Spoiler Free til...

... I can get my hands on the stinking book!!! I am an opinion glutton. I love to hear peoples opinions, and can't get enough. So it is KILLING me to not be able to read the reviews of the latest Harry Potter book. And with me pulling in weekend work to make up for GenCon in 3 weeks, I have even less time to go an purchase the book, much less read it.

Anyway, I finally had time to update my links. I didn't know what I wanted to link to from my page, so I told myself "Where do I go every day, when I am bored at work?" Those sites over there are the complete compilation of locations where I kill time waiting for whatever at my desk. Most of those have to do with Star Trek CCG. HoweverOne that probably doesn't fit is the Full Metal Alchamist site. This is a new game that comes out in August. The mechanics of this game are greatly intriguing, and I really want to see more cards, in order to start building my own (re: non-demo) decks. The series is also really good, so I hope the game takes off. It seems to have a decent following already, for a game that has not even printed one card yet.

At any rate, I will probably never give up Star Trek: CCG Second Edition. They will have to pry my cold dead fingers from the cards. However due to my general distaste of my secondary game at the moment, I am looking for a game that has interesting mechanics and is easy to play, and I think this might just be it. Anacranism was very close to being it (and it might just make it as a territiary game) but I absolutely hate die rolling in card games so it will have to wait.

Game On!

The Saga Begins...

So as I mentioned in my previous blog entry, I am looking for a new Star Trek CCG deck idea. I think I have found that idea, but I need to find a dilemma pile that is not dependent on events. Normally this is not a major issue for players, but all I have done is try to show how a dilemma pile works better with events than without. I have gone all the way to the dark side to prove that dilemmas with events are so much better than without, that I have forgotten the art of playing a dilemma pile without events. So now I sit and ponder, "I can regain this lost skill?"

So the saga begins with me searching for the right combination of cards that will allow me to stall my opponent long enough for me to bust past their dilemmas. I am discovering dilemmas that I have not played with in years, ever since Premiere and Energize were released. But what promote this blog entry is not just my search for a new dilemma pile...

I am re-devoting myself to my diet, sort of... Convention season is just too impossible of a time to start any sort of regular eating/sleeping/working/playing/anything-ing schedule. So I will try to focus on eating right, again, for the next 3 weeks before Gen-Con. Then afterwards, I will have no excuses, I must find a gym and eat right. This is my "Spring Training" time, and then the start of the season is August 22. In addition to my diet, I am starting to watch Enterpise Season 1. I have to admit that episode 1 was one of the best pilots of any of the series to date. However episode 2 and 3 are the worst follow up episodes in Star Trek (possibly TV) history to date. So I am trudging through hoping to find a redeeming value in this lost franchise. Eventually I will purchase the Original Series (the FIRST Star Trek) and hopefully evaluate it on its own merits as well. But for right now, I have many beginnings and hopefully many good things to come.

ComicCon came and went...

... and now it is back to work. What a blast, tho. ComicCon reaches more people from more walks of life than any other convention that I know of. There are the movie fans, comic book fans, anime fans, gaming fans, gamers, and of course no convention would be complete without bad food and the people who serve said food.

I am back now, and I can't believe that it has been a week since I blogged. Now that my crazy time is over I should be able to blog more, maybe. On the gaming front, I was recently accused of over-playing my deck. And they had a point. My deck is effectively unchanged since I started playing in almost 13 months ago. So I am in the search for a "New Hotness", and until I find said deck my old Far-Seeing Eyes deck will be called "Old and Busted". So I have a mission, and I intend to complete my search for the new hotness before Worlds. Looks like I have some work to do.

Game On!

Monday Morning Quickie...

I really had the best of intentions to get up early and beat my cubie to work. I failed again due to my adversion to using alarm clocks on a daily basis (a topic of discussion for another day). However this will be a short week again as Comic Con is right around the corner, and I will be off to try and vindicate myself against the best Star Trek players that bother to show up...

This is not a slam against them, but there will not be as many as were at Origins 2 weekends ago, and some of the locals do not like to play at that level. So I really have no idea who all will be there, and I can only hope that we get a good turn out. Anyway, I have 40 hours of work between me and when I leave Thursday night. I guess I gotta get to it.

Game On!

If you put people in a bad situation...

I just got back from Origins (OK, OK, so I just woke up from getting back from Origins) and have had time to think about what took place there. Some good thigns happened, and some bad things were observed. When I used to write tournament reports a key feature was the Props and Slops section, I will try to summarize here:

PROPS:
- To Vera Corbett for being a good (if not great) Trek player and showing up many of the guys that played in the main events. Keep on playing Vera!!!
- To the judging staff (Keller, Matt, Girard, Blythe, and Colson) for keeping the tournament on schedule and not messing up one gameplay ruling all weekend long.
- Ricky Martin for assisting in making William Hung a star. (He was playing across the way in the Pokemon Nationals)
- Jared Hoffman and Len Niedorf for OWNING the rest of us all weekend long. I was 1-2 against them on the weekend, and considered that a success.
- The Trek player community. Without a doubt the best group of players I have had the honor of playing with, even with a few sour apples, they are still a fun bunch.
- Brad, Evan, and Girard for making a game that can sport 6 or 7 different HQ missions out of the top 16 players. LOTR, cannot say that; VS cannot say that. Heck I bet Magic would have trouble compeating with that level of diversity.
- Decipher for the prize support they gave out for the tournaments.

SLOPS:
- Pokemon players in general, for taking over our tables.
- John for just up an leaving before the game was over. If you wanna conceed, then do so, tell the judge and then walk off to cool down. Otherwise your are holding the TD hostage while they wait for you.
- James T. Kirk, for being TOO damned broken!
- DGMA for not having something in writting for when an elimination game ends in a true tie. There HAS to be a better option than forcing the players to play again. I do not know exactly what that answer might be, but there HAS to be a better solution.

That last slop is the reason for this title. Keller was put in a crappy possition for the first round match between defending world champion Anderw Ehret and myself. And as the saying goes, if you put a person in a bad situation, be prepared for a bad ruling. In this case Mike decided that the game needed to be played again. Because the game needed to be played again, Andrew made an honest mistake (that anyone in his shoes might have made) and didn't properly reassemble his deck and because he was playing with an incomplete deck he was given a game loss and I advanced to the next round. That I don't have a problem with, because it is clearly in the rules, but it was the decision before that, that really screams WRONG in my mind.

But who knows, in the same possition, I might have made the exact same decision. But that doesn't mean that now that we have the time to look at this the right way, that we cannot make a better ruling, so that the entire load is not based on one volunteer's decision. I do not envy Keller's choise, and I must admit that there are worse decision he could have made, but now that the True Tie scenario in an elimination game is no longer theoretical, it needs to be addressed in the tournament guidelines.

Game On!