A Quick Change of Plans

Last week I got sick. I lost my voice at the end of my work week, and it came back just before my next shift. It was a lovely weekend of miming and being reduced to a whisper. Unfortunately, with my new work schedule, plus getting ill, my post last week went up late. I'm still trying to get used to this new schedule, so the post is also late. This was not my plan when I started this blog.

I've certainly played many games where my initial plan was ruined. Sometimes it was just the luck of the dice, while sometimes it was my opponents shutting me down. Regardless of how it happened, the question always became whether or not I could change strategies in time to catch up. I usually couldn't.

It's not an easy thing to do, especially when my strategy early on does well. Getting an early lead is great, but often that rush style needs to be followed up with preparations for a longer game, just in case the quick win falls flat. Otherwise, a loss is all but guaranteed. Games of Magic: the Gathering are particularly indicative of this, where rush strategies are often compared to a flip of a coin: either those decks win early, or they lose horribly. There is no middle ground, and a good aggro deck doesn't usually have the tools required to survive a late game; it's all-in, and every card is there for the quick win. If their opponent survives to find their an answer, the rush deck has basically lost.

I've certainly struggled with trying to change strategies in other games, too. In games like Eclipse, Planet Steam, and a lot of resource management games, I so often focus on one strategy, and when it falters I don't usually know what to do. I've spent too many resources, committed too heavily on a particular plan, and, like the rush deck, I no longer have the ability to do anything different. Collecting a diversity of resources and leaving yourself open to that change in tactics is clearly the way to go in these longer games; I just have a bad habit of tunnelling in one plan. I will aggressively collect one resource, which will become devalued as the game goes on. My economic bubble will burst, and then what can I do?

This isn't really a problem with these games, though. It's just my approach to them that is the problem. I do have a lot of fun gobbling up sheep, or minerals, or water, or whatever resource I have (over)valued in a game, but I know from experience that unless I can trade these resources away for moderate value, it will end badly. Some games leave this option very open; Settlers of Catan has its ports, Ad Astra has cheap trading with the bank, and Lords of Waterdeep have quests for each resource. Each of these games makes it easy to adapt and change your strategies by making each resource roughly of equal value, and somewhat interchangeable, throughout the game.

Meanwhile, games like Puerto Rico and, to a lesser extent, City necessitate specific resources at specific times in the game, and if you find yourself unable to get the resources in the correct order, you will struggle. In games where resources are best collected in a certain order each time you play, I have to question granting access to these resources to players randomly throughout the game, especially if there is no way to swap what you have for what you need.

At least for the player who built the aggro Magic deck he chose what cards to include. Without any sort of agency over what resources you can collect, or at least some ability to get what you need when you need it, you can be shoehorned into a bad strategy for the whole game. Some variation is welcome in these games, making resources occasionally harder to get early on helps to prevent a game from getting stale. But this is best when balanced with some way to adapt strategies and to change plans on the fly.

13/13

The Second Game Problem

During a game night I will occasionally play a game that ends far faster than usual. One player surges ahead and achieves a quick victory. When this happens it is fairly common for the group to decide that the game was too short, and to opt to play a second round of the same game. It is often assumed that because the first game was so short the second game should be about the same duration. This is never the case.

In my experience, when opting to play a second round of a game, it always takes far longer than a normal game. Munchkin is a particularly good example of this: the first game sees players levelling up with great haste, finding Potted Plants and Lame Goblins to slay, and getting to level ten with next to no effort. The group usually feels a little unsatisfied with the game; while everyone had fun, it just ended so soon. In my ten or so years of playing Munchkin (egads, has it been that long since high school?) I have learned the hard way that opting to play a second game of Munchkin in an evening is always a trap. For some strange reason, every single time one of my gaming groups starts that second game, it inevitably drags on for hours. It wouldn't be so remarkable if it didn't always happen, but it does. Every. Single. Time.

I used to think that it must have had something to do with the way we shuffled the deck; all of the cards that helped speed the game along, like the poor Lame Goblin, found their way to the bottom of the deck, clumped together with the other low-level monsters. This left the top of the deck filled with the nasty monsters, like the Plutonium Dragon and the Unspeakably Awful Indescribable Horror. To make matters worse, when not battling unstoppable monsters, all we would find would be Class or Race cards that were of no use to anyone (getting one class is great, getting four is not...)! I know that sometimes we could legitimately blame our setup, since we would occasionally opt to play with the cards we hadn't drawn yet (meaning if the first game had all of the little squishies, the second game would have all of the big bads), but even when we were thorough, and reshuffled everything for the second game, we still suffered the same problem: round two was too long.

This long-second-game phenomenon hasn't been limited to my games of Munchkin, either. I have seen it happen with Magic: the Gathering (particularly in games using the Commander format), too. There, the first game ends with a player winning early from an infinite combo or some other explosive play, so we play a second game which inevitably turns into a long stalemate. This past week I even experienced this strange phenomenon when my gaming group was playing Quarriors. Like my short, unsatisfying games of Munchkin from days gone by, or my remarkably quick Commander games, the first game of Quarriors this week was over all too soon. I had found a strategy that allowed me to gobble up points at an alarming rate, and we finished the game in only a few turns. We decided that a second round was in order, and we replaced the die that enabled that overpowered strategy. Unfortunately, what was supposed to be a relatively brief second round of Quarriors turned into several hours of a stalled game state. It got very late, and we had to call the game, since people had plans the next morning.

I do wonder if this long-round-two nonsense is just a matter of perspective. When the first round of a game is so short, the second game will always feel like it drags on by comparison. It's possible that the second game is actually of average length, and the fact that it starts later in the evening and is compared to the abnormally short game just prior to it means that it feels longer. In remembering, too, it may be that two rounds in a single night blur together to seem like one long experience. I'm not entirely convinced by this argument, but regardless, the fact remains that the second game always feels longer.

13/13

Descent of the Dragons

This past Sunday I went to the Dragons of Tarkir pre-release for Magic: the Gathering. The set comes out this coming Friday, so this weekend was everyone's opportunity to preview the set and to play in a tournament using the new cards. Players were given sealed packs of randomized cards, as well as a faction-specific pack of cards, and from that pool built a deck to use in a series of best-of-3 matches.

The previous Magic pre-release, for Fate Reforged, was the first event I had attended at this particular game store, and I had a great time. For that tournament I had chosen the fast, raiding faction, called the Mardu, and the deck I built matched their style; I was constantly on the offensive, Dashing in creatures from my hand and killing anything that got in their way. I hit hard, and kept hitting. I really liked how my deck played, and by the last round I had gained a reputation as 'the guy with all the removal'. I lost a few rounds, but overall did pretty well.

This time around, the factions were slightly different; what used to be the Mardu had been replaced by the dragon brood of Kolaghan. It was still a fast, aggressive faction, though, and given how much I had enjoyed the Mardu I decided to do the same thing again. I had greatly debated this; I knew that if I picked this faction I would end up comparing my experience at this pre-release to the previous one, while if I picked a different faction it would probably feel more fresh and new. While there were other factions that looked interesting, I was still hard-pressed not to try and relive my glory of the last tournament. So Kolaghan it was.

After deciding on my faction, it was time to look at my pool of cards and build a deck. Just because you pick a certain faction, it doesn't mean that your pool will be best suited to that style of deck. My pool was actually fairly divided between several styles; I could build the fast, aggressive deck with a decent amount of removal that I had planned, or I could build a deck full of flying creatures that would have a lot of evasion but would have a harder time dealing with my opponent's threats. I even had other options, and I could have tried combining these strategies, but ultimately I stuck to the plan. The deck looked very similar to what I had done at the last tournament, but I wasn't as happy with it this time.

In round 1 I was paired against a player who remembered me from the last pre-release. I beat him then, but I lost here 2 games to 1, with both of us suffering from bad card draws. I made some tweaks to my deck after our first game, which helped, but not enough. I would have plenty of time to do more tweaks in round 2; I had a bye. I debated changing up the deck entirely, but decided against it. Round 3 went better, and was my favourite round all evening; I won 2-1, but the games were very close. Our decks were very similar, and it was only by luck and slight gains that either of us could win. I won round 4 quickly 2-0 against a different style of deck, filled with buffs and tricks from a different faction. Finally, in round 5 I was paired up against the player in the lead. Here, like in round 3, our decks were similar; we were both using the Kolaghan faction, but he had two advantages over me: his pool of cards was stronger, and he had a better idea of what he was doing. I made a few strategic mistakes and faltered against him. I don't know if I could have won if I had played better, but I suspect I would have struggled regardless. The final round wasn't much fun for me, but my opponent was nice and polite.

I would have preferred ending the tournament on a high note, and while I did finish 7th out of 27 players, I didn't enjoy myself quite as much as I did at the last pre-release. It was still worth attending, though, and I look forward to the next one. I'll pick up some of the new cards when the set releases on Friday and see what I get. Probably a bunch of dragons.

13/13

The Joys of Limitation

I like building decks for trading card games. I've played a number of them, including the old Harry Potter TCG, the now defunct Warhammer 40k CCG, the discontinued World of Warcraft TCG, and the everlasting Magic: the Gathering, and I've enjoyed constructing decks in all of them.

For me, deck building is a creative outlet. Usually, I pick a theme, look at my card pool, and build a deck that fits that theme. Often this will be centred around a single card and built out from there, but sometimes it's around a combination of two or more cards, or more generally around a type of card or game mechanic. Occasionally, I look at my collection of cards and build the best deck I can with what I have. I enjoy that, but I usually get more satisfaction out of 'jenky' decks that have themes; they have more character to them.

When I was growing up, I was limited by my card pool when building decks. This was an interesting restriction, since I could obviously only build with what I had; I never was big on the trading aspect of these games, and would usually just collect the cards. As a kid, I could only ever get so many cards, but still, I enjoyed being restricted in that sense; it added a challenging element to building, and I didn't feel compelled to spend a fortune to find the right card to complete a deck. What I had would have to be good enough unless I got lucky opening a booster pack.

By contrast, when I started playing Magic: the Gathering a few years ago, my approach to deck building changed. While I still built decks based on a theme when I could, I was no longer limited by my card collection; buying specific cards was far easier with Magic than it ever was with other trading card games I played. This meant that I could look at a list of every card printed, find the card I needed for the deck, and pick it up from a local gaming store. This removed the restriction I had as a kid of a small card pool, and opened up far more opportunities for building those themed decks. If I had an idea for a deck, I could build it, no matter what my luck was in opening packs, or how old a card was that I needed. If the card was one I could afford, I could get it for my deck.

Magic is particularly interesting, however, in that it has several supported ways of playing. These formats are either 'Constructed', where players create decks from whatever they have in their collection, or they are 'Limited', where players are given a small number of sealed booster packs from which they build decks. Given the small card pool, Limited settings make building themed decks largely out of the question, so it falls to building the best deck you can with the limited resources at your disposal. Nevertheless, I find Limited environments to be quite rewarding; players only have a short amount of time to build their decks, and it forces players to use cards that would be passed over in Constructed games in favour of better cards.

I've heard it said that greater restrictions breed greater creativity. I'm not sure that it applies entirely with trading card games, but greater restrictions in TCGs certainly encourage greater resourcefulness. Building a deck out of whatever you want is a lot of fun, but building a deck out of a small pool of cards really does make you better appreciate a lot of otherwise uninteresting cards; sometimes you have to make do with what you have, and those mediocre cards may just be the best on hand.

13/13