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. 

Commander Deck

 Well, my wife has been encouraging me to get out more so I reached out to a member of a commander playgroup ( commander is a way of playing Magic is that basically unique in that it is a multiplayer format rather than a one on one format) that I hadn't participated in for quite awhile. They are still playing and it just so happened that I reached out on Saturday and they play on Sundays. So I decided I wanted to brew up a commander deck. I had mentioned to my wife having some good cards for a mono-black deck. I have like 10 precons (decks built by the company that makes Magic and sold as one whole) but those decks just don't measure up to the creative deckbuilding of the guys in this playgroup.

So basically I had some good cards like Sheoldred the Apocalypse that I had bought for standard deck that I wanted to make but never finished. There were a few in that class like Phyrexian Fleshgorger and some others. So then I also had this Witherbloom Strixhaven commander deck that is black and green. Basically that deck was pretty weak even after the guy who sold it to me helped me to upgrade it. So basically even given that when I play with the twins we just play precons, this witherbloom deck is really too weak to compete so we never use it. So I decided to tear it down and strip the black cards out of it. It does have some good cards in it. So that is another chunk of the cards in my commander deck. I didn't use every card from either the standard or the witherbloom commander deck. Then the rest of the cards are a selection from the other cards I own. Starting with mythic rares like Liliana of the Veil, and then into some good rares, etc.

So, as far as theme goes it is trying to play with life gain and loss. So there are some mechanics that gain me life and some mechanics that drain life from opponents when I gain life. Sheoldred is my commander so that is some life gain right there... The other commander I was considering was Vito but chatgpt thought vito might be more salt inducing (causing opponents to get upset at the play style). Which is funny because Sheoldred is pretty salt inducing from what I know.

Another thing to consider is that I own a copy of Exquisite Blood. This is powerful card that creates an infinite game winning loop when paired with Vito or Sanguine Bond (both of which are in my deck) and maybe a few others. So I bought this card specifically because of this combo but the problem is that this playgroup kind of frowns on infinite combos. So at first I left it in with the rationalization that I don't have cards that allow me to search for a card I want in my deck so it probably wouldn't be in my hand or on the board at the same time as the other combo pieces. But after more thought I just didnt' want to be in a situation where my only legitimate play was to play the infinite combo. So what I did is that I took Exquisite Blood with me but not in the deck. And then I asked Eric about how people would feel about that card and he seemed to say basically what I thought. Combos good, infinite combos bad...

So that is just part of playing with real people. To some extent you have to be a good sport and recognize that a commander group like this is primarily a social and casual kind of deal. And basically I am just kind of trying to reconnect with some real people and get out of the house etc. So my priority here isn't to win but to play nice with the etiquette of the play group. So anyways, both Eric and Jeff were fine with Sheoldred as my commander.

So, anyways here is the deck.

 

 

 

 

So anyways, I went down there and it just happened that Eric was the only other person to show up (at first). So I played two games with him just the two of us. I have mentioned Eric in this blog before. He is a pretty cool guy with a cool dog and a somewhat mysterious job that is in the games industry and involves a lot of travel. He is the resident brewmaster. By that I mean he spends a lot of his free time building new decks for a variety of ideas. Most of the time he is not interested primarily in creating powerful decks although his decks are usually pretty good. He is like to create decks with themes.

The first game I didn't draw enough lands (these are the cards that give you the energy to cast spells). So although I was able to get some cheap creatures out and do some serious damage to his life total I was kind of just stuck with my more expensive spells just sitting in my hand and I so I wasn't really able to interact with what he was doing on his side of the board. So he had some mana trouble at first but eventually he got his engine going and there wasn't a lot to do so pretty soon he killed me.

The third games was a more back and forth affair but I was able to pull off a win which I felt pretty happy about. This one I got out Sanguine bond in conjunction with sheoldred so I got some of my life gain / drain combo working although it was a somewhat slow process kind of pinging away at him. But in the end it was enough for the win.

So then Jeff showed up part way through. I have only played with a Jeff a couple of times quite a while ago. He is a nice guy also. So anyways, then we played a three person game. In this game I got Liliana out early and the whole ability to make everybody discard a card really worked to kind of sabotage eric. I also got out my ob nixilis planeswalker and in conjuction with sheoldreds ability it meant that I could add loyalty counters to him while drawing cards with the "downside" being that I gain one life. (basically his ability is that I should lose one life to draw a card, but sheoldred says you gain two life when you draw a card.) So that worked to some extent and Eric died before too long. so it was just me and jeff. But what it came down to was that I needed a boardwipe (a card that would kill all the creatures on the board) because jeff had more creatures than me, but most of my removal cards were more targeted to just one creature. Both board wipes and targeted removal are good. They are just better in different situations. So anyways, in the end jeff overpowered me.

So overall I am pretty happy with how my deck performed. This is really the first time I have brewed and actually built a commander deck, not to mention actually getting to play it. (commander decks are more intimidating to brew because they contain 100 cards, most of which have to be unique, whereas other constructed formats usually feature 60 card decks where you allowed to have as many as four copies of each card in the deck). I also brewed it this weekend with just cards that I already owned which also feels good.

I asked Eric and Jeff for feedback. They both mentioned feeling I need more card draw. They disagreed in that Jeff felt I should have more protection for my commander like an equipment that give hexproof or something like that. Eric disagreed and felt that might push the deck to the point where it is too unfun to play against.

So overall pretty satisfactory experience! 

Some more thoughts, hopefully a bit more practical

One big one I have been thinking about is negative feedback. Losing is negative feedback. A big part of improvement seems to be finding a way to handle that negative feedback both emotionally and intellectually. This is something I struggle with. To be honest, I don't think I am the worst at handling this aspect of games but I am also not the best. There are a lot of ways of handling that negative feedback. For instance a big one for chess players can be changing your openings. Basically this is a way of shifting the negative feedback from yourself to something else. The world of gaming is full of dodges like this. But if you want to improve you have to handle negative feedback in a mature and responsible way. I am generally pretty mature about losing in some ways. I can say "Good game" after a loss even if I feel upset about losing. I feel like that is a good thing. But in a way it still misses the point. The point is that you have to accept that you are getting negative feedback and you have to take it as showing a weakness that you can improve on. It is easy to blame the game and say it is unfair or something like that. But you also have to avoid beating yourself up. I guess probably my worst fault is just that a lot of times I get disheartened by losses. I start to lose faith in progress and start to feel I would rather be doing something else. So that is something I want to work on. I just feel like somehow I have to work at accepting losses as part of the game. There is part of me that dreams that I can just win the vast majority of the time. So, I want to work on improving in terms of accepting losses as indicating points where I can improve. This is not easy. I feel it is important to kind of give myself credit that to some extent I do take losses as having to do with my skill. But I feel like I lack some kind of fortitude in terms of like processing that in a way that is productive. I feel like to be fair to myself, this is really not easy and a lot of people never get there. So just recognizing that this is what needs to happen in my own gaming is a good step. So that is a big one. I also think that I have to recognize that this is a process and be patient with myself. A lot of times in the past I would have the mistaken belief that recognizing a problem was all that it took to correct it. As soon as I recognized the problem I expected that I should immediately correct course. But this is not at all how it works. Working on your game is a tough process. Recognizing that there is a problem is just the first step. You have to be patient and work at it bit by bit.

Another one that I have kind of recognized is that there are two parts of me. One part is competitive and one part just wants to have fun. The competitive part wants to improve and get better. The part that just wants to have fun wants to avoid discomfort. The problem is that in the past I would go all one way or the other. I would get really intense about improvement and feel like that is what I really want and that is really who I am. Then I would burn out. So then I would swing in the opposite kind of direction and would start to think I just want to have fun and do whatever I feel like in the moment. So I would just follow my nose for awhile. Eventually though I would feel like I was in a dead end and I didn't really have any direction. So the breakthrough I had the other night is just to recognize that I really am both of these things. I really am competitive in some ways. I do care about the results. I want to have some direction and purpose in my gaming. But at the same time, there is part of me that is just curious and kind of wants to investigate random stuff without any practical value. Just create cool magic decks or look at random openings in chess. So really both of these are part of the picture. It is not satisfying to say "games should just be for fun" and like think I should not care about winning or losing. But at the same time, a big part of the reason I am interested in games is just for curiosity and finding cool stuff. So the way forward has to be a mix where I have room for both. I am not really sure exactly how to manage that but I feel a lot better for having escaped that false dilemma.

Being practical is another one I was thinking about today. I feel sometimes I kind of get caught up in pipe dreams of wanting to be a pro at whatever game I happened to be hipped on. I also like to learn about the history of the games I play. So those things are not all bad. I just think I need to have a clearer idea of when I am learning something just for curiosity's sake and when I am doing something practical. In some ways I can be practical but I just feel like I kind of spend too much time kind of chasing will o the wisps. Basically, a prime example is playing over commented historical games of chess. This is something I like to do and have spent quite a bit of time doing. But basically it is not really a practical thing to do. Of course it is not a total waste of time but basically the concerns of top flight grandmasters are very different from my concerns when I play. I am not saying I should never play over commented master games. But I think I need to have a clearer idea that it is mostly just for fun and is not really a practical way of getting stronger. A more practical activity would be reviewing my own games and looking for lessons. Of course tactics training is very practical and I have done a lot of that also. So I am not all daydreams and no action. I think it is just sort of a question of being honest about my motive. It is kind of easy to fool myself and say that I am working on my chess when I am kind of just wanting something relatively easy to do. It is the same thing with magic. It is fun to watch gameplay videos where someone explains how their deck works and then shows themselves playing it online while explaining to viewers about their thought process. But a much more practical activity is brewing my own deck and testing it out. Both have their place. I am not saying it is bad to watch those videos. But I think I have to have a clearer idea of what is kind of a cop out sometimes instead of doing real work.

 

 

Two Chess Games

Well, a couple of tough losses here...

https://lichess.org/74YHxokTVLra

 https://lichess.org/iqOWRT71yw74

In the first game I didn't put up much resistance so it was fairly uneventful win for the opponent. This is because I really didn't believe his plan had merit so I continued moving my pieces to the king-side. Basically I thought there wasn't enough space for him to do anything, he was just working with two files. Secondly, I thought that because the pawns were balanced that there was nothing he could do but trade a few pawn leaving it symmetrical. But he proved me wrong. He showed that he could engineer a protected passed pawn and that the passed pawn I gained wasn't worth much and was easily captured.

The second one I played tonight. This was more of a heartbreaker. Basically I spotted a tactic that won a piece for a pawn in the opening. I then played to trade pieces since I was ahead in material. But the opponent to his credit didn't fold, dug deep and found a tactic of his own to win back his piece. The rest of the game was hard fought. I was able to mount some pressure against his king and queen with some pins that could turned into something if mishandled but the opponent kept his head and found a way through. Perhaps I didn't do the best. I got a bit worried about time pressure and my playing sped up. In the end his pawns won the game. 

Excited about Magic again

 Well, I have also gotten excited about Magic again. A big part of that has been deciding to try a new format. Basically there are many different ways to play Magic. Mostly the rules of the game are the same, the main differences are about how you go about building your deck and what limitations you have to work within. This new format is called Pioneer. It has actually been around awhile but now it is possible to play on Arena where I have made the biggest investment in terms of cards and have a good number of wildcards available. (wildcards allow you to craft any card you want). Technically, Pioneer on Arena is still missing a good chunk of the cards that are available in the paper version but it is most of the way there.

So, the other night I was just browsing through the pioneer legal cards and came up with an idea for a deck where you would use spells to pump creatures that would also get a bonus from you casting spells.

Here it is.

 

So, I played 8 matches the other night and went 4-4 on the ranked ladder which is ok I think. I am not super experienced with deck building but it is the part of Magic that I am most attracted to. I did get a little bit of feedback from chatgpt but I didn't take all of its advice. For example it was kind of negative about the card "Jump Scare" but I feel it is good and it helped me win at least one match. 

Slow Chess Game

 Well, part of getting excited about chess again has been joining a training program at Chess Dojo. This is a site run by some titled players (one of whom has a PhD in philosophy). One aspect of this playing slow games. This can be done in a variety of ways but they also have online tournaments where you play with other members. I played my first game this last Sunday.

 https://lichess.org/mXrSXPu39oM4

 The game was a pretty uneventful draw. I thought I had an advantage in the endgame because he has isolated c and a pawns and my king is more active, but I wasn't able to make anything of it. It seems like he might even be winning in the final position since he has gained the opposition between the kings and I will be forced to abandon one side or the other if he wants to go for it. He told me afterwards the end position was a dead draw. Not sure if that is his opinion, analysis, or if he checked with a computer. Anyways, it was my first slow chess game in over a year so a draw is not a bad result.