prior sheet.

After fixing the sheet (and emailing it back to myself), I decided to look at my last version of Moshi Shigeo, my HoR3 primary.  I was hoping to be inspired about something mechanical I could spew to you even though HoR5 won’t be using 4e and, thus, more 4e thoughts aren’t that useful to me.

I’ve mentioned in the past, I’m sure more than once because I’m prone to that these years, that I spend far too much time focusing on the mechanics of my HoR characters and not nearly enough time on who these characters actually are thematically, which would inform advancement decisions in a far more enthusing way.

Running down Shigeo’s numbers, most of them make sense.  Very HoRish, with certain skills at R-2 for Insight purposes back when HoR did a house rule to not count R-1 skills for Insight.  Sure, a Moshi who is a SR-4 Suzume Bushi did achieve the effect I was aiming for.  Actually, two effects.  One, messing with people because it’s not hard to mess with people’s expectations with L5R, probably (again) because so many L5R fans are attracted to the L5R norms.  But, two, it gave me experience with Suzume Bushi mechanics so that I can be knowledgeable and tell long, rambling blog posts at the drop of a new year.

A propos of how character identity often comes about from play rather than being engineered, Shigeo was supposed to be an … engineer, yet I got more play value out of using Perform: Shakuhachi than I ever did using Engineering.

Besides the HoR3 specific weirdness that mostly didn’t matter, like Mixed Omen and Mark of the Cat (having a black cat on my shoulder at the end of the campaign didn’t really do much) or having a Kharmic Tie with a peasant that never came up, ever, there are two things about perusing the character sheet that stand out.

One I’ve already talked about, at least in passing, which is that I tried to get a better feel for these characters by using character modeling ideas I haven’t heard anyone else ever mention, especially Shigeo precisely because I was aware that I was focusing too much on mechanics with HoR3.

I did Honor hierarchies for my HoR3 characters where I broke up my overall Honor score into scores for each tenet of Bushido.  This was in an effort to figure out how my high Honor Shigeo differed from my high Honor Ikoma Jun (from HoR2).

I assigned astrological values to Shigeo.  He was a Virgo … and a Wood Sheep.  Remember how so many years ago I tortured myself by writing about using astrology for characters’ personality endepthening?  It didn’t end up meaning a lot with Shigeo.

What stands out on his character sheet more than anything else is pure, unadulterated, hilarious [please stop] … stuff.

Stuff
sturdy clothing
daisho; no-dachi; light armor
3 koku; traveling pack; fan**
court kimono (bought)
court kimono (bought with A’Nen’s help) – uguisu (poem reading bird) reading poem
court kimono (bought, haggled) – the passing of the “torch” from Amaterasu to Yakamo
lucky cricket kite (bought)
obi w/ songbirds in clan colors (gift, SoB15))
Treatise on Fighting Kites (gift, SoB24)
Charms with prayers to Megumi and O’Saigo (bought, SoB30)
shakuhachi (bought, 1.5k, SoB37)
fancy go set, go pieces, treatises, tournament report Emperor and Otomo Daimyo 700’s (bought, SoB47)
Sorinpu, The Hell Razor (presented, SoB 29)
Oracle of Fire’s Blessing, box with Shining Light scroll Free Action armor or not (SoB47)
Medicine kits (regular) picked up on mods

Sure, I got use out of Sorinpu, The Hell Razor.  I finished off the Demon Bride of Fu Leng with it, as I’m sure others did as well – the nature of living campaigns.  Still had my second attack in case things got … serious.  Also finished off the Dark Oracle of Water with it.

But, there’s a reason I keep bringing up money and how it applies to L5R play.  I flew a lucky cricket kite.  Because I haggled for one of those court kimono, I’m pretty sure I lost Glory, not that it mattered as HoR3 hadn’t addressed the everyone is at 10.9 Glory problem that L5R is prone to.  The uguisu kimono was particularly inspired, as it suited him immensely, and it came up, I think, in two different mods!

I had a 229 point character (I played two other characters in HoR3, one of them quite a bit and enjoyed playing that character more), and my main takeaway of what makes this character more interesting than every other Suzume-trained Moshi is that he had some interesting stuff, half of which he bought.

Sure, I’m still stuck in my own echo chamber of RPG philosophies, but I thought providing an example might mean just slightly more.  Besides, it reminds me that I need to think about how to enjoy playing Tatakisu and not dwelling on whether his numbers can hold up with higher rank parties.

So, I do intend to actually cover new ground in 2020.  A blog isn’t just about hearing oneself natter.  Should actually do something for the audience.  Maybe I’ll talk about my Traveller CCG deck ideas, which I haven’t even gotten around to talking about on our Traveller forums.  That will enthrall half of all existence, I’m sure.