Fangs and Farflung

Such a bad title.

Anyway, I’m going to local game store weekly for VTES.  So, why haven’t I written about our games?

Well, few reasons.  One reason is that some of the games have been three-players.  More important, methinks, is that some of the players are inexperienced.

I’ve always adjusted my decks based on metagame of groups I’ve played with.  For some groups, it’s slowing decks down as it’s not terribly interesting to … pretty much anyone to get ousted quickly or lose all of their minions or whatever.

I did play my Recruitment Exercise deck in one game just to play it since it was built, and it was tedious.  I’ve played modified precons.  I played Brujah precon.

Some of the more memorable things are just misplays, so it’s just not that compelling to write about.

Then, twice now, we’ve ended up not playing VTES at all as only two of us showed up.  We played Traveller.

We had a two-hour learning game of a precon against one of my old constructed decks that was a quirky build.  The precon won easily.  It shouldn’t have been that easy.  Maybe I’m bad at deckbuilding.  Maybe that deck is trash.  Maybe getting the best possible crew draw on round one out of a precon is actually kind of good.  I could keep murdering his crew with what I had on the board.  He got stuck more rounds than I.  He was essentially bankrupt when I got to 20 VPs.

We played this week.  I brought what I would consider tournament decks.  You know, if Traveller had tournaments.  Gazelle Piracy versus Subsidized Merchant Sleaze.

I had him run Gazelle in first game.  We both got off to terrible starts.  He Gorbashed my Voypa to prevent me from gaining 3 more VPs (and Replenishing) on round one.  I have a tendency to overbuy stuff, so I probably put too much stuff in play.  While I limped towards more VPs, he hit me a couple of times with sad pirate actions, then finally got a Missile Barbette in play to blow me up.

We switched decks.  Both decks had much more normal starts, but his permanents didn’t match the contracts that well, so he only gained 4 VPs on round one and 4 VPs on round two.  He would have been able to gain 13 VPs on round three, but I bankrupted him.  Did 13 damage on round two and just finished off on round three, where he would have come up one VP short of 20 even if he didn’t bankrupt due to Subsidized Merchant disad.

Maybe piracy is broken.  It always feels broken, even if it doesn’t win, as it’s just very griefy and noninteractive.  Maybe, even with every card worth money, we should have sideboards in tournaments, though two out of three matchups would take way too long.  Maybe my decks don’t meta enough against piracy, as this deck had only one RVD Superdense Armor and wasted slots on Search and Seizure, which doesn’t do anything against Gazelle Missile Madness.

I’m thinking I need to run 3x RVD Superdense Armor plus 3x Llaegzko’s “Surplus” Outlets to power them out in first two rounds.  Need more than one in play at same time.

Oh, the irony.  Before pandemic, I was showing up weekly at Game Kastle Fremont to show Traveller and often had no one to play with.  Now, I’m playing more of my CCG while making no effort to do so other than bringing decks to different Game Kastle to establish a weekly VTES presence.

I have unplayed VTES decks.  I guess I should do some Traveller deckbuilding in case it continues to be a fallback option.

I should note that VTES deckbuilding using just V5 cards is rather unexciting in many ways – I’m just playing same library cards I’ve always played and using same disciplines that have been around since Jyhad.

Well, here’s a post about CCG play.  Weird, eh?