The Best of … 2022

What was 2022 like?

Gamingwise – I don’t really remember.

January

Virtual True Dungeon 7

Why call out this post?  I was prepared to skip January where I’m sure as time goes on there’s going to be fewer and fewer Best Of posts just because I post less than I used to.  In this case, rereading it, it’s long …  It shows how much more I cared about VTD years ago than I do now.  It isn’t just how many rounds of combat runs took.

February

More Legendary Ideas

I have more fleshed out ideas than usual that people could even steal.

March

Ill-Fitted Suit

Bunch of this isn’t actually that good, so why call this out?  I have important things to say here about what makes superhero play different.  I don’t know how much I say anymore that is different from what I’ve said before, but I think I got into quintessential elements of what differentiates the supers genre.

April

May

Mission Accomplishing

Most of this isn’t new.  Reason why I like this is that there’s real game philosophy on the role [sic] of dice.

VTD 11

It’s just a long description of playing something very few people care about, so why?  Difficult vs challenging.  Oh, and I did analysis other people don’t even if nobody cares.

KublaCon 2022

Lot to say.  Included images.  I’m thinking of going to KublaCon 2026.

June

PC Santa

Not a great post, but it’s an idea I need to think more about.

July

More Morals

It may have always been obvious, but it only became obvious to me when I wrote this.

August

Gen Con 2022

Should every Gen Con post make one of these lists?  Probably.  There’s just so much in the way of analysis in my reviews.

September

B.R.I.M.S.T.O.N.E.

Should I care about this RPG or should I not?  Why does it matter if I don’t know?  If I can bang out some basic mechanics in a couple of hours, should be possible to make something meaningful without a ton of effort.

[Past Blast] May Wheel of Time CCG Ideas

When I care enough, I can create some quality stuff.  Oh, I don’t know if the cards’ numbers are quality, I mean the tightness of the card text.

October

[Past Blast] Wheel of Time CCG Modules

Ah, Fall 2022, the month of WoT CCG stuff.  This is cute.

[Past Blast] Wheel of Time CCG “Current” Decks

Even with the broken image links, this is sexy.  Amazingly enough, in two-player CCGs, I understand much more the obsession with deck builds.

Lingering Wounds

At this point, any time I talk about something different, I’m vastly more impressed than I once would have been.

Gamehole Con 2022

I’d like to be able to just go every year.  With more effort, maybe I’ll be able to make that happen.

November

December

Run, Franco. Run.

Not really about gaming.  I do find it interesting how much more I care about sports than many a person I know.

So, 2022 was the year that game stuff recovered some from pandemic.  So much of recent years just merges together in my mind and I don’t specifically remember much of it.  I find it funny that WoT CCG stuff was at all of interest.

Well, 2025 is a year I hope to write about in 3 years.  Hopefully, things will be in a better place, then.

Distant Confines Expeditioning

Saturday was free of regular things.  As had nothing earlier in the day, got some present shopping done.  Birthday presents as four family members celebrated birthdays Sunday for being late year birthdays when everyone was in town.

Eventually, I headed over to DC for a gameevening.  With terrible traffic for a Saturday, I got there at 5:30PM rather than 5PM.

Food had already arrived as we ordered earlier in the day, but I just watched for a while as others set up the game.

Expeditions (Scythe)

So, people often think I’ve played more boardgames than I have.  Even though I played stuff in the Bay Area with my friend in Palo Alto pretty often before I moved, I actually pretty rarely play boardgames.  I knew nothing about this game, only knowing it used mechs and had stuff that was survivalistic by looking at what got put on the table.

I played Scarecrow with Matthew and the dog, Caesar?

I should have probably gotten a map token on first turn as I went first (of course), but I had exactly enough map tokens in this game to work with my special ability.  I thought workers would be important as they are in Eurogames, but I never once used my golden worker.

Evil mech came out and built up a huge stack of cards, where maybe I should have gone after it early on as I was pretty high in Guile/Power.  When I moved next to it to try to get enough Guile to do what I wanted, that’s the one turn it of course attacked and, of course, instead of costing me dollars that I didn’t have like the previous two cards, it sucked Guile from me, wasting an entire turn where all I netted was 1 Power on the turn.

I didn’t understand scoring, so I only did one quest the entire game.  I was told stars multiplied in some way, but I didn’t know it was only for quests.

Early on, largely because of vanquishing stuff I could vanquish, I got upgrade actions, so I quickly had two upgrades – the one that gives core value whenever gain meteorite or item card, then one that gives 1 Power if I get 2 Guile in a turn.  Not useless, but not remotely as important as doing quests.

Because of the upgraded item, I picked up meteorite cards, and they produced most of my points as I did four melds, triggering gain $1 per player three times.  I could have melded four and still had more quests to try to complete.

By the time I got my first star, the eventual winner already had 3.  He also beat on the evil mech to get enough corruption to get the star for 7+.

I never got close to 8 cards, as I got my upgrades early, then just didn’t care.  I did get 7 workers to do that star.  Seven corruption for that star, and, obviously, the four meteorites for that star.

Winner had 84 points.  Second – player who got fourth star first – scored 70.  I got 67.  Player to my right 65.  Player to my left less.

So, what did I think?

I was concerned because the theme doesn’t interest me at all, and the game looked like a lot of more thematic games I’ve ended up playing in terms of needing to understand a lot about cards.

It actually played pretty easily.  I had some really long turns as I thought about different possibilities, but that had something to do with lack of experience.  Without any real plan, I still did stuff okay.  Maybe I got lucky to score so many points off of melds.  But, the play felt fine.  I didn’t feel screwed by lack of options or by other players being too much in spots I wanted to move to, though player to my right researching one turn late in the game did screw me as he would have, otherwise, been forced to move, opening up a spot I was planning on moving to as I did three sexy actions.

I didn’t hate endgame scoring.  I could largely ignore the other players, though main reason I probably should have punked evil was to prevent winner from getting his corruption.

I think it’s the sort of game that one more play would make sense to see if I play better to what matters.  It doesn’t feel like it has depth I care about to play much more than that by choice.  But, then, I rarely choose to play any boardgame, so whatever.

Would a different theme interest me more?  Perhaps, but unlikely.  Like, let’s say it was fantasy with art I liked and we had cool creature minis.  I’d be more engaged with the game on an aesthetic level, but the gameplay doesn’t appeal to me that strongly.  Without some expansion, feels like it would feel pretty similar every play.

As for food, we got stuff from a Korean place.  Also can see in that picture Christmas cookies where I ate a fair number.  I also finally had Malört.  Finally?  It gets talked about all of the time in the True Dungeon community as so many of those players are from Chicago.  I could have tried at one convention I was at and missed other conventions when it was available.  It was … clingy.  Kind of medicinal.  Reminded me a bit of certain wines.  Does what I think of it matter?  Only alcoholic drinks I ever have any interest in trying are ones that sound exotic to give my opinions as someone who doesn’t like alcohol.  So, yup, even less relevant than how I feel about other drinks or food.

After 10PM, traffic was still heavy.  Now, I get that there’s Christmas shopping to do this time of year and there are events going on like shows, but I used to try to be asleep around 10PM.  Admittedly, that was in the Pacific Time Zone.  It’s hard to get to sleep that early in the “why is sports on so late?” time zone.

Thanks to host and fellow players.  My main in person gaming is with the old DC Methuselahs.  Besides hanging with buds and getting chewed on by a kitten, it’s just a good thing for me to do in person gaming, do in person any sort of activity outside the house.

Ohio Birthday Tournaments

Nice boring post title.  Sorry about no game-related pictures.  I didn’t even think about it, showing how out of the groove I am.

So, my life in Virginia is not ideal.  But, for a variety of things, travel is vastly easier.  To go to Ohio (or Indy) from South Bay meant getting some early morning flight out of SJC and connecting somewhere to spend all day traveling as arrive +3 hours for time zone change.  Flying to CMH from NoVA means getting to Dulles to take one hour wheels up flight time.

Apparently, I’m just about 300 miles from Columbus area, now.

Sure, flying to Hawai’i is rather different and not going to be making multiple trips a year like I was.

So, my friends near Columbus are ludicrously generous and hosted me and picked me up and dropped me off at airport (while working) and lent me one of their vehicles to drive through snow emergencies and ordered us food and …  All I do is pay attention to their four dogs and babble about Dominions 6 and food.

Nominally, I made the trip to play in Loughman’s Birthday Tournament and Tommaso’s Birthday Tournament.  If weather or whatever had prevented my attendance, I would have been fine just having a weekend hanging out with my friends.  Maybe get more present ordering done.

I flew out Friday midday.  Midday!  No getting up at 3-4AM to take 6AM flight.  My stepmother took me to Dulles.  I took 3 decks with me.  Two too many to matter.  I mostly managed to travel light, though I had to take a laptop to get my Dominions 6 turns in over the weekend.

I get picked up and basically just chill the rest of the day as had nothing I needed to do, other than tentionate the dogs.  Did work on Dominions 6 turn, where maybe I had to submit or maybe was waiting for others to finish turn.

We got burgers from place apparently not tried before.  Fries were packaged poorly as is typical for restaurants, so they got weird as almost all fries gotten to go get, though less soggy and more placticy.  Burger was superdense, which I did not expect.  I was hungry as had no meal prior to dinner.

Slept better than I usually do, possibly because I was still very tired even not getting up at 3-4AM to finish packing.

Snow storm was supposed to arrive starting 1PM.  Tournament started at 12PM.  So, off to the library where I shall go, to get my smoothie before the snow.  Took longer to navigate the library than I’m used to as didn’t think about how this was a weekend where I so often go to the library on weekdays during Origins and early on weekends.  But, the drive to Newark didn’t take that long so I got to store at just about perfect time of close to 11:45AM.  Mixed berry smoothie – my usual.  I noticed they had pistachio white mocha something, where might have been able to get frozen pistachio white mocha, so my plan was to get a strawberry banana smoothie and pistachio white mocha something next library trip.

I had already decided to play Angelique Transfusion, as by far the most interesting of the three decks I had with me.  It was slightly modified from Origins version.

That was torturous.  Modifying any of my decks.  I couldn’t be bothered to build a deck, by which I mean, of course, pull the cards to make a physical deck.  I wrote out like 3 new decks on VDB and had zero interest in actually constructing them.

I’ve completely lost interest in building tournament decks.

Why?

I think it’s a confluence of reasons.  No, really, confluence makes some sense in this case as opposed to a less pretentious word like variety.  The reasons merge and influence each other.

A significant reason, methinks, is that like 90% of my VTES play is tournament play.  I don’t mean 90% of the going somewhere to play is for tournaments.  I mean that like 90% of my games are actual tournament rounds.  I’ve played some games locally as I know the old DC crowd, but, when I have gone to Gulf Coast Roast events or when I’ve gone to Origins or whatever, I end up playing very few pickup games.

If I played casually with a group that built new decks, I’d probably just throw some stuff together and try some things out.  Why not just do that in tournaments?  Because I have various criteria for tournament decks, criterion that fight against each other.  It’s just exhausting to try to make a tournament deck that is different from the 1000 other decks I’ve played in my life, that try to effectively use cards not in TWDA, that aren’t complete crap, and that meta against stuff I want to see lose.  In casual play, I’d be fine playing Malk94 or Gangrel or whatever, so I’d certainly be fine putting together some of the ideas I get that don’t meet my criteria for an ICL tournament deck.

Now, I’m okay borrowing decks for tournaments.  After all, I still enjoy playing the game.  In fact, I generally enjoy my tournament games more than my casual games in recent years.

Loughman’s Birthday Part 1: The Eldest Command Undeath

3(!!)+F, 16 players

Rd1

Karl (Path of Power) -> Doug (Anarch Brujah) -> Ian (Angelique Transfusion) -> Dave (Path of Cathari)

Karl started Power-fully.  Only when Theo Bell showed up and started rushing backwards did his game become an effort.  Dave just kept doing what the precon does, which was reasonably effective as Karl eventually got down to 2 pool.  I got out Angelique, Khurshid, and Mordechai slowly, so slowly.  I played The Barrens at beginning of game and only used it once before Karl nuked it.  Used it to discard Threading the Path of Orpheus, which is, of course, the main use of The Barrens.

Karl didn’t try to backoust as he didn’t think endgame was favorable for him.  I had a Baleful Doll on Khurshid, having chosen only prey’s vampire with AUS, but didn’t burn the blood from my prey, which was likely a mistake.  I had Inevitability of the Void in my hand with my prey at 3 pool and Khurshid also having Vengeful Spirit.  I somehow failed to oust my prey.  I also failed to draw in like first third of deck a single wake effect.  So, when Karl decided to nuke the table with Ancilla Empowerment, the table got nuked after I sucked various bounced bleeds because high caps with permacept and AUS can’t possibly defend against bleeds.

Arguably, I’ve now become a bad player in addition to a deck construction goofball.

Rd2

Mark (OBL Lasombra vote/bleed) -> Ian -> Jay (Merged Dancin’ Dana) -> Mike (SaNewBri)

I never took a forward action.  For second straight game, never drew a wake.  Mark just walked through me with my only bouncing like one bleed and not having enough intercept to catch votes.  Mike did put a lot of pool pressure on Mark before Mark swept.

Not my worst game of the weekend but certainly discouraging.  I don’t even want to play 90 card decks, but, once you intentionally put jank in a deck, it’s hard to keep them tight.  I did count number of possible wakes.  Was lower than I expected.  Since I didn’t take out any wakes when tweaking deck, not sure what I was thinking with original config.  Now, original config had fewer actions, so I can understand how it had slightly better card flow, but, still, I only counted 8 wakes, which is absurdly low for one of my AUSy toolbox decks.

Rd3

Jaime (unnamed Striga) -> Albert (Anarch Gangrel) -> Eric (Valkyrie) -> Elan (Luca Italicus) -> Ian

Jay dropped as he didn’t realize 3+F as that’s so rare in US, so we went to 5 player tables.

I drew a wake, even more than one.  I should have won this game given the endgame situation, but I wasted too much time because I’ve become tiny little fishie.  Like, I spent time counting Albert’s ash heap while in the middle of bleeding him for 7, which was last action of game, when I had two more Inevitability of the Void in hand and he had 7 or less pool left after my action.  I could have just done that on someone else’s turn earlier in the game.  Not like I didn’t know time was running out.

Earlier, I milled Jaime’s first Striga, so he didn’t get much Strigaction going in the game until it was too late.  I did Baleful Doll and Lazarene Inquisitor The unnamed to zero blood to keep his deck from going off.  Eric was doing well until Brunhilde got diablerized and his Valkyrie couldn’t do anything to me.  Elan just got ousted by Club Illusion bleeds.  I had plenty of time to do stuff like Ghost-Eater to get 4 blood and discard Threading the Path of Orpheus before Elan Famed Angelique (which never triggered).

So, my deck did what it was supposed to do, and I didn’t make as many atrocious decisions, but I still didn’t win because of poor play.

It was fun, overall.  My not making final tables is actually fairly desirable.  Since so many of my tournaments are in Columbus area, I have people and dogs to hang out with at night.  I never look forward to spending another 2 hours at a tournament when I have a drive back to the house.  In this particular case, add in level 2 snow emergencies when ole Ian spent nearly his entire life in a region of the world where it doesn’t snow.

My drive back was not remotely the scariest drive I’ve ever done, but I’m driving a giant SUV I don’t own on partially or unploughed roads with limited understanding of the route I’m taking to get back to the house.  I was pleased during the stretch where I got to drive behind a big truck as I’d rather be behind professional driver who will leave lots of braking distance whose vehicle can help compact snow than behind the unpredictables who were also out on the road.

Got to talk to folks, including Jay before he left.  Only Karl knew I was showing up, as I had some stuff to pick up from him.  Ate plenty of the stuff Mike and others got.  Banana bread was quite good.  Pizza was satisfying.  Game store has Barq’s (Root Beer), so that’s a plus.  I picked up some caps crocheted to make money for cancer patients and a crocheted octopus that I’m inclined to give my oldest nephew as a Christmas present.

I found out that Will Dominated the tournament the next day.

Hosts picked up pizza due to the snow emergencies, so I had a bit of pizza back at the house, too.

Sunday, I still didn’t need to get up early for anything.  I had a new Dominions 6 turn to take, I think.  I did at least two turns on the trip.  I had talked to Eric about borrowing a deck from him for Sunday tournament, but I went with plan I already had in mind of playing Lasombra precon.  Minus two cards, of course, because only supervillains play libraries that aren’t 60, 65, 70, 75, 80, or 90 cards.  I dropped Hunting Ground, which would make more sense if the deck wasn’t precon-typical master shy, and one of the Expulsions.  While I don’t like how the deck relies on Second Traditions for wakes, as that makes little sense with bounce in a deck where you don’t want to fight, cutdown precon play in tournaments does meet enough of my criteria for an acceptable tournament deck.  Actually, borrowing someone’s deck meets the special exemption rule for acceptable tournament decks, so I just should borrow decks all of the time at this point.

Snow emergency level was down to 1 in Delaware and Franklin Counties, with level 2 in Licking still, but the expectation was that it would drop to level 1 there.  I left like 15 minutes later than I planned.  So, because I didn’t know how fast I’d be driving to Newark, I decided to bypass the library.

Not wise.  I arrived at game store more than an hour early, so I ended up going to Texas Roadhouse since the only place I know of with clearly better burgers is state of New Mexico where all food is superior (admittedly, Texas Roadhouse in Bay Area does burgers better than TRs I’ve gone to in other states).  Got my standard order of bacon cheeseburger medium rare with house salad instead of fries with ranch dressing and raspberry lemonade.  I ate all of the rolls with cinnamon butter and did the “not drowning my body in lemonade” of only two glasses of lemonade.  So, absurd amount of calories for this aged and decrepit body.

Tommaso Sforza’s Birthday

2+F, 16 players

Rd1

Matt (Anarch AUS/FOR/POT) -> Ian (Las Precon) -> Brad (Brujah OR) -> Arthur (SaNewBri fighty)

I did 3 pool damage to my prey, a Govern bleed with The Sleeping Mind to take the Edge and to cycle cards.  I brought out Yewon and Maria.  Yewon had lost a blood somehow, so I hunted and Brad had to think before my getting back to 8 blood.  Later, I rescued Yewon and she hunted at 5 stealth only to get blocked.  I did call a KRC – my only political action of the game – before I died, but it got blocked, so I didn’t have any opportunity to decide whether to try to deal more than 3 pool damage in the game.

Brad wondered why I didn’t block the rush on my Famed vampire, only unlocked vampire, when I was at 3 pool.  Precon has no real wakes.  Wasn’t like I cared about the game, anyway.

Rd2

Doug (Nos Precon) -> Mike (Aggressive Corpse Museum) -> Ian -> Eric (Hecata Ally)

Somehow, Eric only brought out one ally, and it got punched by Roundhouse.  I actually ousted Eric with votes as the two ally decks thought it was fine for Smiling Jack to get to 4.  Doug was down to 2 pool where Eric managed not to oust him somehow.  Mike was down to around 1-2 pool, with Doug not trying that hard to oust him, which made sense when I had 3 functional vampires and didn’t make sense when I had 1.

I didn’t much enjoy this game, either.  I might enjoy Void Inevitability, but I actually quite hate inevitability in CCGs.  It’s why I dislike permanents generally and especially permanents-based decks.  Sure, I did have a turn of Puppet Mastering predator’s Tommaso to Govern bleed with The Sleeping Mind with him only to encounter the only Protected District Doug played all game.  And, I got two turns of nobody being able to rush through my Shadow Cloak.  And, I twice got to discard Villains when they were my only masters in hand.

I did finally get to play with the new Lasombra as I’m pretty sure I’ve never played with them before, and I did CIF for the first time in a tournament, but it was completely underwhelming to just play same old, same old.  If I had played Banu, I might have gotten off a couple Orgy of Blood, which would have been entertaining.

I don’t know who won, as I left to try to make the library.  Which was something I was hoping for, but I didn’t get ousted fast enough in round 2 to leave earlier.  According to navigation, I would get to library at 5:01PM.  Library closes at 5PM on Sunday.  I didn’t gain any time driving back towards Columbus, so I gave up and went back to the house sans smoothie and pistachio white mocha something.

We got ramen for dinner.  Their first option was something like red dragon ramen that was advertised as spicy.  Spiciness options were 0, .5, 1, 2, 3, 4.  Because I make horrible life decisions, I thought 3 would make sense.

It didn’t.

Took me more than 3 hours to finish my ramen.  No longer burning my mouth, it ravaged my system.

Monday, no library as I got dropped off at airport.  I didn’t deserve best smoothies in world due to poor life choices.  No library smoothie for Ian until Origins next year.  And, pistachio white mocha was flavor of the month, probably not going to have desirable flavor of the month in June.

Brother picked me up at Dulles.  Had pistachios for dinnery snack.

Huge thanks to my hosts who are so kind to Ian and our mutual friends.  Thanks to Mike for getting pizza, Alex and Mark for organizing tournaments.  I like that store, and it’s way, way bigger than I thought it was.  It was nice to see people.  While tiring, nice to hang with doggie friends.

I only had one smoothie, but I also didn’t wreck friend’s vehicle in snow emergency, and it’s novel for this guy to be pelted with snow from sky as that’s not actual thing in the Bay Area (or Hawai’i or even that common in DMV).

Next tournaments for me should be in SoCal, where I need to see if I can find an unopened Ravnos precon …