Since getting laid off, I’ve had the experience of spending more time then I normally would (any) looking at LinkedIn. It has been an interesting experience, because I exist in the middle of two separate bubbles in that space, one being information technology and business process management, and the other being game development.
In the IT/BPM space, all public statements are universally enthusiastic about AI. On the flip side, the gaming space consists of folks like Chet Faliszek looking to start fistfights with every single person who declares that AI is the future and now.
I won’t lie, this second bit brings me great joy. Currently, my BlueSky feed consists of almost entirely of people looking to feed Ryan Dancey’s carear into a wood chipper after he suggested you could just replace game designers with LLMs.
Again, great joy.
Still, the thing I want to talk about is the first group. The BPM/IT space, and the various posts about how the future is now, and it is AI.
Now, while I’ve said that everyone is posting that AI is the future, you might notice that I never said that everyone is saying or everyone believes that AI is the future. That’s because they don’t. I know at least a fair number of the folks posting about the joys of AI LinkedIn either don’t care, think it’s bad, or actively loathe it, but because of current market conditions and messaging, they feel they have no choice.
The problem is that LinkedIn is almost entirely a platform for social signaling, not for actual communication. There are exceptions to this, like Chet. If you have adequate social or monetary capital, you actually can treat it like you would the YouTube comment section, or alternately, post your real opinions.
But I didn’t write any of Portal, so if I go onto the L’OREAL page, and say that their partnership with NVIDIA for some AI powered makeup is the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen, I’ll never get a callback.
The incentives aren’t to have open or interesting discussions about business, challenges, or exciting new developments, it’s to go along with whatever everyone in upper management currently believes. Even when doing otherwise might be better for everyone.
Anyway, it’s kind of unfortunate that LinkedIn requires all of us to engage in a large scale version of the emperors new robe.
Last night I got a chance to draft some Lorwyn! I’ve been curious about how this format would play in Draft since the pre-release. My local game store, the Fourth Place did an event, so I figured I’d take the opportunity and head over. (Side note: If you’re ever in the area, you should stop by. It’s a great store.)
I would like to say that since the prerelease, I’d practiced and learned the set. This would unfortunately be a lie, because outside of a few drafts on arena, I have done zero prep. I hadn’t even bothered to look at a pick list.
Instead, I had a simple plan: ignore what everyone else was doing, and force Blue/White Merfolk.
This was it. The extent of what I’d learned from my digital drafts was that Tributary Vaulter and Shore Lurker could take people to pieces, and that Gravelgill Scoundrel made it possible to push through clogged boards.
So yeah, that’s what I did. Spoiler alert: I won the pod.
It is a deeply uninspired list, but still managed to be a solid one. Perhaps the only notable thing about it is the lack of rares, with Deepway Navigator being the only one. It runs 24 non-lands, and has 2 cards mana value above 4. It also runs zero one drops. Pure and simple, it’s very much a “just find a way past them” style list.
The games were a pretty swift set of matchups, going 2-1, 2-0, and 1-1-1, followed a Bo1 playoff I won.
I don’t know that there’s anything I can even learn from this. While there were some close games, and I did take a few losses, it was almost always dependent on my opponent getting out something like Virulent Emissary or Scarblade Scout to have a bit more extra life, and slow down my early turns. The moral of the story seems to be that “fliers are good” and I kinda already knew that.
Overall, I have mixed feelings about Lorwyn as a Sealed/Limited set. Ignoring aesthetics and theming, the mechanics have never really clicked for me. While I was initially worried about the lack of removal during the Sealed Prerelease, draft has made it pretty clear that there actually is plenty of removal. At the same time, the very low number of counterspells remain a bit weird.
In the one to two dozen games I’ve played of Draft Lorwyn Eclipsed, games have never really felt super fun or exciting. They’ve been tense! It’s felt good when I’ve won, or pulled out of sticky situations, but I’ve never had any huge moments of dropping a bomb, or feeling like I’ve figured out something incredible, or spotted clever synergies.
Some of it may just be the colors I’ve drafted, with Merfolk have arguably the least interesting play pattern, in that it’s mostly about tapping creatures through card effects, but there are only 8 convoke cards under rare, and only two are instant speed.
I like winning in Lorwyn. I just wish I liked playing a bit more.
As a final note, I’ve seen some complaints/comments online that the set really pigeonholes you into your archtype, with very little space to branch out. I don’t think I’ve drafted enough of the set to make the same statement confidently, but it does seem accurate to the experience that I’ve had so far.
Also, I promise I’ll go back to writing about games instead of just things I’m doing shortly, but despite losing my job, it’s been a weirdly busy last few weeks.
I got back late last night from another Winter Weirdness, one of the events hosted by Green Mountain Gamers, a group that organizes game days in the Vermont/New Hampshire area. I quite like these events.
It’s a very lightly structured event. Folks bring their personal games to the event to lend to other people for the event, and then just spread out to play games.
As always, I’ll be talking about what I played, what I liked, and anything else about the event that strikes my fancy.
The games I brought
I brought a smattering of stuff, including Mottainai, Combo, Trio, Pride of Ninja, Brightcast, Blaseball Wild Cards, and the first LoTR trick taking game. These were all small, and I was able to to stuff them into a bag. I’ve linked the ones I’ve done reviews for up the blog, but I enjoy all of these, and someday I really need to give Trio it’s own write-up.
Image of the 7 games I brought
Game time
First thing I did once I got there was crack open my copy of Pride of Ninja, and recruit a few people to play with me. I’ve been interested in Pride of Ninja ever since I first saw it two years ago at PAX Unplugged, and having actually managed to buy a copy this year, I finally got a chance to sit down and try a full game.
I really like it! It’s a pick and pass drafting game with what I’d consider to be two small twists: First, after everyone takes a card, players either reveal that card, and place it in a front row slot, or keep it hidden and place it into a backrow slot. This means that as the draft goes on, you get some information about what your opponents are doing, but it’s still possible to hide key pieces.
Secondly, many of the cards work in such a way that you need to care more about what your opponents are doing, and a few can be effective tools for either punishing them, or drafting off their success. What I really liked about these cards though is that it never really felt particularly painful to be on the receiving end of these plays.
Pride of Ninja is great.
Next up was Moon Colony Bloodbath. This was a weird one.
Moon Colony Bloodbath is a tableau builder where you build up, and then lose your tableau. Well, you do if you’re me. If you’re winning, less of said tableau ends up blown away by accidents, infighting, and malfunctioning robots. The player power graph goes up, and then it goes way, way down.
My feelings on Moon Colony Bloodbath is a decided sense of “Hmm”. I don’t know if I disliked playing it because it’s a bit undercooked, or because I just lost every game horribly. During the back half of the game, once my starting supply of colonists had been whittled to nothing, and I was forced to liquidate buildings, there was a sort of dull sense of a boredom instead of a comedy of overconfident self-destruction.
Image taken moments before everything is liquidated and destroyed.
It felt like the final turns of a game of Terraforming Mars, where instead of doing anything interesting, you just min-max for victory points, as there isn’t enough time for any grand scheme to actually come to completion.
I also have a really weird complaint about the games art and theming. The game feels like it wants to be doing a sort of 1950’s-60’s pop-sci/science fiction cover thing. I think this is a really good theme, and standing alone the art is fine if not great, but in conjunction with the rest of the games mechanics, it feels like the artist was never in on the joke. Every location is played fairly straight, every robot just looks like a generic robot. It feels like no one told Franz Vohwinkel that each of these colonists was going to meet a horribly grisly death.
Anyway, with those two finished, I switched over to a few quicker games. This included a few rounds of Tiger and Dragon, a quick playthrough of the first level of the Lord of the Rings Trick Taking Game, and a short game of Combo. No notes here except maybe a reminder to myself that I should actually do a writeup on Combo one of these days.
After all of that, I played Panda Royale. I don’t like Panda Royale. This might be a bad game between the fairly aggravating draft order system, the dull dice types, the pointless and tedious arithmetic, and also the fact that the theme has absolutely zero connection to the mechanics of this sloggy roll and write.
This was followed up by doing a 4 person draft of Edge of Eternities to round out the day. Unlike the other several times I’ve drafted this set, I actually did quite well this time, and manged to win almost all of the games I played.
And then it was time to leave.
Oh…
The Barre Social Club
This event was held in Barre Social Club, and I just want to note that it might be the single most beautiful space I’ve ever been in.
There’s all this great old furniture, and the walls are covered in old maps, magazines, playbills, and other fun bits of old paperwork.
Like, just look at it.
Oh, and this bookcase?
It’s a secret door!
Okay, not that secret, it leads to a kitchen space, but like… still! Isn’t that cool?
It’s a coworking space, so if you’re in Barre, might be worth checking out. Anyway, that’s all for me right now, I’m gonna see if I can write something to put up for today about a specific game. Talk more later.
