Unhallowed

This week is Halloween week for the Shadowfist league and maybe one or two other things in this relative spacetime.

I really don’t think I enjoy e-play of boardgames and CCGs against other hu-man-s.  I mean I’ve done next to none of it, so maybe it’s an unexamined opinion.

But, there’s something about staring at a screen to engage with icons representing the game components that loses me.  I enjoy playing with my cards.  I enjoy manipulating decks.  Some BG components are aesthetically pleasing in a more visceral milieu.  I just feel disengaged with the digital.

Yet, I like building decks in a theoretical, not find cards and sleeve them sense.

H1:  Monster-ish

Capture Squad x5

Monster Hunter x5

Simon Draskovich x2

Test Subjects x5

Combat Engineer x4

Jason X x1

Prototype X x1

Dockyard x4

Manufactured Island x5

Bzzzzzt! x1

Cellular Reinvigoration x5

Evacuation: 2066 x1

Uncontrolled Mutation x2

Scrounging x2

On the Wire x2

Salvage x1

Information Warfare x1

Buro Godhammer x3

H2: Spirit-ual

36-Legged Horror x2

Aether Spirit x1

Cognitive Spirit x1

Isomorphic Spirit x1

Memory Spirit x2

Mutator x3

The Gray x2

The Unnameable x1

Twisted Horror x3

Uncertainty Spirit x1

Mathemagician x5

True Believer x4

Arcane Scientist x1

Quantum Sorcery x5

Delay the Inevitable x1

Echo Cancellation x1

Entrophy Sphere x1

Glimpse of Brief Eternity x2

Math Bomb x1

Material Transcendance x5

Origami Handguns x1

Discerning Fire x1

Larcenous Mist x1

Pocket Demon x2

Spirit in a Bottle x1

Mobius Portal x1

Secluded Redoubt x5

Bustling Metro Station x1

The Great Wall x2

Dockyard x2

Well, the second deck is a bloated mess.  Should cut 10 cards to get seriously Spirit-ed.

There are complaints about hosers, but Purists don’t have many, neither do monsters.

Touch of metagaming here besides the obvious Architects plays.  Not sure the foundations [sic] are solid enough.

Brain Squishy

So, I mentioned last post about being a Spike.

In looking up Vorthos and Mel, I ran into new subprofiles under the argued for psychographic profiles.  I agree with someone who wrote a criticism of the whole Magic psychographic profile thing that it seems to have lost meaning.

Why?

Well …

Magic Psychographic Profiles

T subtypes:

Diversity Gamer $$$$$

Obvious fiver.  CCGs claimed my soul off of variety.  In truth, CCGs are more diverse than any given RPG as people generally conform to predictable ideas in a given RPG.

J subtypes:

Offbeat Designer $$$$

Maybe I’m overstating my offbeatulness.  I want to build more offbeatical decks, but I don’t do as much of this as I contemplate.

Deck Artist $$

I’m not sure what a two actually means in my scale.  I won an award for most thematic decks in a movie theme competition on a V:TES night.  While this could make for great trivia, nobody actually probably cares at all, so I’ll just state my two decks were based on Miracle on 34th Street and The Secret of My Success.  … I don’t watch a lot of movies.

Uber Johnny $

While not as much motivated to prove some terrible card is good, I will prove I can win with terrible cards.  I am responsible for the only copies of these cards in the V:TES TWDA:  Chalice of Kinship, Ghouled Street Thug, Mercury’s Arrow, Augustus Giovanni, Myrna Goldman, Nitidas, Greer Worder, Appolonius, Consecration Rites, Tereza Rostas, Pseudo-Blindness.  Maybe something else, but these are the most interesting anyway.  Really only Consecration Rites and Pseudo-Blindness are the so awful that nobody should bother level of card.  After all, every Kiasyd victory I’ve ever had has been with a deck that included Trainer …

S subtypes:

Innovator $$

So, on the one hand, I’m extremely interested in what is the best in the game.  On the other, I avoid those cards and don’t try to build anything remotely like a dominant deck.

Tuner $

Another case of theory versus practice.  I’ll think about tuning top level decks, but I usually only do this when playtesting as I’m not interested in winning tournaments with top level decks.

Analyst $$$$

While practice doesn’t see as much of this, I spend a huge amount of thought on metagaming, including for environments that there’s no point in metagaming for.  I was really into storyline V:TES events for an opportunity to metagame environments outside the norm.  I do actually meta a lot.  See running Fear of the Void Below in one of my TWDs.

Profiled?

The subs are actually far more interesting to me as a flopper personality describing system than the profiles.  I don’t care much or at all about some of the subs.

So, a $5/$7/$7 breakdown suggests to me that I can’t really call myself a Spike anymore.  I’m more of an Offbeat Analyst into Diversity.  An OAID.  OAD.  DOA …

“Hey tournament competitors, my tournament style is totally DOA!”

Shadowkick

Because it’s silly to do a separate post for this even though I’m diluting the awesome that is current thoughts on Shadowfist, comments on Virtual True Dungeon II.

VTD2A was far better than 1A or 1B.  The narrative was far more coherent, didn’t get weird sci-fi but got snow.  I jumped a second run just to take the path not taken.  The path not taken didn’t need to be taken, but it helped with benchmarking the difference between Nightmare and Epic level play.

Nightmare is a joke if you have an Epic level build.  I tracked combat rounds in my two runs and they were to the best of my tracking:  Epic – 3, 3, 3, called it on time going into 4 with cleric pleading for healing (which is weird only in the sense that anyone could use healing potions); NM – 2, 3, 2, 3, 3 where I only felt some danger in combat three and only because I don’t feel like using consumables.

Our Epic group was suboptimally built as both wizards were running +2 Staffs of Focus when I could have lent out the +5.  That’s a good thing for a full party so that we can fail.

I’m far, far more interested in failure.  However, we don’t do enough runs to where we see everything if we fail before room seven, so we also still don’t want to fail prior to room seven.

So much VTD …

Fisting like it’s 2019!

So, there’s frequent play of Shadowfist on Discord these days.  My abject abhorrence towards online CCG play (excluding Traveller, which I’ve not actually played online yet, either) precludes me from indulging in tournament or coming up with a Halloween themed deck, but the conversation has gotten me more motivated in thinking about decks for that presumed day when people in this here parts congregate for games.

I got to thinking about cards I hate.  Yup, I’m all sunshine and rainbows, wait, I’m cool with rainbows but eschew sunshine.

All central-thinking people hate monkeys … in Shadowfist, along with apes, gorillas, simians, and whatever.  True Believers will not sully themselves with any card with monkey in its name [*sigh* 7 Masters] or pictured on a card unless the monkey in question is being eviscerated, incinerated (unpleasantly … Shadowfist!), decapitated, or otherwise having vile deeds perpetuated upon said monkey.

I started trying to find cards that specifically stopped Jammer events.  Because I’m only somewhat loony, this was not just to stop this one card (its brethren are less obnoxious) but to stop tedious site removal Jammer cards as well.

Besides generic event cancel, not a lot to work with.  Dan Dammer, Jammer Slammer [Shadowfist!] can’t be affected, so there’s that and like some other ability on some character that’s applicable and not stupid.  But, the closest thing I found to messing with a card like this that wasn’t Hand or Monarchs cancel was … wait for it … a Jammers card.

Now, all central-thinking people are okay with Jammers as long as they don’t infect themselves with monkeys and don’t just Blow Things Up! (admittedly, I’ve been thinking of deck ideas using Blow Things Up!).  So, Stick it to The Man! is noble and pure and virtuous (not like Hood Virtuous but like non-icky virtuous).  And, yes, Stick it to The Man! capitalizes The and not it, at least in the DB, as The Man is … er … The Man.

All battleground sites, except whichever ones I don’t hate, are worthy of derision and need to be doused with Killing Rain.  But, this card so much agony.  Sure, Napalm Belcher needs to die a toast-y death, but this card would be so cool if it were a one cost, no text after Unique card.  Get it, cool.  This needs to go done in a blaze of glory.

Yet, Monarchs direct damage is very central-thinking.  Who doesn’t enjoy reloading a 2-fer?  Who doesn’t enjoy the exceeding awkwardness that is Chain Lightning?

Hatin’

I thought about trying to come up with a card in every faction I hated.  But, I’m all about love, peace, joy, and groupie love.  Outside of monkeys and Non-Feng Shui Sites, there’s hardly anything else … besides Edges.

I’ve put thought into what card I would want to represent meselfim in Shadowfist.  While lame, I was thinking two specials – when comes into play, cancel a chosen edge until it leaves play (I guess target could work, too, but chosen is more robust) and +2 damage to NFSSs.  The latter is easily modified to like “All characters you control gain +2 combat damage to NFSSs.” or whatever, though that’s getting kind of over the top and non stop when I was trying to come up with a weird and not very good character.

I did consider monkeymurder effects, but that didn’t fit my theme as I have a lot of other elements for this hypothetical card that matter more to me than monkeymutilation.

Reminder:  I don’t hate other people playing monkeys, apes, gorillas, et al.  I just must keep myself to mermaids and … uh … acrobats.

Lovin’

So, why dost my notions grasp for Shadows that Fist?  Because I can do a nigh infinite number of weird thematic builds.  VTES deckbuilding is rough for me because I’m so often just going to end up doing something I’ve essentially done.  Because I don’t really do decks based on flavor (well, sometimes flavor text matters to my building a deck).

With SF, the mechanics tend to be interchangeable enough that I can flavor focus without concern for building something unplayable … em … especially unplayable.

Acrobats deck = hard.  Three factions, double Dragon resources.  Need way to damage characters (admittedly, Brave Villagers is perfect for that) plus some way to make your Acrobats mighty beyond Stand Together.

I have it written out and some of the card choices make me giggle like a mad doctor.

Now, one thing the discussion on Discord tends to emphasize is that I play the game differently from the com-petitors.  Forget the house rules.  Just playing almost entirely four and five player games sets my play apart from the brutal three-way-fistings.

I do have ideas that don’t suck.  I am a Spike, after all.

Mel v Vorthos

So, am I a Vorthosian Spike, a Spiky Vorthos?

I don’t think so.  I think I appreciate both aesthetics.  I think there are two kinds of people in the world:  winners and losers.  Wait.  Phaserites and Lightsaberans.  Nope.  Oh, Aesthetes and Aaesthetes.  Or, whatever.

I don’t think that gets played up enough.  Some people just care what cards do in terms of how they affect results.  Central-thinking people care what cards are.

So, I can safely start calling myself Methos.  Yup, as that name isn’t used for anything else.  The original immor-al aesthete.

Shadowfist Content

Didn’t really get much into deck ideas or card uses.  For instance, Hand Uprising, Jammers Uprising, or Multifaction Uprising?  Suicide Tech.  Brews Lly, master of Dragon Fighter.dec.  The sound of one Elephant Gun mowing down monkeys.

Well, there’s always next week … [checks posting history] … month.