Out Today

 Just sick. Sorry folks. Back at it soon.

Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion

How to get someone who isn't into the kind of complex games I am into, into them?

Well, Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion certainly seems to be helping!

This started off when my friend Kim wanted to join in but couldn't find something that worked for her. Magic is a game that has SUCH a steep learning curve, it just turned her away. 

Other games I enjoyed, like Star Realms, were taking themselves too seriously and couldn't connect with her.

But it's OK! Not all games are for all people. What I needed to do was take into consideration what was working for Kim and incorporate that in. 

The kind of games she liked to play were more party oriented. Nothing wrong with those games-they are a LOT of fun sometimes. Trogdor, Satanimals; it always helped if there was a silly theme or art that didn't fall into the grimdark category. 

Finally, I hit on an idea: what if we did a cooperative game? Perhaps one of the things making finding a game difficult was having to play against me instead of with me. Basically, I was hoping that if I gave Kim situations that offered decisions we could both go in on, and would feel like we were doing something, that it might feel a lot more engaging and fun.  

We've made it to the fourth scenario now and I'd have to say: this hunch paid off! She's having a great time. 

I do want to note the length that Gloomhaven's designers went to to make Jaws of the Lion a more accessible game. We're almost at the point where the training wheels come off, but even with that, neither of us have felt overwhelmed or like we were going to fail, while also having games that felt like they were coming down to the wire. Every decision mattered, doing our best to hopefully get it right-or just get lucky.

I can even say that my experience with Jaws of the Lion has helped me understand the base Gloomhaven game better, so I have more fun there. That is impressive. 

We've Got No Time For Plan B

Alright, so RNG is a thing. Further online testing with the combination of It Sucks To Suck and Trash Truck (now called It Sucks To Truck) has been very positive. 

I've even teched up a sideboard, just to give it a little extra workout. 

Coutnerpoint; the testing has been very limited. I've been sick the past week, so I've just gotten to play online, and Fuz has been working on a deck of his own. 

So my sample size has been small, but the feel of the deck has been pretty good. 

Current SB-untested as of yet but-

4 Force of Despair
4 Leyline of the Void
4 Pyroblast
3 Meltdown

I'm going to keep testing this. 

Free Pizza-AvX Season

Well, I did it again! While the legwork was done with some tried-and-true decks, the one I used to get to level 90 was this:

With BeastMaster (the name originally came from having Beast and Grandmaster in the deck), it keys around Annihilus giving opponents bad cards. Mobius M Mobius is the big tech card right now, but the suite of MMM, Shang-Chi and Enchantress all fill important roles. 

Enchantress and Shang-Chi might still be some of the more important cards in the game, especially with Zabu as an enabler. But I hit my mark, and that's what I care about!

Since then I've been mucking about the the Avengers/X-men unbalance patch of the week, and trying to work on the 'destroy your stuff' deck of Gladiator, Yondu and Killmonger. But it really needs Knull to shine-Death is good but a second heavy hitter helps. 

I still want to make the Kraven/Kingpin deck work (I'll call it KK-Nope), where I move the opponent's stuff instead of moving my own. But it doesn't quite seem to be there yet.

I Carry Tokens Now

 For the longest time, I never bothered with token cards. I was happy to use little glass beads as all purpose things- counters of every sort, be they plus, minus or charge, or as creature representatives, from elves to birds, it didn't matter.

Why scut up my collection or my deck with token cards? The cards are there to remind me what the token does. 

But in the past few months, as I've been playing with my friend Rebecca, who's re-learning the game she knew from the Mirage era of Magic, one thing has become very clear to me.

Magic is fucking hard. 

I already knew it was a complicated game and long time players sometimes have fun with the notion that Magic is the world's most complicated game. I certainly do. 

However teaching someone in 2024 a game that I picked up in 1995 is a very different task. It has demonstrated that if anything, Wizards has decided to lean into the complexity and make more cards that do more things. I don't know if there is a textless card that has been printed since Yargle and Multani, and the stat line on that card shows how far things have come. If you pay six mana then getting six power minimum is expected now. Those cards all come with a significant amount of text!

I've realized that I cannot just insist that new players "just remember" what a glass bead on a card or out in the field of play is. The game is just too damn complex to ask people to remember these things, when Wizards has been producing tokens to actually represent what they are, as a way to help new players.

It's unfair of me to have that expectation and I do not want to be an unfair person. It's a game. Let's have fun!

Waiting For Tomorrow When It's Here Today

Another evening of testing It Sucks To Suck and a similar result as last time-it was good but it never seemed like enough. Not enough removal or not enough pressure, the deck could occasionally put together strong games, but I rarely felt like I was doing so often. 

I could see it, but I couldn't get the pieces together. That's when Matt said: "Don't you have another deck that does stuff like this. Maybe you should put them together?"

I mean...fine. I don't have any excuses since I can mock it up online, right? I am trying to improve my decks, and streamline the number of decks I own-this does both. Should be a win win!

So I did that, and my first attempt at playing it resulted in a Burning Inquiry where I had a hand full of lands to start...and discarded every fresh card I drew. 

Four lands and one Stalactite Stalker is not going to win me games. 

The initial look isn't good. But maybe it's just the initial look?

Late to the Party: Spider-Man 2

When Spider-Man 2 came out last year, people were crowing it as a game of the year within a day of release. I, as an adult with things to do, just finished it.

It's good! It isn't great.

The gameplay is as good as ever: traversal around NYC is still as fun as it ever was, and the fighting mechanics remain the same. The switch between Miles and Peter is easy and I understand why they kept things so similar. 

The camera occasionally gave me trouble, especially when dealing with uncounterable attacks. If you need to see the color of the attack to know if you should evade or counterpunch, then the attack can't come from behind you. However, this was mostly a little thing and more often than not I enjoyed the way the game played.

The story, however, is where Spider-Man 2 really falters. Spoilers ahead.

If the big bad is Kraven in his "last hunt" scenario then just make that the game. There's more than enough there and it is a story that could easily lead to the ending that Insomniac wanted: for Peter to retire and Miles to take up the mantel by himself. Venom being a b-story that they rev up for the final game-one that is obviously coming. 

Or, and this is really the better idea, make Venom the big bad and at the end of it, the emotional toll is what causes Peter to pass the mantel on. They storyline rolls easily into it emotionally. That's where all the actual beats are. 

Watching Peter go bad and Miles have to save him, then Peter have to save Harry? That is a storyline that leaves Peter tired and maybe ready to do something else for a little while. It puts Miles in a position to take the role, having saved his mentor. 

Then in the third game you bring in Kraven, one who becomes outraged that the Spider-Man he came to fight isn't the one he wanted at all. He instead starts to pursue the "real" Spider-Man, bringing in Electro and Vulture as extra mooks, enlisting Doc Ock and now you are two-thirds of the way towards a Sinister Six! Don't tell me you can't find two more villains, just because Mysterio and Sandman are reformed in the game. Maybe Sandman and Mysterio are fighting under duress, and you have Miles desperately trying to keep all these people away from Peter, or throw them off the trail. Or not tell Peter at all, afraid that contacting him might expose Peter!

Instead it feels like there is half of a Kraven game and half of a Venom game. But Kraven isn't fleshed out very well and there's a surprise c-story appearance adding to that storyline when 90% of the game is over! Kraven isn't even there anymore!

Venom isn't served well either, which is unfortunate. While I really like the story direction that was taken (which has the symbiote becoming the source of Harry's 'cure'), I was never clear if the symbiote coveted Peter, or was motivated by Harry. Does it want revenge or does it want everyone to join it? 

Plus, the peppering in of Peter's regular life isn't strong enough to get me to see why he'd want to hang up the suit. Everything about Peter in the game is about how sorry he is he hasn't done right by his loved ones and he will do better.

By...quitting the thing that partially defines him? It just doesn't track, emotionally and that's a problem for me.

However, a good game is still good. Playing it feels great, and that counts for a lot. 

Free Pizza-Black Order Season

I honestly didn't think I was going to make my goal of hitting level 90. I'd barely gotten to level 85 when I went on a spiral, and dropped to level 68. Minus 17 levels in two days? Woof.

Then I saw someone on the Marvel Snap subreddit talk about how they were beaten in Conquest mode by someone running a basic Taskmaster deck. 

Well shit. I got one of those. 

Thing is; this puppy got me from 68 back to level 84, and I did it in about two days. It seems a bit shocking how few decks are prepared for two 28 power characters, until you realize what the meta is and then it makes sense. 

Enchantress has been the key card for this season. Taking out Morbius (a heavy hitter in the discard decks) and Living Tribunal, she's been an absolute rockstar. 

But the meta is very much based around Hela decks that want to use their turn six to resurrect the biggest characters in the game: The Infinaut, Giganto, Magneto, things like this-after discarding them to Modok. 

I didn't have a Modok and countering the Hela deck is rough. Apparently one of the best players in the world was using the Black Knight deck to rank up and this was what I used to get to level 90. 

This is doing something similar to the Hela deck yes, but has the flexibility of creating a Black Sword that effectively cannot be interacted with. It means that locations that would reduce or destroy it, just don't and as a turn 4 play or even as a 3 cost play-well if you can put 10, 12 or 20 power in play for that? You're doing pretty well. 

I get why it's such a good deck, and though I'm not sure it's better than the current Hela meta (which is getting a bit tiresome, in my opinion, because there isn't much to interact with) I enjoy playing it more. 

However, this month was the month where I realized that the insistence that I make level 90 to "make my money back" was eating at my enjoyment of the game. I give them $10 a month because I'm having a good time, not to try and take it back from them. Why am I making things unfun by forcing myself to achieve an external goal (level 90) rather than an internal one (play well & have fun!)? I have little control over the first, but significant control over the second. 

Because there's a reason why, as soon as I hit level 90, I went to reddit and asked for spicy lists. And when I didn't get much, (someone suggested Agatha which is just...not spice) I leaned into two ideas I've been messing around with: destroy your stuff and move your stuff. 

It's been more fun than I thought and hey, sometimes I even pull wins.