Post Holidays

So, my holidays trip ended weeks ago, yet still haven’t posted anything.

Well, here’s a thing.

Prior to trip, got a three-player VTES game in.  Just usual Jackal play when prey has Ministry and other player has Banu Haqim.

Then, Badger gets busier.  Without much offense, only got 2 VPs.

Part of the trip was wedding and bachelor’s party all less than a week after Christmas.  Busy time for folks.

Brother’s brother-in-law won first two (real) hands as we played through East while Big Trouble in Little China was being watched by others at the Air BnB.  He may have played before, he may not have.  Both hands were fairly valuable, so when we quit, he would have been still like a 1000 points up with my being around even.

The primary activity for the bachelor’s party was riding roller coasters.  Only four of the nine roller coasters were in operation, and we only had time to do each once.  My takeaway was that the order mattered.  We did from most dramatic to least.  That’s not how to tell a narrative.  Felt anticlimactic.  We tried to do first one a second time but were probably 10 minutes too late as we got to the park very late as there was terrible traffic.

The relevance to gaming is obvious.  Should be some element of building to a climax.  Maybe there’s a different takeaway.  I hadn’t been on a roller coaster in so long I couldn’t think of one since riding the mini one in the Oriental Pearl Tower in Shanghai.  I didn’t know what to expect both in general and in terms of advancements.  Oldening has also affected what affects me most.  What changes with knowing what to expect or not?  I’m not sure.  This post isn’t terribly profound, it’s more here’s what I’ve been up to for the last month.

I didn’t get to play VTES during the trip as the organizer for local play was traveling himself for the holidays.

There are always cases of ideas being generated when out of usual environs, but I didn’t really think of anything profound.

I did play Iron Empire while traveling.  We are still at Winter Court.  Mostly going through events.  Since returning, played more sessions and had a side adventure where there was even combat!  Of the three PCs, only my courtier took any damage, and I was in significant wound penalties and got left behind to hide in the muck.  Ah, the true power of playing low Honor character.  Survival before Honor!

When the Denver CRUSH group got together after the holidays, half the players lacked enthusiasm for continuing and our planned conversion to Mutants & Masterminds 3e from Aberrant seemed like it might not happen.  But, looks like we are going to go forward.  I had my first experience with M&M3e in a playtest session.  Our one combat scene took a very long time.  Apparently not just lack of familiarity with the mechanics on the part of myself and our GM (who was playing).  There are obvious benefits to dumping Aberrant as Aberrant isn’t intended for four color comicbook style stories.  It’s early, so maybe the system will feel less grindy when we play more.  But, I do think that rolling the same type of die over and over again feels more grindy than rolling different dice.

I can’t think of much else.  The subject line doesn’t even refer to the activity in past month but rather my situation currently with having the energy to look back.  I do feel that I missed many opportunities to post more, where this blog isn’t putting out much content.

Well, next post is obvious, but I don’t really have a plan for what after that.  We have a Shadowfist play day coming up in February, so something involving CCGs but probably going to be more RPG stuff with maybe some boardgames.  Then, I have a badge for DunDraCon – I have no sense as to what I’m going to end up doing.

Alphaing

Friday night, I got together with my friend I play boardgames with.  I took over an insane amount of Solomon Kane stuff only to not have gotten the box with the core game in it, as I didn’t know what was in the mailed boxes (in that I didn’t believe the labels), and I didn’t think there was yet another box of components.

So, we ended up playing Darkest Night.

It was a weird mix of expansion stuff and not expansion stuff.  We chose roles recommended by someone, so I ran knight and scout and he ran crusader and rogue.

It was too easy.  Knight was never seriously threatened by anything.  Once scout got Trailblazer, just yanked people over to me.  Necromancer conveniently in our space with no blights, and crusader got three 7’s on like seven dice.

Much like Dungeon Alliance, there are elements here that appeal to us (we both like fantasy), but it just comes across as nothing special.  Sure, we didn’t have quests and whatever that are supposed to make it more compelling.  But, you know what’s compelling as is?  Gloomhaven.  I’d probably rather play HeroQuest, as old school as it is.

Saturday, I visited friends.  I had five things I needed to keep in mind for the trip, two of which didn’t have to do with gaming.

So, of course, we played three-player mahjong – my family’s style, where Andy and Eric had played a little American Mahjong with their aunt.  Pictured is Andy’s winning hand in the very first hand.  This was worth 1600 points the way we count – 30 base, 20 in melds/flowers, five fans.  Andy won another hand later that was a nice solid two fans for 160 and pointed out that was only one tenth of this win.

We played through East, then ate lunch.

After lunch, we did something different.

My first ever play of Alpha Strike.  They had only played like a couple other times, so we threw together a scenario and Andy and I each played three mechs on one side against Eric’s painted force.  The end result was somewhat baffling, but my interest was in just learning what Alpha Strike is about.

I’m not clear how I feel about the game after one play, but, in a weirdly not weird way, Alpha Strike seemed to deliver exactly what I expected it to be like in comparion to CBT.  It loses flavor, plays vastly less awkwardly, allows for greater scale of play.  What was notable was how similar it felt to CBT in some ways.  I hate initiative in CBT, but, then, I’m not a miniatures player, so that could just be the nature of such play.  I hate rolling 2d6 for resolution – it’s the “Risk” frustration that don’t get expected results when it really matters.

I’m entirely fine with us trying some campaign play with pilot abilities and formations and coherent scenarios.  I’m not super motivated to go to the effort I did with CBT scenarios, but, then, I may not have to do that much work.

The other reason for bringing BattleTech stuff was that I had made precisely zero use of my Clan Invasion Kickstarter stuff other than the t-shirt, and they had interest in some of the stuff, so I just sold off a third or so of the mechs.  There’s a reason I don’t back Kickstarters anymore – I don’t even bother opening up what I get.

I’m a huge fan of the theme of BT as established in TR: 3025 with some interest in eras close to that.  But, I don’t care about the novels, a bunch of the other canon, and think the game doesn’t play nearly as well as I want it to.  CBT is clunky as hell.  It’s slow.  It has all sorts of weapon balance problems.

So, BT has a huge problem.  What’s more interesting than anything else is modifying mechs.  Except, once you modify a mech, it loses any personality as all player designs will converge on min/maxing.  So many weapon systems are just insane to use in most scenarios.  Every mech should have CASE.  Every 3025 autocannon should just be LB-10x (with standard ammo).  Missile systems are goofy when optimizing.  I started using a lot of canonical variants for classic mechs when I played with Gary to avoid just making optimized designs.  But, then, the classic designs we want to play of so many mechs are just walking bombs that want to dump ammo after first couple rounds.

Can Alpha Strike sell me on being able to do larger scale fights with no hexes and eliminating so many of the excruciating aspects of CBT, like asymmetric LOS, what piloting rolls are needed for all sorts of stuff, and massive damage variance but losing all of the personality of specific mech designs?

Note that we used the roll each point of damage rule to reduce swinginess.

I was running Viper Prime, Hellbringer Prime, and Battle Cobra Prime.  I set up the Battle Cobra in a centralized spot with good sight lines, and it did its job.  Viper did what it was supposed to do.  Hellbringer just sucked at hurting enemies, even when I overheated, but, then, that was because rolling d6’s for resolution just tends to suck.  Our side spread out too much, but we may have been in the winning position when we called it.  We kept trying to play around a Piranha.

It’s not like my BT play historically has been bad.  It’s just not living the dream of piloting a pilot of a particular mech to glory.  Now, my Mechwarrior play has not been good, so I have little interest in trying again when the real PCs are mechs rather than humans.  Of course, I’ve played so little miniatures play that maybe miniatures anything isn’t really my thing.  It’s just sad that I compare BT to Dragon Dice in my liking the idea of the game better than the play of it.

We had dinner.  I eventually crashed, as my allergies were bothering me all day, and I had to take diphenhydramine HCL.  I drove home the next morning.

Thanks to my friends for hosting, helping with some stuff, feeding me, and letting me sleep overnight.

Sunday, we didn’t play Denver CRUSH, but it looks strongly like we are finally switching from the terrible Aberrant system to using a real supers system – Mutants & Masterminds 3e.  While only one of the group knows M&M, the chargen concepts are extremely similar to Champions, that two of us know (to different degrees).  I don’t see any issue with porting characters.  What’s going to change a lot is combat.  For one thing, I won’t have one attack that never does anything and another attack that can easily kill anyone.  I may lose force field as I no longer have to be constantly concerned with accidentally dying in combat to anything that isn’t just rolling 1d10 of damage.

New TACtics

I visited family for Christmas.  Let’s keep this gamey.

My brother who flew in from Germany on the same day I flew in got me TAC as part of the “siblings” Secret Santa scheme to lower the ridiculous volume of presents that occurs when there are six siblings plus in-laws plus others.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/17991/tac

We played it once.  My team came out behind, then got a vastly more powerful position.  I didn’t Devil when I should have, putting other team back in game, before sealing the victory.  We didn’t do everything right given that my set is in German … almost like my brother had a reason to get TAC while in the Munich hood, but we probably came close.

Why didn’t we play more than once?

Before getting to that, I played pickleball for the first time.  Didn’t play a lot, less than two hours, outside.  My question about drops got answered when got a clearer idea how the rules actually worked.  Not gaming, but it fits newness.  I don’t feel a great need to compare and contrast pickleball with other racket sports I’ve done to draw analogies with similar games playing similarly or not at this time.

Didn’t play more TAC for couple reasons.  First, nobody is particularly assertive about doing things, so we spend time doing things like watching movies I don’t care anything about.  Speaking of movies, I did watch several on a rest day, including two I had never seen before – A Chinese Ghost Story and Ip Man.

But, the main reason was that the main activity other than looking after my nephews was mahjong.

We start with 5000 points in chips.  Christmas Eve, we play an entire set of winds.  I do reasonably well, then get a hand that starts with six flowers.  Recall that we do old style scoring with side scoring.

I was East (not double East).  I was not calling East Wind, so in many variants this would have all been meaningless.  Instead, I get a couple thousand in side scoring.

I’m up 3440 points at a break point.  After the break, I think I win the first three hands.  But, some big hands are won by others, including an 1120 hand, so I end up up 2540.

We play more mahjong night of the 27th, and I can’t win a single hand in my original seat.  Since we aren’t playing for money and people are coming in and out, I do win a single hand after moving to another seat.  We don’t finish a set of winds.

I did get game stuff for my nephews.  Simple jigsaw for the not yet 3 year-old.  Animal magnet puzzle thing for twins that aren’t yet 6 months.  I got my father mahjong butter knives since I don’t know what to get people as I’m not into gifts.  Did ScrabbleGrams as is my wont when I have a Washington Post available.  For some reason, it was easier than it usually is.  Since my mind must be deteriorating, I’ll call it small sample size.  Lot of crossword action was going on, but I don’t like crosswords, so I was rarely involved.  My brother who got me TAC got Terraforming Mars (hardcopy) for Christmas, but we didn’t try.  I’ve only ever played electronically, and we barely got a game of TAC in.

With trips to China no longer a thing, this once a year visiting is pretty much it for playing mahjong.  I can live with the memories.  I gave some personal views of my grandparents’ generation as I knew them much better than my siblings.

Hmmm … all of the True Dungeon tokens I was expecting to arrive either got to me before the trip or arrived at my father’s, including one trade that arrived the night before I flew back.  I didn’t take a deck of cards to play solitaire or a puzzle book for the plane rides.  I read three mysteries of my mother’s.

First time reading about Travis McGee, Dress Her in Indigo.  Just seemed weirdly macho, sort of like James Bond without any of the cool features of Bond.  First time reading an Amanda Cross book, with her literary heroine Kate Fansler.  No Word From Winifred.  Weird ending for one of the supporting protagonists.  Murder at Teatime by Stefanie Matteson.  Also first time.  Way too much description at the very beginning where fortunately sped up but still seemed to drag to a conclusion.

What did they have in common?  And, why does this have to do with gaming?  For the second, whatever, I’m feeling too lazy to say the same things I usually say.

As for what they have in common, I … think a couple things.  One, perfect supporting characters.  Meyer.  Kate’s husband.  Charlotte’s friend.  They do no wrong.  Meyer is sort of interesting in that it’s mysterious as to why he hangs out with Travis (not in this book but in general), but I guess could learn that from another book in the 21 book series.  The female protagonists’ male helpers are just inconsequential as characters.

Two, all three mysteries drag in the mystery department.  Lots of time is spent not accomplishing progress.  In every case, felt like there should be more urgency, though Travis at least had infinite funds to just bang hot women in Mexico for as long as he felt like it.

I didn’t particularly care for any of the main characters.  They all seemed like “characters”.  Kate constantly drinking and being pretentious.  Charlotte being the famed actress.  Travis being some weird private, unofficial detective who is superathletic.  It all felt forced.  Charlotte is kind of like Murder, She Wrote’s Jessica Fletcher, where I have no problem with Jessica Fletcher (but haven’t watched much in a long time).  Admittedly, I don’t read a lot of mysteries.  I’m actually more used to mysteries on TV, where Thomas Magnum was fine, Rockford was fine (when I watched long, long ago), Perry Mason was enjoyable.  Huh.  I guess I’m not anti-mysteries – I just watched them rather than read them.

How … um … novel [bang bang].

So, I’m not compelled to write fiction.  I’m actually not compelled to write at all, I’m just like the most fascinating writer in all of human history and make up the most geniusy words ever.  My chances of being a fantasy novel writer are rather low because I just want to publish 1+ (good) books for the life achievement, not turn my interest in crafting stories into a job.  Yet, I’m unimpressed.  I guess I’m unimpressed with a lot of stuff I read that’s more modern.  Wait, those books weren’t remotely modern.  One was from 1969, where not only the racism and sexism wouldn’t fly now but where the prices of things and population of Mexico were amusing to me.  The Spellsinger dialogue isn’t as sharp as I may have thought when younger, but I still find some of the stuff I read first as a child being vastly more appealing.

Sure, I would get exceedingly frustrated figuring out how much description to use.  I’d even have to think about first person or third person.  I’d have to do so much … work … to craft an entire novel.  Even short stories would just be work.

Speaking of work, got way off on a tangent.  Hard to think of other gamey things from my trip.  Oh, I read bridge columns when I have newspapers to peruse.  I didn’t do any sudoku, as sudoku just feels played out.

The Best Of … 2016

2019 hasn’t been all bad, but it has not been a particularly good year.  2016, on the other hand, wasn’t all good but was one of my favorite years with my brother’s wedding and seeing an old friend for the first time in a long time.

Blogwise, 2016 was clearly better.  L5R 4e was much more relevant back then, and I was still producing analysis of it that might have been useful to people.  I played far more V:TES back then.  Historically, two of my largest audiences have been people looking for L5R RPG and V:TES content.

January

My first post of 2016 was a V:TES tournament report.  But, it’s the other post of January … also V:TES … that was probably more interesting just from a history of V:TES standpoint.

InQuest-ionable

LSJ and I didn’t converse a lot.  An actual conversation wouldn’t have likely been as coherent as this.  Ah, InQuest – not the best thing ever, but it suited my tastes quite a bit.

February

Draw, Lose, Win

I have a propensity towards redundancy in thought, it’s part of the issue with not having more things to respond to and staying within the familiar grounds of what I play or think about playing.

What stands out about this post is that I dig a bit deeper into why different CCGs appeal to me more than others in a way that may have some relevance to others.

Cardflopping Like It’s 1999 isn’t terribly interesting, but it reminds me that I need to pull out the Wheel of Time Aes Sedai playtest slips of paper I hope I still have and write about WoT like it’s the 20th Century.

March

Fisticuffs – Abysmal Li

Why play CCGs?  Because:  Mess with the red and you end up shed.

The Ceaseless Struggle

It’s just the nature of the times to talk about how to change V:TES.  Note the amazingly awesomest variant format proposals I make.

The Story of O … -tomo Junhime and Usagi Kidai

Who says romance is dead?  Oh, wait, this campaign ended a long time ago.  On the other hand, I still think about these characters.

Why play RPGs?  Because:  Junhime gets some assistance from Kidai on murdering geese, she bags two.

Your Better Third

The previous is worthy because it provides an example of something.  Here is a bit more in depth on the theory.

May

Well Suit-ed

Why play mahjong?  Because:  You like games somewhere between bridge and Eurogames.

Shanghai Salon

Travel and play games.  With pictures!

Favorite VTES Sets

I say something nice!

Despised VTES Sets

I rant!

Hot Hawk

How many people explain how to build/advance L5R 4e characters with numbers?  This guy.

Deck Stats 2, The Stattier

This is a perfect example of the benefits of having a blog.  I can self indulgentize while being more entertaining than one can possibly imagine.

KublaCon 2016

Why was I so postriffic in May of 2016?  Because of lack in April, I’m sure.

Back when I did stuff at local cons.  Finally, champion of the fifth largest economy in the world in Modern play.

June

Introducing L5R

So, you want to run L5R 4e for people unfamiliar with L5R?  Well, this will give a little idea what it’s like.

July

Shadowfist Draft Decks

What is Shadowfist drafting like?  Maybe something like this.  So much data.

Name “That” Game

Who doesn’t love Nezumi?  Who doesn’t love Naga?  Who doesn’t love the Fearsome Biter Tribe?

VCG Salute

Alternatively, can people stop complaining about the VCG model?  If you don’t like random packs, go to eBay or buy off of other players.  It’s really not that hard.

August

Gen Con 2016

What happens when there isn’t any HoR to play at Gen Con?  Here’s an example of what I do.

September

Dungeon Lies

Something I get frustrated by is how forumites will speak for players that they don’t seem to understand.  The casual player has no idea what’s going on with the economy to make any sort of decisions about ultrarares, transmuting, etc.

October

The Draw

Very similar in philosophy to Draw, Lose, Win.  Why bother calling this out?  Because I’m being positive – that’s so rare.

True Dungeon – Ultrarares 2016

Images!  Gaming analysis by someone only learning what’s what!

December

Sing Or Singe

This time of year tends to produce more personal posts.  Also posts that are nostalgic or look forward.  Weird seasonal feature.  This post is long, therefore it has to be good.

As an update, Harry is building new schools in Somaliland.  If you want to help, let me know.

There was a lot going on in 2016, for me.  Gaming and nongaming.  It wasn’t just writing about games people are interested in.  It was a good year for writing, even if a lot of things weren’t as original as when I originally said them.  I definitely miss certain things from 2016.

Let’s hope 2020 is better than 2019.  Wouldn’t be bad to play more L5R 4e and VTES, either.

 

World Changing

Proof this is actually a gaming blog – there are so many aspects of our world that perhaps should be changed and I’m not going to address any of them.  I did talk a bit of politics Thursday night after Shadowfist, but I’d much rather stay in the happy place that is the gameosphere.

So, when I first heard Gloomhaven was #1 on Boardgamegeek, I was a tad surprised.  Sure, Gloomhaven is qualitatively different from HeroQuest or Descent or whatever, but that’s what I think of when I play.  I think of a dungeon crawl boardgame.

Legacyness appears to be all the rage, Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 being #2.  Makes me think that there’s a yearning for more storytelly style gaming that RPGs can’t meet due to the logistical ass pain that is having functional campaign play.

Well, that could be a blog topic, but it’s not so much today’s topic.

I’m not really feeling the story with Gloomhaven, but maybe that’s just due to not playing enough and not being part of the driving force behind our group.

I made the comment to my friend, after a Traveller CCG session … yup, Traveller CCG is totally a possible rage, that Gloomhaven wasn’t world-changing to me.  He asked me “What is?”

I want to focus on the play of a game being world-changing.  For me, that rules out AD&D from the following list even though D&D/AD&D existed prior to most of these other games.  I just didn’t play AD&D for a long time.

Ultimate Combat!

Inspired topic from a boardgame with a transition into RPGs and, yet, choose a CCG first.

The impact of playing Ultimate Combat! was profound.  Not only was I enthused by the game, specifically, it started a chain of events and a world view shift.  Acquiring game components might have been something I was already prone to as evidenced by how little I’ve played Champions in my life and how many products I still have from the game’s early years.  But, UC!, as a CCG, made acquiring game components actually important.

When my father and I drove to New Jersey (from Virginia) to go to ShoreCon for a day so that I could play UC! and he could amuse himself outside of the con, not only did I get some UC!ing in, I also made a trade for Amulet of Kwai Chang so that I could build a fully multiplying, brown belt Adrenaline deck.

As a side note, I probably already mentioned this, but I also played some Highlander CCG at the con, borrowing a deck as I barely built any Highlander (CCG) decks.

Twenty thousand plus Magic cards, 40,000 plus V:TES cards, 10,000 plus Babylon 5 cards, 20,000 plus Shadowfist cards, one of the largest Wheel of Time CCG collections probably in the history of the human race, and probably one of the larger Traveller Card Game collections in the history of the human race later and I still view CCGs (customizable card games) as the ultimate [sic] form of competitive gaming.

I’m not competitive minded.  I embrace weakness and goofiness, especially with multiplayer CCGs, yet I’ve had success at a number of CCGs simply by virtue that I love them.  I’d play Blood Wars again.  I’d play Guardians, again.  I still have my Tempest of the Gods and Hyborian Gates cards.  I have playtester rewards for Buffy without ever buying any Buffy CCG product.

Ultimate Combat! set my interests on a path of embracing flopping by virtue of just being really fun.  Really fun to play, really fun to build decks for.  Sure, Magic would have likely done the same thing if it had been first, instead.  I did acquire Magic cards in my first year of flopping.  I played some with family when I visited them.  I always preferred UC!.

Immortal: The Invisible War

I was a huge fan of RPGs as soon as I was aware of them.  I didn’t play them that much, almost like playing RPGs requires a level of effort beyond, say, solitaire or sudoku.

I still don’t actually understand if the mechanics of 1e Immortal are truly functional or not, and I’ve never tried to understand them well enough to use them in actual play.  I’ve also never played in or thought much about campaign play for Immortal.

So, why Immortal and not … um … Feng Shui, which had my first notable campaign?  Yes, Feng Shui is the RPG that I can think of where I had my first memorable campaign.

Because my convention play of Immortal: The Invisible War achieved what I have always wanted out of a RPG.  A story in a cool world getting to do cool things.  Sure, I’ve had lots of convention games that were good, gooder, goodful.  My memory of lots of those is fading faster than my memory of events from Immortal.

HeroQuest

Why am I not agog at the majesty of the currently ranked highest game on this planet, probably even in this solar system?

Maybe because I already played a dungeon crawl boardgame with RPG elements.  Elements I made up.

Experience:

The idea is to have the adventurers become more interesting over time and to lessen the emphasis on equipment.

Each surviving adventurer in a successful or partially successful quest gains 1 XP. Additional XP may be possible.

Advantages (XP cost)
Quick Feet (1) – +1 movement, may be bought multiple times

Discipline (2) – Paladin or Monk only; +1 Mind Point
Haggler (2) – roll 2 dice when selling back equipment; the sales price is 2D6*10% of the list price instead of 1D6*10%
Luck (2) – once per quest, may reroll *any* die roll or may change one die’s face to anything
Savvy Investor (2) – earn 10% interest on any monies held in the “bank”
Wisdom (2) – +1 Mind Point

Bargain Hunter (3) – buys equipment at 1/2D6*10% discount
Dodge (3) – costs one less for the Monk or Thief; +1 Defend Dice
Meditation (3) – Monk only; each turn that you do absolutely nothing and there are no monsters in the same room or corridor and you cannot see any monster, you heal 1 Mind Point
Probe (3) – this costs one less for a Dwarf; may detect traps on the other side of doors when searching for traps
Specialty, Spell (3) – varies by spell, may be bought for each spell
Specialty, Weapon (3) – +1 to Attack Dice with one weapon, may be bought for each weapon
Split Movement (3) – may begin moving, act, then finish moving
Tracking (3) – costs 1 less for the Barbarian; may make a Mind Roll to determine which direction a specified goal is likely to be in, each 6 rolled should provide the player with an increased amount of info

Beserker (4) – Barbarian only; once per quest gains the effects of the Courage spell, requires an action
Hardiness (4) – +1 Body Point, may be bought up to 3 times
Memorization I (4) – Wizard or Elf only, costs 1 less for the Wizard; may begin the quest with one additional different spell in a group taken
Tactician I (4) – the hero or monster with this advantage may choose one enemy, both roll their Mind Dice and the two totals are compared, if the Tactician wins then the chosen enemy must attack the legal target (within the Hero’s party) of the Tactician’s choice on its next turn or it cannot attack at all

Acrobat (5) – prerequisite: Dodge, costs one less for the Monk or Thief; +1 Defend Dice
Biofeedback (5) – prerequisite: Discipline, Monk only; each turn that you do absolutely nothing and there are no monsters in the same room or corridor and you cannot see any monsters, you heal 1 Body Point
Florentine Style (5) – may use 2 one handed weapons (the second must be a dagger or shortsword), gaining a second attack
Giant Slayer (5) – when attacking a humanoid monster of larger than 1 square, rolls 2 additional Attack Dice; when defending against a nonmagical attack from a humanoid monster of larger than 1 square, rolls 2 additional Defend Dice
Martial Arts I (5) – costs 1 less for the Monk; base damage, and minimum damage with melee weapons other than the Dagger, are increased by 1
Physicker (5) – may heal 1 Body Point of damage to any party member after any combat in which the party member was injured, not cumulative with any other healing including healing by another Physicker with the exception of a Master Physicker or Doctor
Poison Immunity (5) – unaffected by all poisons

Memorization II (6) – Wizard or Elf only, costs 1 less for the Wizard; prerequisite: Mem. I; may begin the quest with one additional spell in any of the four groups (five groups for the Elf)
Mind Bar (6) – prerequisites: Discipline and Meditation, Monk only; immune to mental spells – spells that can be defended against by rolling Mind Dice
Spellcasting 101 (6) – nonspellcaster only, may know and cast one spell from one of the four groups

I didn’t do much in the way of world building or quest treeing or having pre-quest encounters or whatever, so nowhere near as sophisticated, but, then, I didn’t need all of that to be fascinated by Zargoning HeroQuest.

One of the few games I played with family a significant amount.  We played a lot one time I was visiting.  I’m not sure that my siblings would be as interested in dealing with the logistics and mechanics of Gloomhaven.

If you can’t have an enduring RPG campaign, you can certainly trot out HeroQuest scenarios.  So, I get it that dungeon crawl boardgames that offer character definition and appealing minis can be popular.

Mahjong

Forerunner to all else.  My father taught me chess.  Then, xiangqi at some point, a game I’m awful at.  My mother rummy and hangman.  This had a tad more impact.

Another case of family play being a feature.  In this case, with my grandparents’ generation.  I may not have gotten to know my great aunts and great uncles that well, but I certainly spent far more time with them due to playing this.

Anything Else?

Nothing really comes to mind.  Being first is a big deal.  Can see this with first loves, first cars, first homes, first pets, first jobs, etc. where what was first was more memorable.

Within particular categories, those four games were firstish, firstable, and/or firstriffic.

I do have another game that comes to mind.  Before ending with that, I can summarize the point of this post being that a game may be objectively higher rank but still not be as impactful as another game.  Even within my own rankings this can be true – Immortal isn’t really playable mechanically where I’ve had far more enjoyment from L5R.

And, while V:TES may be my most played CCG, it just occurred to me that I don’t really think of it as world-changing, though perhaps I should since V:TES is how I ended up getting my first normal office job and why I work where I do now.

Babylon 5 CCG

Could be argued that B5 was world-changing for me as it set me on a path of playtesting, development, design, a path that eventually led to the Traveller Card Game having my name as a designer and developer.

It was a game I had influence in, unlike V:TES, even unlike UC!.  While Immortal led me to B5, B5 led me to read the entire Wheel of Time series minus chapters I couldn’t stand.  It was the game I crusaded the most for, bitched the most about, colored my views on game management the most.

World-changing is a personal thing, of course.  For somebody else, I’m sure Settlers of Catan led them into a world of Euroing.  There are professional egamers likely not from my generation, a generation that grew up on arcade play but way preceded esports.  Maybe Gloomhaven is this for somebody else, someone who may go on to embrace RPGs or may be like “RPGs suck.  Gloomhaven is so much easier to play.”

*shrug*  I may be downplaying the awesomeness of #1, but, you know, I do actually enjoy playing it.  Better than a lot of other possibilities.

Not All Chows

DunDraCon is done, but that’s my next post.

I was in Virginia the week before.  Before getting more into that, let’s see what today’s Ultimate Combat! flavor text provides us.

A tornado of power focused in the fist.

Um, not so relevant in any way I can think of.  C’est dommage.

Calling upon your inner reserves brings extra power to bear.

Two Mantra of Power in this pack.  So broken.  Though, I made some minimal effort to find a rulebook for how power is spent as I started wondering about the timing and correctness of playing the best card in the game.  In some way, I feel like rules consistency would dictate that I’ve been doing power spending wrong, but I just am not sure which way it is wrong.

Celestial aid purges pain.

Yup, call upon higher powers to win your martial arts match.  I may need to call upon some celestial aid.

In the blink of an eye an asset can become a liability.

Guess this card.  Come on.  Even though people aren’t into guessing like I’m into guessing.  Based on what I’ve written about UC!, this shouldn’t be impossible to figure out.

The berserker welcomes pain to inflict pain.

Got a pain theme going.  I could claim pain at the moment, though it’s pretty trivial in the grand scheme of things.

So, Virginia.  This was to celebrate the new Earth Pig.  Did dim sum at a Vietnamese place that was covering for my family’s usual dim sum place.

Got in Friday night around 11PM, got to sleep around 1AM.  My alarm went off at 5AM (I was partially awake), felt mostly fine up until I started on a long, boring ride South.  Now, when I drove to Raleigh last year, it wasn’t so boring, but I had more sleep and it was something novel.  This was same highwaying.

Got to Emporia, about 160 miles.  Ordered breakfast at the meetup spot and, after we ate, divvied up True Dungeon tokens.  Yup, this is a gaming blog.  Had to get to the all important gamingness of gamingiosity.  Far fewer tokens to deal with, more value.

Felt pretty good (had coffee which I hardly ever have because I didn’t want to die driving back) … up until the point that I started a long tedious drive back to Annandale.  Multiple playings of Joan Jett’s I Love Rock n’ Roll as I jumped constantly between stations for stimulation.

Took a bit of a shut eye, then headed over to my father’s place.

For a bunch of mahjong with some movie playing in the background.

I did really well in the lucky seat.  Both Saturday and Sunday, it was the seat of the big chip leader.  Whether that speaks to our skill or the feng shui of the Earth Pig year is not so terribly important.

Sunday, got up later than 5AM (I know, weird to not get up then while on vacation and going from Pacific to Eastern time zones), talked a bit about the SF Giants, Bryce Harper, and other things.  Went to dim sum.  Afterwards, to the father’s place for … mahjong and movies.

Speaking of movies, I don’t like watching parts of things.  To not only be playing something, but to be crashing tiles while actors are offering lines would drive me nuts if I actually wanted to watch the movies.  Big Trouble in Little China is a fine movie that others like way more than me.  Romancing the Stone was my idea and a movie I’d be happy to actually watch normally not having seen it in ages.

I did not sit in the Earth Pig Luck seat.  I was hurting blue time.  I got a couple hands at the end to recover blue and red chips to where I was down less than a thousand (points, out of five thousand).  But, my talking about playing mahjong isn’t to go into my supreme ability to not suck at the game.

Everyone my siblings play with play our family style, so it’s easy to play.  The young ‘uns just play for chips if they play for anything because, unlike me, they weren’t playing as an eight-year old with great uncles and great aunts for money.

Over the two days, I played two rounds of winds.  That was pretty normal when I was growing up for one session.  I found the play very Earth Pig unusual in certain ways.

At least four hands were won with all pungs.  I won twice with all pungs, my father at least once and my sister-in-law at least once.  I almost never win with all pungs playing our style, as our style heavily incentivizes speed and only gives all pungs one fan.

What put me way up on Saturday was one suit pure, pinghu clear.  I use pinghu because I’m not entirely sure what the best spelling would be as we always call all chows with no points gained from the eye phonetically punghu, but I can’t internet a spelling like that.  I’ve seen the Cantonese as peng woo, which is kind of close.  Mandarin pinghu works for the second syllable but totally not the first.

Anyway, five fans.  I may have gone many years with virtually no mahjong play, but I’ve played a fair heft amount, especially in that key 8-12 age range.  I’ve gone for all one suit hands many a time, including in silly cases for the challenge.  I even made what I consider a suboptimal decision in that hand and still Earth Pigged my way to victory.

Truly celestial aid purges pain … or whatever.

We didn’t play Codenames though my brother who was hosting me for the weekend talked about playing it a couple of times.  One of our Chinese cousins who hadn’t played before was shown how to play mahjong.

Just a wallbuildingfest of wallbuildingness.

Anything about TD?  I’d like to get some 2019 rares.  Quite a few are used for transmutes.  Some are just good.  I had some thought at some point about something related to reading the forums but lost that somewhat at sometime.

We head to the airport about 7AM Monday morning.

I read a book during the travel to and fro.  Pirate story.  Resonated reasonably well but not great.  Read some reviews that I thought pointed out the shortcomings of what’s a perfectly decent story.  The protagonists are underdeveloped.  One person did a good job of sarcastically pointing out the Mary Sueness of the puppeteer hero.  The fantasy aspects got anime level ridiculous – this is my original thought.  The ending dragged, partially because the love interest is so irrelevant.  Still, nice to read a book that I didn’t dislike.  It reminded me of my Solomon Kane GMing but didn’t particularly stimulate me to want to run something, play a piratey game, or even world build much.

Was this length of trip the right length?  Felt like wasted days on traveling.  Half the trip was essentially traveling, whereas my December trip to hang with family where I used zero vacation days didn’t feel like I was wasting time traveling.  Of course, I had connecting flights on this trip and didn’t on that trip, so hanging out in Denver and eating twice at the same sports bar was time not spent explaining how True Dungeon works or getting snowed on.

Because it has little to do with DunDraCon, I should note that I played Shadowfist Thursday night.  We played two games.  I was incapable of playing any cards for several turns in the first game and it ended dumbly as I stopped a Reascended victory with Onslaught of the Turtle only to have the next player waltz in when little was left in play.  Second game, I played cards, enough hitters to get them taken out.  I didn’t actually do a whole lot with my Lotus/Dragon deck, but the game was less dumb.

I’m not always happy when I play mahjong, as losing sucks and hands that “should” win don’t while hands that shouldn’t win … also don’t, but it’s just such a pleasant thing to do.  I would compare with how playing V:TES for 20+ years is just doing something I enjoy doing that I have mental investment in.  Plus family bonding.

The Best of … 2015

The thrill of the drill.

I don’t often comment on how the year went.  I did a couple of years ago because two unusual and major events happened, neither of which had anything to do with the election.

Maybe I’ll comment upon 2018 at the end.

January

Building L5R Characters – Origins

January 2015 seemed like a flopping heavy time, what with my reporting on Shadowfist sessions multiple times and V:TES tournaments.  While not great literature, if you want to see what playing V:TES is like for me as opposed to virtually anyone else in the history of the game {question mark, frowny face, birthday cake}, can read the tournament report post.

Meanwhile, in terms of “this is worth mentioning again after three years” posts, we finally get to this post.  Even as I was writing this post, I was getting off of what I wanted to write about.  However, intermixed with talking too much about mechanics, there’s a point made about finding the right character, even if that right character may be related to the right character sheet.

I know that HoR has been a problem for me because I’ve spent too much time on the character sheet and not enough on the character.  Nightmare War was actually better because I didn’t obsess with how the numbers would look, plus it was just more interesting than HoR3 was or HoR4 has been.

Sure, there’s a lot of stating the obvious, but, I guess, I feel like the obvious needs to be stated because people make questionable decisions constantly even when they have experience.  People.  People with blogs.  People with blogs who have written the best analysis of L5R 4e mechanics in the history of creation.

One hook is probably not sufficient to give a character enough to work with.  See my upcoming post on the dual hook-wielding build methodology for creating the most fun and most approaching absolute zero PCs ever.

February

Building L5R Characters – Traits

What happens when you get old is that you remember fewer details of your life.  Now, some of the reason for that makes logical sense – the older you are, the more details you have, thus any given detail is less of the memory pie.

I am shocked, shocked I say, that I wrote Origins before these other posts.  I think of Origins as something I did after hitting basics, though, to be fair, The Elemental Party was a prior run on talking about 4e Traits.

Does Void suck?  Well, I do find that my perspective does vary by metagame.  As mentioned somewhere, having a clearly defined role where you have Reflexes 5 is very different from playing with a bunch of strangers in a mod where nobody bothered to be a brain or a talker or a perceiver or whatever.  Still, Void would come after Awareness, Reflexes, Perception at a minimum and Earth-3 could be a higher priority.  I guess that’s not suck territory.

Kayfabeulous

People with blogs are not any one thing.  They may flop.  They may chuck.  They may criticize poetry from the early 20th Century and still may have watched like tons, one might even have said oodles, of “reaching back for something extra”, “what intestinal fortitude”, “Super-Crazy”.

’80s pro wrestling was often frustrating becomes it was so repetitive.  Modernistic sports entertainment has the … exact same problem.  Just changed from crushing jobbers to … whatever.

Somewhere, there is a great story to be had.  Of course, it’s all in the execution, which is why you favor mic gods like The Rock over … whoever.

DunDraCon 2015

I rarely call out convention reports.  I believe that I don’t feel that stating facts is as compelling as stating my perfecto o-pinions.

But, I feel like local cons and I are moving away from each other.  I just don’t feel the experience as I did a decade prior.  How mysterious and totally impossible in any way to figure out why.

So, here’s to 2015, when I reported a lot on Shadowfist casual play but also kept up with the scene in the ‘hood.

Better. Stronger. Faster.

Does anyone even get the joke of this post?  I don’t know that I do, anymore.  Old.  Let’s just say I’m superclever when I’m not on the spot to be clever – wait, isn’t that just a different word?

This is not that profound.  I just feel like calling it out.

Building L5R Characters – Advantages

Apparently, I ruled the blogosphere in February of 2015.  Because, obviously, nothing else matters more than L5R 4e mechanics analysis.

Formatting on this was kind of (nope), which I fixed to a degree later in my Disads post by using the power of bolding words.

Geez, Marie-Louise, I kind of see why my blog has gotten less popular in 2018.  I used to write useful stuff.

March

More Gooder Deck

Not a more gooder post, so why bother?  It’s long.  It mentions my “24” deck building methodology.

But, you know what?  I don’t do it as often I could, but I have posted deck lists.  Not tournament winning deck lists or here’s how to be furrier than the average bear deck lists, but sheer, unbridled insanity … to make a point.  No, to prove a point.  A thousand points.  A thousand points of CCG light.

It’s easy to have fun with CCGs.  Well, CCGs that don’t have Fate.  Build decks.  Identify other players who are fun to play with.  Play.

Building L5R Characters – Disadvantages

Yup, brilliant formatting makes this as easy to read as the make and model on Wonder Woman’s jet.

Sadly, I still follow my own advice.  I gravitate towards the cheese.  Not that I build a ton of PCs these days, so maybe I’ll learn to go back to when I liked my PCs.

[Classic] TR Vampire Ratings [6/1/2008]

This used to be my thing.  Arguing about stars for cards is fun like getting to ride in Wonder Woman’s jet.

It’s not just that fewer cards come out for CCGs I play.  It’s that I’m much more interested in just getting to play some daft Punks rather than worrying about if something is less gooder.

L5R Party Combat Guide

The original combat guide was more profound for bringing up common mistakes players make.  Neither is the definitive work on the subject.  In my upcoming post, I will …

Actually, it was a discouraging revelation to me that controlling a Unicorn Riding Horse in combat is much harder than I thought.  I don’t know why I got different rolls mixed up.

Anyway, I used examples.  Therefore, most goodest.

Flash VS Arrow

I no longer read comic books.  So, here’s my comicing outlet.  Besides knowing more than the substandard chipmunk, I happen to be the most entertaining reviewer of all things Arrowverse this side of Paradise Island.

Faster than a speeding locomotive, on to the next month …

April

Same Phat Channel, Same Phat Time …

Oh, the bronze-knees.

I was looking at our session tracker for Rokugan 1600.

Do you, wait, do I realize that each season has only been three main sessions long?  Well, yes, blog writer, I do realize that each season has been only three main sessions long.  It just doesn’t feel remotely like that.  I feel like I’m running a campaign that jumps around but still keeps building on what has transpired before (or introduces new stuff that makes the foundation of the campaign a mess).

I was trying to do three session story arcs to get more of an episodic feel with the ability to pivot faster.  Let’s see if I can wrap up season 4 in a way that doesn’t irritate the players and we can pivot for season 5 into something weird, like non-time travel, non-romance war stories.

May

Building L5R Characters – Skills

If it wasn’t for the fact that some people actually are playing FFG’s L5R, maybe I could spread out my geniusness over a longer stretch to not get everyone’s hopes up and, then, give them 2018’s travelogue.

Remember the single most important thing about this post:  I own the rights to factotumness, the rights of righteousosity.

June

July

Princess Police – Episode Guide

I’m used to short campaigns that don’t end as much as they cease to exist.  I’m fighting to try to avoid having me be the GM for such campaigns, while I haven’t played in anything for quite a while that wasn’t HoR.

What made The Princess Police interesting was how much the campaign took off long after it started.  I mean, sure, campaigns just seem to get richer as they go along until they stop, but this campaign survived long enough to have the depth of play that I hope for.

I think you can see how events became more meaningful to me later in the campaign.  This and HoR2 were the two L5R campaigns that I played that really satisfied in terms of L5R play.

August

Gen Con 2015

You know how I constantly call out convention reports.  Well, here’s another mundane, ho hum, hum drum convention report where I get into everyone’s favorite topic – food reviews.

September

Babylon 5 Request

Looking back is not so easy for the old.  There are so many B5 thoughts that I can probably only access by looking at old emails.  I don’t remember cards off the top of my head, anymore.

The B5 era was a hugely important era for me.  I became a playtester.  I became a designer.  I crusaded (but rarely Crusaded) for a game hard.  I played in the first Worlds.  I volunteered at major cons rather than just playing RPGs the whole time.

I got a foundation in CCGing that just being a V:TES player or UC! player or Magic judge didn’t.

I do realize that certain types of posts are more likely to get likes, it’s kind of interesting that this one didn’t, but, maybe, talking B5 long after the game died wasn’t a way to rapturize the masses.

RPG Yarn

I like some things.  Because I don’t really enjoy activities unless other people enjoy them, I subordinate my interests a great deal to enable groups to enjoy playing stuff.  Sure, meetup.com exists, etc., so I could find other people with more similar interests, but that requires a level of effort I’ve avoided.

I could probably write ten, twenty more words about what sort of RPGs I like.  Occurs to me that style of play isn’t something I talked much about in this post.  In my upcoming blog post on style of play I prefer, I will …  But, here’s what gets me looking for that Ring of Three Wishes so that I can blow a wish on the important stuff.

L5R Questions

I know.  It’s hard to provide commentary when everything the writer writes is pure, unadulterated geniusness.

Actually, I have an extremely reactive personality, which is why it can be challenging for me to get inspired to blog or to write more for Traveller.  So, if you want more geniusness spewed rather than the week’s latest ramble, maybe better to actually ask for what you want to hear about.

And, then, you will know everything there is to know about core book shugenjahood.  Every little thing.

October

Double-Striking, Swampwalking Squirrel Pumpers

This was a surprising hit to me.  I played a lot of Type P.  I built a lot more Type P then goldfished those builds.

Most of my Magic play, in the entire history of the cosmos, was, I’m sure, Type P.

Why don’t I talk about Type P more?  Well, I don’t play anymore and more recent efforts to play didn’t capture the Magic.

One hopes that blogging since 2009 would give readers a bit of insight into how my mind works.  This post should be one that gives pretty goodier insight.

If you ever want good sigs, like how I used to use good sigs on a regular basis, can take some quotes from this post.

Want: Land destruction, good way to blow up my own critters over multiple turns, maybe zombies

November

Brought By The Number 7

When gaming is a way of life, and I’d argue that it is for someone who has only ever been to England because of card tournaments in Germany, life is the shapemeister, baron von shape of gaming.  Sure, fiction is not quite so experiencey as, er, doing things that require physically moving more than the eyes and hands.

If staleness is a frequent problem with so many things, more posts like these might be the antistale needed.

Goat Droppings

Need more of this, somehow.

Ratings were too high on average.

This post actually take a lot of time to write, so I’m not that motivated to point out where I changed my mind, but I’d be happy to argue the rating of a card.

Book ’em Danaan

Ah, elitism, superiority complexion.  I can’t seem to escape pointing out that D&D is not remotely high fantasy.  While shopping for Christmas presents, I looked at possibilities of books I could get myself.  I’m sure no one else in the history of the multiverse has ever done that, ere now.  I didn’t shoot the wallaby.  Again, pretty much got myself a reference book for Aztec/Mayan society, which I still haven’t gotten anything out of.

December

A Mouse’s Donkey

Some things matter more to me than others.  Plus, I included an image.

Flaw Wars

Certain truths are self evident.  Btw, I don’t have high hopes that part three will redeem the problems of parts one and, especially, part two.

**  **  **  **  **

So, looking back on 2015, I can clearly see why 2015 had better stats than 2018.  I had the L5R character build posts and even more to say about 4e mechanics.  I had more original posts when it came to personal stuff or interests outside of gaming that I could pretend related to gaming.

Yup, 2015 looked mighty.  This was in the pre-True Dungeon period with lots of casual card play reports.  I even talked about Ultimate Combat!.  I wonder.  I wonder if because I changed jobs in 2015 and started traveling fairly often to Shanghai that I was more fired up even without the gaming five days a week thing I once had.

Leaving 2018 with what will inspire any and all to flood this blog with views, likes, and comments to prove that this blog has been made great again, here are some flavor texts from the best two-player CCG of them all:

• Learned early, soon perfected – always a lance of destruction.
• Denied the blood of life, first brain then body fail.
• A good sweep takes you down like a patch of ice – without warning.
• Draining speed and vitality, sand slows us all.
• With the speed of a cobra, this whip to the head strikes true.
• Flying enhances penetration.

Well Suit-ed

There are a bunch of things I can post about now that I’m back in the US.  I just have been trying to recover from the time difference while a pet is rather sick.

I actually thought about posting from Shanghai this post, but I just didn’t have the infrastructure that I do at home.

So, mahjong.

But, first, go.  I’ve never played go.  In a later post, I’ll talk about the games I played on my trip that I had never played previously.  But, it was funny that I woke up from multiple dreams on the same night dreaming about playing my first go match.  I think reading an article in China Daily about a go player had something to do with that.

I was asked what style we should play.  We had done half my family’s style and half a current popular style in China on one trip, followed by only the latter on another trip.  What I hadn’t played in 9 years was a/the Shanghainese style where you can only win with all one suit or all pungs.

One of our players hadn’t played the style before.  He didn’t do well.  I thought there was an additional rule that I had played under, I think something about declaration of being ready, but I haven’t been able to remember it.  So, it was pretty straightforward.

Cons

I don’t know if there’s an optimal style out there.  By style, talking about a combination of rules for what a legal winning hand is and how hands are scored, with the latter often being the greater variance, though having dragons act as flowers is a pretty big deal when it comes to play.

When I first played the style, the big drawback to me was that you knew what a lot of safe tiles were once a hand developed.  You had an incentive to eliminate suits early and play for rather limiting hands.

I still find it kind of odd to dispense with tiles that I’d normally cultivate in other styles, and I think it can be a bit easy to fall into excessively defensive play.  However, having played more, I do feel there are more things going on than what first appears and that there’s some strategic thinking that one can bring to the table.

I was definitely prone to playing far too defensively at first.  Because I could.  Various styles I’ve played don’t reward you much for defensive play, including the style I’ve played the most – my family’s.

I almost wonder if somewhere between my family’s style, where who discards the winning tile usually doesn’t matter, and a lot of other styles, where only the person who discards the winning tile pays exclusive of self-picked victories, there is an optimal middle path.  I kind of like the symmetry of discarder pays full and the other two players pay half, but that’s bad math, so discarder pays double would make more sense.

One thing about self-picked wins is that the local styles make these rather valuable.  If I win off of someone’s discard some 20 point hand, I gain 20 at the cost of someone else.  If I pick the winning tile (ignoring possible concealed bonuses), I gain 60 points.  That’s a huge swing.  When I first played with current coworkers, I won one or two hands by drawing the winning tile early, which gave me such a cushion that I could play defensively the rest of the time and pretty much guarantee coming out ahead.

Pros

I compare and contrast with my family’s style.  In my family’s style, all one suit is rather rare and all pungs is extremely rare.  As one of the reasons to play mahjong over cards is the aesthetic appeal of the tiles, all one suit and all pungs are both prettier winning hands.  While all pungs is still only one fan (i.e. double) in this Shanghainese style, it’s still far more common because of how limited winning hands can be.  All pungs should probably be two fans in my family’s style to compensate for the difficulty, though there’s a counterargument that all pung hands tend to be relatively good scoring hands due to how prevalent winds and dragons show up in them and how random flowers are in our style.

One thing I felt this go around but don’t recall the first go around is how you need to be flexible and committed in different ways than normal.  What the players to your left and right are doing matters a ton.  If the player to your left is in your suit, you are going to see hardly any discards of that suit to chow and one less player to pung off of.  If you are on the other side of this relationship, your right hand player is probably screwed unless they get ready off of draws, then your late game discards are incredibly dangerous.

I was generally playing my hands early on, keeping to my long suits even when nothing was progressing.  Later on, I got more flexible to the idea of either giving up on a stronger suit or just holding off to see what sort of draws I’d get, as drawing lots of tiles in a single suit can radically change the winning potential of a hand, where other styles are more prone to general value add from connected suit tiles.

Dragons and winds.  In my family’s style, unless you are going for a big scoring hand or difficult hands that rarely pay off, you discard winds that aren’t your own right away.  In this style (and others), there’s no concept of “your” wind.  In my family’s style, dragons are common early discards, we really play a lot to all chows (i.e. runs) as an easy way to win with a decent score.  Hoping to draw into pairs of winds or dragons is typically a loser’s path.  Also, you usually establish your “eye” (i.e. required pair) before you become ready or have some multiple way call that creates your eye.

With this style, because you are more limited in what can win and because winds and dragons always go with all one suit or all pungs, they have a lot of late game value.  Actually, a wind or dragon that has been discarded once often makes for a good eye.  That’s usually an awful call in what I’m used to.

Again, aesthetics.  Winds and dragons shouldn’t be automatic discards 90% of the time.  That loses flavor.

As mentioned, you can play this style very defensively, if you want.  I kept losing chips, winning no hands until about half way into our three hour session.  That came from focusing on not discarding winning tiles rather than realizing that it can be really hard for other players to make ready, too, and focusing more on giving myself a chance to gain chips.  In aggro styles, like my family’s, it’s usually a tactical decision to play defensively, with the possible exception of how the North player has added responsibility to “move the bank”.

A pro, in that interesting decisions are interesting, is how pairs of suit tiles have extra value.  Punging in a suit doesn’t commit you to the suit or to all pungs.  A number of styles don’t really encourage pungs because they break connectivity in your hand (and prevent all concealed bonuses).

Kongs are often not that exciting in my family’s style.  “Ten” more points or whatever just doesn’t usually matter and the odds of picking the winning tile from the flower garden for that fan are low.  But, in these styles, it can be rather scary if someone completes a kong and has a chance for the extra fan as even just the base score increase is nontrivial.

Lot more pros listed than cons, but I still wouldn’t say this style is normal.  And, whatever additional rule I played under before or that I think I played under before left me thinking that the format was a bit more luck based than what we were playing this time.

Shifting Winds

One thing I find interesting is how we go to MaiDanLao for dinner before we play because the place we go to is just down a driveway from it.  This would not likely be the case after the office moves, if it moves.

It cost all of 60 RMB for the four of us to play for three hours.  That’s like $2.25 per person for getting to use an automated table, having chips provided, not having to clean up our MaiDanLao waste, having privacy with no real cigarette smell even though there are ash trays.

So, how did I, supergrandmaster (a joke no one will get, let’s just say certain sudoku collections top out at a level higher than grand master), fare?  I lost 20% of my stack.  I was done to like 20% of my stack, maybe 10%, at one point before I shifted to focusing more on trying to win … and finally won a couple of hands.  The last hand, I had three possibilities for winning.  I don’t say chances because that means something a bit different.  I was down to one tile.  I chose to discard North and keep an eight of characters, as I didn’t want to be forced to discard a wind/dragon later in the hand.  Two other players cleared out their single copies of North immediately after my discard.  I agonized over keeping the eight or switching to a one of characters, neither had any copies in play.  I discarded the eight and immediately drew another eight.  I forgot what the other possibility was, maybe just that someone could have discarded a one but didn’t.

If I get a discard for the win, I’m up a bit overall.  If I kept the eight and picked, I’m big time up.  The math on whether to go eight or go one is not the sort of thing I bother with calculating.  I think there were sevens out somewhere, making me believe there was a good chance someone had a pair of eights in hand, but I could be totally not recalling.  I just figured an end tile discard was a bit more likely, though an eight wasn’t an unlikely discard.

It felt like we played for a very long time.  Maybe three hours is a pretty good chunk of time, especially when I’m adjusting to the time difference and would normally go to bed between 6PM and 8PM if I had nothing to do.  It was just really pleasant.  We don’t play for money, so there isn’t much pressure or frustration (at the randomness of higher scoring hands).  It was a good level of randomness.

On Key

Not yet time to insert an M.  Not on Fire, either.

January was a time of doing fun things with great people.  But, it wasn’t much of a month for gaming.

While I was flying back to the US recently, I spent a bit of time thinking about gaming.  Sure, RPG thoughts came to mind.  But, unlike the norm of thinking primarily about RPGs, I actually spent some time thinking about CCGs.  In particular, I thought about V:TES.

For quite some time, I haven’t been playing much.  This led, of course, to not spending much time thinking about the game.  But, for some reason, while I haven’t done much to organize cards and haven’t done much deckbuilding, I’ve still found something more enjoyable about thinking about deckbuilding.

We played last Sunday.  I was still jet lagged and didn’t do anything new, so I played Hatchlings, Pre/Vic bruise bleed, and Jyhad Pre bleed.  In other words, my kind of decks.

I often don’t play my kind of decks.  To stretch, I’ll play decks ridiculously bad for me, like the most recent deck I think I made, which is Tzimisce rush.  Sure, without Bill around or people like him to keep coming up with combo deck ideas, I don’t get around to combo decks, but …

What makes those decks my kind of decks?

They bleed.  Yes, I know I hardly ever bleed anymore.  But, I used to.  Two out of the three hunt reasonably well, by which I mean I can afford actions hunting.  The third even hunts because it really can’t do anything besides bleed or hunt.

And, that’s the thing.  They don’t complicate my game.  Hatchlings has, generally, three different actions to take – Hatchling, hunt, bleed.  The other two just two actions.  Two of the decks bounce.  The third plays cards that both reduce bleeds and give intercept.  They don’t obsess over screwing vote decks.  Two of the decks play combat ends.  They don’t obsess over screwing combat decks, though one of them is a combat deck.

Yes, bruise bleed isn’t my thing, which makes the Pre/Vic deck kind of odd.  But, it does its superior three disciplines thing.  The other two have relatively simple discipline needs.

I don’t try to stop stuff crosstable.  I can’t shut down jack.  But, there are silver bullets.  I won one game due to Sudden Reversal on Palla Grande, though I had my Hostile Takeover on Jost with Ivory Bow Washed.

There’s just something pleasant about how all three function, though they are hardly close substitutes for each other.

I was thinking about how I hadn’t blogged in a while.  By the way, way to go WordPress, right up there with Yahoogroups and others on making your own product annoying to use.  I was thinking and started a line of thought that I don’t remember all that clearly, just that it ran through RPG and CCG stuff.

I invented a card when playing Sunday.  “Master.  Put this card in play.  You may burn this card to give a vampire of capacity five or higher +2 bleed for the current action.  This bleed action may not resolve for more than three pool damage.”  No, this paragraph has nothing to do with anything.

I was thinking about events, though I don’t really care about Anthelios, I only see Anthelios matter when I play out of my region.  Even then, it’s not Anthelios I care about.

I haven’t played any HoR: Nightmare War.  I was up at 1AM China time (well, earlier) waiting for my Gen Con housing slot, which was an hour later, which turned out to be a strong slot, where I got a room, though I think I maybe needed to try a bit harder to get a better one.

If I keep throwing out random comments, what will be unlocked?

I played mahjong on my trip, though only one format – the variant popular in China according to my coworkers I mentioned last time.  We didn’t play the Shanghainese style of all one suit or all pungs, but we talked about doing that next time.  Only one player won.  She seems very lucky in my small sample size of playing games with her, but I’d certainly also say she’s a good player.  Could be better than I.

I need to learn a couple of boardgames for the weekend after this, when I’ll be running convention sessions of stuff that isn’t either a RPG or CCG.

I need a new Fading Suns character, as I still haven’t replaced my dead monk.

Thinking.

I was thinking about card limits.  I was thinking about how I may not give other people enough credit for seeing why card limits are so awesome.  As every right-thinking gamer knows, card limits have nothing to do with the playability of a CCG.  It’s all about the collectibility and collection management advantages of needing fewer copies of cards.  Sure, for Wheel of Time, where I may only have 10 decks built at one time, I still need some 15 Lucky Finds and 15 Invasions.  But, I only need six recruitable Rahvins.  With V:TES, I need 60+ On the Qui Vive just to get by.  Anything less than 20 Villeins, which, by the way, I don’t own 20 Villeins, is a struggle.

I gave away extra Jyhad copies of commons.  I only held on to 40 copies of Jyhad Majesty, as that’s enough to scrape by.  Were there Babylon 5 cards I had problems having sufficient quantities of?  Must have been the case, though I don’t really recall it.  Annex Neutral World was something I could probably live on nine copies of.  Not Meant To Be around the same number.  Wasn’t like I had 20 decks at once for the game.  More of a 12 deck kind of game.  I think only V:TES (ignoring such things as Type P Magic) has ever seen me have 20+ decks built at once, and I haven’t done that in ages (ignoring “experiment” decks).

I still haven’t run part two of Against the Dark Yogi.  I’m beat during the week, though inertia helps me with getting out to do Thursday Shadowfist.  Every week in the month of January was consultants in town, coworkers from out of town, or my being in another country.

Carolina 41, Denver 3.  Why not?  I don’t care.  Whenever I’ve had other things to do, I’ve skipped the Big Bowl.  Plus, Seattle produced two awful results in recent years, just making it that much less worth my engagement.

We didn’t play for money.  We did have chips, though, to make it easier to track how people did in our mahjong session.  I still find it interesting.  I also found it interesting how many times I said to myself “yo, dudicle, you aren’t paying that much attention to people’s discards, like is kind of much of the skill in the game”.  I realized later why the format is so fast.  When every dragon is a flower, the tile pool is vastly decreased, which makes connections in hands and from discards form much faster.  There’s a lot of thought I could put into the format, especially around the payoff calculations of declaring ready versus playing not to lose.

I’ve talked about what I enjoy out of RPGs.  I don’t know if I’ve covered what sort of PCs I like playing enough.  Too good a topic not to save for a more laser sharp blog post.

How come in Legends of Tomorrow, the fire gun never causes fires and the cold gun never freezes things?

Merged Ferox with Tremere demo deck as predator.  Grandpredator wins the game.  But, that’s so unmeta.

There are rarity indicators on Shadowfist cards?  According to an article on drafting there are (or were).  Probably should do a Shadowfist draft some day.  I almost miss V:TES drafting, just because everyone should be forced to learn more about limited play with CCGs other than Magic.

There are a lot of things that don’t enthuse me about making RPG characters.  I’ve talked about my disdain for equipment, and I’m sure I mentioned something about not being into playing magic-users.  That kind of covers Theurgy and Psychics.  But, what about Cybernetics?  I think they come across as equipment to me.  I’m also not a tech guy, except when I’m a software consultant, software developer, technical architect, or the like.  So, what sort of Fading Suns character should I play?  I think I should stretch and actually go with one of these things I normally wouldn’t choose because they don’t sound appealing.

Why aren’t games better?  Another great topic for another time.

I still haven’t posted another solitaire variant I created.  One I created years ago as yet another solitaire game to use a small amount of space but to have meaningful decisions.  I’ll have to get around to this some day.

But, today.  Today is just a day to make a mess before getting back on track with geniusness.

Giftable

Sure, I played Shadowfist Thursday and even won a game because of the power of Li Po.  Sure, had my PC die Friday night in our online Fading Suns game, so I have to think about what my new character will be.  Kurgan?  Without my dude, there’s no religious character in the party, though I think there was too much pressure on my character to hold up the religious aspects of the world.

Sure, I’m supposed to run a game Wednesday night.  I was thinking it was going to be Champions, but I am back to Against the Dark Yogi because I had a clearer idea of plot in my brainial region.  Either way, mechanics need to be explained.  I just actually know something about Hero mechanics.  I’ll report back, I’m sure.

But, let’s talk about gifts.

Let’s start with the boring but simple.  What would I want as gaming gifts?

An Ultimate Combat! tournament where I get another chance to win a playmat (the greatest gaming accessory I’ve ever acquired).  I think sealed deck would be more fun, actually.  As much as constructed might be fun, I don’t know if it is as fun in tournament play, where it may be too brutal and too repetitive.

For V:TES to go back into business production and for all of the e-sets to either be junked or turned into printed sets.  Actually, it’s not the sets so much as individual cards that I’d like to see some junking or some changing.

For the upcoming V:TES tournaments to be enjoyed by all.

Heroes of Rokugan: Nightmare War to either start or to never have to worry about … for me; I realize others have already started.  I’ve been away for L5R play for some time, now.  I’m perfectly fine with getting back to playing L5R, but I want it to be coherent.

To feel like the last home campaign of L5R is truly complete.  I mentioned posting stuff from the campaign, but I stopped because there was at least one major thing I was waiting on.  I don’t know what the situation is.  It’s been so long since things ended that I don’t know if anyone cares anymore about my providing some insight into what I was doing.

To be inspired to build more decks for V:TES and Shadowfist.

To have the computer room organized so that I don’t have gaming stuff piled up on the floor as I currently do.  In the vein of being more organized, try to find four or so mahjong sets I own that I don’t currently know the location of just so that I can confirm inventory.  Not like I would fly anywhere with one unless I knew I was gifting a set to somebody, but the interest in the game has been renewed.

To feel like I have time to think and create for RPGs.

To get a plan together for Origins, even though no due dates should be any time soon.  To have a Gen Con hotel option when I know the passkey system is going to be a joke again this year.

To find more playmats for CCG play that I have interest in as my current crop is kind of iffy for covering all possibilities.

For someone else to want to run a long term campaign of something I find intriguing.

What about gifts for other people?

While I’m not inclined to get gaming stuff for family, I have looked at fantasy books.  I ended up at a used book store because:  I’m too late to order things from Amazon; local new books book store doesn’t have most of what I want; when it does have something it’s ungodly expensive in a steal your money kind of way.  For example, first trilogy of Corum is something I could find.  It was split up in three, $10 books.  Or, I could find the trilogy in one $3 book because it’s stupid for such short books to be split up into three separate books, and it’s a sad money grab to charge $10 for what’s a reprint of like a 150 page book.

The problem with gifts for friends is then you enter a reciprocity situation that I just don’t want to get into.  I don’t have any great desire for people to get me things (I’ll just buy any things I want, though, sometimes it’s interesting to get things because I wouldn’t have bought them and they open up a new world of things I’m interested in).  Nor do I remotely enjoy shopping for other people, though it’s amusing how sometimes it’s easy to find things for friends.

If consulted, I could give some ideas for things to get other people.  I’ve played a number of boardgames to where I could envision who might like what.  CCGs are hard to spring on people, though it’s easy enough to gift stuff to someone already interested.  RPG books are something that comes to mind much more today than in the past for reasons that aren’t entirely clear.  For instance, L5R 4e books are just really nice looking.  Even if you don’t like the system or the world, might be inspired by the presentation.  Other books that are more about culture and less about mechanics seem like possibilities, though, again, more so possibilities for gamer friends.  Dice can be an accessory I can imagine actually giving to people and not just gamers – non-gamers don’t understand how common polyhedral dice are in the gaming world.  Mahjong dice are something non-mahjong players might find more interesting.  Using weird six-sided dice for mahjong is a possibility.

I’m increasingly looking at non-stuff gifts because I, personally, have way too much stuff and need to reduce those things that aren’t important to me.  Plus, I realized experiences are the best things in life a while back, anyway.  In fact, my anti-present thing comes from getting presents but not getting experiences to go with them when I was young as toys and games and whatever were in a vacuum of lack of people to play things with.  I sort of realized that tickets to events and whatnot are a legit thing to consider, recently.  Of course, travel is a great thing to have, just a messy thing to gift out of the blue.