My Card Gaming, Week Ending 5/7/16

Games played:
Star Wars CCG - 1 game (basically played with the decks in the Empire Strikes Back 2-Player Intro Box)
Legend of the Five Rings - 1 game (Arc, trying out my Dragon Clan Oni deck).
Netrunner - 11 games (used Sync, Industrial Genomics, Leela, and Jesminder, The Professor, and Palana Foods).  6 of these games were in a small tournament

New acquisitions:
Few boosters of Shadows Over Innistrad (got a second Arlinn Kord)
A booster of DBZ: Perfection
A starter and a booster of Force of Will.
A ton of Middle-Earth cards
Flight of the Stormcaller (Lord of the Rings LCG)
The Final Gambit (Warhammer 40K: Conquest)

Nothing!

Current Card Games on Kickstarter 5/4/16

Any good card games currently on Kickstarter?

The Dresden Files Cooperative Card Game looks like a sure bet for me to grab.  It's not my 'style' of card game, from what I can tell (I don't build decks pre-game), but the theme is a big plus for me, and it looks like it'll be a really enjoyable game.

9DKP Trading Card Game.  Three different starters (one for each faction).  Rules are posted, plenty of images of cards are posted, and the product looks pretty decent.  It seems like it might be a little simple for my taste.  Additionally, as a TCG, the Booster Packs are kind of the core business model.  It looks like at the highest likely tier anyone would pay, I would get three (in addition to the three starters)?  Why not have additional boosters as an add-on, at the very least?

Gringo-Gaijin's: Dawn of the Aerogirls.  There's a lot wrong here.  First, the title of the product.  Should a possessive go before the colon?  That feels really awkward.  The video of the product even misspells it (as Areogirls).  That's really bad.  Anyway, the game looks to be a CCG with women as the main combatants in some alternate reality World War II.  However, not enough information about the rules or the cards is really given.  I guess they are hoping that anime girls will sell a product by itself?

I keep an eye on Kickstarter from time to time, looking for anything that looks like a card game of my particular taste (separate decks, pre-built before the game).  I have found some decent new games this way- but I do miss a few.  If you come across any, please let me know!

Dragon Clan Oni [L5R]

Ever since the release of Evil Portents last year, I have been dying to try to play more Legend of the Five Rings, mainly so I could try to use the new Ikikashi Sensei.  As a primarily Spider Clan player, having access to all the tools of the Shadowlands without having to end my own game (through dishonor) sounded like an absolute blast.

The first decision was which Stronghold to take in my deck.  Even though I can't dishonor myself, I can be dishonored, and I've been on the receiving end of that often enough that I wanted to at least give myself some buffer.  Playing as the Spider would start me at -8 honor, only 12 honor loss actions away from losing the game.  Starting from the high honor clans and working down, I decided to go with the Dragon Clan stronghold.  This starts me at -3 honor and has the additional benefit of giving me a ring in play- I have been using Earth or Air, usually.

Here is what I am running in my Dynasty Deck:

1 Severed from the Emperor

1 Forgotten Legacy
2 Fudoist Temple
2 Gold Mine
1 House of Disgrace
3 Lane of Immorality
3 Suana Dojo
1 Temple of Destiny
3 The Feeding Hills
2 Traveling Market

3 Akuma no Obake
2 Fushiki no Oni
3 Gekido no Oni
2 Hatsu Suru no Oni
2 Keppo
3 Minikui no Oni
3 Patairaku no Oni
1 Umikaiju
3 Voitagi

None of this feels particularly surprising- run a lot of the honor loss Holdings, since they do not affect me, and fit in several Shadowlands personalities.  I'm still tweaking the various counts of the Oni in between games, but that's what I'm currently at (if I'd ever draw a Umikaiju in-game, I can figure out if I like him in here or not).

My Fate Deck:

1 Ring of Air
1 Ring of Earth
1 Ring of the Void
1 Ring of Water

3 Oni Familiar
3 Skeletal Troops
3 The Desiccated
1 The Unquiet Moto
3 Zombie Troops

1 A New Alliance
1 Ambush
3 Another Time
2 Back to the Front
3 Blind Honor
1 Brazen Disregard
2 Breaking the Rhythm
1 Calculated Risk
2 Corrupted Ground
2 Strength in Subtlety
3 The Looming Darkness
2 Victory Through Deference
2 Wedge
3 Your True Nature

Again, I am trying out a few things.  I want to have some anti-dueling help, but Another Time ends up getting on my nerves.  I may switch to Kharmic Strike.  I may consider dropping it altogether and up my numbers of A New Alliance and Brazen Disregard.  I am still testing, and still trying to figure out what I like.

Does anyone have any success, or any thoughts?

My Card Gaming, Week Ending 4/30/16

Games played:
Android: Netrunner- 4 games (a small draft tournament- went 4-0!)

New acquisitions:
Salsette Island (Android: Netrunner)
Marvel Vs. System 2PCG: A-Force Expansion
Valentina Starter (Force of Will)
Star Wars Empire Strikes Back Two-Player Introductory Set (Star Wars CCG)

A few Magic Boosters for Shadows Over Innistrad (finally got a Thing in the Ice!).

A second quiet week for me, but I should start playing more again soon.  My final for my current class is next Wednesday, and I have had my fiance's mother down visiting the second half of this week.  All valid excuses, if you ask me.

General ramblings on the Hologram sub-faction in Star Trek CCG 2E

Last Friday, the Continuing Committee released a new virtual expansion for the Star Trek CCG, 2nd Edition: A Time to Stand.  This expansion focused on pre-Federation Starfleet and the Maquis, as well as making different parts of missions more useful in game.  Although I'll print it out soon (hopefully next Friday), it's going to have limited use for me at present- I don't own a Starfleet Headquarters mission, and I don't believe I own enough Maquis cards to play a Maquis deck yet.

However, one card that immediately grabbed my attention was the new Headquarters, Grid 296, Holographic Training Facility.

For me, part of the enjoyment of any card game is playing with the various themes in the game, working and tweaking with them until I make something enjoyable (and hopefully decent).  Sub-factions and sub-themes are a perfect example of the sort of thing I absolutely love.  Having a new sub-faction available is very exciting!

Of course, it is pretty limiting- trekcc.org lists 31 Hologram Personnel, some of whom are not particularly useful in a Photonic deck (Aikido?).  You could use Iden, Lustrous Demagogue and a version of the Olarra as well as some Holoprogram events (there are only two), to get some Hologram related bonuses, but is that really good enough to be its own thing? Two missions give you benefits for having Hologram Personnel. Strangely (to me, since they included the Headquarters in this expansion), it does not look like A Time to Stand has any other cards that work with this sort of deck.

Quality of such a deck aside, I'm thrilled that the Continuing Committee is adding new factions/sub-factions.  So long as there is enough to distinguish each faction from one another by play-style, more options are always a good thing.

Right after I print A Time to Stand, I will need to print the Unity expansion as well (since they included many Hologram toys there), and I'll toy around with it some.  As I play with it, I'll put up some decks that I'm trying out.

My Card Gaming, Week Ending 4/23/16

Games played:
Magic the Gathering: 2 games of Commander.

New acquisitions:
Calm Over Westeros (Game of Thrones 2nd Edition)
Ashes: The Children of Blackcloud & Ashes: The Frostdale Giants (Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn)
A few Magic Boosters for Shadows Over Innistrad (got a Declaration of Stone, finally).
Battletech CCG Starter (I used to play this, and wanted to check out the rules to see if I'd like to play this again)

Actually, a pretty quiet week for me on the gaming front.  I had a hard time finding time, since I have a final coming up in my grad school class.  Let's hope the next few weeks sees some improvements.

A new introduction

I have been very bad.

Bad about blogging is one thing- the amount of time I have to do anything varies from day to day, so there is no guarantee I'll have time to sit here and blog.  Knowing that, I don't feel too bad about a long delay (although my last post was a year ago tomorrow, ugh).

Instead, I have been bad about purchasing.

I got back into card gaming after a many year delay due to Fantasy Flight Games' LCG line.  The ability to play Warhammer: Invasion where all the cards were easily accessible was just too incredible to pass up.  In addition, every LCG produced was just another game I could play and love.  Then other companies (Alderac, Upper Deck) started noticing how great this was, and put out their own games.  Of course, I had to get those too.  During this time, I also played Legend of the Five Rings, from AEG, a game I loved 20-ish years ago when it first came out.

Of course, none of these were a problem.  The costs have been reasonable, and the releases are fairly infrequent.  Indeed, any delays actually help me- I always have a lot of cards available to me at any given time anyway.

What was really bad was when I started picking up old CCGs.

At first, it was just the Star Trek CCG, 1st Edition.  Then, of course, I discover there is a 2nd Edition, which means I get more cards (and much to my joy, there's a continuing committee releasing new expansions for these games!).  Then, I decide to get Babylon 5.  Then I think back to all the other CCGs I played... and get them as well.

After buying a bunch of these (and not really having many opponents), I looked for a new game that I would actually be able to play.  And ended up buying Magic again.

Although I love Magic (I have played it various times in my life- Ice Age and Mirrodin were my most serious times playing it), it is a bit of an expensive game.  I've been keeping it pretty casual, focusing on Commander and a sort of casual approach to Standard... but I realized what I SHOULD be doing is trying to get my other games on the table somewhere.

You see, I love all of the card games I play, each for a different reason. I want different things out of all of them.  I don't want my life to be just about playing Magic, and trying to hit up the major tournaments.  I am not out to make money doing this.

I want to share my love of card games with people.  Be it Android: Netrunner (which there are plenty of sites and discussion out there already), or Berserk (a Russian LCG-type game), or anything in between, I hope to talk about it.  With luck, someone else with my passion for these games will find something worth talking about as well.