Gulf Coast Roast – Lafayette

Why didn’t I write this a week ago?

I was exhausted at the end of the trip.  As is typical when I get back from a vacation, besides needing a vacation, I needed to get caught up on things going on here.  I had the time but not the will.

So, I was working up until I took an Uber to the airport Wednesday.  Got into New Orleans Airport around 11:30PM.  I had chosen to stay at an airport hotel Wednesday and Monday under the theory that I’d use the airport shuttle and it be less “involved” than staying downtown.  Sure, I knew that meant Ubering between the hotel and New Orleans proper, but I don’t know what I don’t know.

Like, I didn’t know until close to my trip that the airport shuttle stopped running at 11PM.

I get into room at midnight.  I get up at 5AM to head out to downtown New Orleans around 6AM as people are wont to do.

To get my 7:40AM bus to Lafayette.  So, I get my first experience of the city – I had never been to Louisiana before – by sitting in the bus/train station for over an hour.

Manage to get to Lafayette and Norm picks me up.  We get food, where as a first timer at the chain, they gave me free stuff, which I found curious as to how much they endeavor to find out whether someone has never been to their chain.  I make the mistake of getting a burger, but I wanted something easy to eat.  I’ve got to stop getting burgers when I travel even if the best meal I’ve ever had in London was getting a burger and fries (yes, fries, this was an American style restaurant).  He does some miscellaneous tasks, and I get something of a short nap, then we are off to Vidor, Texas.

Casual play!!

Because we get in early, we go check out the ABnB.  It’s a shack, with storage units on the property and nothing else.  It was beautiful inside.  Modern, straight, I found out the towels were really soft.

We get to Kelly’s store.  Time for six games of VTES.  Of which, I played in five, as I needed some dinner.  Standard thing for me to do in the South and Midwest is to go get some Chinese/Asian food.  I asked them if I could change the protein on one of their dishes, and they did that.  Also, it was actually spicy.  There are Thai places in my hood, you know, the San Francisco Bay Area, where the food isn’t spicy.  Not nearly as spicy as the Thai food got on the Big Island, of course, but not like the “Thai” food I’ve gotten in Northwest Arkansas.

First game, I play Blood Brothers w/ Vic deck.  I only took seven decks as I knew I’d have to carry all my luggage around with me a significant amount.  Logistically, this reminded me in ways of my trip to Stockholm.  I had to figure out how to get from Arlanda to where Henrik was, had time to kill until he got off work so walked around Stockholm’s islands with all my stuff, learned how to ride the bus, learned how to take train to get closer to Arlanda then bus when I left.  Certainly not precisely the same.  But, you learn from doing.

Only two of my decks were new, and one was modified from an existing deck.  Something about having work to do but also leaving things to last minute.

Procrastination for the w- … finals!

I think Clint, my prey, was playing Brujah.  I weathered some fighting.  Chance, my predator, was playing something that also fought, I think, kind of hard to remember as many details more than a week later after playing something like 17 games and drinking lots of sugar.  Then, there was the usual play of Deep Ecology by …

I was an ineffectual predator.  For one thing, I couldn’t get the right combat cards in hand at the right time to threaten prey in combat.  Not even with this geniusy setup.

Block those D actions with the power of Fortitude.  Hey, quiet, there’s actually a Blood Brother in the picture.

Stuff happened, I got ousted.  I was shaking my head when Clint was doing something, and it wasn’t for the reason he thought.  I was just shaking my head at the power of new cards.

I think it was game two I sat out for spicy Chinese food, maybe it was game three.  Game two/three, played Transfusion.  Table was set up well for me, so I got … two VPs.

Yup, set up well.  Good ole Dracon as predator.  Fortunately, I was there to support my good buddy and rescued … it from torpor and put a blood on him with Transfusion.  Then, after he got Animalismed back into torpor again, rescued good ole Dracon again and put a blood on him.  Good thing Transfusion has some use to it, right?

After ousting prey, moved around corner of table.

Fame was on my guy in endgame, with Kelly having 1 pool.  But, he had Edge, and I couldn’t get through and he could.

I, then, borrowed a deck from Norm.  I had his Vampiric Disease deck mostly working.  Norm was my prey, of course.  Chance my predator with Lord Tremere and others.  I would try to get into combat with Lord Tremere, but so did his predator, so Chance’s game kind of sucked.  I lost control of my position as I wasn’t really doing things efficiently and Norm gained pool.  We talked about changes to the deck.  I found the rush combat angle clunky.  Something else seemed off to me, but I don’t remember.

Norm made the deck more blocky and played it in later game.  I borrowed Chance’s Arika deck in one of these games.  Got down to three players, and I kept putting 3 pool damage on my predator, playing Dementation bleed to preserve the three player, ousting Norm with bounce, having double Banishment to buy me enough time to take a game.  Ha ha!  Victory!  With someone else’s deck …

You know, I thought we played six games, with my playing five.  But, I also borrowed Kelly’s Trujah deck and played it badly.  This was the game of infinite (or at least five) Golcondas, including my Golcondaing myself and my prey’s Cock Robin.  I didn’t do well.  So, that’s five games of my playing.

But, I’m pretty sure it was in Vidor that I played Tzimisce SB.  I know I was on the end of the table and just kept bleeding.  I think this was last game as I was trying to play something quick so that we could get some sleep.  I stopped taking pictures … of any of my games, only have food pictures left from my trip as I send those to coworker.

I know I got at least one VP.  That deck just peters out.  It lacks control elements.  The original version – Living Lolita Loca – is still probably better even with the stuff that was relevant when it won and not so much now just because it can swarm and it’s faster.  But, any version of this at this point leaves me wanting more bloat and more control.

We use the shack.  I had leftover Chinese food that I put in fridge and even remembered to get when we left.  Norm and I drive back to Lafayette.  We go to daiquiri place and meet up with Brad and Chance.  I get a burger.  Well, in my defense, this is their main entree.  I was not thrilled.  I also asked for fries crunchy, like I asked at other place for country potatoes crunchy.  I know why I bother – I hate making french fries.  I want some place to exist that does french fries correctly, like the Foster City Red Robin did in the long, long ago.  Of course they weren’t crunchy.  Keep in mind, I don’t drink alcohol (outside of special occasion stuff), so I’m just drinking Dr. Pepper.  Also, the dark environment may be vampire conducive, but I kind of like natural light during the day.  Not direct sunlight – my Fortitude dots are low – but side light.

We get to Sanctuary early enough for some set up and to play a pickup game.  I play Transfusion again as some different players.  Chance is in this game.  I oust Oscar and don’t remember much else from this game.  Was there another pickup game?  I don’t know.  I know there was a smoothie coupon at stake in a game, and Kelly won it, though he passed it to me.

Smoothie time.  So, I go Mocha Madness.  Good.  I spend so much time talking, thinking, and researching food these days.  I don’t really care that much about what I eat.  I care way more about what I drink.  What form of flavored sugar, anyway.

There’s a tournament.

Rd1

Norm (Barons) -> Brad (Brujah) -> Oscar (Nos) -> Ian (Ravnos w/ PRE) -> James (Gangrel)

So, this was a cluster.  Norm and Brad contend all game that they survive.  They contest.  James puts nominal pressure.  Oscar brings out Sheldon, Nikolaus, later Selma.  He keeps dropping Army of Rats, Creeping Sabotage, and … far more importantly … Judgment: Camarilla Segregation.

I bring out Delizbieta.  I feel like I had someone else who got beat up and I sacced to a JCS, but I don’t remember.  I brought out Ezmerelda, who never acted, having to blow up to keep me alive on my unlock.  So, I bring out another Ezmerelda … who never acts, having to blow up to keep me alive on my unlock.  Time’s a wastin’.  Norm is contesting with both predator and prey.  I put Week of Nightmares in play and bleed for what I think was first time in game at around 1.5 hour mark.  James doesn’t block, and I bleed for four.

Judgment: Camarilla Segregation proceeds to oust James.  Then, Norm.  Eventually, Brad goes under from multiple.  Oscar and I play out endgame even though I can’t really do anything to him as I don’t have enough free stealth and I just keep losing pool every turn.  Now, admittedly, the techy play would have been to blow up Delizbieta so that I had no non-Camarilla vampires in play, but I don’t know if that makes any difference.  Oscar can just Creeping Sabotage more or whatever.

Yup, “do nothing until my inevitable victory” kicks in, again.  This also begins the meme of the weekend (for me).  Best card ever – J:CS does nothing but give me game wins.

Rd2

Devin (Beast rush) -> Ian -> Dean (Nocturns) -> [blanking, had same name as someone else, James?] (Banu Haqim) -> Oscar

Devin was busy removing Oscar’s offense.  Banu Haqim had predator and prey both under control.  This was an easy game for me.  Minimum 1 VP.  Pretty much just waiting to get two.  So, of course, I wait too long and Devin gets unleashed and prevents my inevitable victory.

Finals

No decisions for me.

Sidney (Malks) -> Ian -> Kelly (Brujah) -> Devin -> Chance (Ministry)

And, so begins the rushfest.  Kelly placed himself last to give himself time against the stealth bleeders.  We think other positions would have worked, too, but he won, so it was the right decision.  I got Ezmerelda out.  She kept me alive.  Delizbieta learned Dominate.  Maybe I got out Gabrin, maybe I only thought about it.  I wasn’t ever really a threat, though I did bounce to Kelly, which concerned him.  I just weathered the stealth bleed as Kelly and Devin killed Sidney, so I survived two SB decks as team rush eventually made Chance irrelevant.  Obviously, my Sensory Overload on one of Sidney’s Malks was … irrelevant as it just got beat up by rush.

As is usually the case, you don’t want to be my predator with bleed.  Sure, I can’t deal with a lot of decks forever.  Just long enough that you will either die to someone else or burn so many resources can’t finish off a table.  Well, okay, this is just in general.  Next tournament we see me not impacting my SB predator in any way.

I didn’t get bled out.  Kelly backousted me with Reckless Agitation.  Yup, yet again being backousted by vote or crosstabled by vote.  Prevents those inevitable victories.

Kelly wins.

Friday night, I stay at ABnB with Chance, Sidney, and James.  It’s not as nice inside as other place.  Creaky floors.  Well, whatever.  I was comfortable enough.

Saturday morning, I go with Sidney to Waffle House.  First time ever for me.  I do have a picture, but this is a gaming blog (in theory).

I liked my patty melt and hash browns better than the daiquiri place’s burger and fries.  End up at Sanctuary and I get Pomegranate Plunge.  It’s decent.

Were there pickup games?  I assume so.  I remember one other pickup game I played in and it was later.  I don’t remember borrowing any more decks.

Grand Prix

Rd1

Ian (8-cap vote) -> ?? (Toreador gun) -> Clay (Arika & friends) -> Devin (DoC Crescendo) -> Clint (Malks)

I didn’t last long.  Oh, I got to play a number of things, including masters that cost me pool.  My prey did something quite odd.  Discarded Concealed Weapon.  Discarded .44.  Put Haven Uncovered on one of my guys and … didn’t use it.  He did pretty much nothing in the game.  Might have helped me to get rushed to cycle out of combat ends.

Anyway, I could have done 4 pool damage to my predator early on.  It just seemed too early to go that route.  Well, since Clint swept, guess it wasn’t too early.  I could have reduced him to like 4 pool with votes, and Devin may have been able to finish him off.  Because what Devin didn’t have was Shattering Crescendoes to blow up Clint’s board.

Rd2

Felipe (Imbued) -> Chance (Banu Haqim) -> Ian -> Matt (Gangrel)

I so easily could have killed Felipe at any time.  I did hit him for 5 with one vote.  It was argued that I should have backousted Chance late in the game, and that would have worked better than my not being able to get Matt.  Even with the power of three stealth Zip Lines, too much intercept around me, plus I lost vote control to the Banu Haqim.

Game timed out with my demise being the “oh, well” demise.  I tried to collapse the table for one VP, but the table didn’t go for it.

Rd3

Norm (Gangrel) -> James (Gangrel) -> Seth (J:CS) -> [blanking] (Kiasyd) -> Ian

Norm Thinged a lot.  Seth perturbed my predator.  I still ended up getting bled for a lot eventually, though there was hardly any for a long time as I was too busy to block early and lost interest in blocking later.  May have been a bunch of combat in the Kiasyd deck.

I do the usual thing in this meta, I bring out Sarrasine Advanced and Katarina Kornfeld to be utterly immune to best card ever.  As is apparently always the case in the Gulf Coast, someone else’s J:CS ousts my prey and grandprey, and I make sure to have the right pool splashes to sweep, only bringing out Sobayifa when my pool is sufficient.

Finals

I had a choice of seating.  I probably made the wrong choice.  Impact of that choice affected Justin.  Justin wasn’t in a bad position.

Clint -> Kelly (Gangrel) -> Sidney (Ravnos) -> Ian -> Justin (Ghede)

Well, I did virtually nothing.  I called two votes.  Didn’t help that I played masters costing pool rather than just ones giving pool.  Sidney decided to blow up the table.  Dropped Club Illusion.  Kelly won again.

So, unlike other games where I could have started backousting but didn’t.  I did look to begin the process, but it was too late.  My view was that my best chance was to salmon, as all “good” vote decks want to do.  I meet my rush predator in an endgame where I think I have the advantage.  Gives him plenty of time to rip up everyone else to stop problematic ousts, while I suck enough bleeds while salmoning that I can’t just build up.

But, then, other people could have played differently, too.  I think Justin could have started by crosstabling Sidney.  Let Clint do some damage to Kelly before blowing up Clint rather than first rush going after Clint.  Kelly still gets Sidney but may put some resources into defending versus Malks.  I’m hanging around.  Maybe that’s a hard thing for Justin to manage as it takes him time to get Clint off the table.

Last night at ABnB.

Sunday, Chance and I get brunch, where I make the mistake of getting another burger, then head over to daiquiri place.  I get homemade chips.  Now, being from California, I asked what the chips were made of.  While I suspected (and mentioned) potatoes, there’s tortilla and more esoteric stuff that seemed unlikely like plantains.

The potato chips were okay.  Unevenly cooked so some were too soft, some too crunchy.  Get to locale, get Blueberry Bliss.  It is ridiculously hard to drink compared to the Mocha Madness.  Had to drink some of it without straw.

Rd1

Clay (Ariadne Amaranth) -> Sidney (Tzimisce bleed) -> Ian (Banu Haqim) -> Chance (Tha/Vic) -> Norm (Banu Haqim)

And, so begins the day of no Judgment: Camarilla Segregation.  I must of have cursed us.  Us being Norm and me who were playing same crypts for most part.  His deck is much more Second Traditiony, with Anathemas.  My deck is much more Flamethrower.

I Magic of the Smith and get out Ivory Bow.  I don’t have a lot of pool, but I can survive all of Sidney’s stuff.  I DI his first .44.  He eventually gets a .44.  I Machine Blitz, additional strike him into torpor.  What makes me sad is that Clay collapses.  Norm gets Sidney pretty easily as Sidney was trying to play with two minions and doesn’t have much pool.  I get Chance through a lot of low bleeds.

The endgame is rough.  I have Flamethrower to beat Marduk.  Fame on Norm’s guy doesn’t help me much as I’m lower on pool.  We eventually time out.

Rd2

Norm -> Ian -> Jason(?) [yeah, my brain has smoothed over the years] (Choir) -> [sigh] (Tupdog/Nephandus) -> Dean (!Ventrue)

I got 3 VPs.  I maybe could have had more.  I possibly could have had less, where Dean’s game was awful.  My prey was not in a strong position, but he got 2 VPs.  Yet again, Flamethrower wins combats, where I could afford to contest late in the game, too.  Almost timed out.

Banu Haqim combat is really dumb.  My Kalinda with 1 blood tries to hunt and Norm blocks, leading to us both doing three strikes and stealing 1 blood each time.

Finals

I probably choose poorly again.  Being Brad’s prey usually works really badly for me.  I just wanted to be away from Norm, though my recent history of trying to be crosstable from like decks has turned out really poorly for me.

Brad (Anarch unnamed & friends) -> Ian -> Matt (Nos) -> Justin (Clown Car) -> Norm

So, Norm wrecked Justin with extreme prejudice.  I kept hoping to collapse to three-player with Matt and Norm.  Was not to be.  I couldn’t really defend against Brad’s deck.  Sometimes, Anathema and rush are better than Flamethrower.  In the three-player I wasn’t involved in, Brad ousted Matt, which meant he won regardless as to whether Norm got him or not.

At some point, I played my Black Hand deck in a pickup, with Oscar as my prey with boring old Samedi Bear-Baiting.  I don’t know how anyone puts up with the mindnumbing nature of BH decks.  Never again.  I do think I should play more decks with engines.  Just not my CCG style in any CCG.  At some point, I got an al pastor burrito from a nearby food truck.  With both salsas, that was quite decent.

I also got another Mocha Madness.  Was making me cold in the finals.

Sunday night, Dean takes me to my Lafayette hotel.  That hotel was better than the airport hotel in Kenner.  I got breakfast at the hotel that was tolerable.  I considered walking to transit center for my bus back to New Orleans, but I found a reasonable Uber.

My bus ride back wasn’t as nice as my bus ride over – a lot more people.

I walk from bus station to Turkey and the Wolf, which was suggested by card floppers.  I pass by some architecture, but I’m already beat up and need to eat.  I get the fried bologna sandwich, where you could barely tell there was bologna given the chips and Russian dressing and big bread.  It was okay.  My crinkle cut fries were crunchy.  Still undercooked but a marked improvement.

I Uber to Kenner hotel.  And, lie down.  Talk to my friend for like 1.5 hours while lying in bed with TV on.  Next morning, walk over to Daisy Dukes Diner for hot sausage po boy and red beans.  It was fine.  Too much sausage.  After taking half of it off, the sandwich was in a good balance.  Eating the other sausage was not terribly interesting.  Have a pic of this, too.  Never had red beans as a dish before.  I amount it to chili, so I cease to care as I eat chili all of the time, like last night.

I *did* actually consider getting the fish basket to have seafood in Louisiana, New Orleans adjacent.  But, nah.

So, my stages in New Orleans itself consisted of:  sit in bus station, walk from bus station to hipster sandwich shop, eat at sandwich shop.

I can check Louisiana off as another state where I’ve done something of significance.  Still haven’t hit the halfway mark.

Thanks Norm for organizing, for shuttling me around, getting the ABnB, and putting up with my harping on the Normkiller that is Judgment: Camarilla Segregation.  Thanks Kelly for having us at your store Thursday, putting me in contact with Texans to stay with two nights, smoothie coupons.  Thanks Brad for smoothie coupons.  Thanks Chance and Sidney for driving me around and ABnB.  Thanks to Dean for taking me to other hotel.  Thanks to everyone else for making it a really great gaming trip.  It had been so long since I saw Devin, I didn’t recognize him immediately.  I recognized Oscar, of course, and we talked quite a bit.  Really nice to be able to talk and hang out with other players.

My games were really fun.  Even the tournament games.  Even getting blown off tables and cowardly/iniquitously being backousted while at 1 pool.

That was a lot of travel logistics to deal with.  Norm suggested other possibilities, but I had in mind the possibility of actually touristing in New Orleans, so I thought my plans made sense.

What am I forgetting?  I don’t see a reason to post decklists in this post, anyway.  I do have casual play pictures, so I should do a casual play report for a couple different events sandwiching this trip.

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.

Gen Con Events 2023

So, event registration opened up last Sunday.

And, I have complaining.

Some complaining, not nearly as much complaining as people who didn’t get the True Dungeon events they wanted or whatever.

I’m used to the process taking like 30 minutes.  Admittedly, now that there’s a last minute True Dungeon run organization process the team goes through, can expect it to take longer.  But, my initial wish list took 2.5 hours to process.  I don’t recall with the first year of wish lists what my number was, but there were a couple years of being in the 2000s.  This year, 6980th in line.  After an hour and 45 minutes, I was still 4400th in line.

I got into a few first choices and a bunch of second choices for the RPGs I was two levels deep on in the eight non-Sunday slots I tried to get into.  I got none of the 20 TD runs I had in my wish list.  With teammate getting two runs, I resubmitted my wish list with like two changes (I started trying to drop useless events, but that took too long as I had Sunday supers game starting).  4652nd in line.  Done in 15 minutes.  My third and fourth wish list submissions were so fast I don’t know how long they took.

I think someone had returned a ticket for the one Sunday event I tried to get into as it didn’t hit first submission, but I got into it on second submission.

I have an event in every “RPG slot” except Sunday morning when there wasn’t anything I cared about.  I dropped the event I got into Saturday night due to when our run is then.  Friday night’s run is late enough that I have a game in the night slot.

So, I could go into how to try to get TD runs … note that I don’t care about individual tickets – I only want to get full runs.  But, whatever, who cares about premier events or whatever that cause ten thousand people to submit within seconds of event reg opening up?  Sure, Lorcana was this year, but, in theory, there’s something a big deal every year … beyond TD that essentially was sold out within four hours and had one event listed as having tickets one day into event reg.

I don’t go to Gen Con because of True Dungeon.  I play TD because I’m at GC.

I did look at a much wider range of events this year as one of my friends who has never been wanted to go and would have different interests than mine.  But, here’s my normal process.

Check TCG and non-collectible card games because people don’t seem to understand the difference to see if there’s anything sexy.  Look at the start times of games I might want to play and give up on CCGs because people schedule them at unacceptable times that overlap “RPG slots”.  I thought about Dragon Dice a number of times, especially the Monster Bash event, but noon is only acceptable on Sunday.

In recent past years, only look at LARPs to find the Heroes of Rokugan event.  I have done parlor LARPs at GC in the past, but I’m not really into LARPs, not even the HoR ones, and I’m not doing HoR5.

Create two additional columns in my spreadsheet, breaking datetime into date and time.  Filter to RPGs, sort by either game system or date or time first then like the others next.  I might filter to only ones that are at least 3 hours long as it’s dumb to have a RPG session less than 4 hours, yet some stuff is only 3 hours long.  At one point, filtered out expensive RPGs as it makes zero sense to me to have the norm be $4 and have other stuff be $8 or whatever.

Look for systems or interesting descriptions in systems I don’t eschew.  I ignore anything D&D, Pathfinder, Call of Cthulhu, or pretty much anything popular.  I look for obscure systems that don’t sound like comedy or sci-fi or teens or too horrory, especially this year where I want a more light-hearted experience.  Toon events started at noon or I would have tried for one of them.

End up with around 25 different RPGs I want to do.  It’s impossible to do more than 11.  So, I don’t feel that strongly about not getting all of my first choices.  Sure, I want most of my first choices and it becomes complicated how to layer back ups in a given time slot.  When HoR was much of my schedule, things weren’t that complicated as they don’t care which event you have a ticket for just a ticket (or generics) for that slot.

I try not to have too many 8AM games.  I avoid games longer than 4 hours as they either overlap or run too late.

I would have gotten into a Starship Horizons slot with other folks before our TD run, but there weren’t enough tickets left, so I got the last ticket for my friend who is volunteering for TD this year.  No Magic events as only three Magic events were even on the schedule.  There is a BattleTech Alpha Strike event I could do before the TD run, but it’s rather expensive for an event where I don’t get any stuff.  I could just take a nap or have a slow dinner.

Rest of the 17,000 events?  Who cares.  I can effortlessly fill my schedule just doing obscure RPGs.  You can read about some of the ones I found most interesting in the past.

Sure, I have a hole in my schedule to where I could set foot in exhibit hall, but why would I do that?  I need to get rid of stuff not chase more stuff.

No concerts, no parties, no planned dinners.  I thought I was going to do a lot more stuff with Dave, but his volunteer hours are 10-6 every day, so I just revert to the norm of:  Babylon RPG, Four Colours Al Fresco, How We Came To Be Here, Fate of the Norns, all the other stuff I don’t remember off the top of my head.  Btw, I am doing Fate of the Norns again this year, but it’s an Irish FotN event, which is different.

I didn’t get into the adventure I was most interested in, but, you know what, the system is light years ahead of the pre-wish list years, and I don’t see how it could be a better system, even if it seems like back end technical processing could be handled vastly better.

Generic tickets?

Who gets those?

VTD 12

New season.  Tomb of Terrors themed dungeons.

Three runs.  All Epic.  None that harsh … to me.

Saturday

Missing one team member, who was at baby shower.  I build high damage, high to hit monk and ranger for others.  I play paladin because I just don’t enjoy casting spells with the dice roller.  I just find it awkward, slow, anticlimactic, and too mechanical as I’m more focused on getting through my clicks than on what the spells actually do.  Sure, Templar spellcaster was fun as I didn’t realize how good Templar is at spellcaster in this day of obscene overpowered builds.

How do you know builds are overpowered?  While we took a ton of damage on this run, we had a ton of healing to where the free rez/full heal effect cleric had never got used.  Admittedly, puzzle room 7’s do vastly reduce difficulty (at least in VTD where puzzles generally get figured out after one or two runs).

So, I did take damage, but paladin means AC 42 to mitigate damage.  The other thing that made me take way less damage but didn’t help others is that I was a ranged build, where melee got hammered in this dungeon.

Room one puzzle … on this run … was spending a ridiculous amount of time getting nowhere close to the solution.  Room four puzzle we solved because of the rogue clue.  We took too much time not doing obvious things.  Room seven puzzle we solved with little time left.  My initial thoughts were “this was a pleasant dungeon” and “there’s way too much looking closely at stuff”.  I think the aesthetics helped make up for how tedious it becomes to look closely at things through someone else’s camera.

I didn’t terribly care for the combats, which usually lasted four rounds.  In particular, the confused NPC schtick triggers me after the obnoxious room six on 4ABC that others kept wanting to do for some reason even though we pretty much always cheated our way out of the combat, making it a pointless exercise.  They just felt repetitive.  I don’t mind the been there, done that for middle rooms if the final room is cool.  Not only is it hard for a final room puzzle to be cool, but just staring at stuff and some memorization isn’t interesting to me.

Sunday

So, we had seven on Saturday.  This was usual Anti-Cabal, so five.  Others used potions.  I had AC 40 and just took little damage … with yet another ranged build.  I learned the first puzzle.  I’m tired of this sort of puzzle.  I understand there are only so many things you can do through a camera, but I’m just really tired of “story” puzzles.  I should notice these much faster than I do – it’s much like having blocks on other puzzle types I’ve seen many times.  I just don’t care about the solutions as it feels like painting by numbers rather than doing something clever, where the cleverness is really just recognizing this puzzle type immediately and blowing through them.

Combats went 6, 6, 5, 5 rounds.

Monday

We had five team members, an adjacent player, and someone I sold tokens to who bought an insane amount of high end stuff in less than a year.  He played paladin.  Beertram did druid.  I gave ranged ranger to Dave and played monk for damage.  So, we had seven again.

Again, mostly four rounds for combats.  I knew all of the puzzles, which was probably unfortunate.  I usually try to ignore rooms where I know solutions as I don’t care about failing, but I don’t have a sense of what other people want.  Seemed like people wanted to succeed at the puzzles.  In particular, the first room didn’t seem fun for anyone where I felt like I just doled out the solution (along with the others who knew the trick to it).  With a room seven puzzle, wasn’t like the combats mattered much as just need to survive them even if could take damage in room seven.  So, this run felt like just doing the dungeon without much accomplishing anything.

After three runs, I think less of the puzzles as first and last were too much examing lots of things and first was a puzzle type I’m tired of.  Middle puzzle was fine, and the room had some amusement for other reasons.  The combats were really forgettable.  I still think the dungeon was decent, but what was important about it?  Just Gib Gub, if that even was Gib Gub, having stuff happen to him.  Sunday’s DM did a good job with room five, but I didn’t really care about the stoned NPC as it reminded me of a room I hated even if it was my primary metagaming (outside of ranged for multiple rooms) of running Supreme Ring of Elemental Command on the second and third runs.

A good start on the season?

No.

A bad start?

No.

As I had gotten terrible treasure pretty much all of 2022, I have little expectation treasure will make me happy.  The stress of figuring out who was playing Monday was not fun.  I like to play with my teammates.  I like to play with a few other people.  I’m okay with playing with a bunch of people.  Then, there are people I’m not into playing with, and I pretty much never want to do a 10 person run no matter who is playing as it’s just too many people where I don’t really do much of anything (I care about doing) on such runs either in person or in VTD.

I really miss 2021’s dungeons where we got variety in the dungeons, didn’t have the dice roller, and where things seemed much harder.  I complain about lack of build variety unless you do weird formats, but I think I can just run suboptimal stuff on runs to try to up the challenge level without really hurting party chances.  Just requires a bit of thought to not go overboard but to make some change that’s actually interesting.

VTD 9B

So, last weekend was end of 2022 Virtual True Dungeon, which was also end of True Dungeon for the year.

I suppose I could wait until I get my treasure to post this, not that I’ve done that in the past, but because the treasure is a hybrid of 2022 and 2023, with other folks getting excited by new, new, new.

I did three runs.

Saturday 12:24PM

This was our only team run.  We did Epic.  We lacked our usual bard, where I had done a bard build for someone to run, but forgot due to conversations around who was playing ranger.  Because it was the end of the year, I used my last alt class voucher to play Templar.  Normally, when I go to play Templar, I look for high damage bonus to physical attacks and just hope for sweet, sweet crit action.  This time, I went with a ranged build that had +47 spell damage.

Templar is not actually bad at burn, which was something I discovered with this build.

Two of the team had done the dungeon already, something quite unusual that I wasn’t one of the folks to do the dungeon earlier.  We tried to focus on damage, but I should really push to hit bonuses on physical attackers for Epic to as high as possible, even if we do have bard and Prayer (which Templar doesn’t have).  Figure boss monster AC will be 35, so should have adjusted to hit bonus of +33 to only miss on natural 1.

Room one was the same undead dinosaur on the beach fight.  I critted it – Templar achievement checked off.  I Turned it – Templar achievement unlocked.  Destroyed it in three rounds.

Room two was same puzzle but not live NPC.  The puzzle is too easy, which makes it only worse on replay.

Room three was same winged serpent with high Initiative.  Took us two rounds.

Room four was just giant scorpion in for hook horror.  Hook horror looked scarier.  Two rounds.

Room five was new puzzle.  We figured it out.  I didn’t think it was hard to know what you were supposed to spell, but the movement of getting there required someone to just start moving around the grid.

Room six was same totem guardian fight, maybe less weird than 9A.  Six rounds.

Room seven.  Room seven was different in that you got three rounds in order to deal enough damage to take out a goddess.  In three rounds, we maybe got halfway.  Barbarian was prevented from attacking one round.  Monk and ranger, normally most consistent damage producers in game, missed … every single time.  Oops.  I did Turn the evil outsider, but I did it in a dumb way, and I didn’t make best use of room effects.

The one advantage of only having three rounds to do your thing is plenty of time (since we aren’t slow, full parties) to make sure you do all of your effects.

The more I thought about this mechanic, though, the less I thought of it.  The game already incentivizes doing as much damage as possible.  There’s no reason to push people even further down that banal path, even if my builds were kind of interesting because I don’t worship at the altar of max DPS.  Then, any group that could succeed at dealing enough damage for the difficulty played at was going to annihilate earlier fights, which makes those less interesting.  It’s all end-heavy.  Now, it interests me on how to meta room 7’s, so I didn’t think as much of it as others did, but it’s still just poor dungeon construction.

I’d like to see a dungeon that just incentivized survival over damage output, a room 7 monster fight where you didn’t need to kill the monster but just survive it/them.

Saturday 6:12PM

Epic, full party, forum run.  I got on to this weeks ago because I wanted another challenging run.

We came up 110 damage short on Epic.  I played barbarian and didn’t hold back, though I wasn’t quite optimized for this dungeon as I didn’t quite embrace nothing but to hit/damage as important.  I did 486 damage in three rounds – Fury 160, Fury 160, Flanked crit 156, Reaver 10.

Sunday 10:24AM

Anti-Cabal run on Nightmare.  I played dwarf, as usual, but two-handed build with +53 damage bonus this time around as I finally began to worship.  Actually, I quite like the build as it has a decent AC, good Fort save.  We figured this was going to be rough as smaller parties don’t get more rounds.  We only did 900 damage in three rounds, 400 less than what we needed for NM (NM was even harder earlier in the weekend).

I had fun, but it was not a particularly fun dungeon.  9A was my favorite of the A’s, where getting out on an island was a nice change from being on a ship and the combats encouraged doing certain things, and I soloed the dungeon as room 7 was a puzzle in A version.

B version favorite?  8B?  7B had Pillage.  10B had One Boot Billy, who I couldn’t care less about.  11B had more OBB.

In general, the changes with B’s made them feel fresh, though VTD 2022 just was nowhere near as good as 2021.  Not having the Cube with 7B was weird, as it was one of the highlights of the year, where the fight was part puzzle.  Its replacement was dull and looked too similar to other animated monsters.

I don’t like that 2023 VTD will all be single weekends.  The fun way to do VTD is two months in a row with Easter Eggs, side rooms, choose your own path (room by room), and, of course, without the dice roller.

I guess that’s it.  Not doing a second run with team was suboptimal, but these tickets are expensive.  I do need to play around with Templar more, as it’s so much less boring than regular cleric.  Retribution players got a lot out of running Dwarf Defender, which is cool as half the alt classes are just irrelevant.

Oh, we did have a Troubadour on Saturday night run and Assassin on A-C run.  Assassin never assassinated a monster.  Some paladins did one-shot the evil outsider, where I had some interest in an Epic two-person run with paladin and rogue to just flank fish for the Ava’s kill.  Paladin gets rogue to room 7 with Guard.

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

This is going to be long as hell.  The 10 decks I have built without having played in 20+ years.

Shadow Wise Ones Opening Hand:
1x Moghedien
1x Sweat Tents [Starting Advantage]
1x Dark Disguises
1x Gyldin [from Dark Disguises]
1x The Bleakness [from Dark Disguises]
1x Edarra
1x Manifest Destiny [from Edarra]
1x Connections

Advantages (8)
1x Concealed Dagger
3x Gai’shain
3x The Art of Intrigue
1x He Who Comes With the Dawn

Challenges (8)
3x Assassination Attempt
2x From the Shadows
3x Invasion [signed!]

Characters (25)
3x Alarys
1x Amys
1x Bair
1x Belinde
1x Chaelin
1x Colinda
1x Couladin
1x Couladin Car’a’carn
1x Meira
1x Melaine
1x Melindhra
1x Modarra
1x Rhiale
1x Seana
1x Sevanna
1x Someryn
1x Therava
1x Tion
1x Lord Argirin Darelos
1x Aludra
1x Hadnan Kadere
1x Isendre
1x High Lord Meilan

Events (12)
1x A Murder of Ravens
2x Connections
1x Infiltration
3x Lucky Find
2x Peace of Rhuidean
3x Sabotage

Wise Ones have crazy buffing. Combine with Manifest Destiny, and it’s just another “200 dice” deck.

Losing characters that participate in challenges though isn’t that hard, thus the Peaces of Rhuidean.

There’s nothing terribly weird here, Argirin for ability, Meilan for dice.

Moghedien Trolloc Horn Opening Hand:
1x Moghedien
1x Casualties of War [Starting Advantage]
1x Dark Disguises
1x Gyldin [from Dark Disguises]
1x Trolloc Horn [from Dark Disguises]
1x Narg
1x Moment of Transition

Advantages (5)
1x Battle Hardened
2x Trolloc Horn
1x Linked
1x Military State

Challenges (5)
2x Need
1x No Middle Ground
2x Wash the Spears

Characters (11)
3x Fade
3x Halfman
1x Jaichim Carridin
1x Shaidar Haran
3x Trolloc Champion

Events (16)
3x Blood Tide
3x Connections
1x Decisive Tactics
1x Guarded by Fate
2x Moment of Transition
3x Overrun
3x Sabotage

Troops (17)
3x Darkfriend Band
1x Forces of Evil
1x Trolloc Army
1x Trolloc Fist
3x Trolloc Footmen
1x Trolloc Guard
1x Trolloc Horde
3x Trolloc Raiders
3x Trolloc War Band

Perfect example of how searching in WoT was crazy. Dark Disguises goes and gets a card that can’t be played on starting character.

Trolloc Horn is not only easier to use with Gyldin’s ability to convert intrigue to combat as intrigue symbols come up more often, but it continues with the idea that searching is broken.

Moghedien is so much fun with Gyldin but also opens up more searching with Need.

The characters not only recruit the troops, Halfman buffs them. Meanwhile troops try to murder as much opposing stuff as possible (or scare it off).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Perrin Andor Opening Hand:
1x Perrin Aybara
1x Casualties of War [Starting Advantage]
1x Leader of Nations
1x Gareth Bryne
1x Sentries

Advantages (8)
1x Herb Bag
1x A New Empire
1x Caemlyn
1x Dragonmount [see below]
1x Manifest Destiny
1x The Lion Throne
1x Under One Banner
1x Andor

Challenges (6)
3x Invasion
1x Political Maneuvering
1x Political Powerbase
1x The Old Tongue

Characters (11)
1x Elayne Trakand
1x Gawyn
1x Lady Aemlyn
1x Lord Comar
1x Lord Jarid
1x Lord Lir
1x Lord Nasin
1x Lord Pelivar
1x Martyn Tallanvor
1x Morgase Trakand
1x Aludra

Events (16)
3x Connections
1x Defensive Measures
3x Lucky Find
3x Strong Loyalties
3x The Lion and the Rose
3x The Wheel Weaves [see below]

Troops (16)
1x Andoran Reserves
3x Andoran Spearmen
3x Andor Infantry
1x Queen’s Guards
1x Two Rivers Archers
1x White Lions
3x Illian Lancers
3x Saboteurs

I had completely forgotten how dense WoT cards can be. So, you recruit Sentries and give it Andor allegiance, then Leader of Nations Andor.

Later, you get Illian allegiance symbols from Andor or Saboteurs or whatever.

Why is Dragonmount in this deck when I don’t think it’s a legal play? Most Light side starting characters are Rand, and Dragonmount became a staple play. I’ll make this mistake again.

The Wheel Weaves may not actually be in this deck. I have two proxies in this deck (well, at least two). I routinely proxied Lucky Find with Lightning. I proxied something with The Truth They Tell. Maybe Moment of Transition (best card drawing).

Is this deck competitive? I don’t think I knew. I probably only played this like once or twice. I was not focused on nation allegiances like another playtester in our group.

Seems like this deck should have more copies of Andor. I think you can have 3x the nation contested advantages.

Why is this deck 61 cards? Maybe Dragonmount got replaced, but I didn’t actually remove it. Certainly doesn’t have good card draw. Actually, maybe Dragonmount is a proxy for a card drawing advantage, like … no, probably not.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Squadron/Wolfbrother Opening Hand:
1x Rand al’Thor (Heron-Mark Blade)
1x Heron-Mark Blade [from Rand al’Thor]
1x Lay of the Land [Starting Advantage]
1x Stedding [from Lay of the Land]
1x Mandarb
1x Lan Mandragoran [from Mandarb]
1x Elyas
1x Wolves [from Elyas]
1x Into the Fight

Advantages (4)
1x Herb Bag
1x Battle Readiness
1x Blood and Ashes
1x Dragonmount

Challenges (6)
3x Invasion
1x Prolonged Campaign
2x Secondary Efforts

Characters (13)
1x Aan’allein
1x Loial
1x Mat Cauthon (Starting Hero!)
3x Perrin Aybara (Starting Hero!!)
3x Dapple
1x Hopper
3x Wolfbrother

Events (16)
1x Decisive Tactics
1x Defensive Measures
3x Lucky Find
3x Moment of Transition
1x Overrun
2x Pull of the Pattern
1x Stedding
1x The Pattern Decrees
3x Unexpected Ally

Troops (13)
3x Fifth Squadron
1x First Squadron
3x Fourth Squadron
1x Legion of the Dragon
1x Second Squadron
1x Sixth Squadron
1x Third Squadron
2x Wolves

So much shuffling. Yet another suboptimal feature of the game. Let’s start by shuffling Mandarb to get Lan, then keep shuffling Squadrons to search out other ones.

A feature of Precedence CCGs was choosing your starting hand, a feature I’m all in favor of. But, it got crazy with expansions where cards search other cards in chains.

One of my discoveries early on was that the way to counter recruiting snowballing is to shorten the game. The challenges here are meant to compensate for how badly this deck actually recruits compared to the norm.

Note how you keep seeing the same cards over and over. Lucky Find is like automatic 2-3 copies. Moment of Transition is broken. Invasion is broken. Connections when can generate politics reasonably.

This was totally my kind of deck – aggro. Yup. I did aggro in games more than 20 years ago.

Light Good Stuff Character With Aiel Rand Opening Hand:
1x Rand al’Thor (Aiel)
1x Lord Dragon [signed!]
1x Lay of the Land
1x Stedding [from Lay of the Land]
1x Pull of the Ta’veren
1x Couladin

Advantages (7)
1x Ashandarei
1x Half-moon Axe
1x Mandarb
1x The Art of Intrigue
1x The Dragon Scepter
1x Dragonmount
1x The Ta’veren [signed!]

Challenges (6)
1x A Time of Decision
1x Gather Allies
3x Invasion
1x Prolonged Campaign

Characters (27)
1x Amys
1x Aviendha
1x Bain
1x Chiad
1x Gaul
1x Melindhra
1x Rhuarc
1x Sulin
1x Aan’allein
1x Lan Mandragoran
1x Aram
1x Faile
1x Herid Fel
1x Mat Cauthon
1x Mat the Gambler
1x Mat the General [signed!]
1x Perrin Aybara
1x Perrin Goldeneyes [signed!]
1x The Prophet
1x Thom Merrilin
1x Young Bull
1x Dapple
1x Elyas
1x Hopper
3x Wolfbrother

Events (15)
3x Connections
1x Decisive Tactics
1x Further Goals
2x Guarded by Fate
3x Lucky Find
2x Moment of Transition
1x Tarmon Gaidon
1x The Pattern Decrees
1x Time of Need

Pop out that first turn Couladin – prevents the Shadow player from playing his (think there was some rule about choosing opening hands after seeing starting characters to prevent Shadow player from being trapped).

You can see how I often go down the same routes with deckbuilding in CCGs. This is basically just a variation of the prior deck strategically, with an insane number of rares.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mat Illian Troop Opening Hand:
1x Mat Cauthon [signed!]
1x Lay of the Land [Starting Advantage]
1x Dense Forest [from Lay of the Land]
1x Manifest Destiny
1x Tear [from Manifest Destiny]
1x Conquest
1x Illian [from Conquest]
1x Lucky Find

Advantages (3)
1x Leader of Nations
1x A New Empire
1x Military State

Challenges (3)
3x Invasion

Characters (4)
1x Bayle Domon
1x Lord Eliris Mancuri
1x Lord Ershin Netari
1x High Lord Simaan

Events (18)
1x Blood Tide
3x Connections
2x Decisive Tactics
1x Heavy Fighting
2x Overrun
3x Plots
1x Stedding
3x Strong Loyalties
1x The Port of Illian
1x Time of Need

Troops (25)
3x Andor Cavalry
3x Andor Infantry
1x Blockade Runners
3x Illian Lancers
3x Illian Spearmen
3x Illian Tall Ships
1x Illian Traders
1x Illian Volunteers
1x The Companions
3x War Galleys
3x Tear Levies

Two things stand out here. Lucky Find without another faux opening hand card it goes and gets, so I assume it names Player Advantage where could be one of two possibilities.

Are the Plots in this deck actually Plots? I’m not sure. If so, well, that’s cool. I can’t see a combo to enable them to recruit. Maybe they are to play Connections, if that’s even legal, except that’s two cards to draw two cards other than the minor support/opposition gain.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Demandred Children of the Light Opening Hand:
1x Demandred
1x Children’s Crusade [Starting Advantage]
1x Charismatic Leader
1x Geofram Bornhald
1x Into the Fight

Advantages (3)
1x Compulsion
1x The Art of Intrigue
1x Circle of Light

Challenges (11)
1x Cut Supply Lines
1x Invasion
3x Political Prisoner
1x Search and Destroy
3x Shattered Dreams
1x Stalemate
1x Weaken Support

Characters (14)
3x Child of the Light
1x Dain Bornhald
1x Eamon Valda
1x Galad
1x Jaret Byar
1x Omerna
2x Pedron Niall
1x Questioner
1x Rhadam Asunawa
1x Sebban Balwer
1x Whitecloak Spy

Events (16)
3x Connections
1x Defensive Measures
1x Guarded by Fate
2x Lucky Find
3x Shades of Grey
3x The Light Illumine
3x Twists in the Pattern

Troops (12)
3x Army of the Light
3x Half Legion
1x Legion
2x Light Brigade
3x Patrol

Demandred seems a case of power creep. With Forsaken specific character advantages, was always possible to power up weaker ones. Because it was still unclear what was going on with Demandred in the books when this got made, he didn’t get a Dark Disguises target (that I recall), which is why you don’t see Dark Disguises in the opening hand.

Speaking of the opening hand, I’m not sure what it was. I was using this deck for playtesting Traveller and mixed the opening hand in with the rest of the deck. Into the Fight is usually going to be either 3x or be in the OH. Geofram Bornhald shows up in opening hands for a reason – he sets up annoying challenges, whether stuff like Genocide or stuff like what’s here.

So, I see Incite Rebellion in many of these decks. I had to realize that it was a proxy for Invasion since Invasion is broken, but what confuses me is that Incite Rebellion is actually really annoying and would fit a deck like this.

So, why do Children of the Light go with so many challenges (besides Geofram Bornhald)? Children of the Light decks are really different in that they want to encourage more neutral Pattern tokens as Circle of Light gives you a bonus in the Last Battle based on that. Besides the obvious Twists in the Pattern, which also can screw your opponent, … CotL are all about griefing your opponent rather than propping yourself up. Shades of Grey is another case of just griefing your opponent as much as possible.

I’m going to do all of us a disservice. I should go hunt playtest comments for Whitecloak Spy as it was superbroken in playtesting. If you wonder why it has so many restrictions, it was because it was just heinous before the nerf hammer.

Why isn’t Pedron Niall in the OH? Light might be playing CotL and could recruit him first, though I mention the possibility you could get around this above. He’s just absurdly expensive, but this is a challenge spam deck to grief the opponent as much as possible, so Geofram is more broken.

Remember, WoT CCG is all about broken fighting broken.

So, one of the things about the game is that we knew more than most people in the world because we were such dedicated playtesters. At the same time, I’ve learned some things in the last 20 years. One concept that I don’t think we embraced that much, though Bill may have embraced it without articulating it that clearly to Dave and me, is that cards with bigger numbers can be bigger than cards with better fit. I look at some of the weenies and know they get pumped by Children’s Crusade but still think about how, maybe not for this deck but in general, playing big dice dudes out of allegiance are just better than weefolk. Now, I did do that sort of thing with High Lord Meilan in various decks, so I sort of understood it to some degree.

Light Aiel Big Troop Opening Hand:
1x Rand al’Thor (Heron-Mark Blade)
1x Heron-Mark Blade [from Rand al’Thor]
1x Ji’e’toh [Starting Advantage]
1x Remnant of a Remnant
1x Aviendha [from Remnant of a Remnant … hopefully]
1x Car a carn [yup, missing apostrophes – did I know this?]
1x Aviendha Apprenticed

Advantages (7)
1x A New Empire
1x He Who Comes With the Dawn
1x He Will Bind and Destroy Them
1x Military State
1x Rhuidean
1x The Three Fold Land
1x The Waste

Challenges (10)
3x Invasion
3x Military Dominance
3x Rule a Nation
1x Strength of Character

Characters (12)
1x Edarra
1x Erim
1x Jolien
1x Mandelain
1x Mangin
1x Melaine
1x Nandera
1x Rhuarc
1x Sept Warrior
1x Sorilea
1x Sulin
1x Urien

Events (10)
1x Blood Tide
3x Connections
2x Defensive Measures
3x Lucky Find
1x Overrun

Troops (15)
1x Chareen Aiel
1x Codarra Aiel
1x Daryne Aiel
1x Goshien Aiel
1x Miagoma Aiel
1x Nakai Aiel
1x Reyn Aiel
1x Shaarad Aiel
1x Shiande Aiel
3x Siswai’aman
1x Taardad Aiel
1x Tomanelle Aiel
1x War Party

Damn this deck is fragile. Okay, clan chiefs and the clan armies are a go big or go home play no matter how you do it. But, wow, if you don’t win Car a carn on turn one, you probably scoop to a decent player playing a decent deck. There are so many effects that interact with Car’a’carn, including getting Aviendha Apprenticed into play to recruit. Now, if you fail, you can use her to get base Aviendha. And, I guess you can Invasion back Car a carn to try again. That doesn’t sound like something you could do back in the day, but maybe it works.

This assumes that Rand doesn’t get murdered by Shadow Starting Character in the Car a carn challenge as you are stuck with Ji’e’toh instead of Lay of the Land for like Dense Forest or whatever.

Something else I did 20 years ago – play high risk, high reward decks.

Even if you do become Car’a’carn on turn one, recruiting is hellacious with clan chiefs and their clan troops. But, that’s what makes this deck cool. Not just Military State but Military Dominance, Rule a Nation, and Strength of Character (and the other stuff). Different decks should play different cards. No Moment of Transition in this deck because need those Pattern Tokens just to play cards to hit critical Military Symbol mass. Sure, Connections, Lucky Find, Invasion because CCGs are hard.

Speaking of Connections, it’s proxied in this deck. My WoT CCG collection is/was maybe as good as anyone outside the company. I have just insane numbers of rares where not every deck proxies Invasion with Incite Rebellion and Lucky Find with Lightning. So, obviously for a big baller shot caller High Lord Suitcase, I proxied Connections, a common, with the rare Carpe Fatum.

Shadow Maiden Opening Hand:
1x Demandred
1x Maidens of the Spear
1x The Bleakness
1x Couladin
1x Moment of Transition

Advantages (2)
1x Remnant of a Remnant
1x The Waste

Challenges (10)
2x Confrontation
3x Flanking Maneuvers
3x Prolonged Campaign
2x Secondary Efforts

Characters (18)
1x Aviendha
1x Bain
1x Chiad
3x Desora
1x Enaila
1x Jolien
1x Liah
1x Maira
1x Melindhra
1x Nandera
1x Sulin
3x Gray Man
1x Lord Argirin Darelos
1x Aludra

Events (17)
1x Blood Tide
3x Connections
1x Decisive Tactics
2x Further Goals
1x Guarded by Fate
1x Lucky Find
2x Moment of Transition
1x Tarmon Gai’don
2x The Dance of Spears
1x The Pattern Decrees
2x Time of Need

Troops (9)
3x Far Dareis Mai
3x Raiding Party
3x Scouting Party

So, here we go – hyperspeed. Aggro. I’m totally a Sligh player. So, I’m all over Maidens [um].

One thing that may be noticeable is that I either built speed decks or recruiting decks. There was not really a midrange concept. Confrontation would be interesting to test for a midspeed deck.

So, the game has been dead for more than 20 years. I have trouble remembering a lot of stuff, partially because as people age they have more things to remember, partially because my lifestyle is unhealthy and I don’t work on the mind hovel enough. I remember being over at Dave’s for a playtest session when I discovered that Forsaken.dec had no game against Maidens. Maira got some nerfing due to our playtesting. Forsaken were frightening when we saw them, but they were such a pain to recruit. Maidens just came out and locked them down with Maira’s obnoxious rotating ability.

I don’t know what I have in emails about this playtest feedback. Now, Forsaken.dec is playable and would probably wreck inferior deckbuilders or people without tons of rares. Like clan chiefs in terms of excruciating play costs that can eventually snowball into ridiculous dice amounts, though probably going to use some of the generally not that good One Power events in the game to do fattie control rather than just “big dice”.

Mat Troop Control Opening Hand:
1x Mat Cauthon [signed!]
1x Lay of the Land [Starting Advantage]
1x The Dying Ground [from Lay of the Land]
1x Leader of Nations
1x Genocide
1x Geofram Bornhald

Advantages (16)
3x Battle Hardened
3x Lines of Support
1x Ashandarei
1x The Art of Intrigue
1x A New Empire
1x Dragonmount [mistake? proxy? rule I forgot?]
1x Momentum
1x The City of Illian
3x Illian
1x The Ta’veren

Challenges (6)
3x Shattered Dreams
3x Stalemate

Characters (6)
3x Ishamael [!!]
3x Rahvin [!!]

Events (14)
2x Decisive Tactics
3x Guarded by Fate
1x Overrun
3x Strong Loyalties
2x The Dying Ground
3x The Wheel Weaves

Troops (13)
3x Illian Lancers
3x Illian Spearmen
3x Illian Tall Ships
1x Illian Traders
3x War Galleys

Of course I have two Illian troop decks built at the same time. I’m all about variations on themes. This one is very, very different though. Which is cool – CCGs should have different strategies!

This is all about using speed to slow the game down. Mat is fearless in this deck, just running into whatever challenges where I don’t think he can participate in challenges with any other character in this deck.

Not like this deck can recruit either one of the Forsaken. Yup, 3x recruitable Rahvin in every deck to just search out other recruitable Forsaken you may only just discard for some effect. 3x Rahvin for 3x Asmodean was a play in some deck I built.

So, there aren’t any CCG forums anymore that I’m aware of. I think the main ones were on dragonmount.com, but they seem gone and I don’t know how to access my old account. I do remember reading someone’s comment, probably in response to a deck or module I posted, about how “Who has [owns] three [recruitable] Rahvin?!?” or whatever and my thought was ‘I have 3x Rahvin in two different decks, one of them Light.’ because two things about this reality – one, people will sink money into anything, no matter how esoteric; two, I may not care about owning houses, cars, electronics, tools, private islands [wait, no, I do want to own private islands], but I care a lot about owning collectible game components for games I play.

Anyway, back to this deck. Try to suppress everyone’s recruiting as much as possible by just spamming challenges that prevent recruiting over and over again with the usual Geofram engine. While this isn’t a Genocide.dec deck, get the suppression rolling with good ole Genocide.

I was looking at WoT cards on eBay and came across an auction for Insane Designer, a test card that was sort of promotional. It was signed by Mike Hummel, who wasn’t an artist but the game manager and one of the designers (eventually). I was looking at the pictures posted in the auction when I saw the last one, where a Scrye Magazine article described a tournament and a winning deck where this card was won at. … An article I wrote … Maidens …

General thoughts?

I haven’t missed this game in more than a decade.  The nostalgia is strong as I look more closely at cards.  It really is leaving something behind now where it was just leaving something hanging before.  I feel like this collection is worth so much more than I will get for it, but the point was to not have to put any effort into moving it and getting it to someone who might actually appreciate the game.  I don’t know if the person cares about the game, but, at this point, who does?

Obviously, there are various deck archetypes not represented here.  I played a lot more of the Rands than Heron-Mark and Aiel.  I was just on a Cycles Expansion kick when the game died, thus the Mats, Perrins, and Demandreds.  No Shaidar Haran deck – I don’t recall if I made one.  That article I wrote was about the tournament winner’s Shaidar Haran deck.

Well, I will try to dig up more about the game as I blast myself with the past.  I could do much the same with Babylon 5, to a much lesser extent with Tomb Raider.  I just haven’t gotten an offer for those, yet.

[Past Blast] Wheel of Time CCG Modules

So, I was going through files to verify where those card ideas from last post came from when I came across this.

I’m sure that the concept of modules in VTES existed already and I was just applying that concept to Wheel of Time.  I just thought it was funny how this existed and how it wasn’t just a couple of modules.

WoT Modules and Suites

Nation Module
3x Political Powerbase
3x Strong Loyalties
1x A New Empire
1x NCA

Troop Module
2x Overrun
1x Blood Tide
1x Battle Hardened
2x Decisive Tactics

Healing/Protection Module
2x Healing
2x Guarded by Fate
1x Herb Bag

Card Drawing Module
3x Connections
3x Moment of Transition
3x Invasion

Ta’veren Module
1x Pull of the Ta’veren
1x Mat
1x Mat replacement
1x Mat the General
1x Ashandarei
1x Perrin
1x Perrin replacement
1x Perrin Goldeneyes
1x Half-moon Axe
1x The Ta’veren

Discard Module
3x Sabotage
3x A Murder of Ravens

Speed Module
2x Prolonged Campaign
2x Confrontation
2x additional challenges
2x The Pattern Decrees

So, you may know nothing about the game, but this is sufficiently plain languaged that I don’t know that I need to speak much to what these things mean.

Things you may not know about the WoT CCG are that card drawing and card searching (tutoring) were insane in the game.  Some broken stuff out of the initial set was nerfed, but the idea that you search and draw as much as possible was ever present.

The game was a snowball game, an avalanche game, a landslide game – get an advantage, turn that into more of an advantage.  Now, was it like A Game of Thrones CCG where I just find the snowballing miserable?  Not in my experience.  There were some ways to try to come back.  Some events in the Last Battle were very swingy.

But, in general, recruit more than the opponent, keep recruiting more than the opponent, use troops to control challenges until get to Last Battle.

Assassination decks – deck designed to kill opposing starting character or any Ta’veren – could win, but, if you were familiar with how they worked, we never considered them that threatening as you can use various events and whatnot to not get Ruby Daggered out of the game or the like.

If card searching and drawing was broken, discard was brutal.  In particular, repeated discard from Thom Merrilin or Liandrin Sedai (not nearly as good as Thom at discard or in general), was game winning.  My original “this is the only way the Light side can compete in serious play” opening hand for Light side was get Thom in play on turn one (or pretty much lose) because random discard could even out resources for the Last Battle.  Otherwise, Shadow side was insanely more powerful.  First expansion fixed the side imbalance with the likes of Lord Dragon being comparable to Forsaken in recruiting.

Nation control became important.  There were all sorts of variations on controlling one or more nations not just due to card effects but because nation challenges were participation restricted, making them vastly less dangerous to participate in.

You never built decks larger than 60 cards, and the expectation was to draw your entire deck around the Last Battle unless playing aggro decks that shortened the game.  One card not listed here is War of Attrition which was deck destruction as any card discarded was a card not drawn.

I’m running out of time, so I’m going to pull out my constructed decks soon where I fully expect a bunch of the above cards to show up, even though I don’t have a lot of decks built, and they tend to be similar in particular ways to each other.  I do think one of them is an Andor deck, so that should be doing nation stuff.

What else about modules and suites in WoT CCG?

Probably stuff that doesn’t come to mind, but I’m trying to bang these out quickly.

 

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.

VTD 10

Finally got a monster charm effect.  Finally had something that was kind of underwater hindrance related, I guess.

I did four runs.  Weirdly, two of those runs were Bloody(ish) Nightmare.

Friday night was our group’s take on it.  With no dungeon familiarity, I ran monk for beats and had Dave run ranged ranger for general functionality.  We actually won the earlier fights and got destroyed in the final room without coming close.  Puzzle one was okay.  Puzzle two was okay.  Puzzle three was shrugworthy as got distracted by props that weren’t relevant.

Saturday midday was Epic run where we did reasonably well.  I played wizard.  I hate the dice roller.  While building skill checks into the software makes me actually do them, I hate spellcasting even more with dice roller as can’t just precast all of your spells to know amounts and state your total when it’s your turn.  Instead, let’s open a second attack phase for one player.

Saturday night was next Bloodyish, where I ran druid with Drue’s, and we failed room 4 by a lot … but won room 7!  I Spell Surged two Call Lightnings and cast three Freezing Orbs.  Think combat was six rounds, possibly seven.  This had nine players as Dave and I jumped on a forum run (I had some interest, but it needing players made me pull the trigger because I’m the nicest of them all).  Dave’s build had Hat of Muffling(!!) and Cloak of the Frog(!!).

Sunday morning was Anti-Cabal and we cakewalked Nightmare.  Two of us didn’t take any damage until room 7.  One went from 97 to 95 hit points after finally getting hit.  I had to decide whether to take my first hit of the game or not, decided to take it to deal 18 Retribution damage to Billy.  I Shadowskinned the only other successful attack on me during the run.  I ran Cloak of the Wind for shock DR, and it meant nothing as we were only on Nightmare, and I had lots of DR.

Would we have beaten Epic?  Probably.  More importantly, there would have been some actual challenge.  Metaing with DR was different.  I actually put Shaed into a build … I played!  Earcuff of Retort was ubiquitous.  I almost ran Belt of the Fey but am not using Hitchhiking Ghosts just to do that.

Getting back to the third puzzle – it was a waste.  I realize True Dungeon has puzzles that are lots of red herring and not lots of actual puzzle, but I’m only interested in elegant puzzles to begin with.  Having a cool map with all sorts of interesting features and having that be a distraction from the solution makes me feel worse than it just being an uninteresting solution.  Didn’t feel any sense of accomplishment when the group figured it out (not that I did anything).  I didn’t feel any sense of accomplishment with any of the puzzles, though, since I didn’t do anything to solve any of them, anything that mattered anyway.

This is why I like doing a solo run before playing with others.  I want a shot at actually figuring stuff out on the off chance I’ll feel like I accomplished something.  Though, I mostly want to do solo runs after all of my other runs to try to solo Nightmare with maximum meta action.

Speaking of cool looking stuff just being a distraction from what matters … oh, let’s not go there.

In like 13 attacks as dwarf, I didn’t crit once.  A 10% chance of something means seven times doing it is roughly a coin flip.  So, without doing actual math, I had something like a 70% chance of 1+ crits.

Normally, Easter Egg stuff has some appeal, things like side rooms, etc.  But, in this last run, I was tipped off to some alt possibility, and all it did was annoy me.  It was the sort of thing along the lines of punch a wall 99 times to have something interesting happen.

The dungeon was fine.  Like VTD 9, it had a decent aesthetic.  I didn’t hate the first two puzzles, just thought they were banal.  Wasn’t that into the combats even though the final one actually had a lot of things going on mechanically.

Then, played Aberrant.  It was okay.  It just seemed pointless even though I got to murder some demon bats through the power of Armor Piercing.  My new lightning bolt is just about the right level of effectiveness in the play where it has come up, which is two sessions.  No plot advancement happened at all.

I just came away from doing game things on the weekend feeling like I didn’t really get what I should have out of doing them.  Gaming is supposed to be fun.  Not just in the moment, where I had moments of fun on my four runs, but before and after.  I should be excited by doing more.

There’s just something about TD that is irritating me.  Token dev was typically annoying.  Being forced to endure the dice roller just decreases my enjoyment of VTD so much from the high of last year.

Then, getting XP for my super and not having anything I want to spend it on because we never lose (so I don’t need to be more powerful) and group play doesn’t trigger any urgency on thematic advancement is not a positive thing.  My character does what I want him to do … mechanically.  Thematically, he barely does things.

There’s far more character development in my PBP game than anything else, where, until recently, XP were scarce.  We just got about a third of the total XP we’ve gotten from play in the last day, after having played for months.  Now bought up two traits to 3.

I just want to talk about gaming stuff.  No, that’s not true.  I just want to have intelligent conversation about gaming stuff.  While not having to be the person who initiates or decides or who does work.  I want to spew geniusness or be entertained.

Now, am I entertaining?

Ill-Fitted Suit

Before getting into what I want to whine about, talk about Virtual True Dungeon 9.

I did four runs.

Friday, solo Hardcore, Druid.

I still am gunshy on solo Nightmare even more so as first run of a dungeon.  So, I went HC and went with AC42 in a missile build.  Basically just murdered things with a hammer, usually big, sometimes small.  I cast three spells:  Neutralize Poison, two cures where I didn’t really need to cast either.

It’s so different when dungeons end on a puzzle room.  My general takeaway was that Butterfly Cloak becomes massively more useful as just need to limp into room 7 in order to have chance at win.

Solo remains really awkward as DMs are used to hanging out with a group of people rather than just one person for a long, long time.  I figured out first puzzle, which was ludicrously simple, and third puzzle, which was much simpler than what I expected.  Second was more challenging because I wasn’t given any real idea of what I was trying to do.

Friday, Gilligan’s Island Nightmare, Monk.

We didn’t organize well our group runs.  At last hours, people threw together Gilligan’s Island themed builds.  Our bard was the radio.  DM worked with us well, doing things like having commercials between rooms.  My Mary Ann build was intentionally “envious” – underpowered, yet monk is powerful and room 7 puzzle means party strength matters way less.

Saturday, Epic, Paladin.

I went with AC49 paladin Guarding two (barbarian, druid).  We did fine.

Sunday, No Spellcasters Epic(!), Dwarf.

I continue to try to run Butterfly Cloak, after all, only one save mattered.  AC45.  Usually we do Nightmare, but Epic made sense when we didn’t have to deal out massive damage in order to win.  It was fine.  Room 7 was boring at this point, and our acting was terrible as we wanted to fail.

Lot of the same complaints as VTD7 and VTD8:  why aren’t we underwater?; why don’t we have to save against charm?; saves largely don’t matter and Reflex and Will don’t matter at all.

On the other hand, I liked this dungeon much more.  I don’t have a problem with animated monsters, and I thought the visuals were strong.  The thing with wings should have had some flight ability to force ranged attacks, though.  The room 6 monster had all sorts of interesting curses to unleash upon the party.  They should have involved saves at times, especially Will saves, but it looked cool enough and did interesting things.  There were effects that didn’t do damage or kill folks but reduced to hit, which was a nice alternative.  Didn’t have the VTD8 problem of rooms seeming too similar to each other.  Didn’t have the VTD7 problem of puzzles I didn’t care for.

Was a decent TD weekend …

And, then, I played in our Aberrant campaign, though I use “played” loosely.  I fell asleep at one point while we were staking out a building.

Which got me to thinking about character roles/types and how superhero play may vary that.

My character doesn’t do investigating well.  He doesn’t do intrusion well.  Yes, he actually has a good Stealth dice pool, so he can stealth some, but … he wears a costume.

Superheroes are meant to be identified.  They are public figures.  They show up on the news.  So, great, hide for a bit, then somebody sees you and … reacts.

Now, two of our party don’t have separate identities, though they also don’t look human.  They do look like animals and a plant, respectively, so they can blend in.  Our roguish character is good at intruding.  I have a secret identity where taking off a mask makes no sense.  Routinely, whether in the old days when I hung out with the flying brick military dude or now where I just kind of do my own thing, I don’t do anything while the intrusive sorts intrude.  Then, they get into fights while I’m elsewhere and I never impact their battles.

Is it ironic that the most team oriented character thematically is the greatest loner of the party?

So, of course, GMs can have set ups where supers super rather than play like in a supernatural investigation game.

What does that mean?

What distinguishes superhero play from other play?

Again, public figures, but more importantly:  Supers are distinguished by their power sets.  They can overlap some, like multiple bricks or multiple energy projectors or whatever, but the idea is that characters have unique powers.  Now, if you play a WoD vampire or whatever or play pretty much anything, you are going to look for niche protection and having distinct abilities from other PCs, but supers … in my mind at least … are specifically about having extremely distinct powers.  Even if you can do the same things as other characters, like fly or blast stuff with energy, you do it in a unique way that informs the narrative.

I rarely use my abilities.  Even when I do do something, it’s often like research … when another PC is smarter than I am.  Meanwhile, the sentient bee hive constantly uses his powers.  His powers inform play.

What is my character supposed to be doing?

Electrocuting things.  He’s not all that good at that, as the Gambit-y character does way more damage firing charged poker chips.  Getting blasted by energy.  That happened not that long ago when I was testing Force Field and realized there was no real way I was going to get hurt because of that power.  Otherwise, pretty much never get energized, where I have additional defenses.

Not be Invisible Woman of the party as I arranged to cut my FF’s power level in half because it wasn’t supposed to be a primary ability and I’m not going to lean into it to protect other people … or will I?  My powers are half electricity, half weather control.  Protecting others with weather effects actually makes some sense.

He can power stuff that uses electricity – that has happened like once.  He can change the weather – this is the only time he feels like he’s doing anything superheroic.  Almost like I should abandon blasting and just focus on weather control effects that don’t accidentally murder people.

He’s extremely Wits-y, yet I only recall rolling a skill with Wits like three times in 35 sessions.  He never rolls Rapport.  He never rolls Biz in any meaningful way.

But, that’s also part of it, even when rolling skills, which is something that used to feel like a strength and used to feel productive, it just doesn’t feel like any rolls matter to my character.  Now, this isn’t a character role problem, specifically, though maybe it ties into having no real role in the party.

He’s not perceptive.  He’s not particularly social, though he also barely rolls any social skills other than Subterfuge.

So, this is a personal problem, but is there a greater truth?

I think there is.  I think superhero play needs to lean into how powers interact with each other and the world.  If just going to be superpowered investigators or whatever, could be playing any of a ton of modern supernatural games.

Identity should matter.  In that it should be easy to maintain separate identities.  If not going to have a secret ID, then just start being more like other games.  It’s one of the most troperiffic tropes.

Stuff should happen to superheroes.  Supers defend the world.  They are inherently reactive.  And, that stuff should happen constantly.  There shouldn’t be time spent researching – that’s what Call of Cthulhu is for.

Supernormal stuff should constantly be happening.  The mundane world exists, but it’s supposed to be a background for wild and crazy stuff happening, like alien invasions or citywide destruction or teleporting to other worlds.  The GM used my character’s civilian background to set a session against a different backdrop.  But, that backdrop didn’t really matter; all the situation did was yet again isolate my character from what everyone else was doing and limit the use of my powers.  That obviously wasn’t the intent, and it would be more appealing to have things like that happen if my character felt like he was a superhero.

He basically just feels like a guy in a costume who happens to have powers that don’t really matter.  Not all of the time.  A lot of the time.

There should be a soap opera going on with NPCs.  Sure, I like soap opera with NPCs in every setting, but the supervillains being related to the superheroes, the coworker in civilian life being a love interest or foil, etc. are genre defining.

While it’s true that every PC should be involved in what’s going on in any genre, in supers play, there should be background specific interactions.  The alien super should have alien politics going on.  The mystic super has supernatural stuff going on.  There is a new supervillain that’s supposed to be my nemesis, so the effort is there.  But, in a party fight, it just doesn’t matter.

Which brings me to:  while it’s important to have group activities because this is a group game, it’s important in supers play that things happen to individual characters that highlight the differences between the characters and highlight that all supers are supposed to be vastly more competent than normal people are.

Part of my being so discouraged is that I play in another campaign where I’m just as irrelevant to what’s going on.  It’s just tiring watching other people play games that I should love.

On the positive side, because I’m all about positivity, I played a HoR4 module last night, and it was fun.  The mod could have been better, but I like it, and the specific experience was rather enjoyable.  Given how discouraged I am with HoR4, it’s a nice counterpoint.  Though, I actually enjoyed other recent intro mods; it’s the recent mods that are mid/high or high that just fall flat to me as whatever they are trying to do isn’t something I care about and they don’t do what I do care about.

See, positive.