Tag Archives: gaming

Play Like a Spider (No Spider-Sense Required)

November 3, 2011 Robin 1 Comment

Weird article title, right? What does it mean to “play like a spider,” anyway?

Well, if you play any games with me, it means to play like me–camp out, build up, and wait. Like web-building spiders, who weave a complicated web of sticky silk and then wait at one corner for a hapless insect to blunder into it, I construct my Magic decks and my HeroClix teams with the same long-term win in mind. I don’t rush aggressively forward; I wait for you to come to me, and get yourself hopelessly stuck with your own aggressive tactics. I may not win within 5 turns, but give me enough time, and I will succeed in at least immobilizing and tying down your force.

Why Bother with This Slow Strategy?

Spiders are not one of the most feared creepy-crawlies for no reason. They can bite, they get even humans stuck in webs (ugh, especially when it’s dark and all you can feel is the sticky silk across your face, hands, or arms)…and they seem pretty ruthless. But faced with a large boot heel or even a rolled-up magazine, they’re useless. In fact, their strategy works best against creatures similarly sized to them.

It may seem worthless to “play like a spider,” since most competitive gamers act as the boot heels and rolled-up magazines of the Magic and HeroClix world. But in a casual and/or multiplayer environment, spider-style play provides a new and creative way to interact. Instead of heavily focusing on “WIN WIN WIN within 5 turns,” you can sit back and socialize with your gaming friends for the first few turns, as you build up slowly. You then have time to observe how everyone else plays, compliment others on their strategy–generally create an atmosphere of camaraderie within your group.

It’s a little more laid-back style of gaming, and yet you still have your own strategy to build up, turn by turn, at an unhurried pace. Get enough of your defenses in place, and you can chat in relative peace. That is, until someone messes with you and disturbs your web.

The Steps of a Spider Gamer

Don’t mess with anybody unless they mess with you.
This is of paramount importance–spiders who are actively building their webs aren’t seeking prey yet. They have to wait until their web is finished (or at least mostly finished) before they can catch anything. Likewise, your first turns are better spent building up your defenses, not making enemies. Identify your strongest opponents and observe their playstyles, yes. But do not provoke them. Time enough for that later.
Once they do mess with you, begin your offensive strategy.
Sounds odd to only launch counterattacks, but it’s actually a very efficient strategy. Once the web is disturbed, spiders launch themselves at their prey and go after them relentlessly. As a spider gamer, you have to act similarly. You wait until they have extended themselves, and then start going after them, make them run scared for a few minutes. If you’re playing one-on-one, this is important to gain back some ground (especially if you didn’t have all your defenses in place yet); if you’re playing multi-player, this is an important show of force, so that everyone else at the table knows that you indeed can strike back, and hard.
Build in lots of support for yourself, and several ways to retreat if you have to.
Like spiders, who build multiple ways to escape if their prey is too strong for them or is too big, spider gamers have to include lots of long-term support into their strategies. In Magic: the Gathering, life-gain, counterspells, graveyard recurrence, creature-kill spells, and high-toughness creatures are ways to keep yourself afloat in tough circumstances; in HeroClix, including lots of Probability Control, Support, Outwit, flying characters, and high defenses can help your team go the distance. Retreating into defensive mode (not attacking and building up your defenses again) is important if you’re facing a lot of aggression–you’ve got to keep yourself alive, even if it means losing the offensive advantage for a few turns.
If you have to retreat, make it very difficult for anybody to come after you.
Spiders often retreat into trees, behind objects, or anywhere else that makes it hard to kill them. If you’re going to be a spider gamer, you have to think similarly when you need to build back up after a hard turn of battle. Make sure you’ve got enough things to defend you, and that it won’t do any good for anybody to come after you for a few turns, and then quietly put your strategy back together. (A strategy that falls apart at the slightest touch is not enough for a spider gamer–it’s got to be solid enough to hold up for the long-term.)

I do this a lot by building in tons of life-gain and Support–people get done battering down my life total or my HeroClix figures, only for me to gain the life back or heal up my characters again so that all their work has been undone! It flusters your opponent(s) and can give you the time you need to build back up.
Rest, recharge, and wait for the others to combat themselves to exhaustion…
This is my favorite part of spider strategy…waiting for the others to thrash themselves tired. Most often, especially in a multi-player game, the two most aggressive gamers at the table face off against each other and spend most of the time tearing at each other’s throats, leaving the rest of us alone. This is the perfect time for a spider gamer to build back up–do just a couple little things during your turn and be relatively unobtrusive, allowing the attention to focus on the more aggressive players. Like real spiders, who wait for their prey to get completely stuck before moving in on them, spider gamers can wait for their traps to spring on their opponent’s turn and not do a whole lot otherwise.
…then come in and mop, mop, mop.
Once the more aggressive gamers have fought each other enough and overextended their resources (and their life points), it’s time for the spider gamer to step out and start mopping up the mess. Half-dead HeroClix figures and Magic players with no blockers to defend themselves are easy targets for the spider gamer, and it gets some of the threats off the board before they can start building themselves back up.

Yes, I know, this strategy is often called “cherry-picking,” getting the last hit on somebody when someone else did all the work…but it’s about the only way for a spider gamer to stay alive. Waiting until the enemy is at half-strength or less is how a spider gamer survives, just like a real spider won’t mess with a hornet or a grasshopper until the insect is thoroughly entangled in its web.

The Point of Playing like a Spider

Those who practice spider-like gaming are allowed to be more talkative and sociable during gaming. Even if you’re not making the most kills or crushing the most people, you are surviving, which means you’re still in the game and you’re doing something right. I like the idea of actually talking to other players, hanging out with them as opposed to just beating them into the ground, and spider gaming lets me do that. Plus, I’m still using a deadly strategy, even if most people don’t recognize it. (The right attitude is key…never, never let on how dangerous you really are until it’s too late. XD)

I’d challenge any gamer who’s never tried playing slow, steady, and spiderish to try it. It’s a very different flavor and mindset from the typical “5-turn-win” aggressive or control-based strategy, and yet it can still win…if you have the patience and the support built in to succeed in the long term.

Thursday in the Zone

When Gaming Has Become Un-fun

October 27, 2011 Robin 2 Comments

It’s slowly been happening, over the course of the last year and a half. Gradually, my weekend trips to the gaming shop my boyfriend and I frequent have become more work and less play. At first, I thought I was just being annoyed by some of the people who go there, but it’s not that. Disturbingly, it seems I’ve lost interest in playing many of the games I used to enjoy.

When I had my laptop with me at the shop, I could use it as a “shield” from all the bothersome conversations; I didn’t have to sit there thinking, “Do we REALLY have to spend 5 hours doing nothing but discussing new Magic cards? Do we REALLY need a long and involved discussion over dinner about the new HeroClix set?” I could surf the Internet in relative peace, doing what I really wanted to do (blogging, Facebook, surfing sites I never get to see over dialup), instead of being immersed in this gaming culture that I increasingly felt outclassed in. Now that my laptop baby is in the shop (and has been for almost two months), the situation’s scabbed top layer has peeled back, revealing a deep resentment and no small amount of anger about it.

My frustration with gaming (and my apparent loss of interest in it) is frightening and strange to me. This is an activity I used to enjoy greatly with friends and my boyfriend–in fact, my boyfriend and I bonded over HeroClix and Magic. Now, I find it useless to even play anymore; I know what’s going to happen as soon as I choose one of my Magic decks and he chooses one of his. It seems pointless to play. Same with HeroClix…I feel like I don’t have enough mental energy for the strategy required anymore, and even if I did, everyone would be using all the new “hot” figures and I’d be swept off the board before 5 rounds had passed.

It’s like I’ve lost my gaming mojo. Pardon the Austin-Powers-ism, but there it is. This activity, which I used to take such pride in and such pleasure in, is now almost worthless to me. I’ve suffered depression enough times in my life to know that “loss of interest in favorite activities” is a hallmark, but I don’t feel depressed in any other aspect of my life. Just gaming.

Since I at least have a passing knowledge of psychology, I sought to delve into this problem, and I came up with a few possible explanations for this:

I am female and the rest of the gaming crew is male
The current gaming crew is more cutthroat and competitive than my old gaming crew
Every weekend, I have to “share” my boyfriend with these competitive guys and I get almost no quality time with him
The old gaming crew has splintered apart, with most of them becoming competitive jerks like the current crew
With all the new expansion sets coming out in both games, I feel beaten before I even begin a game
I don’t feel like I’m friends with anybody in the current gaming crew
I can’t be my whole self with any of the current gaming crew because no one there cares about my writing, my music, my church activities, etc.

Let’s delve into each of these reasons, just a bit.

I am female and the rest of the gaming crew is male

I am bewildered at how much this bugs me. It never used to–I always got along better with guys than girls when I was growing up, and I never was particularly “girly” in terms of fashion and gossip. But I am an adult woman now, an adult woman with very few female friends left in my home state, and I find myself suddenly more isolated from “girl talk” than I realized. Most of my female friends have already “grown up”; gotten married, had babies, gotten jobs, etc. And here I am, still playing in the sandbox with the boys. The boys might be okay with a girl in their midst, but I increasingly feel that it’s not “my place” anymore, as bad as I want it to be. What began as a great way to spend my Saturdays is now the worst day of the week because I don’t feel like I fit in.

The current gaming crew is more cutthroat and competitive than my old gaming crew

When our old gaming shop closed, it seems, the old casual gaming crew went with it–we all went our separate ways for a few years. In the interim, we began attending a shop in another county, another city, with all new players. All was well and good for my boyfriend, who has a great love for games and blends in well with the other players because he knows rules better than anyone else. I, however, did not feel as though I had a place, because my casual style of play was simply outclassed by the competitive styles preferred by the “new” crew. I don’t like 5-turn defeats and alpha strikes, but I’m forced to play against these types of strategies just to ward off the painful boredom of sitting and watching.

Every weekend, I have to “share” my boyfriend with the new competitive crew and I get almost no quality time with him

This is a pretty big beef I have. We’ve been going out 3 1/2 years, and some Saturdays I feel more like a glorified taxi driving him up to the shop rather than an active participant once I get there. He tries to engage me in games, but more often than not he’s called away from our game to answer a rules question in another game, or he ends up talking strategy or new expansion sets with some of the other guys and it leaves me completely out. I feel like I have to “share” my boyfriend with everyone else on Saturdays, when I barely get any real quality time with him during his crazy-busy work week or on Sundays, and it leaves me feeling cheated. It’s hard to even bring this up with him because I feel like if I complain, then I’m being a typical whiny girlfriend and yanking him away from time with his friends, which I know he needs. But if I don’t complain, then it looks like I’m perfectly happy with the arrangement, which is not the case at all.

The old gaming crew has splintered apart, with most of them becoming competitive jerks like the current crew

I used to love playing with the old crew because we just HAD FUN–we weren’t trying to one-up each other all the time, or win money, or gain any kind of prestige. Now, at least 2 of our former number are always talking “best strategies to win tournaments” and playing like they’re in competitions all the time instead of playing against friends. There’s only one of the old crew I still even talk to like a friend anymore, because the others have become strangers to me. We all grew apart, I guess, and I find myself more nostalgic and wistful for what has been lost rather than trying to build anything new, because it just won’t compare.

With all the new expansion sets coming out in both games, I feel beaten before I even begin a game

I don’t play Standard format in Magic, and I don’t play Modern Age in HeroClix. Most of my cards and figures come from Vintage format and Golden Age…which singles me out among the players at the new shop. My strategies, therefore, don’t match up to a lot of the “new hotness” that is being produced by both game companies. I’m not drooling over the latest 13-attack Clix figure, nor do I care about the latest monstrous Infect creature that’s starring in all the Poison Counter Magic decks. I just want to play MY strategies, the ones I made up MYSELF, not something I got off the internet. But my strategies are not good enough to beat Tier 1 strategies, and like I said, I feel beaten before I even begin a game these days.

I don’t feel like I’m friends with anybody in the current gaming crew

Because I have withdrawn from the current crew’s gaming scene, I feel like I can’t get close to anyone. I desperately would like to make friends with them, even just to chat about random stuff, but no one seems to bother with talking about anything that doesn’t have to do with competitive Magic or HeroClix, etc. I feel hamstrung; I don’t always WANT to talk about gaming stuff because it’s become a smaller and smaller portion of my life, but what do I have in common with these guys otherwise?

I can’t be my whole self with any of the current gaming crew because no one there cares about my writing, my music, my church activities, etc.

I am much more than the sum of my games. But you’d never know that if you saw me at the gaming shop. I feel unable to talk about anything but games (see previous subheading), even though I have tentatively tried to broach other topics a few times. I have tried to share my poetry, my music, my church activities, the fact that I’m writing a novel, and tons more stuff about me, but no one seems interested. My forum threads are stillborn; no one is interested in me, and thus, I find myself less and less interested in them. How can I enjoy myself if I’m limited to talking about (or more often, listening to) stuff I don’t find interesting anymore?

A Kind of Summary

One thing’s for sure, this loss of interest in gaming goes much deeper than just hatred of a particular shop, a particular player, or how the games have evolved. It seems as if my very identity is shaken by this. I used to identify myself as a “gamer girl.” Now, I find myself wondering if I even want that label anymore. According to this very blog article, many things have changed in this situation, including myself, and…I am now at a crossroads. I’m sure I’m not the only female to find herself in this situation, but I am powerless to do much about it except write.

Perhaps, by writing this and getting some of these poisonous feelings out, I can find a way to either renew my interest in gaming or withdraw from it completely. After all, gaming is not life…at least, not for me anymore.

Thursday in the Zone

A New Take on “Green Lantern Tank”

October 20, 2011 Robin Leave a comment

Green Lantern what?!

Actually, “Green Lantern Tank” refers to a once-popular HeroClix strategy, best explained in this HCRealms forum thread.

The idea behind the original GLT (lol, quite unlike a BLT) is to surround a strong, flying Green Lantern figure with lots of supportive characters, such as figures with Enhancement (for ranged damage), Probability Control (for rerolls), and perhaps some Perplex and Outwit thrown in there as well for extra pwnage. The Green Lantern figure was most often equipped with the feat card called Trick Shot, which enabled a ranged character to attack from range without worrying about characters, hindering terrain, or Stealth.

Most famously, this was done, as one of the forum members says, with the Veteran Hal Jordan Green Lantern figure. But other GL pieces could do this as well. The two prerequisites for this: The GL figure had to be able to fly, and it had to have the Green Lantern Corps team symbol on its base, seen below:

The reason the team symbol was so important? The GL team symbol means that the character can carry up to 8 adjacent, friendly, grounded figures with it when it moves. Basically, the GL piece could “hide” behind its grounded buddies, keeping it safe from both ranged and close attack, while being able to fire off attacks using the Trick Shot feat, and it could move around the board carrying its 8 buddies with it–a very mobile, highly-efficient, and dangerous team.

And Then, They Nerfed It

Nerf: Verb. Meaning “to dull down the effectiveness of, to soften the damaging effect of.” And yes, it’s related to the Nerf ball.

The GLT strategy was effectively nerfed when game developers took Trick Shot and other feats out of the modern Clix environment–suddenly, Hal Jordan was trapped in the middle of his 8 buddies with no way to fire out from behind them. Also, they introduced a movement penalty for carrying characters. A flying figure who can move 10 squares on his/her own could no longer carry a friendly grounded character for 10 squares–he/she can only go 8. This really reduced the “run-and-gun” strategy for the GLT, and it seemed as if the strategy was dead.

It’s Not Dead, Just Sleeping

Trust me to find a way to revive an old, decrepit strategy. Well, maybe not totally revive it, but repurpose it. One gamer’s trash is another gamer’s treasure!

I discovered the wondrous power of the Green Lantern team ability one day while talking Clix strategy with my boyfriend. Being a Mystics player, I had a ton of wildcard pieces, many of them Legion of Superheroes figures (i.e., flying wildcards); I’m also a hardcore swarm strategist, liking to play many smaller figures instead of just a few large figures.

That day, I’d been trying out a new strategy, using the 37-point Rookie Invisible Woman piece as a central figure. R Invisible Woman’s 18 defense with Defend meant that she could share her 18 defense with up to 8 people around her. I had a lot of little ranged and close-combat pieces that were strong attack characters, but had very low defenses (Veteran Shi from Indy, anyone? That 15 defense made me SAD, even if it did come with Super Senses!).

Thus, I sought to protect my strong attackers by letting them borrow Invisible Woman’s 18 defense; I surrounded Invisible Woman on all sides with friendly figures. Invisible Woman enabled Shi and other small stealthy attackers to survive for the whole game, and Shi and her pals protected Invisible Woman, whose 6 attack and 6 move would be harmless to just about everyone.

I loved the strategy–it was defensive and stealthy and unexpected and it was chock-full of characters. But there was one problem with it.

“Wish there was a way to move my teams quickly and carefully into position,” I said to my boyfriend as we ate a quick dinner. “I mean, Sue (Invisible Woman) has to be protected on all sides as soon as possible, otherwise the strategy folds. But aside from having a few flying characters, I can’t figure out how to transport a whole team at once.”

“Ever heard of the Green Lantern team ability?” my boyfriend said, ever a fountain of Clix knowledge.

I had heard of it, but since most of the figures who carry that team symbol are way expensive for my tastes (over 100 points), I had largely dismissed it from memory. “Oh, yeah, that…I remember the symbol, but what does it do?”

“It allows a flying character to carry up to 8 friendly, adjacent, grounded characters,” my boyfriend replied.

And my memory leaped into my mental wildcard stash, coming up with all the Legion of Superheroes pieces I favored. No, they weren’t particularly strong by themselves, but if you could Wildcard to Mystics, surely you could Wildcard to Green Lantern team. The seed of the idea sprouted and grew vigorously, and I grinned. That was the key to moving my high-defense, stealthy, unexpected team. Nobody would expect a Legionnaire, of all things, to come flying in with 8 of her friends!

Refining the Strategy

Once I had the main idea, I sought out pieces that had similarities to Invisible Woman–I already knew that just using a wildcarded-Green Lantern piece in the center could be possibly more effective than just having that piece fly in Invisible Woman and 7 other friends. If I could find a wildcard who had Stealth and Defend like Invisible Woman, I would likely be set.

The best match I found came from my own Clix box–Experienced Umbra, 56 points, a flying Legionnaire. With 9 move, 9 attack, 17 defense, and 3 damage first click, she was enough to ward off attacks, and with Stealth, Force Blast, and Defend, she was exactly what I needed for wildcard fodder.

Now to find a cheap-enough Green Lantern piece. Since I don’t like playing figures over 100 points (unless they’re REALLY amazing and worth every point), I struggled finding a Green Lantern piece I could live with. But finally, due to some good searching, my boyfriend and I found two figures that fit the bill. Experienced Jade, 92 points from the Legacy set, and Rookie Green Lantern, 81 points from the Cosmic Justice set, worked very well for what I needed them for (mainly wildcard-fodder), and they were both good fits for my collection. I could improve their defenses if I needed to by incorporating Invisible Woman, and their attacks could be fixed with Perplex. (Of course, with the recent Green Lantern pieces that have been released in the Fast Forces and Gravity Feed packs, I could also get my hands on some more (and cheaper) pieces if I needed to. These just happened to be the first I got.)

Trying It Out

I have played this strategy several times and really enjoy how it works. It’s great for getting a large team into position (try using 2 Green Lantern team pieces for those really large-point-value games!), and it’s ideal for getting hurt pieces up, up, and away from the danger. I used Rookie Green Lantern in tandem with Exp. Umbra in one 500-point game, and ended up surviving the game with 11 of my 22 pieces intact, sitting atop Elevated terrain that was 3 squares by 4 squares–perfect for my team to hide out on and heal, and hard for my enemies to approach.

Defensive GLT is also good for moving more than one supportive piece at a time (like repositioning your Perplex, Prob, and Outwit so they can see better). Using E Umbra to move Destiny, Harley Quinn, and Abbey Chase around, while still providing them with a 17 base defense, is very, very efficient when you’re working with large teams and limited actions.

I don’t find that the -2 to movement is all that encumbering with GLT. You can always Perplex up the movement value if you absolutely need those 2 extra squares and you have the spare Perplexes to do it. Alternatively, you can use the feat Contingency Plan to heighten the movement by a maximum of 3 if you have a Leadership/Mastermind character on your team. Or, you could just use a wildcard flier that has a larger movement value to begin with: many of the Legionnaires have 10 move, such as Dawnstar, Triplicate Girl, and Karate Kid.

The best figures that work with this build are small-point-value figures with good defensive abilities and solid attacks. Having Stealth and/or Energy Shield/Deflection is great; so is having Combat Reflexes, Impervious, or Invulnerability. If you have more luck with Super Senses rolls than I have, Super Senses is also a good choice, but that 33% chance to dodge doesn’t always cover one’s posterior as well as one might hope.

Choosing a good Defend piece is also important–you want to protect that source of good defense with great offense, but you don’t want your Defend piece to be absolutely useless if your opponent breaks through the offensive wall. And don’t forget Support, Prob, Outwit, Perplex, and Telekinesis! Having at least one representative of those powers is always a good thing with swarm.

Weaknesses

Like the more offensively-based GLT, defensive GLT is weak to Pulse Wave attacks (the Defend won’t matter). Energy Explosion is a little more difficult to pull off against this team, because of how much Stealth I incorporate (especially on the side of the 3×3 GLT “box” that faces the enemy. Stealth plus high Defense values = I scoff at Energy Explosion. If you don’t have Stealth on your side, at least put in some Energy Shield/Deflection to jack up your Defense value 2 more points higher at range. (Oh yeah, Jason Blood is sitting on a 20 defense at range. YEEHA.)

A good close-combat rush is a winning tactic against a defensive GLT that has overbalanced on range pieces. That’s why I always include a Mockingbird, Vet Psylocke from Armor Wars (Stealth and Combat Reflexes–SURPRISE!!), or even a good Cheetah for a little 11 attack Blades. Shi from Indy functions as both a range and close-combat piece, too, which makes her a good choice for defensive GLT. Make sure not to use too many range or too many close-combat pieces–try to intersperse a few close-combatties in with your pew-pew-pew squad.

Hey, Wait a Minute, Why Don’t You Have a Team List?

Because I don’t build off keywords. I use a more “toolbox” approach to playing Clix–a piece has the ability I need at the point value I can afford, so I play it. That said, I have literally dozens of Clix pieces that could suit this strategy. GLT, in my opinion, is a min/max-friendly format, but it also encourages innovation and creativity, using pieces that lots of people call “bad” to win big. (Ever seen a 30-point Checkmate Black Knight deal 5 damage at range and emerge from the game unscathed? Yep, I did it–with 2 Enhancers, 1 Probber, and Invisible Woman in the background!)

Summary

Unlike the Green Lantern Tank of gamer legend, my “defensive” Green Lantern Tank strategy is not necessarily a game-winner. However, it will stretch your boundaries of what makes a “good” team, and might just make you rethink how you play. One thing’s for sure, the Green Lantern team ability is not just for running-and-gunning anymore!

Thursday in the Zone

The Maddening Efficiency of Poison Counters

October 13, 2011 Robin 2 Comments

As a Magic player for several years (since 2004), I have made a name for myself among the local groups by playing a distinct “life-gain” style of play, also known as “stall.” I gain life and prevent damage in most of my decks, and do mainly combat damage as a win condition; this allows the other player to play their strategy, but most of the time they cannot actually do me any lasting damage. In my eyes, it’s a win-win, because I get to play my strategy without being overly worried about my life total, and they get to see how their deck plays in extreme long-game, with plenty of time for joking around and socializing in the process.

However, a not-so-new mechanic that was revived in Scars of Mirrodin threatens this easy and relatively carefree way of playing. It’s called poison counters.

Poison Counters Before Scars of Mirrodin

In the 1994 Magic set Legends, the first cards dealing with the “poison counter” effect were printed. Poison counters were a new way to win or lose the game–if a player accumulated 10 poison counters, they automatically lost the game, no matter what their life total was. It was, in a way, a second type of life total, even though the creators of the game still refuse to acknowledge it as such.

From 1994 to 1997, Wizards of the Coast worked with poison counters in several of its sets. Expansions such as The Dark, 4th Edition, Chronicles, Homelands, Alliances, Mirage, Visions, and 5th Edition each had just a few cards sprinkled in that concerned poison counters. Within these sets, poison counters were generally dealt directly by creatures, usually with wording such as “When [card name] deals damage to a player, that player gets X amount of poison counters”, not always matching how much damage the creature dealt.

Because of the fairly scant number of cards dealing with poison counters, it was somewhat difficult to incorporate into an entire deck strategy. Thus, the mechanic did not see a whole lot of play after these sets faded into memory.

Poison Counters Since Scars of Mirrodin

Fast-forward thirteen years, to 2010–the release of Scars of Mirrodin, and the introduction of a very new and quite deadly mechanic: infect. This new mechanic combined the effects of two other fairly good mechanics, “poisonous” and “wither,” into one super-powered game-changer for any creature.

With the advent of infect, previously small one-drop, 1/1 creatures with very little prowess to their name could become killing machines in their own right. They could wither away the opponent’s creatures, but they could also give undefended players a poison counter. And once given one poison counter, opponents were then susceptible to a mechanic called “proliferate,” which allowed the proliferate-wielding player to “choose any number of permanents and/or players with counters on them, then give each another counter of a kind already there,” according to the official rules reminder text.

This substantially increased the playability of poison counter strategies. With so many new infect creatures and so many new proliferating spells and permanents, it was suddenly viable–and suddenly very deadly, not just to tournament players, but to the global Magic-playing population.

My Beef with Poison Counters

Even though most of Magic’s developers don’t want to believe that poison counters represent a second type of life total, they are. They represent a 10-turn clock in the background of the game, which is completely at the mercy of the other player, especially thanks to infect and proliferate. What’s more, they are a life total that to date, players have only two ways to change:

Leeches, a card from the much-maligned set Homelands, gets rid of all poison counters on a target player, and transfers it to damage to the regular life total instead;
Melira, Sylvok Outcast, from New Phyrexia, prevents its controller from getting poison counters, and directly counters the infect keyword and its -1/-1 effect on creatures.

Damage, I can deal with easily–it’s called Holy Day and Fog. Loss of life, I can spring back from; Life Burst and Beacon of Immortality for the win. Poison counters? With only two cards in the ENTIRE GAME to counter this strategy and take back control of my own poison counter total, it’s a very small chance that I have those cards and can make them work in one of my existing decks, or build a new deck with them in it that makes any kind of cohesive strategy.

Furthermore, poison counters are a death stroke to my typical gameplay style of “casual, slow and steady, more joking than playing.” I can’t have fun and be casual when I have an uncontrollable clock of counters going in the background the entire game. I’m forced into running scared the whole game, trying to outrun my typically Standard-format opponent with Vintage-format decks that just were not made to counter this kind of strategy. It feels like I’m taking a timed final exam that I didn’t study for. I hate being timed, especially when I don’t control the clock and don’t have the right resources or knowledge to finish the test of skill.

I thought Magic was supposed to be a game, but poison counters have changed the whole face of it. If the game developers are truly trying to make Magic into a purely competitive, cutthroat game, then they’re succeeding–they have just taken a major step toward stamping out Casual Play once and for all. Yes, it’s a great mechanic; it’s effective, and it forces people to play quickly and powerfully. But it’s far too competitive for those of us who use Magic and other GAMES to relax and have a good time with friends.

Warning, This Gamer’s Climbing onto Her Soapbox!

To me, poison counters represent everything that’s wrong with Magic these days. Yes, I know, I sound like an old fuddy-duddy, waving my proverbial cane about and muttering “Well, in MY day, WE didn’t HAVE no stinkin’ poison counters and tournaments!” But it’s true–Magic has grown exponentially more competitive as the mass of Standard-playing customers has increased in size, and the game developers seem to be pandering more toward this aggressive, tournament-winning style of play.

Now, I’ll freely admit, I don’t think I’ve ever won a Magic tournament, because the deck styles that I most enjoy playing are meant more for multi-player games and extreme-long-game setups. (In multi-player games, I’m liable to win without anybody realizing how powerful I’ve become until it’s too late. In one-on-one games, I am wiped off the map before my first combo piece is on the board.) But I LIKED playing casually and playing multi-player. I LIKED just playing silly combos that only affect me and create a hilarious situation, like being able to gain 64 life off a single Life Burst because of Boon Reflection and having 3 Life Bursts in the graveyard. Gaining astronomical amounts of life doesn’t hurt anybody else, and it’s hysterical to watch.

But with most of the local gamers I know going over to the “dark side” of strictly tournament play, my favorite style of playing is nearly extinct. Everyone is either playing the more aggressive mechanics and more recent formats, playing me one-on-one and wiping the floor with me, or taking me down with poison counters that I can’t control. As my blog title says, poison counters (and mechanics like it) are maddeningly efficient. They’re maddeningly efficient at making me and other casual players like me quit the game entirely, because it’s no longer fun–it’s a gun fight, and I came equipped with a butter knife.

How Can We Defend Against Poison Counters?

Well, now that I’ve said my piece about how Magic seems to be going all uber-competitive, how can players work around these annoying little poison counters?

Besides using Leeches or Melira, Sylvok Outcast, there ARE ways to defend against getting poison counters, as listed below:

Blocking any and all Infect creatures. Make sure the creature you block with has a larger toughness so that it can survive the -1/-1 hit!
Removing or destroying Infect creatures and Proliferating permanents. Disenchant, Naturalize, Doom Blade, Swords to Plowshares, Path to Exile, Shock, Lightning Bolt, and Shriekmaw are just a few cards off the top of my head that can help this cause.
Countering Infect creature spells and Proliferating permanent spells. Blue always has an answer for everything.

Even a primarily Vintage player like me can find ways to use the above strategies to protect myself from poison counters. After all, I play big-toughness creatures as a rule of thumb, and I also enjoy pumping my little creatures to stronger power and toughness to overcome my opponent, so I do have at least the ability to block the infect creatures. I also run a good deal of creature removal and enchantment/artifact destruction in most of my decks, so I can get rid of permanents that could proliferate what poison counters I have. And while I don’t run a lot of Red, Blue, or Black, I can occasionally Shock and Bolt some of the smaller infect creatures if I have to.

It is important to note, however, that not every deck can encompass these strategies. For those of us who build decks and rarely change them because they work so well, it’s annoying to have to change out some parts to a well-oiled machine just because of one mechanic. But if you want to survive in today’s Magic: the Gathering, you sometimes have to sacrifice the beauty of a well-designed Vintage- or Legacy-format strategy in order to build “what works” against the mechanic flavor of the month. “What works” may not be exactly your cup of tea, but it will give you a better chance to win, and perhaps a chance to have that fleeting, mythical experience called “fun” again.

More About Poison Counters and Player Discussions of Strategy

From wiki.mtgsalvation.com:

Ways to Remove Poison Counters? @ TappedOut.net
Need Help Preventing/Removing Poison Counters @ MTGFanatic.com
Complete list of cards that directly deal with poison counters @ Gatherer

Thursday in the Zone

We Love Katamari

October 6, 2011 Robin Leave a comment

This crazily fun game for the Playstation 2, released in 2005, has to be one of the most relaxing games I’ve ever played. But don’t let it fool you–the humor and fun in the game is only the surface of a game that actually requires more thought and strategy.

Basic Gameplay

You play as Prince Katamari Damacy, the son of the King of the Cosmos, and in this game (a sequel to earlier Katamari games), the King has gotten a little tipsy (okay, a LOT tipsy) and has accidentally destroyed all the planets in the universe except for Earth. In a panic, the King sends his son Katamari to Earth to collect lots of junk to make new planets out of. (To think of all the universes the King could make with the junk in my room…!)

The Prince is given a rather strange-looking, lumpy ball (also called a “katamari”), which “picks up” anything lighter than itself, and you are asked to roll the ball around and pick up items, making the katamari larger and larger. This process is called “rolling up” stuff. You use the two control sticks on the Playstation controller to roll the katamari around–the left stick controls the Prince’s left hand, and the right stick controls the right hand. (There’s a wonderful tutorial level which shows you more of the fine control skills–it’s a fun little mini-game in itself!)

Once you’ve gotten into the game, you explore several different areas of a park-like setting, where many people are hanging out waiting for the Prince to help them with a task. There’s a harried mother who wants her son’s room cleaned up, a schoolteacher who needs to get all her students home safely, a florist who wants a beautiful, large bouquet of flowers gathered, a camper who wants a big bundle of firewood for his campfire, and even a bird and elephant who want to see just how big a katamari can get. Each person you talk to gives you a different level to play on, and each person’s level requires a little bit different strategy and mindset to conquer.

As you play each level, new challenges appear. Some of the people you talked to before offer you new levels or new types of challenges later in the game. Example: the young sumo wrestler in training, who asks you to help him get big enough to fight first a relatively small opponent, then a medium-sized opponent, then a large opponent. Keep talking to everyone, even the people whose levels you’ve already done–you might find yourself breaking your old record, or completing an entirely new challenge!

What I Love about the Game

We Love Katamari is a fun, approachable game, suitable for children but challenging for all ages, with the different goals you must reach to complete different levels. It’s relaxing and hilarious (if you get the katamari big enough on the bird-and-elephant level especially…you start rolling up islands and giant buildings!). Though one would think the process of rolling up all these different items would get boring after a while, it never does–I’ve been playing it since 2007 and still love starting the game over and trying it all again.

The game is very easy in its controls, which frees up a lot of brainpower for thinking through the levels. In the levels where time is of the essence, for instance, you have to focus on getting just the essentials, not trying to roll up everything in sight. Other levels, like the campfire level where you have to make sure you’re rolling up something every few seconds so the campfire doesn’t go out, are very challenging. (Don’t let your campfire bundle fall into the water…just saying, it’s the only way to utterly fail at We Love Katamari.) There are still some levels I haven’t conquered completely–I may have completed them, but I want to complete them better. We Love Katamari is ultimately a game about bettering yourself, discovering novel ways to complete a task, and of course, laughing at all the junk you’re collecting along the way.

To Find Out More

We Love Katamari on Wikipedia
GameSpot.com’s We Love Katamari section

Thursday in the Zone

Pikmin

September 29, 2011 Robin Leave a comment

If you ever wondered “Isn’t there a way that I can lead an army of cute little creatures to help me do stuff?”, then the Nintendo Gamecube game Pikmin is definitely for you. Released in 2002 and again in 2009 for the Wii, this little real-time strategy game is like nothing you’ve ever played before.

Concept

You play as Captain Olimar, a lone spaceship pilot on his way back home after a long vacation. Unfortunately, the ship is struck by a passing asteroid and plummets to the surface of a nearby planet. Olimar is safe, but his ship is in pieces–30 pieces, to be exact. And this is a very, very big planet, and he is an itty-bitty little guy. Not to mention that the planet’s atmosphere is poisonous to him; he’s only got 30 days of breathable air in his spacesuit!

He bemoans his fate onscreen, as he ambles about the skeleton of his beloved Dolphin, assessing the damage. And then, he catches sight of what appears to be a growing carrot, a few feet away. He pulls experimentally at the stalk, only to uproot a bright red living creature, carrot-shaped, but definitely not food!

The little creature, which Captain Olimar names “Pikmin” after his favorite brand of carrots back home, clings to him, in need of protection and leadership. It turns out that in the immediate crash site area, there are several more sprouts; there are even some random numbered red pellets, which, when fed to the Pikmin’s apparent mothership (nicknamed “Onion” by Olimar), produces even more sprouts. These new Pikmin are just as loyal and clingy as the first Pikmin Olimar uprooted; it seems he now has a commandable and expandable army on his hands.

Basic Gameplay

Once you discover the Pikmin, you (as Olimar) lead them into battle and into ship part recovery, fighting off the natural Pikmin-eating creatures in order to get to the far-flung parts. A number of Pikmin then carry the recovered part back to the Dolphin, restoring its functions piece by painstaking piece. Upon evening falling, Olimar and the Pikmin both must leave the surface of the planet, since there are more dangerous nocturnal creatures about which could eat both the Pikmin army and Olimar as well.

In-Game Exploration

As the Dolphin is put back together, it can rise up higher in the atmosphere and seek out more parts in different places. You end up visiting five different areas in all.

Different parts you recover also help you in-game–once you get the Whimsical Radar, for instance, you can locate lost Pikmin on your map, whereas before you have to go whistling madly through all the areas looking for them.

Pikmin Types

Red Pikmin, the first type you discover, are fire-resistant and somewhat stronger, but slower. The slimmer Yellow Pikmin can carry and place explosives, and can be thrown higher into the air to retrieve hard-to-reach stuff–they also move the fastest. Blue Pikmin can swim and are medium-build, making them fairly good at fighting and moving quickly.

It is a good idea to build up your Pikmin army as quickly as possible, using the carcasses of creatures the Pikmin have defeated, as well as the scattered Pikmin pellets. Remember, let the red Pikmin carry the red pellets, yellow carry yellow, etc.–you will maximize your Pikmin sprouts in this way, because the pellet colors match the Onion they go back to.

Carrying Objects

Each portable object you come across in the game, whether it’s a ship part or an enemy carcass, needs a certain amount of Pikmin to carry it. The number will appear as the bottom half of a fraction floating above the item, with the number of Pikmin currently trying to carry the item appearing as the top half of the fraction. For instance, an item labeled “29/30” needs one more Pikmin to be lifted; an item labeled “2/2” is being carried by just enough Pikmin; an item labeled “30/20” is being carried more quickly because there are 10 more Pikmin to share the load.

Game Time and Sunsets

Your time in the game is divided up into 30 days, lasting about 13 minutes each (except the first “day”, which lasts until you find the Dolphin‘s engine). At sunset, make sure all your Pikmin are accounted for–if they are not actively walking with you or put up in their individual Onions, they will be lost to the nocturnal beasts when sunset arrives.

Multi-Tasking with Pikmin

You can multi-task with different groups of Pikmin recovering different objects at the same time. A popular way to do this is to work with one group of Pikmin to get one item, then assigning only as many Pikmin as are needed to carry the item back to the campsite, while you go forth and start working on retrieving the next. Be careful doing this, though–if you have not cleared the path back to the campsite of all enemies, the unsupervised Pikmin can be ambushed and killed.

Unnecessary Parts

Not all the ship’s 30 parts are necessary for the Dolphin to be able to take off and give you a successful game ending. There are 5 unnecessary parts, listed below:

Space Float
UV Lamp
Nova Blaster
Massage Machine
Secret Safe

List gleaned from the Ship Parts page on the Pikmin Wikia site.

Hidden Ending

If you get 29 of 30 parts, a new, final area will open up, which is full of challenges for your experienced Pikmin fleet. Getting through most of the stage is fairly easy after having gotten through all the other challenges of the game…until you get to the “final boss,” a huge, fat yellow caterpillar/slug thing called Emperor Bulblax, which sounds less like a critter and more like Dulcolax’s evil twin drug.

Defeating this horrible creature is one of the most frustrating endgame experiences I’ve ever had. I threw one of my poor yellow Pikmin into Bulblax’s mouth, just like my Nintendo Power guide said to do…and then watched in horror as the fat thing rolled over and killed my 99 remaining Pikmin in 2 seconds. I was about 14 at the time, so I had a nice little fit and swore never to play that level again. XD

Instead, after retrieving 29 of 30 parts, my Pikmin force is generally treated to several days of ego-boosting whooping up on local wildlife and making more Pikmin. The Secret Safe (the part that Bulblax guards) ain’t worth so much loss of life, in my opinion. BUT…beating Bulblax is the only way to retrieve it. So if you’re a completionist, go for it–just keep your Pikmin away from his girth and hungry maw, is all I have to say.

Consulting the Perfect Pikmin guide might help you towards this goal. (Hmmm…maybe I’ll finally avenge those martyred Pikmin after all!)

Summary

Pikmin is one of my all-time favorite games (despite its inherent challenges). It involves leadership and organization, nurturing little life-forms, and striving toward a goal of survival for everyone involved. It might look like a kid’s game, but trust me, it’s as tactical and strategic as you want to make it!

Read more about the game: Pikmin @ Wikipedia.com

Thursday in the Zone

Strategy Porting, part 3: Playing by Proxy

September 22, 2011 Robin 1 Comment

As part 1 and part 2 of this gaming strategy series will attest, I’ve been trying to “port” in a strategy from the Yu-Gi-Oh! trading card game to Magic: the Gathering. This has not been an easy process, but I’m continuing to work on finding matching cards and strategies that will work within M:TG’s color wheel of White, Blue, Red, Black, and Green.

If you’re following this process, you inevitably reach a point where you know generally what you want in the deck and you’re ready for a test run. But before you start buying or trading for actual physical cards, you need to make sure the items you’re getting will actually end up in the deck. That’s why I suggest the following practice of proxying your deck-in-progress.

Testing Your Strategies with Proxies

Okay, okay, I know, “proxy” is a bad word to most “serious” (read: competitive) Magic players. But for those of us who don’t win Standard tournaments (and/or buy lots of cards) on a regular basis, using proxies can be remarkably effective at building and testing new decks. It lets you test the strategies first to see if they even work for your deck!

Paper Proxies

At their most low-tech, proxies can be as simple as cutting up a sheet of paper to make small slips that you can write the card name and effect on, like my craptastic Hedron Crab proxy at left. Paper-proxied decks (decks with paper copies of cards, whether it’s printed out or written out by hand) are generally not allowed in tournaments, but they are great for testing out your new deck in a casual setting.

(WARNING: don’t ever print high-quality proxies and try to sell them as the real card–you will definitely end up with mad customers, and possibly the game designers could sue you! I use proxies strictly for deck testing, and trust me, nobody wants my quick-made, scrawled-handwriting paper proxies. XD)

Virtual Proxies

If you don’t want to go the paper-and-pen route with your proxies, you can also build a virtual deck on a service like LackeyCCG, which is a free program you can use to build decks and test against a “dummy player,” or even a real online player if you wish. (Be warned, it’s a jungle of occasionally mean competitive players out there!)

This kind of service is pretty good, but I still prefer to test my decks in real life against another player. If you like to speed-test your decks more and prefer not to use a deck until you’ve thoroughly tested it, however, LackeyCCG and its ilk could be just right for you.

Summary

Proxying is a great way to try out cards without having to invest the money in them just yet, which is key for porting in an old strategy to a new game. Give it a try, and see how this can help you create your new-old deck!

Thursday in the Zone

Strategy Porting, part 2: The Card Hunt

September 15, 2011 Robin 3 Comments

In my introductory post about strategy porting, I talked about wanting to port one of my old Yu-Gi-Oh! decks into Magic: the Gathering–specifically, I wanted to recreate a very control-based deck that worked around getting a bunch of Flip-Effect monsters into the graveyard so that Shadow Ghoul and Chaos Necromancer could be bigger attackers.

This has proven to be much harder than it first seemed. 😛

Problem #1: No Flip-Effect Creatures in Magic

The Morph mechanic does exist in M:TG, but for what I want the creatures to do, there’s not really any Morph cards that do the effects for any kind of reasonable cost. Plus, the ability of Flip-Effect monsters in Yu-Gi-Oh! to block an attack and THEN have an effect go off is hard to replicate in Magic anyway.

Problem #2: No One Color Does It All

If you want “destroy creatures” and “sacrifice creatures” effects, you look to Black. If you want “return creatures to owner’s hand” and “mill top four or five cards,” you look to Blue. If you want “sacrifice this creature to gain a bunch of life,” you look to White. See where I’m going with this?

With Yu-Gi-Oh!, you don’t have to worry about being able to play your creatures with specific colors of mana. This enables you to have a toolbox-style deck like the one I’ve assembled. But with Magic, if I want to have a deck that is able to play what it needs to play, I have to make sure I’m not running a crazy five-color deck where I’ll never get the amounts of mana I need.

Problem #3: Might Not End Up Being the Same Kind of Deck

While the surprise effects of a Flip-Effect monster in Yu-Gi-Oh is almost impossible to match in Magic, there is something that does match the surprise factor: instants. Casting an instant in response to another player’s attack can give the same net effect as a Flip-Effect monster.

However, if I start building the deck with all instants and sorceries instead of creatures, the strategy won’t be quite the same. No longer will I be able to amass a creature-filled graveyard and mow down people with the Magic equivalent of Chaos Necromancer, Mortivore. Instead, it will be almost a creatureless deck…not exactly what I intended.

Some Light at the End of the Tunnel

I agree, there are problems with porting a strategy…but there is hope. Going through the card database available on Gatherer, I was able to find at least some cards that matched up to what I’d like to replicate from my old deck. A partial list appears below, sticking to Blue and Black as the main colors of the deck:

Creature-Destroying Creatures

Blind Zealot
Shriekmaw
Necrite
Wall of Corpses

Creature-Destroying Spells

Bone Splinters
Chainer’s Edict
Witch’s Mist
Wretched Banquet

Creature-Bouncing Creatures

AEther Adept
Barrin, Master Wizard
Man-O’-War
Waterfront Bouncer

Creature-Bouncing Spells

AEther Spellbomb
Peel from Reality
Unsummon
Seal of Removal

Card-Milling Creatures

Hedron Crab
Cathartic Adept
Merfolk Mesmerist
Riddlekeeper

Card-Milling Spells

Brain Freeze
Vision Charm
Horrifying Revelation
Memory Sluice

Damage-Preventing Creatures

Fog Bank
Cephalid Illusionist

Damage-Preventing Spells

Darkness

Life-Loss/Direct Damage Creatures

Bile Urchin
Death Cultist
Blightspeaker
Cabal Archon

Life-Loss/Direct Damage Spells

Ebony Charm
Geth’s Verdict
Misery Charm
Hideous End

Card-Drawing Creatures

Sage of Epityr
Hapless Researcher
Drowned Rusalka
Alchemist’s Apprentice

Card-Drawing Spells

Accumulated Knowledge
Brainstorm
Visions of Beyond
Thought Scour

Life-Gaining Creatures

Deathgreeter
Child of Night
Vampire Nighthawk
Gutless Ghoul

Life-Gaining Spells

Douse in Gloom
Plunge into Darkness
Devour Flesh
Crypt Incursion

How to Do a Search Like This for Yourself

Search out the abilities you need, narrowing the focus by colors, then type of card.
If you’re trying to build within a certain format (such as Standard, keep set printings in mind as you search.
Be open to new ways to include an effect (such as finding life-gain in Black rather than White).

On to Part 3: Playing by Proxy!

Thursday in the Zone

“Porting” a Strategy From One Game to Another

September 8, 2011 Robin 3 Comments

Even when you start playing a new game, your mind sticks to old, familiar channels of play. Take my Magic decks and my HeroClix strategies; when I first started playing Clix, I found myself choosing pieces that were self-regenerative, able to heal themselves from damage, just like I built my Life-Gain-centered Magic decks to do. I also went with lots of little close-combat pieces–they were much like my aggressive decks full of small but powerful creatures.

As I discovered, it’s possible to “port in” a favorite strategy from another game. Even Yu-Gi-Oh! and Magic: the Gathering can play nicely together–read on to find out how!

The Old Deck: A Yu-Gi-Oh! Shadow Ghoul Deck

Before I ever set foot into Magic, I played the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG, well before Synchro Summons and mecha-Fairies. Maha Vailo, Mirror Force, and old-school “pretty” Fairies were among my cards of choice. But even after I quit playing Yu-Gi-Oh! in real life, I continued to mess around building decks on an old Yu-Gi-Oh! game for Game Boy Advance, using the old favorite cards I cut my TCG teeth on to try out new strategies.

One deck I came up with was based around two monsters: Shadow Ghoul and Chaos Necromancer.

Both images from the Yu-Gi-Oh! Wikia.

Both monsters get Attack Points for each monster that is in my graveyard. Thus, I built a deck full of just easy-to-play monsters–Flip Effect monsters that could control the board, plus some strong, no-Tribute high-Defense monsters to block hits from my opponent’s monsters. If either of these types of monsters were destroyed, in battle or otherwise, they would just pump up Shadow Ghoul or Chaos Necromancer to serious strength.

Below is the original decklist:

Defense Monsters

3x Mystical Elf (800/2000)
3x Giant Soldier of Stone (1300/2000)
1x Battle Footballer (1000/2100)
1x Soul Tiger (0/2100)

Big-Momma Attackers

3x Chaos Necromancer (effect: Attack score of this card is 300 times the number of monster cards in your graveyard)
3x Shadow Ghoul (effect: +100 attack points for each monster in graveyard)

Flip-Effect Monsters

3x Man-Eater Bug (flip: destroy one monster on the field)
3x Old Vindictive Magician (flip: destroy one monster on opponent’s side of field)
3x Hane-Hane (flip: return one monster on the field to its owner’s hand)
3x Penguin Soldier (flip: return up to two monsters on the field to owners’ hands)
3x Needle Worm (flip: opponent takes top five cards from deck and puts them into graveyard)
3x The Unhappy Maiden (flip: end Battle Phase immediately)
3x Nimble Momonga (effect: when sent to graveyard as result of battle, gain 1000 life points, and then search out and set however many Nimble Momongas you have left in your deck)
3x Poison Mummy (flip: opponent loses 500 life points)
3x Yomi Ship (effect: when sent to graveyard as result of battle, destroy the monster that destroyed Yomi Ship)
3x Witch Doctor of Chaos (flip: remove one monster from any graveyard)

The Strategy Behind This Deck

Since you don’t have to play one solid “color” or type of creature to have a solid Yu-Gi-Oh! deck, I could gather all the most efficient Flip-Effect monsters together in one deck. In Magic: the Gathering lingo, this deck contains creature kill, bounce, and removal; it also has life-gain, life loss, mill, damage prevention, AND big stompy creatures. In short, the deck had EVERYTHING, and it was very, VERY fun to play, especially against computerized opponents. I rarely (if ever) lost a game with it.

The Problem

There was just one problem with this incredibly fun deck–I couldn’t figure out how to port it to Magic. Since I don’t play Yu-Gi-Oh! in real life anymore, I wanted to play this same type of strategy in a game I’m still active in Plus, I was actually curious to see if something like this would even work in Magic at all.

Yu-Gi-Oh! To Magic–A Surprising Twist

I talked it over with my resident Magic guru (aka, my boyfriend), and he was surprised at the number of Blue and Black effects I had incorporated into this deck. “In fact,” he said as he studied the list of card effects I was looking for, “Black can do a lot of this, but a Blue/Black deck would probably get all the effects you want without having to splash in other colors.”

This surprised me–I am definitely not a Blue/Black player, since I’ve always seen Blue and Black as the meanest color in Magic. But as I looked at the effects I had written down from my own self-created Yu-Gi-Oh! deck, it seemed I was hiding a tactical player underneath all my trappings of Life-Gain and high defense.

Preparing to Port Your Strategy

For Magic especially, you can find some online help for porting strategies. Online services like Gatherer work well for searching out card effects and other types of text. But it also helps to have someone else who is more familiar with the new game’s mechanics, so that together you can figure out how to translate your old favorite abilities into the new game’s language.

In my case, since Magic works around a base of five colors and you have to have mana (resources) to play each spell, strategies work out a little differently from Yu-Gi-Oh!. Here, I couldn’t just pick “the best of the best” in terms of creatures and throw together a deck–I had to make sure I’d be able to PLAY all the creatures I picked. Thus, why my boyfriend said that Blue/Black could do most of the card effects I wanted; he wanted me to have a deck that could consistently get enough mana to play what it needed.

On to part 2 of this series–The Card Hunt!

Thursday in the Zone

The Best Offense is a Good Defense–Wait, What?

September 1, 2011 Robin 3 Comments

[/shameless paraphrase of cliche]

A quick, efficient win is usually prized among gamers, especially when playing competitively. But let me bend your thoughts a minute. What if, instead of looking to win quickly, you wanted a SATISFYING game? A game that took a little while but afforded a win you could actually savor?

This second approach is my philosophy on gaming. I don’t want just a quick, easy win–it feels like cheating, or like eating cotton candy for dinner. I’d rather have a game which makes me think and allows me to socialize a little, too. I favor long games–which means that I play defensively.

Thinking Defensively Rather Than Aggressively

If you want to play defensively, you’ve got to think long-term, because aggressive players will burn themselves out quickly. “Aggro” Magic: the Gathering players, for instance, soon run out of cards in hand and have less options to defend themselves. Aggressive Clix players usually wear out their first-string attackers by mid-game, leaving themselves only their second-string attackers and their support crew (if that).

So, a defensive strategy that wins has to have 3 basic prongs:

High defenses/support to stay alive long-term

Strategies that punish the other player for attacking

Good resource management/game control

Defensive Strategy Examples

Magic: the Gathering

Life-gain to offset opponent’s direct damage

Graveyard recursion to foil any milling or discard

High-toughness creatures to both block combat damage and deal a little combat damage of my own

Mill, board wipes, discard, targeted destruction, and other minor control elements to stay alive

HeroClix

A couple of Medics to heal wounded figures

Several sources of Probability Control and Outwit, to reroll dice and get rid of particularly damaging powers and abilities

A Mystic or two and some Wildcards, to punish the opponent for attacking me

Figures with high defenses (18+), or figures with Energy Shield/Deflection or Combat Reflexes

The Reason I Include Control With High-Defense Strategies

As I have learned from experience, if you focus on nothing but defense, you will get controlled and manipulated into destruction. Black and Blue Magic decks with a lot of control elements will keep a high-defense White deck from doing anything, for instance, while 6 or 7 damage from Vet Icons Superman holding an object will KO any support piece before you can use it.

As a defense player, you have to have a modicum of control included in your strategy, but you don’t have to make it irritating–just a strategically-placed and protected Windborn Muse can be enough to stop aggro, and a Story Circle can prevent even the fastest of Burn decks from hurting you once it’s out. Likewise, using Outwitters and long-range pieces can help your defensive HeroClix team win the day.

Summary

Defense is often discounted in most collectible card and miniatures games, but it’s a key strategy in a long-term game. Sure, if you want a 5-minute win, aggression is still your best way, but if you like longer games with more chances to socialize and more chances to laugh, playing “de” might be your best way to do that.