Prerelease weekend

 So, basically I decided to be ambitious this weekend. I played three of the prerelease events that I described in my last entry. I played one each on friday, saturday, and sunday. Furthermore, I decided to play the first two at a store that I have been to and bought stuff from but never played at before. I felt a bit intimidated because the crowd there seems more serious and also there are fewer foreigners so I was unsure about the language and culture barriers. Sunday I played at my usual gameshop. The new gameshop is called GameSquare and the old one is called Growlife.

So overall it was a success. My goal was just to do my best, and just try to gain experience with a format I enjoy. My aim is improvement but it is a very longterm kind of thing. I did have a good time at the new gameshop and felt that people were nice and good to play with, and I accomplished my goal of gaining experience...

However there was one glaring issue that ran through the whole weekend. And this is the problematic way these matches end. So basically you have an hour to play a best of three match. When time is up you are supposed to start a turn counter and play 5 more turns. In practice this often means that if the first two games are split then the third game will be decided like this. At Growlife the rule was that if the game isn't decided in those five turns then it is ruled a draw and hence the match is a draw. This is regardless of the life totals when the five turns run out. And at Growlife there was never really an issue about this, people just accepted it.

So what happened is that in my first match at the new store we split the first two games and went to the third game which wasn't decisive. My opponent asserted that because his life total was higher he won the third game. I told him that I understood it was a draw. Then he seemed to accept that this is the technically correct way of playing but then argued that if we draw then neither of gets a prize (an important point is that prizes are awarded based on match wins). So then he offered to let me have the win because in his book it was better that I would get the prize than that neither of us would. So, I just decided that I didn't really want the win that bad but if he cared so much about not drawing that he would give me the win then in sense I didn't mind letting him have it. So I just told him he could have it.

In the second match, it was much the same thing. We split the first two games and the third went to the limit. And roughly the exact same negotiation took place. One wrinkle is that after I had already offered to let him have it he offered to pay me 100 NT which is over half the cost of the prize (one pack). I told him I didn't want to take money for losing. But actually during this second match my opponent from the first match walked up and handed me a pack. I didn't know why and thought it was something to do with the tournament so I just took it. Later I realized he was giving me the prize for that round. So in some technical sense I did take a payout for losing.

This is further compounded by the fact that people were very irregular about when and how they would start the 5 turn counter. Most of the time people would wait for the clerk to announce that we needed to wrap up even though that was already well after time was up. And it was rare for people to actually use a die to track it.

On the second day, the same thing happened in the first match, my opponent asserted that because his life total was higher he won. So I just decided I didn't want to argue or negotiate. So I just accepted that is just the rules they play by at that shop.

In the second match it worked in my favor even though my opponent gave himself an extra turn to try to reverse things....

In the third match it ended 0-2 in my opponent's favor so it wasn't an issue.

Then on Sunday I was back to Growlife. So, the first match I won 2-0. The second match though was the real kicker because here we see the bad side of the draw rule. I was playing Clayton. Clayton is really good but also can be quite pushy. He can be quite friendly in a lot of ways but he really wants to get his way and will rationalize that is best for everyone. So I split the first two games with him. I am proud of the win against him because it was a good game and wasn't like an obvious case of him getting screwed by bad draws. So, already in the second game he started rushing me. Basically he is strong believer in the fact that if the 5 turn counter gets to the end with no winner it is a tie. He thinks the "higher life total wins" generates gamesmanship because he had a bad experience one time where someone stalled when ahead until the result was called in their favor. But on the other hand, he really wanted to win that third game and not have it be a tie. So he was rushing me really bad but like presenting it in this way that if I didn't rush then that meant I was just playing for a draw. So basically that third game was pretty unpleasant because of that. I think I didn't draw very well so I probably wouldn't have won anyways, but it just made that third game not be fun. But hey he got his win. 

So the third match was a long drawn out affair and we actually had to use the 5 turn rule on the end of the second game. But my opponent managed to eke out his second win within that time. So I lost 0-2.

So, overall I am quite happy that I got out and tried playing at a new shop and that I got a lot of experience playing magic and playing sealed. And overall I really did have a good time. Even Clayton I am not really that upset with. If being rushed so much really ruined it for me I should have been more assertive. I also think that in some ways the problem is with the setup. I guess from my experience I am in favor of the "higher life total wins." But if Clayton's experience is anything to go by that is not perfect either. 

Update 13

Well, some turmoil in my life has taken my mind off gaming, or at least off posting about it.  Been applying for jobs that can give me more hours. Had an interview with one company that went well. They didn't immediately offer me the job but I am on the list for when opportunities come up. But I have been up to some various gaming stuff...

*The twins are back from England so we have been playing some games. I got to play my new commander deck with them. It worked ok but I didn't end up winning the game.

*We also played Terraforming Mars again. This is a highly rated board game that I bought some years ago at a board game store here in Taipei. We played it the day I got it and haven't played it since. Not really for any particular reason. I guess most of the time the twins are more interested in playing Magic so we usually do that. But recently Yuen has been expressing some interest in this game so we decided to bust it out again. We need a day when we have a lot of time because it seems to take us an awfully long time to play the game. The first time I think we played for like 6+ hours. This time we finished in about 5. Not sure if we are doing something wrong or if we are just slower players than most people. Maybe we just need to get used to the game.

*Been reading old Pyramid magazines. This is a magazine that has been put out in various formats by Steve Jackson Games (the makers of GURPS). The second volume was done as webpages that subscribers had access to. But last year they put out the whole volume (this incarnation ran from like 98 to 08) as an archive that can be downloaded and browsed offline. Everything is still presented as webpages but the entire archive sits on your own computer rather than on servers. The issues have a lot of coverage of other companies' games as well as articles about roleplaying in GURPS or some of the other systems SJG put out. So this can be a lot of fun to do some detective work with. Basically it is interesting to see which of the various games and books and systems that were put out then are still around in some form or another and to learn about what their impact was. Some of the books have since been made available for free as PDFs. (Entirely legally!).

*So reading that has kind of gotten me interested in solo roleplaying again. One of the free books I got was for a game called WitchCraft. This is kind of an occult horror setting where some kind of apocalyptic time called the Reckoning is approaching and more and more people with magical abilities are being born. They have their own system but in some ways it is very similar to GURPS and in fact some of the Qualities in Witchcraft are exactly the same as Advantages in GURPS. This has made it easy to get a handle on (at least the character creation process. I haven't delved into the actual game play rules yet). This has kind of been waking me up to the fact that I do like this kind of horror. Not the mad serial killer type of horror but more like some kind of freaky occult sense where there are evils that lurk underneath the surface of the normal world kind of thing.

*Also been watching baseball still. Just mostly the free game of the day on MLB.tv. 

*A new Magic set is having its pre-release weekend this coming weekend. Prerelease weekends are when you go to a game store that hosts Magic events and participate in a kind of tournament. Basically there are many different formats of Magic. The kind that is played at pre-release weekends is called sealed. This is where your entry fee gives you 6 booster packs. At a pre-release these usually come in special boxes that have some extra goodies but all you really need is 6 booster packs. So then everyone opens their 6 packs and has some time, like an hour or so, to sort through all the cards and to build a 40 card deck (including lands that are supplied by the store). So, everybody builds their deck and then the tournament director uses software to run a Swiss system style tournament. With every opponent you play a best of three games match. Usually there are three rounds. So I have attended a number of these over the years at Growlife (the game shop where I play). So, I feel a bit mixed about these events because in some ways I quite like them but I am not very good so I always end up near the bottom of the cross-table. I do like playing sealed but just wish I was better at it. So anyways, I am planning on trying to play at least one of these maybe more. (stores often host multiple little tournaments that weekend for people with different availabilities to be able to play.)

*I finished the slow live chess tournament I was playing. Had a couple of forfeit wins. The last game was a pretty even game. Opponent was attacking but I was defending well. We traded off most of the pieces but the queens were still on the board. Then my opponent proceeded to blunder his queen. I think he thought he was forking two of my pawns but the square he moved his queen to was defended by my queen. He resigned as soon as I captured it.

*Still playing daily chess. Been playing on some different sites. I am kind of sick of chess.com these days because they are constantly bombarding you with ads for the premium subscription or pop ups for different services I don't want to use and they have gradually been moving stuff behind the pay wall. I was playing the slow league tournament on lichess because that is the server that was dictated. In general lichess is a good server but I often feel kind of bothered by attitude of the people who are ardent supporters (it is completely free but very modern and well run.) So I have also been playing on some other much less well-known sites such as Scheming Mind and GameKnot.