Geeking Out

Two weeks back I went to Chaoticon, the annual game convention put on by the UWGB Gamers' Club. It's usually a pretty small affair. But folks get together, play games, and I get a chance to meet up with friends I had back in college whom I haven't seen since, well, Chaoticon the previous year. I go every year to support the Gamers' Club because I'm an alumnus. I wasn't there quite at the beginning, but since, like Chaoticon 3, I think.

This was pretty much the same. Chris and Adam Bauknecht came up from Madison with a friend of theirs named Eric. Chris and Adam are two of the Gamers' Club's original founders. It's pretty cool to see something they started 22 years ago still there. One current member commented, "I didn't even exist the first year you held Chaoticon." To which Chris responded, "Awesome. That's exactly what we hoped for."

Just this past year Chris inivited me to play World of Warcraft with the group he and Adam raid with. Eric is part of that group. Raiding hasn't actually panned out yet... but we've been doing challenge modes and unlocking achievements instead and it has been a lot of fun. Even if I do have to play Horde.

Anyway, the four of us played a couple games. First we played Chaos in the Old World. It's a war game-ish conflict between four gods of Chaos from the Warhammer 40K mythos. There are a couple paths to victory. The one that is common to all players is bringing chaos and ruin to the various regions in the land. You do that with your demonic army, cultist followers and special action cards. Each player has a limited number of action points to use each turn moving his forces around the board, taking actions. The more ruin you bring, the more points you rack up. Most points wins the game. Each player also has an individual win condition specific to his god. For example, since I played the god of war, I advanced in my individual condition by winning multiple fights each turn against the other gods.

It's a very well balanced game. A lot of fun. It was a close contest. Adam had advised that the best ways to win were either (a) pursue points or (b) pursue your individual goal, but trying to do both usually meant you couldn't get far enough in either. So I tried for (b), everyone else tried for (a).

I managed to position my armies where I could make steady progress on my track. Specifically, I was central enough to pick fights consistently and I prevented the ruin of the largest (highest point) region, which allowed me to stay competetive in the race. Still there was plenty of ruin going around and we eventually hit a critical turn in the game where Chris, Adam and Eric started racking up tons of points very quickly as regions fell. Chris nearly won the game on turn n. All he had to do was ruin one region. No one was close enough to ruining any other regions to rack up more points than him and I needed both turns n and n+1 in order to possibly win enough fights to achieve my individual win condition.

Fortunately, I had an action that stopped the ruin of a region for one turn. Everyone took turn n to pile on ruin, I won some fights. Turn n+1 we were all in contention for the win. It was just a matter of who could ruin which regions first or could I win enough fights. In the end, I did. Very close. Very fun.

We also played Vegas Showdown. Each player takes the part of a Vegas entertainment mogul building the next big attraction. You bring in money each turn based on what you've built and use it to bid against other players on new additions to your complex. There's a real balance to strike as the starting bid price of each addition drops each turn it is not bought, you want to get additions as cheaply as possible and also get better additions than your opponents. Then you have to factor in that some additions get you increased revenue, others get you points, some get a combination. There are also certain configurations you put into your complex to get bonus points.

Also a very fun game. Even more fun beause I won it, too. I've got to admit, a large part of my Chaos in the Old World win was due to the other 3 players knowing how to play the game well. They knew how to time the point accumulations and how to interfere with each other's progress. Had it been just me against any one of them, they'd have run away with the game and crushed me. However, I won Vegas Showdown because I did everything right. Bought cheap revenue generators early, saved up, bid on cheap improvements when my opponents were low on money and that allowed me to have enough money on hand to outbid them for point generators when they came up. At the right time in the game I switched my focus to points over revenue and won by a pretty good margin.

Chaoticon was a good time. The Gamers' Club itself seems to be at an ebb right now. There wasn't a lot of participation, communication & outreach for the con was weak, there weren't many events. But it was held. It was fun to see old friends. It was fun playing games all day.

The next weekend I got to geek out even more. Gnome Games, a local store here in Green Bay, held pre-release events for the new Magic: the Gathering set of cards, Dragonmaze. Friday night I got together with some friends that also play Magic, Scott and Beth Harris, and played some Magic. Saturday morning we all went to a sunrise tournament (breakfast included!) at Gnome Games.

Friday night Tabby went with me to Scott & Beth's. Becky & Ben were going to come along too (Sam was at work), but Becky had to pick up Ben at school when he got back from his design day competition in Milwaukee (2nd place in individual computer game design! Yay Ben!)... but Becky crashed after picking up Ben, laid down for a "quick" nap and never made it. Tabby had a great time with the Harris girls, though. Sierra and Dakota are about the same age as Sam & Ben, but Tabby is used to teens, right? And she loves... I mean absolutely adores, worships, LOVES!... teen girls. They watched Mirror, Mirror. Tabby told them to close their eyes whenever Prince Charming had his shirt off.

I really like how Wizards of the Coast has set up the pre-release events for the last few sets. You pick a "guild" from the Ravnica setting to represent during the event. Each guild is essentially a two color combination with it's own "flavor" so to speak. For example, I choose Selesnya, the Green/White guild concerned with preserving and protecting the peaceful, serene elements of nature. In this event you were randomly assigned an allied guild that shared one color with yours. My ally was Boros, the Red/White guild that serves as Ravnica's military and police. We got one booster pack of cards specific to our guild, i.e. containing only cards of our guild's colors, and another of our ally's, then four random Dragonmaze booster packs. From those six packs we build a 40 card deck and play four rounds of brackets.

If you're interested, here are the cards I opened. I guess even if you're not interested.

Land
Boros Guildgate
Rakdos Guildgate x2
Selesnya Guildgate
Simic Guildgate x2

Artifacts
Boros Cluestone
Dimir Cluestone
Gruul Cluestone x2
Izzet Cluestone
Selesnya Keyrune

Black
Crypt Invasion
Fatal Fumes
Hired Torturer x2
Sinister Possession
Ubul Sar Gatekeepers

Blue
Hidden Strings
Murmuring Phantasm
Opal Lake Gatekeepers
Uncovered Clues
Wind Drake

Green
Axebane Guardian
Brush Strider
Chorus of Might
Druid's Deliverance
Giant Growth
Kraul Warrior
Maze Behemoth
Phytoburst

Red
Bomber Corps
Mark for Death
Massive Raid
Maze Rusher
Molten Primordial
Punish the Enemy x2
Rubblebelt Maaka x3
Smeltward Gatekeepers
Tin Street Market
Warmind Infantry

White
Assault Griffin
Boros Elite
Boros Mastiff x2
Daring Skyjek
Eyes in the Skies
Guildscorn Ward
Maze Sentinel
Riot Control
Rootborn Defenses
Shielded Passage
Trained Caracal
Trostani's Judgement
Wake the Reflections

Azorius (blue/white)
Deputy of Acquittals x2

Boros (red/white)
Shattering Blow
Skynight Legionnaire
Sunhome Guildmage
Viashino Firstblade

Dimir (black/blue)
Haunter of Nightveil
Pilfered Plans x2

Golgari (black/green)
Down/Dirty x2
Gaze of Granite
Putrefy x2
Varolz, the Scar Striped

Gruul (green/red)
Zhur-taa Druid

Izzet (blue/red)
Goblin Test Pilot
Nivix Cyclops

Rakdos (black/red)
Carnage Gladiator
Morgueburst
Showstopper

Selesnya (green/white)
Alive/Well
Armored Wolf Rider
Centaur Healer
Risen Sanctuary
Sundering Growth
Unflinching Courage x2
Wayfaring Temple

Simic (blue/green)
Bred for the Hunt

Other
Beck/Call
Ready/Willing

With a Selsnya/Boros alliance, the obvious route is to take advantage of two boosters worth of cards focused on Green/White/Red and go those colors. But man, I saw Putrefy x2, Gaze of Granite and Varolz and thought adding black looked real strong. I wasn't sure I could pull off the mana base for Green/Red/White/Black so I dropped Red from the pool and just made a Green/White/Black deck. Even that was going to be tough to get a good mana base for and at the last minute I even dropped Gaze of Granite due to the double black required to cast it.

I ended up playing

Land
Forest x5
Plains x5
Swamp x5
Selsnya Guildgate

Artifacts
Selesnya Keyrune

Black
Fatal Fumes
Hired Torturer x2

Green
Brush Strider
Giant Growth
Kraul Warrior

White
Assault Griffin
Boros Mastiff x2
Daring Skyjek

Golgari
Down/Dirty x2
Putrefy x2
Varolz, the Scar Striped

Selesnya
Alive/Well
Armored Wolf Rider
Centaur Healer
Risen Sanctuary
Unflinching Courage x2
Wayfaring Temple

Other
Ready/Willing

Turns out it helps to read the cards. I didn't notice Hired Torturer had Defender until I went to attack with it. Had I noticed, I would have played Axebane Guardian instead of the Selsnya Keyrune and kept in the Gaze of Granite instead of Fatal Fumes. Or more likely, I would have decided I didn't like the creature base and gone back to playing Green/Red/White.

I would have missed Putrefy. 3 mana to kill anything I wanted was pretty useful. But I really wanted the Torturers to attack almost every time I had them in play. And Varolz wasn't as cool as I thought he would be. I never had creatures in the graveyard he could let me scavange. Mostly I wanted to play my 3 mana creatures, like Varolz, on turn 3. Which often meant Varolz hitting play alone, i.e. without anything to sacrifice for his regenerate ability. Maybe I just built my deck wrong to take advantage of him. In the end, because Varolz wasn't as cool as I thought, I wanted the Torturers to attack and I didn't even play Gaze of Granite, I looked over my card pool at home and figured I should have stuck with Green/White/Red and played:

Land
Forest x5
Mountains x3
Plains x4
Boros Guildgate
Rakdos Guildgate x2
Selesnya Guildgate

Artifacts
Gruul Cluestone
Selesnya Keystone

Green
Brush Strider
Giant Growth
Kraul Warrior

Red
Molten Primordial
Punish the Enemy
Rubblebelt Maaka
Smeltward Gatekeepers
Warmind Infantry

White
Assault Griffin
Boros Mastiff
Daring Skyjek
Trostani's Judgement

Boros
Skyknight Legionnaire
Sunhome Guildmage

Selesnya
Alive/Well
Armored Wolf Rider
Centaur Healer
Risen Sanctuary
Unflinching Courage x2
Wayfaring Temple

Other
Ready/Willing

The Rakdos Guildgates are there so that it might be possible to cast the Willing half of Ready/Willing. I never did in the four rounds I played, but Ready was a neat combat trick that let me get the jump on my opponents a couple times. With enough mana (and a source of black), I can see how fusing Willing with it would be good. Plus the extra guildgates also make playing the Smeltward Gatekeepers worthwhile.

I usually hate playing with creature enchantments because you're setting yourself up to lose two cards to an opponent's one at some point. In fact, several times that exact thing happened where my opponent stacked an enchantment on his creature and ran into my Putrefy. One opponent even put 2 enchantments on the same dude and my one Putrefy took out all 3 of his cards. However, I remember playing sealed deck tournaments back when Armadillo Cloak was in the set and everyone who used it loved it. So I figured I'd try Unflinching Courage, which is essentially a renamed Armadillo Cloak. It is as awesome as everyone said. It flat out won me two games and made a couple others better. One of the game wins was just stupid. Turn 2 Kraul Warrior, turn 3 Unflinching Courage and attack for 4 (gain 4 life), turn 4 Unflinching Courage #2 and attack for 6 (gain 6 life). Turn 5 my opponent finally played a blocker, I Putrefied it and attacked again. He was at 4 life while I was 36. At that point, even if he killed the Kraul Warrior for a 3:1 card advantage, I was so far ahead it wouldn't matter.


I'm not totally sure the Red/Green/White deck is better. Putrefy is really good. Much better than the six mana Trostani's Judgmenet and Punish the Enemy I'd replace them with. Down/Dirty was often nice. Played right, Down usually made my opponent discard at least one strong card. I only ever used Dirty once, but it was to get a Putrefy back and kill something important.

But what the Red version of the deck has going for it is trading Varolz, 2 Torturer's and a Boros Mastiff for Sunhome Guildmage, Skyknight Legionnaire, Warmind Infantry, Smeltward Gatekeepers, Rubblebelt Maaka and a Molten Primordial, i.e. a much, much better creature base. It also has a better mana base. The Black version had 7 sources each of Green & White mana and only 5 sources of black. There was one game, in the only match I lost, where I never drew a black mana source while I had a Putrefy in my hand that would have won me the game. The Red version of the deck has 8 Green, 7 White and 7 Red mana sources. I'd feel really good about that.

I can't really complain though. I went 3-1 in matches and had a great time.