CCG February, Part 1

I decided to split this up as I want to post decklists from Shadowfist play, so this should be long.

Saturday, I played, apparently, seven games of Shadowfist.  This was part of our quarterly playday scheduling system.

Game 1 (3 players)

Earl (Monarchs) -> Ian (Multifaction) -> Paul (Multifaction)

My deck shall remain a mystery as it didn’t do what it was supposed to do.  In fact, it didn’t do anything.  Paul’s deck also didn’t do anything.  Earl won pretty easily.  I remember playing some foundations and Paul trying to get his second faction running.  Wait, some of this is coming back to me.

Earl played Flambards.  He played Fire Mystic.  He played Fakhir-al-Din for the win against really nothing.  One of my first two sites was Proving Ground, and Earl took it pretty early, and that was when the game essentially ended.  My Gao Family Banquet Hall slowed him down slightly.

Game 2 (3 players)

Miguel () -> Ian (Corrupted) -> Tim (Scrappy Kids)

I tried to rein in some recursion with Scroll of Pain in response to Inauspicious Return, but I only got one Scrappy Kid with it.  What smaller dudes I put into play just got wiped by Final Brawls.  Miguel didn’t have a lot going on, either.  Tim just kept progressing until victory.

Game 3 (3 players)

Ian (Ancestral River Home) -> Tim (as above) -> Miguel (Butterfly Raid)

I didn’t have a good start in that nobody was coming for my Ancestral River Home.  I finally hardcast Queen of the Ice Pagoda.  Someone did my Ancestral River Home in and I put out White Ninja.  I should have taken a picture of this game rather than the other games as it got dumber.

What was really dumb on my part is that my deck actually requires Monarch resources for certain cards, and I couldn’t get a second resource.  Not that it mattered as I had the game under control pretty much throughout.  Queen got attacked some but never went away.  They were concerned with Netherworld Returns, which of course wouldn’t be in this Modern deck.  Now, if Queen did go down, I could play Fire Emissary to … end up with smaller character and still have only one Monarch resource.

I won without ever playing Fire Emissary.  In fact, in the entire course of the game, only one card ever hit my smoked pile.  I finally got a second resource off of Aide de Camp (after I already had seized Kinoshita House and Fox Pass was doomed).  Miguel couldn’t get in the game as his Butterfly Knights weren’t threatening enough, and I started bullying his dudes.  Tim couldn’t get in the game between not being able to defend from my monsters and because I run Diamond Beach in this deck, which wrecks his strategy.

In the end, Queen had a Hovercraft.  White Ninja had Living Legend.  Beaumains was bullying.

I posted recently that the aphorism “I win because nobody else does” applies well to both my Shadowfist and VTES play.  I can win good VTES games.  But, I only ever seem to win bad Shadowfist games.

Game 4 (3 players)

Tim (Eunuchs) -> Miguel (Ascended) -> Ian (Badger)

Miguel kept messing with my power generation, using Sulphurous Cenote to stop IKTV Radio Outpost flips.  He had a much, much cooler play than that, though, in this game.  He was doing well, and he played Inside Job against me.  Inside Job where you play for free a card in someone else’s hand.

I had two copies of Attack of the Fifty Foot Badger in hand.  What he didn’t pay attention to (not that he would have chosen differently) was that I had a copy of Abandoned Old Shop in hand.  I had already discarded another Old Shop.  I got bailed out by the sheer geniusosity of my deckbuilding.

I play Abandoned Old Shop, bounce Badger back to my hand.  End up playing a Badger.  End up putting Specialist and Stance of the Wandering Toad on my Badger so that it would grow by 2 every turn.  Miguel had some annoying stuff, but he lacked fighting and stuff got cleared out.  I did Brain Tape one of his guys as I didn’t want to do mine when The Emperor left play.

Meanwhile, Tim was just winning.  Wasn’t like we did anything to his Eunuch army.  So, he just did stuff even with a Badger in the ‘hood.

Game 5 (4 players)

Drew (Lotus) -> Paul (Battle-Matic) -> Miguel (Battle-Matic) -> Ian (Corrupted)

Tim was going to get picked up soon and Earl sat out.

Well, I did stuff in this game with my Corrupted damage deck.  … just not Corrupted damage.  I put Stalking Horrors in play, and it had zero damage bonus.

Drew was quite strong for a time.  But, I Poisoned Wound his Infernal Army, and he didn’t have much in the way of characters after.  I never had much in play, though I was a threat for a bit.  Paul wasn’t doing much offensively, but he was in the game.  Miguel won.

So, this was a good game.  Everyone got to do stuff.  This was the game where I commented “If only Lotus had some way to remove characters.” as Drew and I failed to murder the souls of dorks with Battle-Matics.  Actually, if I had another turn, I would have drawn Incendiary Blast.

Game 6 (3 players)

Ian (SWS Ascended) -> Earl (Revivication Shard) -> Paul (Multifaction)

Drew and Miguel left.

This was a sad, pathetic game.  So, of course, I won.

My Bunker Security did a lot of early work against Earl.  This allowed me to burn for power with Old Buzzard and Shamali Storm help.  Earl couldn’t recover, having only Registry of the Damned in play at one point.  Paul was struggling with resources, then I took his Netherworld Trickster with Katerina Sa to remove his only Dragon resource.  I finished things up with The Mouse, never using her to steal stuff as there weren’t things worth stealing.

Game 7 (3 players)

Earl (as above) -> Paul (Monarchs/Lotus) -> Ian (Influence)

I failed my Influence deck.  I overcommitted when trying to clear out annoying characters in play, and Earl played Underworld Coronation.  After that, I had nothing that mattered.  Earl was impaired by Paul’s Sacred Wigwam.  I probably made a mistake not going after that.  We kept trying to rein in Paul, but it’s hard to regulate someone far ahead in three-player, so Paul eventually won.  His recursing Avenging Darkness was so, so bad for me.  Syndicate does not like having its characters messed with, and Catching Bullets never works for me.

Decks

I’m not going to post every deck.  Just the ones with fewer than 40 cards.  Just happens to include the two that won games.

Badger Time!
(30) Jammers/Guiding Hand

Jammers (14)
Characters (10)
4x Absolute Maniacs
2x Attack of the Fifty Foot Badger
4x Netherworld Scavenger

Edges (3)
3x Aftershocks

Events (1)
1x “What’s the Worst that Could Happen?”

Guiding Hand (4)
Characters (3)
3x Wasteland Gardener

States (1)
1x Stance of the Wandering Toad

Factionless (12)
Feng Shui Sites (7)
2x Abandoned Old Shop
1x Ancient Trollbridge
1x Beached Supertanker
1x Echoing Cavern
1x Golden Sky Island
1x Salt Mine

Sites (3)
3x IKTV Radio Outpost

States (2)
1x Brain-Tape
1x Specialist

Echoing Enclave
(35) Ascended

Ascended (25)
Characters (15)
2x Bunker Security
2x Cut-Out
2x Katerina Sa
2x Kennedy Rose
3x Old Buzzard
1x Shamali Storm
1x Street Rat
1x The Mouse
1x The Professional

Edges (4)
1x Deep Pockets
3x Long Term Investments

Events (4)
1x Anonymous Tip
1x Forged Orders
1x Inside Job
1x Playing Possum

States (2)
1x Framed!
1x Ghillie Suit

Factionless (10)
Feng Shui Sites (10)
3x Echoing Cavern
1x Golden Sky Island
1x Isolated Banyan Grove
1x Salt Mine
2x Sunken City District
2x Walled Enclave

River Running
(35) Monarchs

Monarchs (21)
Characters (7)
2x Aide de Camp
1x Beaumains, the Mongrel Knight
1x Fire Emissary
1x Lord Hawksmoor
2x Queen of the Ice Pagoda

Edges (3)
3x Summoning Circle

Events (10)
1x Amnesty
1x Avenging Thunder
2x Blood Lust
2x Brain Fire
1x Deafening Thunder
1x The Warrior’s Calm
1x Twin Thunders
1x Vengeance in the Ashes

States (1)
1x Soul Fire

Factionless (14)
Characters (3)
1x Sprung-Li
2x White Ninja

Feng Shui Sites (7)
5x Ancestral River Home
2x Diamond Beach

States (4)
1x Hovercraft
2x Living Legend
1x Public Enemy No. 1

The Best of … 2020

So, I didn’t so much miss a deadline as much as I just forgot about my annual tradition.

One of my brothers had a wedding Saturday, so the last week plus has been kind of busy.

I actually had a plan for posting before my best of post something, but it has been hard to be concerned about normal things.

Anyway, 2020 was not a good year in various ways.  As I just start looking back at what I wrote as I write these posts, let’s see what I want to call out.

January

Fascinating.

Eleven Decks, Eleven Notes – Part 1

Somehow, this entire series … started in 2020 … ended before we stopped playing.

This is precisely the sort of thing I should do more of – build decks, talk about how the decks perform in actual games.  Of course, it’s kind of hard to play decks when there’s no one to play with.

Other parts are probably noteworthy, too.  After all, they aren’t short play reports, even if I included TV reviews or whatever in some of them.  Can get an idea how bonkers Shadowfist is by trying to describe games in partial detail, though it’s not like I haven’t done SF session reports before.

Advanced Play – L5R & Gloomhaven

I was trying in 2020 to get back to doing more analysis and less navel gazing.  Well, not that anyone needed to hear my Gloomhaven analysis so long after the game came out, but I write about things I do.  Advancing Tatakisu might have been interesting for how I both try to know how to min/max, then do something weird.

Off Court

Why do courtiers exist in a fantasy world where Hell is just to the Southwest?

I’m still playing Akarui.  Team Akarui just won an actual Winter Court event.  Obvious thing for a team of Imperial Herald, Tortoise, and Yasuki to win – shrine building.  Yup, build that shrine better than all of the other teams, which I think all had shugenja on them.

And, that’s why courtiers exist – to have multiple ranks in Engineering, to have Lore: Shrines, to have partners with a bunch of ranks in Lore: Rokugan, to have Ebisu’s Blessing and to have lots of koku koku bills to throw at spiritual projects.

February

Unstable

I almost skipped over this, but this was the most interesting thing in February.  It’s long, so it must be good.

I was just talking to one of my GMs yesterday about how contested rolls in R&K are bad because the system has too much variance.  This article is a lot about how variance creates problems with combat.  Now, maybe it’s just because L5R has lethality.  Maybe a system that wasn’t bad to begin with (most are, bad that is) with low lethality or enough metacurrency to not die can embrace variance.

March

Roll & Defeat

Speaking of the problems with contested rolls and variance …

April

Rather Not Walk

Choo choo.

ARe Wards

More direct about what players like me want and what isn’t as important.

Fiction Destruction

So, how good is my writing?  Much like my cooking, I’d say highly variable.  I don’t care much about getting better at these sorts of things as much as I just like being wrapped up in the narrative (that includes the narrative of cooking).

This is really, really long, but that just means it’s got to be better.

May

Building L5R Characters – Emerald Empire

*shrug*  If people want L5R content, I might as well write about L5R stuff.  How do I know people want L5R content?  I check what articles are getting views at times and it’s mostly old L5R articles.

Friendliness Rating

I try at times to create things for people to use.  Whether I ever use this idea I have no idea.

Gen Con – Early Years

Some Gen Cons are very similar to others.  And, yet, lot of stuff going on every year relative to other cons.

[Classic ] Gen Con SoCal 2004 [12/8/2004]

Why call out this classic post?  Charmed, I’m sure.

[Classic] Gen Con 2004 [8/26/2004]

I had seven posts in May, so it wasn’t like I chose every one.  First time playing Heroes of Rokugan!

June

Fight, Right?

Yet another take on what makes combat better or worse.

August

Gen Con 2020 – Oh, The Horror!

For posterity, the virtual Gen Con.

[Classic] True Dungeon V1 Feedback [2020-8-3]

Well, as much as 2021 was my favorite year for VTD, most recent VTD was vastly better than VTD1.

September

Card Qualit-ies

I am a CCG designer/developer.  Like a real one.  I’ve created other games, but those weren’t actually sold to people for actual money.

October

Brain Squishy

Who doesn’t want to know more about what sort of gamer type I am?

November

Midwest Gamefest 2020

As possibly the only Midwest Gamefest I’ll ever participate in, figure why not.  Besides, had Battle Interactive.

December

Camping Tools

Sure, other people have their lists.  Here’s mine.

So, 2020 was 2020.  I’m trying to get this wrapped up as family is having New Year’s dim sum lunch.  While there’s probably more to say about the year, I guess I’ll just let it go.

Fisticuffs 20230729

Miguel hosted first of our newly planned quarterly location-rotating sessions yesterday.

Thanks for hosting.

I think I played seven games, but it might have been eight.

First game was four-player before others showed up.  I have a Penal Soldiers deck built I keep not caring hugely about but wanted to play at least once, so I broke it out for this game.

I got General Olivet in play, so I could have attacked on other people’s turns, but I wasn’t terribly relevant.  I know who sat where.  What else?

Oh, Paul, to my left, played Architects as well as he played Arcanoleech on my front site.  He put out Char with Elephant Gun and Commandant Barkhorn.  I didn’t get attacked much early on.  Mostly Paul and Miguel (opposite) doing stuff that mattered.  Tim, to my right, played same Scrappy Kid deck in every game he played that I also was in.

Well, I didn’t win.  I had nothing in play or in hand that could stop an attack on someone else.  Miguel attacked Paul, who only single blocked Miguel’s one attacker, and it got by the one interceptor.

Jackson and Drew arrived, so we split into two threes.

I played this deck I built in the morning:

Sufficient
Shadow Syndicate (45)
Syndicate (30)
Characters (22)
2x  Forest Sheng
1x  Hirake Kazuko
3x  Mars Colony Miscreants
1x  Mars Program Executive
2x  Ono Hideyoshi
3x  Planetologist
1x  Rei Okamoto
2x  Tamura Yumi
4x  Triad Punks
3x  Yamada Hanako
Edges (1)
1x  Corporate Warfare
Events (3)
1x  Catching Bullets
1x  Contract
1x  Zero-G Kung Fu
Sites (1)
1x  Cybermod Parlor
States (3)
2x  Herbert Suit
1x  Wall Running
Unaligned (15)
Events (4)
1x  Ejector Seat Malfunction
1x  On the Wire
1x  Scrounging
1x  The Algernon Effect
Feng Shui Sites (10)
2x  Dockyard
1x  Four Sorrows Island
5x  Möbius Gardens
1x  Precious Lotus Monastery
1x  The Hidden Grotto
Sites (1)
1x  Decked-Out Dirigible

After getting Yamada Hanako in play, I ended up with Hirake Kazuko, Rei Okamoto, and whatever.  I had a stolen Cop on the Beat for awhile.  Jackson, to my left, played at least four and was a threat with them and dorks with guns.  Miguel was playing Jammers and Hand.  There was a point when Jackson and I both had good power, and The Iron Monkey went right thinking could get damaged LaGrange Four, but the attack failed, and I eventually took Dark Traveler with Kazuko, who went from 4f to 8f, and swung for the win.

We had food.  Now, I lose track of quite what happened, but it may be that Drew had to leave at this point and Tim sat out so that we could play four-player.

Miguel was to my left … and I don’t remember this game at all.  Jackson’s decks were fast, so it may have been that he just ran over us, which is why I can’t remember what I did.  I may have played new Architects deck and just never put anything that mattered into play.  He may have played Flambards.

Rick showed up so that we had six again.

I think the next game was Tim to the left not getting sites and me not getting foundations, so the game ended without virtually anything happening.

Then, I played latest Brain Sucker.  I got lots of power from Möbius Gardens and Scrounging, even forgetting to use Möbius Gardens on various Ice Blessings and maybe other stuff.  Being able to not need a site structure helped immensely, as Jackson, to my right, was playing Flambards and monkeys.  I ended up with a Blood Eagles with BK97 Attack Chopper (played after using Blood Eagles for a BfV), Brain Sucker with BK97 Attack Chopper (played after using Brain Sucker for a BfV), and super Arcanomoth.  Nine monkey tokens and one Big Macaque Attack could try to block, but it was futile (nevermind that I had two cards in my hand to get stuff through) as I was going after flimsy Dockyard.

Jackson left.  Played four.

Well, at some point, there was a game with Tim to my left, Miguel opposite playing Queens and White Ninja that we kept stopping, Paul was to my right with Hand, and I played Architects and got Nachtshreck up to 14f when Tim won off of an attack where I failed to intercept like Tai Chi Student because of his Discerning Fire.  I feel like this had to have happened before Rick appeared, but I don’t know what Jackson was doing during this time.

Anyway.

Played a four with my playing a bunch of junky Ascended cards.  I did Shadowy Mentor Miguel’s 7f Thief in the Night to my right and had a 10f Might of the Elephant.  Miguel kept stealing power from me, had multiple Kickbacks, multiple Deep Pockets.  Rick was to my left with Miguel’s Ascended/Monarchs deck that tries to abuse Butterfly Knights.  Paul won off of The Burwell Incident after Miguel failed to win because I wasn’t running Dockyard or Möbius Gardens but rather Obsidian Mountains.  I didn’t even know the card existed.  Obviously, he was running Yakuza Enforcers and the like.

Final game was same seating, Rick playing Hand power steal, Paul playing Donner Lake, Miguel playing eunuchs.  I played Penal Soldiers again.  Miguel got his Imperial Boon engine going.  Hands of Darkness were constantly murdering The Iron Monkey but missed Commandant Barkhorn.  Rick Blade Palmed Imperial Boon …

I had two Penal Soldiers, Commandant Barkhorn, Colonel Griffith, Buro Official, so I Ambushed Paul’s The Unleashed for 9 with a Penal Soldiers to reduce his massive Lake army, but my Penal Soldiers, The Unleashed, and Rapid Response Team could not stop Paul, who still had enough little dudes to do 10 to Miguel’s site.

Suggested to Miguel he steal a play Don did all of the time on his Feasts of Souls for this deck – Dance of the Centipede.  Paul did manage to Glimpse too Briefly before he won:

The Shadowfist day worked well.  Penal Soldiers deck did what it was supposed to.  New Architects stuff interested me, I even played “CHAR is II sucky” (and may never again).  New Syndicate obviously must be banned as I outundercosted Cops on the Beat.  I got a bunch of empty boxes back from Miguel, so I can work on putting more cards away.  I’ll post about VTES Friday night later – after all, I have to complain about our former mayor and how she deprived me of additional sleep.

Origins 2023

I just skimmed through Origins 2021 post.  Very relevant in at least some ways.

Anyway, I played 13 card tournaments, 11 VTES tournaments this year.  There’s no way I’m remembering all of the things that entertained me.  I won’t even write about The Grandest Trick that occurred as the payoff is really for someone else to deliver.

I stayed with True Dungeon teammates, as did two North Carolinian teammates.  This enabled my actually attending all of Week of Nightmares and led to the weirdness of flying into the con and not renting a car but driving at least some on four different days.  Was interesting at times, had to tell myself to calm down and drive slower a lot as I never had to rush anywhere when I drove.  Drove two different vehicles.

They were all focused on Starship Horizons (Adventures).  I was (obviously) not.

Prior to Saturday, I had a bunch of stuff to deal with.  Work, car not starting, mother’s health all distracted from getting VTES decks built.  Shadowfist decks were easy as I only had to build two decks, one for Modern tournament, one a theme deck.  I built another and had some old decks in my one Shadowfist box.  I had no plan to play in the Classic tournament, but I wanted some backup for whatever.

I wrote up various decks.  Friday, I pulled the cards for 10 VTES decks, including throwing together a deck based on what was lying around in piles surrounding me.

Saturday morning flight was 7:15AM, so I was a wreck getting from Bay Area to Columbus.  I am increasingly realizing I’m too decrepit to have these early morning flights as they involve way too much lost sleep.  A host picks me up from airport.  We end up ordering in food for dinner.  I find out that mashers are mashed potatoes.

Hosts have four dogs.  I spend much of my vacation ttentionating the canines.

Sunday #1

I arranged with Jay that I’d drive to his place, and he would drive us to and from comicbook store for tournament.  I didn’t think about how it was Father’s Day as my life has never involved celebrating Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, or whatever.  This, at least, made more sense than what happened Monday.

I had a sense of what order to play decks in.  Play something I might replay later with some modifications as I might discover something with my 10 new decks to where I’d want to actually play a deck more than twice in my life.

I played Daughters Polaris Coach/Zip Line bleed with Concert Tours to pay for Polaris Coaches and bleed pump.  First round, don’t draw bleed stuff so do little before being eliminated.  Second round, don’t draw bleed until later but actually be bleedy for a bit before being eliminated.  Not feeling much from this deck.  I could have done vote instead or Shattering Crescendo, but I was trying to keep it simple when conceiving an updated take on this.  Just kind of dull.

I did play Art’s Traumatic Essence on The unnamed.  Lack of familiarity with the card meant it didn’t get removed.  I had to relook through my deck to even remember that.  I guess I should just run Crescendo more often to do something interesting.

Monday

Jay agreed to drive me to and from events on Juneteenth.  After he discovers how far to the North I am from downtown, we go with a plan of my figuring out transportation for other days (ignoring travel between tournament venues).  Very kind to drive me at all.

Game store, I go with Thing deck.  First time ever playing Thing (unless my mind has gone and I played someone else’s Thing deck sometime).  I had to break open packs to get my Things for this deck.  Lot of dumb things I had to do to get cards for my decks like hunt through lots of unsleeved cards to find things like VTES versions of Jyhad vampires.

I guess I did stuff.  Oh, not Thing in first round, at least not until it was too late to matter.  I did get a Jackal in one round or both rounds.  In both cases, needed my prey out of the way to get my permastealth.  Somehow, I didn’t manage to oust anyone in either round.  Did survive a fair amount in second round when it wasn’t looking good … this sentence is meaningless.  I played VTES.  I enjoyed it.  I can’t recall doing anything all that cool.  Shape Mastery-ed something, which got me to thinking about Shape Mastery in the current meta.

Got a Barq’s and got BBQ from City BBQ.  BBQ was not great.  Maybe I oversauced it.  I would not get the sausage again, which wasn’t cut.

Jay drives us to Biergarten.  The tables are small.

Three straight nights (well, expected three) of Gemüt Biergarten with expecting to get back to sleep headquarters late at night meant playing all of the fast decks.  Fast to lose, anyway.

I went with less bad on Monday, so it was Madman’s Quill time.  First round bleed out my prey.  Whoa.  What’s going on here?  What’s going on is a joke that took much of the week to pay off due to how it was observed that my prey might have been the only one to ever be ousted by ole Ian (of course not technically true, but I’ve been playing since 1996 and more prey than not have been secure in their knowledge that at least their predator wasn’t going to oust them).

I got two VPs through the power of dropping Madman’s Quill on The unnamed and my grandprey not getting his star vampire until so late in the game that he was irrelevant.  Kelly S. was my grandpredator just recursing Banishments.  I mention this detail because it has some relevance to later in the week.  I did Sudden three of my prey’s masters to stop him from bringing out a second minion.  I did not Sudden any of Kelly’s plays.  I did Touch of Clarity some stuff.

Well, two VPs is more than zero by old math.

First round got fast start with The Call.  Second round played some chumps with Mark as my prey, Karl his, Brad his, Jay his.  Did not get The Calls to accelerate.  Put some pressure on Mark, but not enough.  Didn’t draw bunch of Suddens early.

Jay drove me to HQ not too late.

Tuesday

I’m a drivin’.  Park at library.  Play Transfusion.  In one round, I didn’t draw The Path of Bone early, so I played Transfusion to move blood around/cycle.  I was bleeding.

May have been same round that I misplayed by using Gear Up to get Spiritual Intervention when I should have gotten Delaying Tactics as my prey was Stanislava, my grandprey had no game with Giotto allies, my grandpredator !Salubri, and my predator something I don’t recall that kind of fights.  I blocked a Bowl of Convergence by !Salubri and Karl asked why I did that.  Gave my two reasons.  This had to be second round as I was thinking I needed table win, something I hadn’t achieved in three tournaments.

Matt C. beat up Francis Milliner depriving me of some bleed two ways due to my having Margaret Milliner as my major Stanislava threat.  Didn’t rush backwards.  Stanislava eventually won.

Oh, I remember first round, now.  My predator’s first turn, he puts out two 2-caps with Dominate.  My prey sweeps.  Prey did number of Con Boons Giovanni to delay my demise.  I don’t fear bleed.  Bleed predators hardly ever seem to oust me due to my deckbuilding and playing styles.  Fame or votes kill me way better.

This should have been easier to remember as Jamie and I talked about his deck between rounds while we walked around the topiary with others.  We (in the game) think Jamie shouldn’t have equipped Saturday Night Special with one of his many minion actions as it cost him a pool that made Marshall’s game easier.  I played a fair amount with Marshall.

I didn’t notice the concession in the library had smoothies.

I drive to Gemüt Biergarten early, which was unnecessary.  I was more comfortable at library.

I get lunch/breakfast at HangOverEasy across the street.  Chili burger cooked medium rare (I asked) with sweet potato tots.  I missed the drink menu until after I had ordered lemonade.  So, one takeaway of cuisine in Columbus is that lemonade is much more watery than I expect it to be, true here and at HQ.  Burger wasn’t open face chili burger like I’m used to and was okay.  I don’t like sweet potatoes, so my unbridled thrill at having a better than fries option was defeated and my life descended into unending misery yet again.

Since I’m driving, I can leave as soon as I fail.  I have to choose from one of two terrible decks, deciding to go with Ahrimanes stealth bleed for Tuesday leaving Nosferatu … um … Nosferatu for Wednesday night.

I only remember one of my rounds.  Eric A. (only Eric?) didn’t know what Spiritus does.  He ousted me with Bang Nakh deck, so let’s say he didn’t get much sense.  I did concern Mark, my prey, who was running NewToreador, when I did things like bleed for four with not my The Siamese with Heart of the City.  I Engling Furyed some to pay for stuff.  Discarded Vulture’s Buffets early.

Agent of Power was interesting to me in this deck.  I did AoP for Protean on like Cynthia at one point for the possibility of Donnybrook … yup, Ahrimanes Anarch SB.

It was okay tournament.  I wasn’t enjoying food at Gemüt Biergarten, though.  I did enjoy my fruit punch Monday, but neither currywurst nor paprika schnitzel were doing anything for me.

I drive to HQ.

Wednesday

NCers drop me off at library as they all go to con to do Starship Horizons install.

We are in different room, maybe better room.  I direct folks to new room for a while.

I try to play less bad deck, so I go with 8-cap (vote) bloat.

First game might have been four player as I remember Vinny was my prey with NewBrujah Debate, axe was Jamie with Ventrue with Obfuscate, predator was Kelly S. with Cybele Striga.  Vinny’s game was rough as he basically could only act with one minion, while I got Creepshow Casino to avoid not-Second Tradition.  I had a fine start and bloated a lot.  I’d get bled for three at times.

Kelly was more amused than I was when he declared a Nergal bleed, I try to block, he plays I Am Legion specifically stating that “You aren’t Auspex bouncing.” since we were late in the game, and I Auspex bounce with one of my two Telepathic Misdirections.  Bleed gets bounced back.  He was under pressure from Arika and friends.

I Golconda Nergal at one point, having to spend a lot of time thinking whether to Golconda one of my dudes, Marcus Vitel, or Nergal.  Kelly has to think, where I hope he takes the pool.  He doesn’t.

Kelly and I agree I blew this game as I recognized that Jamie was low on cards but didn’t process how much easier the endgame was likely to be for me than having Cybele and Nergal behind me.  I did Entrancement Veneficti at some point to reduce pressure.  I thought this was a good game with my making a bad tactical decision of not backousting but where I got to do a lot of stuff and be relevant.

In the second round, my predator is playing Imbued and my grandpredator (playing Nephandi) doesn’t know Imbued stuff.  He doesn’t get to learn a lot as I Entrancement with Force of Personality my predator’s second Imbued with a Living Wood Staff as always happens in games with Imbued.

The playmat, btw, was borrowed from HQ, as one of two things I forgot to bring with me.

Alex R. (only Alex?) is my prey with British Museum version of Recruitment Exercise.  Brad C. (only Brad?) his prey.  I steal a Nephandus with Force of Personality from Eric.

Time grows short.  Alex is looming threat to Brad.  Brad ousts Eric after Matt’s game was long over.  With little time left, I use all of these minions to oust Alex with Aire of Elation.

I play inefficiently with 2 minutes left and Brad has too much pool for me to oust.  I doubt I could have done anything to oust him in time, anyway, but it was sloppy of me to not have my actions planned.  I had very few votes to call late in this game.  Miller did get agged into torpor trying to oust Alex.  Imbued and Nephandus kept bleeding for 1, so those helped a lot as I only did exactly enough damage to get Alex.  Time running out affected a lot.

It was fun.  More importantly, I discovered that the library smoothies (well, the one type I got) were really good and very reasonably priced, so I was well chilled.

Still no table win.

Played only pickup game of WoN.  I played Blood Brothers agg stuff.  I bled for 4 early against prey unfamiliar with Sanguinus.  I rescued a vampire crosstable, first time playing against Shadowfist Matt ever, then used Haven Uncovered on his dude to rush him so that I could cycle a dodge.  I Breath of the Dragon predator’s Rafael de Corazon and eat him.  Jay, my grandprey, gets ousted by “Stanislava” prey when KRC passes while Jay is at 4 pool.  I screw up something that could have probably saved Jay’s Lasombra deck.  Votes were everywhere except on my board.

I don’t remember much else of the game.

Jay takes me over to Gemüt Biergarten, where we also use The Olde Oak as Biergarten wanted outdoor space for other folks.  I get food from Oak, and it’s okay.  Weird to get chips and salsa as side with my BBQ burger.  Chips are supersalty, so I rub off a bunch.  Burger was pleasant enough.

I play Nosferatu figuring I’ll get done quickly.

First round, predator does nothing much.  I try to block grandpredator with Tusk the Talebearer with 4, one more than three, intercept and fail.  I was amused.  Second round, I try to burn Pentex Subversion on grandpredator that was grandprey’s (Karl winnie Presence), get Tusk blocked, who proceeds to Song of Serenity, Immortal Grapple, Disarm.  Nobody really cares.  The unnamed … yawn … behind me puts pressure on.  I put no pressure forward on Brad’s Ministry, though I do fail one of his votes against Karl by accident.

I get ride to convention center with others.  We get badges after I finally can get to QR code.  I check in with HQites.  We return to HQ.

Thursday

Not-VTES day for ole Ian.

9AM Shadowfist cube draft.  I am always amazed at how people draft niche CCGs.  Sure, my deck was flawed with lack of reliable faction resources.  But, I had tons of power generation that never should have been passed to me.

Quanqiu Wishing Well should not have been passed to me.  Nor should the second.

Summoning Circle shouldn’t have been passed.  Xin’s Tome of Knowledge also passed to me.  Decklist:

2x  Blue Flower Society

1x  Confusion Stability

1x  Finding Your Balance

1x  Fu Lions

1x  Into the Light

1x  Li Po

1x  Shaolin Supplicants

1x  Sifu Beumer

1x  Warrior Poet

1x  Yung Chang

1x  Alfar

1x  Auramancer

1x  Chiu Bagong

1x  Fakhir-al-Din

1x  Fire Warriors

1x  Soul Fire

1x  Summoning Circle

1x  Wasteland Rangers

1x  William Franklin

1x  Abandoned Old Shop

1x  Beached Supertanker

1x  Medicinal Flower Garden

1x  Phlogiston Mine

2x  Quanqiu Wishing Well

1x  Rainforest Bridge

2x  Sulphurous Cenote

2x  Walled Enclave

1x  Xin’s Tome of Knowledge

1x  Discerning Fire

1x  Spirit in a Bottle

2x  Violet Meditation

1x  Chainsword

I had tons of Jammers hitters in card pool, so I looked for Jammers’ foundations late, but it was too late.  I hate drafted a lot.  I passed White Ninja!!

First game, I win at time after not having resources to play faction cards for much of the game and just keep playing Feng Shui Sites.  I played Summoning Circle early, so I also got to participate with that in addition to site abilities.  Sulphurous Cenote may have prevented Josh from winning earlier.  Second round, didn’t win.  Third round, played Chainsword on Paul’s superleaper to try to help contain Tim K.’s weenie horde, which only caused Paul to win when I didn’t attack his superleaper but his site that could move Chainsword with my Li Po and/or Yung Chang.

I have to get going to Starship Horizons Adventures as tournament is running an hour late, and I left an hour between events.  I find out later I got third place.

SHA just ends up being bewildering to me.  I do a run with three volunteers, two I’m staying with, in part four of a four part series when I’ve never played before, and they had played the first two parts …  Why we didn’t play part three wasn’t superclear, maybe they had it scheduled for later.

The 20 seconds of useful training on tactical meant I wasn’t clear how to load and fire Devastators (nukes) or the railgun.  Turned out that our ship specs weren’t loaded correctly, so I would have seen boxes for those.  We apparently succeeded in our mission even as badly as things seemed to go.  We playtested some the basic ship on mission 1 in our remaining time.  I learned a little of tactical and engineering.

Was it fun?  I guess.  I just didn’t know what was going on or how to do things, so I committed war crimes unintentionally rather than intentionally.  I have too little sense of what would want me to get seriously into the game.  Maybe I just tag along when my friends need another player.  I suggest that anyone who likes Star Trek try it out at least once, and it … much like True Dungeon or RPEX … is likely a much better example of play if you run with others who are newbs.  Of course, you can always just download SH and practice roles before trying SHA at a con.

Thursday night is Shadowfist Modern.  I suck.  One game, I might have had a chance if I attacked right not noticing Matt had two FSS in play early.  The game swung wildly between Troy and Matt due to Cat Stance.  I wasn’t that into this.  Draft was vastly more interesting to me.

Because the HQites can leave early Thursday night, I drive a car back to HQ.

Friday

In the morning, because I got little sleep any night and had plenty of time in the basement trying to avoid setting off dogs, I build a VTES deck.  As I had 11 tournaments and only 10 new decks, this meant I could run a different deck every event, however I had lost interest in my Recruitment Exercise deck after watching how tediously boring they were in other players’ hands.  So, my plan was to run Vic SB in first tourney, if I win, run precon mashup in second, then play I Love Cheap Thrills in the NAC.  If I continue to suck (zero table wins in 7 tournaments), run I Love Cheap Thrills Friday night and precon mashup in NAC.

Morning tournament, I suck.  I don’t remember much from first round.  I got Lolita Houston in play and bled some and eventually petered out against … whatever.  The second game was vastly more memorable … because it was a complete travesty and shall not be talked about, not even my amusement over something.

Evening tournament was vastly more fun, even if I sucked.  One round I didn’t do much.  Other round, Marshall, predator, plays Smiling Jack early and table doesn’t get rid of it.  I get 2 VPs from it as it builds up to eventually 9 counters.  Could have gone away if grandpredator ousts Marshall, but my prey Annekes the killing bleed.  In the two player endgame, I Inscription Marshall’s Anima Gathering Isabel de Leon and … eventually he Direct Interventions the Inscription.  I was trying to cycle, and I dug one less card because of that.  Nine counters on Smiling Jack kills me.

Having enjoyed I Love Cheap Thrills a lot, even in first game where I just played cards that weren’t Inscription, I decided to rerun it on Sunday Funday (with no changes after what happened on Saturday).

Failing to have gotten into finals for a ninth straight time, I check in with HQites, and they are busy.

So, I go to Local Cantina and get two Americano tacos.  I liked this food the best of any meal, though it wasn’t perfect – tacos would have been vastly better with hard shells as they just fell apart.  Ambience sucked, with weird cover songs, lots of noise, and my being by myself.  My talking about weezy tacos causes the crew to want Taco Bell as we head back to HQ.

Saturday

NAC.  Time to play a real deck.

First round, Pete is my prey with group 5/6 Ventrue, Mark is Nocturning, other two didn’t much matter.  Mark Nocturns them.  I comment that Pete will crush me in endgame, so my game sucks.  Pete Daring the Dawns for kill bleed on Mark as I spend time trying to figure out how to survive, The Uncoiling The Unmasking (coin flip as FBI came down early) after sitting on The Uncoiling in my hand for ages waiting for The Unmasking.  That bleed is great … especially for me.  Not only do I lose Nocturn pressure, but Mary Anne Blaire being in torpor for a round buys me time to pass votes and contest with Pete, who contests with me, so it’s my two Ventrue to his one.  I win the endgame.  2/2/1 split was amazing for how game looked.

Second round, more people join tournament, so our 40 player tournament with all fives now has me play a four player with prey playing The unnamed, axe playing !Salubri, and my predator is … Mark.  I make the comment that expect him to run over me.

That might have happened if Matt (!Salubri) didn’t drop Tension in the Ranks on turn one and hadn’t started rushing forward right away.  Mark’s game completely changed as he kept Dreamsing to get to point of blowing up Tension.  With lack of pressure, The Uncoiling coming down to blow up The Unmasking again, no interference from prey that I cared about, I built up.  Prey ousted !Salubri.  I get 3 VPs.

So, great tournament points, first TW in 10 tournaments and 5 VPs after two rounds means I’m doing amusingly well.

Third round is the easy game.  Some chump named Darby is my prey.  Three of the decks at the table just stealth bleed, including my predator’s … Nocturn deck.  Grandprey has no game as Huitzilopochtli to my left just bleeds him out.  I have no vote competition, no meaningful intercept, and only some pool pressure.  I get rid of Unleash Hell’s Furys repeatedly as I can just Freak and rescue.  I bloat a ton.  I hit John, grandpredator with Platinum Protocol action with KRCs as I know he will get my predator eventually.  I Daring the Dawn past an UHF for the Darby kill.  In the endgame, I have too much pool to get ousted.  I grind through John’s pool for another 3 VPs.

I commented to Darby that I didn’t think I made a single mistake in this game, where I notice mistakes all of the time normally.  Sure, the game was easy due to the matchups, but I still made good decisions on every turn.

As top seed, my placement decision is painful.  I didn’t want to be in front of Malk22 (or whatever it’s called).  I didn’t want to be next to The unnamed gets The Great Beast.  But, mostly, I just wanted to be across the table from the other Ventrue deck as it was 5/6.  I thought a bunch of times later about maybe being Bill’s predator, but Kelly S.’s deck just made mine bad.  Kelly L.’s prey might have been interesting as Kelly on Kelly crime would have happened sooner with Banishments likely coming Malk way.

Kelly S., whom I had spouted nonsense to for much of the week, commented that I didn’t seem happy.  I wasn’t.  For various reasons.

Consider that the only tournament of the first 10 where I got even a TW, let alone got to the finals was the one tournament where I didn’t really build the deck, where I played a deck that was just good stuff cards that get played all of the time and that didn’t do anything interesting strategically or tactically.  While Bill’s deck was interesting in the finals, I just didn’t have anyone to root for in the finals outside of myself, and I did very little all game.  Also, I didn’t expect to live the dream and win the NAC as a bottom quartile player.  My response to Kelly S. was “Let’s see how this game goes.”  I did start to feel better after I was ousted.  I was somewhat disappointed in the Kelly on Kelly endgame that Lyons didn’t try to play to time for the win, but it was an honorable seppuku.

I was late for the Shadowfist casual event, not that that mattered as it was play however much you wanted to play.  I was horribly not in the mood to play SF at this point or possibly anything.  But, this was when people were supposed to play their theme decks, so I toughed it out while waiting for people’s games to end.

It was not a good game as one of the theme decks did winning things, and the other three did not.  I did get to go at a reasonable time …

… only to discover that the SHAfolks were doing tear down early, rather than waiting for Sunday to do everything.

I did some minimal help, and we all headed back to HQ, well, with a stop at Wendy’s as they wanted food.  I did end up finishing some leftover nuggets, so it got me food to.

I got like one hour of sleep Saturday night.

Sunday #2

Pain around my left eye until I have a soft drink and some nuts.

To the con!

There are at least four things I’m supposed to remember from round one.  I got Information Highway on my first turn, so I bring out 6-caps on round one, round two, round three, a Tupdog on round four, 6-cap on round five.

My Tupdog gets Dominate, and I eventually just rush Pete’s Blood Brother and torp it with hands of 1.  I debated bleeding for 2 with it.  I had an easy game, with Mark as my grandpredator with Recruitment Exercise.  Easy in that I played for the time out table win by leaving Marshall alone as much as possible with his Garrote deck.  Vinny was my predator and defended well with punching for 4+ with NewBrujah Debate deck.

I Illegal Search and Seizure Marshall’s Ivan’s Ivory Bow.  I play Ecstatic Agony and Vinny comments not knowing what the card does, then Marshall makes a comment, then I comment “I’m not sure I know what the card does.”  So, as is usual in VTES, prey has first opportunity to read the card followed by predator then Eagle Sight/Falcon’s Eye players, then the person who played the card.  Marshall reads it out loud.  Couple times later, I have to read the card to make sure I can abuse Mark with it.

I torp Mark’s vampire with a .44 off of the press punch for 3 from Ecstatic Agony.  I oust Marshall for second VP with no more than 10 minutes left, though not with Melange because I’m bottom quartile.  I chose to discard The Name Forgotten.  I torp one of Mark’s minions with Machine Blitz …

2.5 VPs.  Second round, Kelly L. is my prey and Inside Dirts + Thuggees one of my two 6-caps into torpor.  Tom is his prey.  Tom and I played in the Bay Area a long time ago, and it was good to talk some.  Pete was my grandpredator and didn’t do anything to Norm, whose NewBrujah “do it all” (as opposed to toolbox, which I was explaining to Brett, whom I never played with but talked to for extended stretches) deck ripped me apart, even with Ecstatic Agony on one of my two minions.

I waited quite awhile while needing sleep badly as 1 TW 2.5 VPs almost made the finals.  I just needed Mark to not get more than 1 VP in his second round, but some folks are like top quartile.

Because the SHAfolks only needed like an hour to load up vehicles, NCers headed home, and I drove a SUV full of electronic equipment back to HQ.  I tried napping and got some rest but not a lot.  We went for pizza final meal.  I think if I went there again, I’d get Sicilian style as thin crust really isn’t my thing.

Watched some YouTube.

I got up before my 2:45AM alarm, so total about four hours of sleep in two nights before my 6:15AM flight.  I got home without any issues, too tired to read a book on my long flight, where I just conked out shortly into flight.

Had work to do Monday.  Kept falling asleep throughout the day.

Great experience.

I just enjoy playing VTES.  I’m discouraged by how boring decks are, including my own, as I’ve built (as in pulled the cards, I write a lot of decks I never play) maybe 500 decks in my life at this point, and it’s all so similar.

Shadowfist could have been better, but it may have been how much I was focused on VTES that made it harder to care what happened outside of the draft.

SHA was just an incomplete as a game to me.

Hanging out with my True Dungeon team and the hosts’ dogs was … the sort of thing I would be happy to do a lot.  Both at HQ and in the SHA area.

Jay was very kind to drive me around … when I wasn’t learning the freeway system around Columbus.

I got to hang out with VTES players, try to help some with deck change ideas.  I got to amuse myself by giving rather than taking.  I got to hang out with ‘Fisters, even one in my hood that I don’t spend a lot of time normally talking to.  I got inspired with VTES deck ideas on the flights home, serious ideas in some cases.

Nothing really went wrong other than being top seed going into the finals of the NAC.  Well, I was horribly sleep deprived a lot of the time, but that’s to be expected.  Maybe I don’t do Sunday Funday in future and just sleep all day.  Hopefully, I don’t have 6:15AM flight on Monday after con.

KublaCon 23 Shadowfist Decks

So, why not?  One of the things about Origins coming up is that I avoided doing anything I cared about with Modern.  Well, okay, I avoided playing anything I cared about, not that my other built decks matter that much to me.  Actually having new cards in front of me, I just couldn’t get that interested in doing things.  I will have to think about what cards are fun to me.

Fan Hand
(40) Guiding Hand
Guiding Hand (25)
Characters (15)
1x Kings in Yellow
1x Kite Sailor
1x Peasant Hero
1x The Master
1x The Red Turtle
3x Twin Steels
1x Wandering Tracker
1x Warrior Poet
3x Wasteland Gardener
1x Wasteland Sage
1x Xiang Wu
Edges (3)
3x Dawning Light
Events (4)
1x First, Do No Harm
1x Pushed to the Edge
1x Revolution
1x Voices on the Wind
States (3)
1x Finding Your Balance
1x Sage’s Footsteps
1x Stance of the Wandering Toad
Unaligned (15)
Characters (1)
1x Johann Bonengel
Feng Shui Sites (12)
1x Abandoned Old Shop
1x Beached Supertanker
1x Golden Sky Island
1x Isolated Banyan Grove
1x Salt Mine
2x Shifting Sands
1x Traveling Theater
1x Undisturbed Rainforest
1x Walled Enclave
2x Wasteland Steppes
States (2)
1x Defense Perimeter
1x Specialist

What did I learn from this deck?  Damage redirection as the Hand theme in this set is just, ahem, painful.

Unfortunate
(49) Lotus
Lotus (37)
Characters (25)
4x Eater of Fortune
1x Evil Twin
1x Fo Shen
1x Infernal Army
1x Je Pai
1x Jiang Fei
1x Li Yu
1x Malachi
1x Midnight
1x Reverend Adam Wither
2x Shamanistic Punk
5x Sinister Priest
1x Sung Hi
1x Ten Thousand Agonies
1x The Alabaster King
2x Wailing Apparition
Edges (2)
2x Throne of Skulls
Events (9)
1x Cannibal’s Banquet
2x Detonating Corpses
1x Poisoned Wound
1x Rend Chi
1x Spirit Wrack
2x The Withering of Souls
1x Verminous Rain
States (1)
1x Imperial Champion
Unaligned (12)
Edges (1)
1x The Hungry
Events (3)
1x Discerning Fire
2x Pocket Demon
Feng Shui Sites (8)
5x Dockyard
1x Haunted Tomb
2x Möbius Gardens

Anything interesting here?  Nope.

Fan Ascended
(35) Ascended
Ascended (25)
Characters (15)
2x Bunker Security
1x Cut-Out
1x Enclave Historian
1x Katerina Sa
1x Kennedy Rose
3x Old Buzzard
1x Paratroopers
1x Puppet Dictator
1x Shamali Storm
1x Street Rat
1x The Mouse
1x The Professional
Edges (4)
1x Deep Pockets
3x Long Term Investments
Events (4)
1x Anonymous Tip
1x Forged Orders
1x Inside Job
1x Playing Possum
States (2)
1x Framed!
1x Ghillie Suit
Unaligned (10)
Feng Shui Sites (10)
3x Echoing Cavern
1x Golden Sky Island
1x Isolated Banyan Grove
1x Salt Mine
2x Sunken City District
2x Walled Enclave

What did I learn here?  Long Term Investments is maybe not hard to trigger, but it’s not all that interesting to do so.  Rather play these cards than most of the Hand cards.

Fermat’s Last Plan
(60) Purists
Purists (36)
Characters (21)
2x Arcane Scientist
1x Cognitive Spirit
3x Fermat’s Soldiers
1x Jirani Parker
1x Kisa Serkov
5x Mathemagician
1x Occult Geomancer
1x Purist Aspirant
2x Symphonic Disciples
1x The Insidious Dr. Fermat
1x The Magnificent Vincenzo!
1x The Makyoh
1x True Believer
Events (14)
2x Déjà Vu
1x Delay the Inevitable
2x Echo Cancellation
4x Entropy Sphere
2x Entropy Tap
1x Glimpse of Brief Eternity
1x Math Bomb
1x Strange Magic
States (1)
1x Glimpse of Paradox
Unaligned (24)
Characters (1)
1x Dark Traveler
Events (11)
2x Discerning Fire
1x Incendiary Blast
1x Larcenous Mist
1x Memory Reprocessing
4x Pocket Demon
1x Scroll of Incantation
1x Shattering Fire
Feng Shui Sites (11)
3x Bamboo Forest
1x Humble Dojo
5x Secluded Redoubt
1x Tangram Alley
1x Thousand Sword Mountain
Sites (1)
1x Secret Headquarters

You would think Energy Tap would be easy.  Canceling characters you fight is not something I care about.  I did like Glimpse of Paradox – I played it as a preemptive counter to Material Transcendence.

Flitting
(50) Jammers
Jammers (37)
Characters (18)
1x 401k Squad
1x Blasting Crew
2x Dr. Ivan Vasilovich
5x Mad Scientist
3x Napalm Addict
1x Razor’s Hotties
3x Rebel Without a Cause
1x Resistance Squad
1x Turing Machine
Edges (2)
1x Frag the G!
1x Payback Time
Events (11)
1x Coordinated Sabotage
2x Lighting the Fuse
5x Scrounging
1x Stick it to The Man!
1x The Underground
1x Turbo Boost
Sites (1)
1x Genocide Lounge
States (5)
1x Jury-Rigged Dynamo
3x Netherflitter
1x Sabotage
Unaligned (13)
Characters (1)
1x Jimmy Wai
Feng Shui Sites (11)
1x Ancestral River Home
5x Bustling Metro Station
1x Cataract Gorge
2x Möbius Gardens
1x Night Market
1x Solar Farm
States (1)
1x Desire Manipulator

Key to victory – 401k Squad for zero discards.

KublaCon 2023

As usual, I blow off Friday.  I don’t really go to these local cons to play anything anymore, which is why they feel more like chores than events.

I do work on Shadowfist decks during the week as well as a couple Traveller demo decks (that never got used for demo purposes nor have I ever played them).

Saturday, head up about 10AM to go get breakfast/lunch at Shanghai Dumpling Shop.  Predictably get there half an hour early so look through everything at Dean’s Produce before finally getting some pears.  Get the two things I care most about for food.  Hard on body to eat that much these days.

Get to con at noon.  Dump stuff in Jeff’s room, which I decided I’d stay in for the con rather than commute back and forth – thanks Jeff for putting me up.  Go hang out with ‘fisters who are not ‘fisting.

Play a couple of games of Tsuro.  I don’t dislike filler games, I just think of them as filler.  Could just spend time talking, but whatever.  Go through some new fan cards and build a couple decks as I complain about how one of the cards should have the Acrobats designator.

As some folks disappear and others are into a game they care about, I start falling asleep, so I go lie down.  Yup, game conventions – places to nap.

I get up and get Traveller stuff together to head down to the dungeon that is the CCG room.  I was reminded that this room was the same type as on the other side where CCGs were located for years.  In recent years, we got a room with natural light and plenty of space.

Traveller demos are stressful as the game is complicated, so I want to explain in excruciating detail how to play in each game.  Well, when six of the eight people who signed up show up, I have to divide my attention.  Admittedly, the family with two young children left early for good reasons as the game is not easy.  The other three finished up their game after a very long time.

It helped that Jeff could come by between his staff rounds.  Generally, I end up with the most people with the fewest people to explain how to play.  I don’t know if it’s night demos or earlier in the con or what, but I consistently get more people Saturday nights than other times.

Jeff and his brother finish up what they are doing, and we go for hot pot.  The green onion pancake was quite good.  The hot pot was not.  I never know with these places what the sauce situation is, so I didn’t go to try to find the sauce bar, which I only saw on the way out.  Sauces would have helped a lot as our spicy broth was just bland.

Barely get any sleep.  Get up and go to Little Lucca’s to get same sandwich I don’t generally end up enjoying that much.  Problem with LL’s is that their bread, which I like by itself, so dominates the filling that the sandwich is unbalanced and pretty tasteless.  I think I try to remember to ask for more mustard so that there’s some flavor.  They have garlic spread and whatever, but I’m going to be around people, so that’s out, and sandwiches should actually taste like something without special sauces.

I help set up Traveller being run by Jeff’s sister and brother-in-law.  I finally get to ‘fisting.

Apparently, I only played five games.  It felt like more, but they did not go that fast.

I started out playing a game with deck entirely of the new fan cards.  The deck was Hand, and I had all sorts of damage redirection text to parse.  I did do a little bit in this game, played The Master, Underworld Coronation went off, and I did nothing for the rest of the game.  In fact, I even started a turn with the thought of making a bid for victory, playing Revolution to take everything in play, except two things – one, it was ruled differently than it should have been ruled, two, it didn’t matter as it got Catching Bulletsed anyway.

The games were casual even though we had 10 players as it allowed people to come and go.

Same three of us played again.  I played Lotus with bunch of cards I don’t normally play.  I played one 3c character who got murdered by Who’s the Monkey Now? after I tried The Withering of Souls.  I, then, didn’t do anything else.  Yeah, Shadowfist.

Then, I played another three player with a deck entirely of new cards.  Ascended.  I have problems getting enough resources to play things, so I just keep putting out FSSs and get a bunch of power.  I finally get to play Kennedy Rose, who gets stolen.  I play Puppet Dictator, who also gets stolen.  Jason is playing a Song of the Assassin deck and makes a final bid for victory by drawing the rest of his deck, which fails.  Merlin effortlessly wins at that point.

Four player game – yeah, the slow, regulation heavy format I was made to play.  I play Purists!!  Why, when I hate playing Purists decks even though the individual cards are so interesting?  Because it’s the only deck I have that combines old cards with fan cards.  I do stuff.  I actually play character removal in this deck and remove some characters.  My Secret Headquarters survives the whole game.  I can’t keep the other Purists deck from becoming defenseless after I block a Mutator with Jirani Parker and Discerning Fire away his Voice of the Unnameable and Inoue Oram (masterminds!), so the weenie Lotus/Jammers deck which was closest to victory most of the game won.  My Fermat’s Soldiers actually had Ambush at times, also gave Ambush to an Orange Master off of RigDis.  While the Orange deck did get lots of power, it was regulated for the most part.

Finally, time to become legendary.  Jammers.  Time for unparalleled sleaze.  I get power off of Solar Farm, Jury-Rigged Dynamo on … Möbius Gardens (the one true way), Scroungings, Lighting the Fuse, Dr. Ivan Vasilovich.  So, I get to do stuff like play Napalm Addict and 401k Squad and … Netherflitters.

Miguel whiffs on Glimpse of Brief Eternity due to the pure awesome of this deck.  I manage to twice … twice … forget to use Bustling Metro Stations.  I need to stop playing the card as I forget about FSS abilities all of the time.

Yet, I run through my opponents, even as Miguel is playing my Purists deck and got to see a couple new cards in action.  He didn’t pay attention to my stating that my Netherflitters gave Mobility, so his bid for victory just ran into two extra interceptors.

Yup, win one game.  Well, admittely, that’s 20% of the games, where the expected number of wins would be 1.6.

My Gazelle piracy deck (Traveller) didn’t get played by Jeff’s brother-in-law.  I go to bed, lying around for hours.

Monday morning, go to Lucky’s for sandwich, takes forever and costs 50% more than it used to, so I think I’m finally done with getting from this Lucky’s even though I’ve had some good sandwiches from there.  Get stuff in car that isn’t Traveller.  Talk to two people before my Traveller event.  Set up in dungeon.

Talk to couple people up from SoCal for a while.  Jeff gets done with his staff stuff, so we do some playtesting of the Gazelle deck.  I win three games.  I don’t dispute that there are answers in our game to things like generating 20+ Attack Value on rounds 2 and 3, but I don’t think they are good enough to make the game fun to play when people build serious piracy decks.  We don’t want extremes.  We want piracy as both a tactical play, which it often is, especially with starter decks, and a path to victory with some interesting interactions.  I just don’t find pure piracy to have interesting interactions.  I couldn’t care less about what complications people play – my adventure deck is entirely designed to suppress opponents’ victory points.

So, I got to talk to various people I used to do stuff with.  I got to play some Shadowfist and with different folks.  Got some interesting prizes from that – thanks Merlin for running Shadowfist locally.  Got to finally test Gazelle deck, a deck I don’t really want to play.  Got to teach some.  It was a good weekend.  Got out of the house.  But, I just don’t feel local cons as they aren’t adventures, aren’t special, and require way too much work as I hall around 60 pounds of Traveller stuff and worry about how to give people a decent experience.

Fisticuffs 20230203

Sign of the times.  I played Shadowfist last Friday and didn’t post immediately here about it.  Instead, I posted these comments to the Discord server:

We had four games.  I went first in four player with Merlin to left, Daniel opposite, Paul to right.  I was playing Abominations.  Merlin Good Ol’ Boys.  Daniel Dragon Guns with Gunslinger for Bite.  Paul Unstoppable Four Mountains Fist.  Daniel burned for victory a bunch of times, then got locked out (unless he could Bite a second time) with zero power and four in his BfV due to Potlatch.  I could have delayed this game a bit longer, but a Good Ol’ Boys got through after hours on my never used Valley of Ashes even with ITAYG and Golden Comeback played while it was in play (both played to stop bids for victory).

I played threesie with Paul to left, Drew to right.  I had resource issues, but managed to play a third Great Wall and an Urban Monk on same turn to look threatening.  Paul had Architects/Hand for some obvious reason.  Drew won off of Underworld Gateway in a game that didn’t last forever.  I played a total of two Railroad Workers (both of which got Toasted after being in smoked pile), Urban Monk, and Red Ally.

I finished my patty melt while Daniel won off of the broken power of CAT Tactics in a fourway.  Paul to his left, Drew across, Merlin right.  Merlin did vampire stuff.  Paul Dragon/Purists.  Drew Syndicate.

We did five player where only three players play on any given turn.  On a player’s turn, only two opposite players exist.  Daniel first with Petal stuff.  I skipped a turn, eventually played some Ascended stuff that didn’t rein in Merlin at all.  Paul to my left was Dragon.  Drew was Hand Faceoff.  Merlin Fiery with some Ice sleaze.  Put out bunch of pingy foundations, then three Flambards, and a Fire Serpent.  With Paul’s site hit for 5 from Daniel, it was 3 Body with a horde coming in from Merlin.  Paul’s game was rough as Merlin and Daniel were the only two actually making any progress.  Drew kept giving me power through Chinese Connection, but I had no defensive tricks and could never generate enough attack to actually do anything to Merlin.

In three games, I never once made a bid for victory.  Occurred to me that the last deck I played probably should only be played in foursies.  I’ll try to build decks that actually do something even if that’s against my oeuvre as it makes for better games when actually have things like Killdeer in Ascended deck or whatever.

Takeaways?  I continue to not get around to lots of deck ideas.  I continue to not be able to threaten to win in games, part of which is being able to stop others from winning or achieving dominant positions.  I have an idea for building decks differently than I usually do.  I mostly get attracted to designators.  I should build around edges and other engine cards that generate power or fighting without having to spend power I don’t have (either because I can’t take sites or because I’m tired of burning for power).

We played at St. John’s.  I used to go there for cheap non-fast food burgers as they used to do half price burgers Wednesdays and Saturdays.  Then, went to 1/3 off.  Now, I don’t know if they have any promotional pricing.  It was much quieter, especially for a Friday, for probably the obvious reasons.  I got a patty melt, which I had never gotten there before.  Comparing to my own.  I like my own better.  I want my bread crunchy (but not dry).  This was too soft.  I’ve always found their burgers too meaty, which is why I used to typically get chili burger.  I don’t think Daniel and Merlin understood what I meant by that.  I don’t mean too thick.  I mean the patty is underseasoned and tastes too much like cooked ground beef rather than actually being a good burger taste.  I dipped the patty melt in various condiments as it was neither greasy enough nor onions carried enough flavor juxtaposition.  I noted that my preference in the area (by area I mean a huge area as not close to my house) is Texas Roadhouse for burger.  Their bacon cheeseburger is just right, except I prefer good bread over hamburger bun style bread, and it can fall apart a bit.

Posting this deck because it should be reworked and because of its own name.  Cheng Hu Bai makes little sense unless you realize this is a “Red” theme deck.  The healing is probably over done.  It’s fine to not run 5x Dockyard when expecting to never make a bid for victory, but this doesn’t reliably do anything.  Red Ally really needs some combo so that it can survive giving Superleap.  I find that folks murder my Blood Eagles if they have enough time to do so.  Maybe more Festival of Giants and less other things.  Can easily take out the Rice Paddies, which I have never gotten to generate power.  Maybe they could if running better characters.

Red Deck Loses
Guiding Hand (60)

Hand Cards (49)
Characters (21)
1x Cheng Hu Bai
2x Master Yuen
4x Railroad Workers
3x Red Ally
3x Red Master
5x Shaolin Student
3x Urban Monk

Edges (3)
1x Fire in the Lake
1x Superior Mastery
1x Undisturbed Meditation

Events (11)
1x Blessings of the Fall
1x Confucian Stability
1x Corners of the Mouth
1x Festival of Giants
1x Into the Light
1x Iron and Silk
1x Journey’s Reward
1x Rigorous Discipline
1x Secrets of Shaolin
2x The Willow Bends

Sites (7)
-Feng Shui Sites (1)
1x Temple of Boundless Meditation
-Non-Feng Shui Sites (6)
1x Red Senshi Chamber
5x Rice Paddies

States (7)
1x Crane Stance
2x Essence-Absorbing Stance
2x Mastery of the Red Principle
1x Simple Paper Fan
1x Yanyuedao Blade

Factionless (11)
Feng Shui Sites (11)
1x Sacred Heart Hospital
10x The Great Wall

To Fail Or Not To Fail

I’m happy for Messi.

I’m not an Argentina fan, though I don’t dislike them.  I’d like to root for Uruguay, except they are saddled with Luis “The Vampire” Suárez.

I’m not even a Messi fan.  I find the “best ever” stuff grating.  I am much more of a fan of Pelé.  I just hate watching people suffer, and Messi is fine.

I had another reason not to want France to win.  While I’m also not a Brazil fan (except I appreciate their style of play) and I’ve wanted France to win a prior World Cup that they lost, I didn’t want the first repeat champion in 60 years.

What am I a fan of?

Sports in general.  I watched the 30 for 30 about Jeanette Lee (who I *am* a fan of … for obvious reasons) and knew who she was because I watched a lot of billiards on ESPN while living in China, where snooker and Formula 1 were on all of the time.  I should have been a sabermetrician … who moved on to other sports after baseball stats became too esoteric even for me.

Underdogs and perpetual losers.  Sure, I’ll root for greatness; I used to watch WGN just to watch Bulls games and wanted LeBron to win more than one in Cleveland, maybe even win a third in Miami.  I’m not a Cubs fan, but I was that year.  I wanted Morocco over France.  I was pro Cameroon when they made their initial splash.  Give me a South Korea run.  This World Cup was pretty neat – I should have watched more.

I should be a Croatia fan, both because they are knocking on the door and because Croatia was good to me the one time I visited.  So was Sweden, so I should root more for them, I guess.  If I ever get to Peru, Paraguay, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, and/or Brazil, maybe I’ll become more fannish for one or more of them.

So, while for every champion there are a bunch of losers and Argentina was hardly an underdog, preferred that result.  Also, Maradona was an ass, so leveling the field between him and Messi is a positive.

On another side topic, I realized today yet another reason I disdain shugenja in L5R 4e play.  So much of what they do doesn’t feel like they are achieving something.  Commune is just a cheat code where it takes zero effort to Commune, though some people can’t seem to form useful questions, though that sort of stuff is also obnoxious at this point.  Other spells also routinely feel like “roll some dice, okay, bad guys lose because of some feature of the world”.  That may be on theme as shugenja are summoners, but it just feels cheap.  Maybe it wouldn’t if spells weren’t so overpowered, but moving on …

There was a Shadowfist Kickstarter this month.  It failed.  I didn’t like the previous Kickstarter’s, A Better Tomorrow, cards.  The art was atrocious.  It had a hoser mentality.  It felt very mechanical.  I’m not into postapocalyptic anything.  But, I backed it at a high level.  I didn’t back this Kickstarter.  I wanted it to fail.

Now, other Shadowfist players (I am actually a SF player even if I will only play in person and prioritize other stuff at Origins/Gen Con) had much more of a reason to hate this set.  I hated the new layout, which was bizarre when their own promos aren’t in their hideous new layout.  But, that wasn’t the only thing.  The lack of professionalism in development, marketing, graphic design just displayed a lack of, uh, professionalism.  This isn’t a new game.  I can forgive mistakes in new games far more.  Sure, Traveller card game isn’t perfect.  But, there were so many basic mistakes with these SF cards, including the promos that were spoiled before the KS started.

I actually liked the art, well, at least, far more than I like most SF art.  Except, I don’t really care about art on cards.  Ultimate Combat! is the best CCG to me, after all.

So, what now?  Who knows?  SF has plenty of cards.  Like most CCGs after a certain point, the better thing to do for play environment isn’t to add more cards but to remove existing cards.  Kill Killdeer.  Imprison Imprisoned!.  Etc.  I get why people want new cards.  I get why companies can’t really make money off of not producing new content.

There are certainly things I’d like to see with Shadowfist.  I’m in favor of Architects coming back.  I’m more in favor of more Syndicate cards as they just don’t have enough options, especially a good 3c4f character.  I’d really like to see more multifaction cards and easier ways to play multifaction.  However, how many I want isn’t clear to me.  Too many could be a problem with removing any reason to play monofaction and end up losing thematic flavor.  While the factions can cooperate in the setting, they aren’t suited to it.  The factions mostly are about a single way of thinking how the world should be with the Dragons there to stop them from becoming too powerful.  When Lotus/Hand decks become commonplace, just thematic fail.

Then, I can multifaction in ways that others won’t currently because it tends to be challenging.  When anyone can easily multifaction, I’m just doing stuff other people do.  Sure, in the details, I’ll do goofy things just to be different.

It very well may be that no new SF cards will get made or that some of these cards will get made.  It’s already hard to get people together to play.  Could end up being dead for me as other CCGs died on me.  That’s suboptimal.  But, sometimes failing is the better result.

Four Seasons

Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday I had hamburgers for dinner.

So, why call this post Four Seasons?  I had a burger for lunch yesterday.

Now, to be fair, half of those burgers I made and I used the same seasonings on the meat – cumin, Northwoods Seasoning, salt, pepper, dried garlic, onion powder.  I also used naan for the bun both times, ate with pickles both times (once on the burger), and poured BBQ sauce over both.  Did have iceberg on second one.  If I had onion, which I would usually, I wouldn’t have bothered trying to put other crunch on them.

Friday’s burger was a black & blue, so blue cheese.  It was overwhelmingly blue cheesy.  I don’t like ketchup, but I had to have some as a counterpoint and an acid to cut through the cheese.  As usual, my fries were undercooked as “I want them very crunchy.” is interpreted by restaurants as “Cook them loss soggy than usual.” rather than actually cooking them correctly.  But, they were okay.  Ludicrous to spend $26 on burger and fries when I can just make a burger and forego fries, but it’s hard to find decent restaurants to get together with people that aren’t absurdly overpriced compared to just making things myself.

Saturday’s burger was at my favorite place to get a burger in the Bay Area, and I enjoyed it just fine.  Got the house salad rather than fries, as usual, as drowning vegetables in dressing is only screwed up when places use gross leaves rather than real lettuce.  Bacon cheeseburger, with some extra ranch dressing.

So, someone asked me not long ago what L5R character I’ve been wanting to play, and there isn’t one.  Oh, I came up with an idea for a character if it would fit a campaign.

But.  There are like an infinite number of possible characters I could play that would interest me, and it’s far more important to know what a campaign and a party is about first before deciding what I want to do, given that I’m not fixated on one idea and don’t want to have to change characters/concepts later to fit in.

But, this post isn’t about RPG play, even if it is yet another post about variety.

There’s a new Shadowfist league started up yesterday running on Lackey and Discord.  I’m chomping at the bit to … not play.  Not build decks.

I just want to give people ideas and discuss their decks because I have virtually zero interest in playing a CCG electronically.  I’d totally make some level of effort to play in person if people could be bothered.  I’d rather not drive North into freeway shootings land, though I suppose that’s not entirely fair given that we had a shooting to the South recently.  Driving South is fine, especially on a weekend.  North not as far is where I keep suggesting meeting up, but there isn’t enough interest.  Peninsula would be fine with me, but that makes less sense for person South of here (mostly East, actually) on a weekend, which is when play would make far more sense.

Anyway, nobody cares about my being deprived of simple joys in life.

Eight week league with a final set up I’d never do, but, since I’m not playing, doesn’t matter whether I’d do it that way.  Three alternative formats.  And, this is where my subconscious is more geniusy than my conscious as I didn’t know that when I started writing this post.  I thought there were four-ish.

There should be four.  Well, more than three, and I’ve heard somewhere that four is more than three.

In a previous league, there was Mystery Basket.  Organizer randomizes to get 12 different cards, have to use one of the cards for every 25 cards or more than 50% of 25 cards.  So, two at 62 card deck, three at 63 card deck.

The organizer mentioned that not rerolling White Ninja was questionable, given that can throw White Ninja into any deck and have it be a card that doesn’t really warp deck construction or suck to actually play.

The players who actually play don’t like the format.

Sure, people can just run cards they don’t want to run and just not play them or whatever.  A lot like our Bloodlines (VTES) draft where some people just ignored the cards in the boosters and used their constructed elements to do stuff.

I just can’t comprehend the lack of interest in being forced to be different.  Even I have a penchant for going to the same wells over and over even though I don’t want people to play the same things over and over.

From last Mystery Basket:

Your ingredients: Plasma Trooper; Student of the Bear; Armored In Life; The Prof’s Gambit; Dance of the Centipede; Shaolin Supplicants; Jet Pack; Safety Third!; Soul Maze; White Ninja; Jui Szu; Fire Horse.

There are way too many foundations here.  Foundations should be excluded.  Really anything with no resource requirement should be excluded.

But, there is one card in here that got me enthused … about deck ideas, anyway.

In particular, I wanted to run this with:

But, then, I got more interested in different Yakuza Enforcer possibilities.  Final Brawl is obvious.  Purists have some options.

There have been a number of times when I’ve thought about building decks around random cards.  Mystery Basket has a little bit of feel of cube, which is another way to force people to build decks differently.

It’s much easier for me to think about things I’m interested in trying just because large cardpool with my having built relatively few decks and with ‘fist having so few deck constraints.  B5 might have a had a good number of cards, but you have an ambassador, some victory condition in agenda/conflicts, other characters or fleets or combination of both, 3x Meditation, etc.

There’s a rather large difference between no minimum deck size and games with 50 or 60 card minimums.  Now, my 40 card decks don’t try to do one thing, that’s what 25 or 35 card decks are for.  So, once you get an idea, quickly run out of room.

Of course, thematic themes are a great way to build different decks.  Maybe could look to build a ‘fist deck for each of the four seasons …

KublaCon 2022

I did three gaming things at Kubla this year, the year Kubla returned.

I skipped Friday as I commute to this con (even though I haven’t needed to for a long time).

Thursday/Friday, I did review and work on Shadowfist decks.  I had forgotten that I had so many decks already built, where some of them seemed like decks never played.

I built two new decks, stealing Dockyards from other decks I had played with the old South Bay group and didn’t really care about.

I really wanted to build a deck around:

So, I dusted off my cards … yup, went there.

Why?  Stealth isn’t Superleap.

The “big stick problem”.  I find that I can be scary with Lotus decks.  I gots power.  I gots Fighting.  I gots character kill.  I gots lots of losses.

Because people are scared.  So, they get in the way of beef.  So, they attack you and you either lose stuff or spend your characterkill and your charactersteal on defending.  Well, maybe you don’t.  I do.

Because I’m not that good at Shadowfist.  Merlin, who ran the tournament, has a unique Lotus deck that has strong late game because it can just keep recursing while having power generation outside of sites.  Now, I often have power outside of sites … as catch up events.  What I almost never do is some sort of power engine that isn’t site structure dependent.  I’m very much oriented to limited resources.

That may sound familiar, but there’s a difference to VTES.  In Shadowfist, not having certain cards matters a lot as cards, decks, games are much swingier.  When I get serious about tournament decks, I do things like 40 card, tempo decks.

This was a 40 card, trying to be tempo deck.  It wasn’t that good.  But, then, small sample size.

Anyway, didn’t ever explain why this demon gets around the big stick problem other demons are saddled with.  Evasion enables getting by defenses.

Is Stealth good evasion?  Maybe not that good.  Against a single column, might have a bunch of Fighting to still deprive Huichen Kan of glory.

Now, what happened when I played this deck is that I attacked like once with my first Huichen Kan, then it got Shadowy Mentored.

The other deck I build for Kubla was a Noriko Watson deck.

This is my kind of card.  Not because I’m into razor girls, though if I knew more …  I like cards that are weird but in a less overt way.  This is a promo card.  Yes, a unique promo card – the bane of CCGs.  I have a collector mentality even if I don’t try to complete my Shadowfist collection.  I do like chasing cards even if unique promos are dumb and unfair and completely unnecessary for having cool chase cards.

Trying to process what this card is intended to do requires far more analysis than so many other cards.  Then, I love the cost.  In faction games, I like out of facton stuff.

So, I didn’t really try to leverage the damage bonus against Sites, and I didn’t work that hard to increase Fighting/damage for Ambush/Amnotbush.  I mostly focused on something I like to do a lot – do lots of High Tech stuff.

I went with Dragon to have Techie Apprentices and to have “Is That All You Got?” to bring her and Marauder Lord back.

We started a game where I played this deck and called it when people showed up for the tournament.  It was functioning.  I played this in a game the day after the tournament, so I’ve clearly proved that Noriko Watson is the best character ever as I remain undefeated when putting her into play in my increasingly failing memory.  I’m pretty sure she was in another deck I had built at some point, but I don’t remember putting her into play, probably because that deck had only one copy, while this deck had three copies since I relatively recently picked up two more copies.

The game I won, and I only won like two games all weekend and the other game was a disaster where the other players never were able to do anything, had me not drawing any sort of meaningful character, just a bunch of foundation characters, for the longest time, but my site structure was robust as I was using all of the tech cheese.

First turn, FSS, foundation, Manufactured Island.  Play another FSS.  Play On the Wire to gain 5 power around turn three.  Keep playing 1-Fighting dudes because … my deck construction peccadillos.

So, Saturday morning I get my pastrami sandwich from Lucky’s – an actual habit when in my old hood.  And, near SFO is certainly my old hood.  I went to Burlingame Intermediate School and lived in Millbrae close to Millbrae Avenue long before I worked in South San Francisco.  Used to ride the bike to go to Burlingame Bowl before they tore it down when living just off Broadway (in Burlingame).  Lucky’s can do good sandwiches, though everything is location dependent.  This one’s main problem is that there bread can be too dry.

My bread was too dry.  They didn’t have sourdough rolls, so I got Dutch Crunch.  Good Dutch Crunch is, um, good.  A lot of Dutch Crunch is not good, being too dry and get flaky rather than having that good crunch.  If not for that, would have been pretty desirable.  Had a bit too much pastrami as sandwiches are all about getting the balance right.

Also got some pears and some peaches and a nectarine.  I had the peaches and nectarine at the con.  The nectarine was decently hard, so I …

Right, the tournament.  I sucked.  I find three-player Shadowfist hard to get comfortable with, as my play style in multiplayer games is all about table regulation to create the perfect harmonic balance of wasting time.

Oh, wait, the reason for mentioning getting my sandwich is that I got to the CCG room 1.5 hours before anyone else.  We could have easily have played if people would start gaming at 9AM.

After the tournament, played two pick up games, including first four-player.  That dragged.

Had to get set up for my Traveller demo at 6PM.

I had four people for my event.  Got some help from others, mostly Andy as I tend to be very helicopter demoer with games.  It was okay.  I had more people for this event than we had for any of the other three events we had on the schedule.

After done, sped home to feed the cat – primary reason I can’t stay overnight places.

Sunday morning, plan on getting a sandwich.  Just not from Lucky’s.  And, yet, I went to Lucky’s and got nectarines.  Three pounds of nectarines as they had a display further towards the front that had superhard nectarines.  The only quality that truly matters with fruit.  Turned out the larger, harder nectarines were also sweet.  Fruit victory!

Waited for Little Lucca’s to open.  LL is a well known chain in the area.  Giant sandwiches with quality bread.  While it’s possible that their pastrami is different, I have gotten it before, and it was fatty pastrami.  No.  Lean pastrami is the proper pastrami.  Well, if you fry it, can have it be baconfat, but I wasn’t going to go there.

I got Genoa Salami with sourdough, skipped the garlic sauce for obvious reason, did go with pepper sauce.  The pepper sauce was too sour.  Ate half the sandwich for breakfast and other half for lunch.  Then, there were the like four nectarines and a chorizo empanada.

Played Shadowfist in the morning after talking to a player for ages as the 10AM demo I wasn’t running didn’t need me.  Around when the tournament was supposed to start that had no one show up, I played Jeff with my Gazelle piracy deck to have a real test rather than show people the stupid starts the deck can get.  I bankrupted him on round three, with 13 AV on round two and 12 AV on round three.  I had some good draws for opening hand.  Never put Tactical Display in play.

Then, we played five-player Traveller.

For the first time.

It went faster than a two-player demo.  Of course, you have five people who run Traveller events playing.

It was a great game.  Three players qualified for victory in the final round.  Jeff was playing a piracy deck and might have gotten to victory threshold in final round if not for funny stuff.  Three times Liach, T’zen, and Giiar got played, and all three times it affected the game significantly by canceling or redirecting events.

Kevin beat his sister on tiebreakers after they tied on margin of victory.  Meanwhile, I was 18 VPs behind her.  In a game that is a race to 20.

Still, Traveller is clearly the best CCG ever as you can play meaningful solo whenever you want, it was intended to be primarily a two-player game, and every single five-player game I’ve ever seen was a great game.  Give Jeff and me a Nobel or something.

We were done around 5:30PM, so home to feed the cat.

Monday morning, I didn’t go to Lucky’s again.  I got Genoa Salami on sweet roll with no pepper sauce from Little Lucca’s because they wouldn’t give me samples of their Toscono [sic] Salami or soppressata.  Now, not only do I not eat a whole lot of alt-salamis, but I didn’t want some strong herb flavor or wine flavor or want a too chewy or not chewy enough meat.  Also, food I don’t make myself is expensive and it would have annoyed me to pull the meat off and eat it separately because it didn’t go well on bread.

I ran my demo.  I was the only thing going on in CCG room Monday morning.

It was great.  Only one person showed, we played constructed decks, I got to overexplain strategy, tactics, factoids about the game.  I screwed up (unintentionally) in hilarious ways that led to her winning.  If you don’t know the game, the story won’t mean anything, but let’s say I needed to play Bwap Advisors on final round, had two Bwap Advisors in my hand, and I couldn’t afford the cost (obviously of either).  She won 22 to 19.

Traveller – “I had no cards left and won!”  Yup, best game in the history of games.  Best game that will ever be made by mammals.

Then, Jeff and I “playtested” a “game” we are working on that is in “alpha”.

The distant spaceship (the playmat is just to define the play space, not a space game), the lock, the buddha, and the object in the lower left all represent play pieces, with the die in the middle as a victory point related goal.  What do you think the dice case is for?  What do you think the object in the lower left is?

Look at our awesome Traveller playmats.  The lower left object, buddha, spaceship, and lock all died at one point or another.  When this game gets published, this will be one of those images that shows the geniusnesses of game designers.

Two more photos that I posted to the Shadowfist Discord server.  They do speak for themselves.  In gibberish, but unaccented gibberish.