It’s the second day of PAX Unplugged! This meant that I actually had time to attend some of the meetings that I’d set up yesterday, starting with a demo of Obscurids!
Obscurids
As a game, Obscruids can be described as an attempt to fix all of the problems with Magic: The Gathering’s commander format. Mana screw has been removed, there’s no summoning sickness, and the game is based around victory points instead of life totals. That last one is important, because it heavily rewards aggression over purely defensive play.
If those words didn’t mean anything to you, it’s probably best to describe Obscurids as a big monster brawl, and a fun one that at. If you want to learn more about the game, it has a Tabletop Simulator Mod here.
(And for folks who might be a bit worried by that “collectible card game” under the tagline, the devs have told me that there will also just be a 5 deck box set for all the people who don’t like cracking boosters.)
After that I just tooled around the show floor a bit, helped some folks find the upstairs freeplay area, and finally headed over to UnPub. I played a few things that didn’t quite stick, before finding Tournament Arc, a sports anime themed game by Little Creature.
Tournament Arc
Tournament Arc is pretty straightforward. Players draft athletes, and then take turns playing episode cards to buff and debuff their own and other players’ athletes. All of this is in service of creating the best team for the sport that’s been randomly chosen.
While it’s a simple game and some ways reminded me a bit of Fluxx or Muchkin, its strongest point is just how funny and accurate it feels to following sports anime. Someone got isekaied! Someone has a tragic backstory! There’s a love triangle.
I also just found the art to be incredibly wonderful. It feels incredibly evocative but without engaging in a lot of the crappier anime tropes.
Leaving UnPub, I went back to browsing the expo hall. I did a little shopping, and picked up a copy of Clank Legacy 2. I said in my Clank Legacy writeup that I wouldn’t play a fresh game, but the $115 I just spent says otherwise.
Was that my entire day? Well, no. The Indie Games Night Market tonight is probably the thing I’m most excited to see at PAX, followed by the Jonathan Coulton concert. So of course they’re at the same time. I also have a few meetings to demo stuff before the night market, so I’ll have to see how that pans out.
That said, the Night Market will be receiving its own writeup, so I’m going to take this hour to chug pedialyte and consume a waffle refresh and relax, before rushing back to the show floor.
If you’re curious about my experiences on day 1, you can read them here. And if you’d like semi-random photos and live blogs of the show, you can follow me on Bluesky here.
Before I talk about SolForge Fusion, I want to talk about SolForge. SolForge was its predecessor. A digital-only card game that lived a brief 4 years, and then died. We should talk about why.
SolForge never had a problem being fun. Its core mechanic was, and remains, brilliant and simple. Here’s how it worked.
In SolForge, each time you played a card, it got stronger in future rounds. Decks were small, and every few rounds they’d shuffle all the upgraded cards back in.
This created a simple, but very exciting core tension: Playing the best card for the moment vs. playing a card that might be less ideal now, but was better later.
SolForge didn’t die because of bad mechanics. It died because it didn’t make any money.
But here, from the ashes, comes SolForge Fusion, a brand new digital/physical/web3 card game! Bringing back the traditional upgrade mechanic, it’s replaced its deck construction with a combo of KeyForge and Smash Up.
Gameplay
SolForge Fusion is played over four phases of three rounds each. At the start of each round, players draw a hand of five cards from their deck, then each take alternating turns, generally playing a single card into one of five lanes.
One player is given the forge to start, marking them as the first player for that round. They will play the first and third card of the round, while the other player will play the second and fourth (and final) card. Creatures played by the player with the forge are aggressive, meaning they will attack the turn they are played, while creatures played by the non-forge player will defend, but not attack. After one turn, every creature in play moves to the top of the lane and attacks.
If this sounds complicated, it boils down to: alternating first player, and since the first player is somewhat punished by the opponent getting to see all of their plays before combat, they also get to go on the offensive.
At the end of each round, players discard their unplayed cards and creatures slam into each other dealing damage equal to their attack. Unblocked creatures deal damage to the opposing player. After three rounds, cards are shuffled back into their owners’ decks, including upgraded cards, and the process repeats.
Whoever runs out of health loses, and if both players have health after all four phases, whoever has the most wins. There is a bit more to it than this, but this is the general loop.
So, is it worth playing?
Yes.
That’s a yes that I’m going to caveat heavily over the next few sentences, but I’ve had a lot of fun with SolForge Fusion. Specifically, a lot of fun I’ve had exclusively playing the digital version of SolForge Fusion.
I wrote about SolForge Fusion briefly before in 2022, but I was writing about the paper version of the game. To summarize my opinion from then: the game is simply far too clunky to play in paper. In digital, though, all of those issues are managed by the computer, so it’s a silky smooth experience*.
*Compared to the physical game.More on this later.
A second caveat is that I’ve spent most of my time playing the Roguelike PVE mode. It’s a sort of Slay The Spire thing where you pick a deck and fight through a series of enemies, culminating in a boss. While the content feels limited, it’s just very fun to play. Currently there are only 2 campaigns, and only one is free. The second costs $10.
But now that we’re talking about money, let’s talk about the in-game economy.
The in-game economy is a mess.
SolForge Fusion has Web 3 integration. Here’s the whitepaper. I got 3 slides in before my eyes glazed over, mostly because the first 3 pages are the exact same set of words, rephrased.
Side Note: The official position of this blog is that crypto can suck it.At some point I may clarify my position on this.
Now, you can ignore this and play, in which case… it’s still a mess. Even after playing for 18 or so hours, I haven’t saved enough gold to get one permanent deck.
There’s also a premium battlepass that comes with the second PVE campaign. I paid to unlock it, and then realized that the good rewards on it would require me to play 40-60 more hours of the game. Frankly, I feel like I got my $10 worth out of the campaign, not so much out of the battlepass.
It’s just a mess.
Side note: I posted about the grindy battlepass on the SolForge Discord, and the response I got was that it’s intended for long term players who have played the game a lot more than me. I understand that viewpoint, but I think it misses the point, because the end game track rewards are additional decks. As a new player, I would have liked to have more than 4 decks to play with, so that I can actually… y’know. Experiment and enjoy of the game. Which might have led to me playing an additional 40-60 hours. But given that really only have one deck to play with currently, I’m now a bit burnt out.
Bugs and Weirdness
As I was playing a few final games to put the finishing touches on this writeup, I played an online game where the server hit a critical error and crashed, kicking me back to the game’s login screen.
There are also a few goofy UI things. For example, when you complete a quest, it doesn’t auto-claim, so it’s possible to complete your quest and then forget to actually get your rewards.
Also, the store still has purchasable items for an event that already ended, and can’t be played further, so that’s great.
These things are small, but they’re part of a clunky experience that just drags things down a bit.
I’m sure some folks will defend the game by saying “It’s an early access alpha!” to which I say “It has a fully released cash shop that takes real money, as such I will treat it as a fully released game”.
Overall
SolForge Fusion is fun, which is a bummer because I still don’t feel compelled to spend any more money on it than the $10 I put in. Given that I may well be the patron saint of spending money on card games I don’t really play, that probably doesn’t bode well SolForge Fusion’s long term success.
One thing I didn’t touch on in this write-up is that the player base seems low. I didn’t mention it because it’s not really relevant. There’s PVE, and if the game detects that you’re sitting in the PVP queue for too long, it’ll match you against some pretty decent bots that count as players for the purpose of rewards.
Then just decide if you want to play more, or go do something else. I wish I could say that its fun gameplay will carry it to success. But there’s a lot of junk here, and quality is often no indicator of games’ long term profitably.
Non-Clickbait Title: I went to an Azurite Sea pre-release, and got 3rd.
I went to an Azurite Sea pre-release just about two weeks ago. I had never played in a Lorcana sealed event before. In fact, I’d never played in any Lorcana event before this one, and I’ve probably played less than 20 games of Lorcana total.
(Okay, that’s not counting grinding first chapter games with a friend about a year and half ago, but again, it’s been a while, and there game has had like 5 expansions since then.)
So why did I decide to spend $45 to play a sealed format for a game I don’t really play, for a set that I’d done no prep for? Well, because I make poor decisions when I’m bored.
Arrival, and Opening Boosters
I was relying on my expertise at Magic to carry me through the event. However, after cracking my boosters, I was hit with a few key realizations.
The first was that I had no sense of how “good” any given card was stat-wise, something that I can do with no effort in Magic. Is a 1/2 for 1 that quests for 1 worth playing? Should I only be running 2/2’s for 1? Something I take for granted (assessing stat values) was completely gone.
The second thing was the deckbuilding structure itself. In a sealed Lorcana event, you can use all colors of cards. This is a bit of a double edged sword, because what it actually means is that deck construction becomes a game of cutting 32 of the of the 72 cards you’ve opened.
Finally, I was confronted by the fact that I didn’t have a good sense of what the Inkable vs Non-Inkable ratio should be.
Faced with this dizzying array of choices, as well as not really knowing how locations worked, I decided to go back to my basics, and reach for my classic strategy.
BREAD
BREAD is a Magic strategy that dictates card value order in limited/sealed formats. It stands for the following:
B- Bombs These are cards that will win you game if you resolve them, either due to high power, or just a very strong effect. R – Removal Cards that get rid of your opponents’ cards. Notably, there are far fewer of these in Lorcana than I’m used to, and they’re much higher costed. I actually only had a single card that could do any direct damage to a character. E – Evasion These are cards that get through to your opponent even if they have lots of characters out. Fortunately, Lorcana does have a good example of this: The keyword Evasive. These characters are tricky to remove and can safely build lore turn after turn.
I ran both of these in my deck, and they both did a LOT of work.
A – Aggro Cheap cards that can be played early, and apply pressure. D – Duds Cards you just don’t want to play.
Deckbuilding
Confronted with an overwhelming number of cards, and 25 minutes to build a deck, I came up with the following plan:
I would build out a pretty standard curve, prioritizing 1 and 2 cost cards, with a majority of the deck being under 4 cost.
I’d try to run as many characters as possible, and few locations, but no items.
After building this deck, I made one last big decision, and probably the single decision responsible for my final result: I added in Pooh Pirate Ship.
Now, while this goes completely against everything else above, as it’s an un-inkable, type-specific item, I figured it could be worth it. Something that had become clear to me was that Lorcana had very little direct removal in the lower rarity slots, so I was unlikely to run into those sorts of cards. The second bit was that because Sealed formats for card games in general are at a much lower power level, they often stall out into top-decking.
My thought was that Pooh Pirate Ship would be a siegebreaker sort of card, allowing me to continually challenge with my pirates, and then fetch them back to replay them. And while I only had 8 or so pirates, I had two pretty decent targets for recovery in Mullins and Jim Hawkins, both of which seemed to have decent stats for combat.
These two quite honestly carried the day.
With deck construction complete, it was time to play.
The Games
I didn’t take great notes on my individual matches. But I can talk to the effectiveness of the decisions I made.
I finished with a record of 2-1, with most of my matches going to 3 games.
Match 1 wasn’t exactly a stomp, but I managed to pull ahead in the late game. Match 2 was my only loss of the three, and while it was possible I could have pulled out a win, I made some pretty significant misplays around my Vanellope Von Schweetz, choosing to Ink the locations that I would have placed her at.
That said, my game 2 opponent was also significantly better than me at managing the early game tempo, and outran me to the point that even when I had set up my board, I couldn’t clear their characters before they won.
Finally, for match 3, I managed to hit two Sail The Azurite Seas back to back into an early Jim Hawkins. He refilled my hand, giving me the win early, and then I was able to use Pooh Pirate Ship in the second game to grab back my cheaper 2-3 drop pirates for another win.
Overall
The last time I wrote about Lorcana was about a year ago. I predicted that if it could weather the storm, it would be set up to become one of the larger card games in the space. Not the most shocking armchair prediction, but something that seemed unclear at the time, what with the pretty blatant scalping making it impossible for folks to actually buy the game.
As far as I can tell, Lorcana seems to have done that. I’m not really a Disney person on any level, and coming in with no knowledge of the characters or cards, I still had a pretty good time. Games felt tense and plays felt meaningful.
Some of my habits from playing a lot of sealed Magic did carry over (recursion and evasion is good!), while others didn’t (My single damage spell did VERY little work). I think that sealed Lorcana might actually be a more interesting experience than Magic sealed, because it allows combos that can’t be done in the normal game, whereas sealed Magic is pretty much just slower standard Magic.
Overall, it was really fun to see how Lorcana has developed since I last played it, and also to see the design space that’s getting used now. For example, typal is much more of a thing than it used to be. I’ll probably try to play a bit more Lorcana, as I am getting a bit burnt out on Magic, and Foundations didn’t really sell itself on its limited format.
I was having trouble finding something to write about this week, so I finally bit the bullet and bought a game I had hesitations about, but thought I’d enjoy: TCG Card Shop Simulator. And I was right on the money!
And while I personally enjoy the game, it currently lacks depth in any of its systems. I don’t really want to recommend it in its current state.
Side note:In that sense, it reminds me of MMORPG Tycoon 2, a game I purchased 3 years ago, and is now on version 0.2. Early access is a grave of ideas.
But let’s say you do fork over $13. What do you get right now? A sort of abstract sim game with some card collection elements. Here was my experience.
Tales From The Gameplay Loop
After I named my store, I ordered inventory and waited for folks to wander in. When those customers finished their browsing, I went and checked them out. The checkout mini-game is a majority of the “gameplay” that I’ve seen so far. There is a small element where customers can show up smelly, and need to be sprayed with air freshener. I dealt with this by setting up two auto cleaners near the entrance to my store to double blast anyone who walked in, like it was a tower defense.
While the player can hire helpers NPC’s to run the checkout, the only one I could afford was so slow that I just did it myself. It felt more practical to have them stock shelves, where it didn’t matter that they moved like molasses.
The other parts of the loop involve buying new furniture and displays for the store, buying stock, adjusting prices, and selling singles. More about selling singles in a bit. First, let’s talk about the other parts.
My general take on this game is that it functions mechanically, but lacks real depth to any single system. Employees don’t get better or worse as they work for you. There are a few different types of furniture, but they all function the same, and there’s only one type of play table. NPC’s don’t have names or preferences, there are no regulars, grinders, or “That One Guy.” The player can adjust prices, but it doesn’t seem to influence market value.
Furniture is both deeply unaspirational, and as as my friends will point out, better than what I have in my apartment.
In that sense, the game feels very static, almost like a clicker game. I would wait for things to happen, acquire money, buy a bigger store, buy more stuff to put in it. Rinse, repeat.
A sort of capitalist zen garden.
But I never felt like I was really working toward anything, or making more than incremental progress. That said, I do want to talk about one system the game has that did make me feel something.
Cracking Boosters, and Selling Singles
TCG Card Shop Simulator has a fairly reasonable system for opening booster packs to add cards to your own collection. It’s nicely animated, works reasonably well in partnership with the rest of the game, and is mildly compelling. But it’s not what I want to talk about.
No, what I want to talk about is how this game has finally made me understand why stores don’t like selling singles, mostly because the process is a huge annoyance for tiny amounts of profit. I never want to sell a single under $10 ever again.
And this is in a sanitized, digital version of the process! I don’t have to keep perfect inventory, or look up pricing, or worry heavily about shelf space. But every time some unblinking digital homunculus walks up to the register with a card that’s a $1.27, and a $5 bill, I want to leap across the counter and chase them from the store.
So in that sense, this game has made me feel a weird sort of sympathy for local game stores, and their equivalents. I now understand why no one wants to sell me 30 commons for $8.71.
Overall
Sure, TCG Card Shop Simulator is fun right now in a sort of zen/whiteout sense, but there’s no guarantee it will ever get all of the features it has promised, or even that I’ll remember the game exists by then. If you have $13, and need to just zone out from the world for a few hours, it’s great.
After 8 hours, my card store looks like… well, pretty much any other card store on the planet honestly.
But it lacks any real depth to any system, or even the aesthetic customization that would set it apart as a fun toy for designing a dream card shop.
As far as I can tell, NPCs in TCG Card Shop Simulator don’t react to anything you do, including jumping on tables, throwing boxes around, and just generally nuisance in the store.
Somehow while playing, this manifested into me envisioning my player character as a sort of long limbed, pale cryptid that always wears a flat cap covering their face, speaking only in curses and praise, clambering over counters and leaping across tables as it restocked and moved to check people out.
It also made me realize that I would still probably shop and play at this store, even if the owner occasionally scuttled across the table in the middle of the match if the prices were good enough.
This was followed by me roleplaying as this character for 30 to 40 minutes, including nodding my head, and saying “Blessings upon you, yes, yes!” whenever someone paid with exact change.
This is not a thing I usually do in games. I don’t know where this came from. Also, at some point I decided they had a tail like a lizard.
He should really be skinnier than this, all bones and sinew.
Duskmourn is here! I was trying to think of something witty to say about the set, but I don’t really have any insights on its implementation of modern horror.
I was going to borrow some copy from the Wizards site, but the site was mostly about how I would have a “more thrilling experience” by pre-ordering boxes of collector boosters, something I decided to skip.
I’m sure it would be a thrilling and horrible experience to look at my bank account afterward, but that’s not the sort of horror I’m looking for.
Instead, let’s talk about some Sealed! Here’s what I ended up building.
View the list on Aetherhub. As a brief note, I’ve included only rares and cards in my colors in the sideboard, but there were in fact more cards than this.
While the rest of the pool was decent, it didn’t offer much in the way of a definitive direction. My two pretty mythic creatures (Niko, Light of Hope and The Wandering Rescuer) did give me direction, though!
As a result, I ended up with a pretty straight forward Blue/White aggro list.
Compared to my last pool, this one was far stronger and offered a definite direction to play.
So how did it actually do?
Better than last time! Still not great. But better!
Match 1 was a set of games against Red/Blue control that I was able just roll over in two quick games. Possessed Goat put in a lot of work, and they were never able to drop a big enough creature to slow my roll of tiny dudes and pump effects.
Match 2 was another 2-0, but a much harder fought one. They were running a Red/Green/Blue delirium deck. Game 1 was a bit of a brawl, but Niko and The Rescuer managed to turn things for me. Game 2 was closer, with them dropping a few Patchwork Beasties, but not managing to get the delirium up quite in time. This allowed me to finally sneak a board in, and pump the goat again for lethal.
And then we get to Match 3.
It might as well be a running bit at this point.
For the first time in the night I experienced actual horror: my round 3 opponent was going to be my friend. Again. He was running blue/black control with splashed red for a few extra creatures.
And just like last time, it did not go well for me. While I managed to take game 1 off of Niko and The Rescuer showing up, game 2 he managed to drop his Unholy Annex/Ritual Chamber for a 6/6 flying demon, after removing some of my early threats. A lack of hard removal combined with being pinged for two each turn while he healed up two meant that I did not last long.
It was finally time for game three.
It was not technically a stomp. I had him down to 4 life. But then Unholy Annex/Ritual Chamber came out again, and even though I removed the 6/6 demon, he just sacked the Annex with Boilerbilges Ripper. He then proceeded to drop Grievous Wound, and turn my “potential possible comeback” life total of 20 into 7 in one turn.
Is there a moral to this story? Yes. Next time he commits to a three color control list, I’m not going to suggest he cuts aggro-fliers and adds the midsize bodies.
Is there a better moral? Well, honestly, I think I probably should have side-boarded in a few more of my slightly cheaper cards after game 2 for game 3.
But overall, how did it go?
Some final thoughts
I was generally excited for Bloomburrow, and I’m looking forward to playing Duskmourn. I’m not a huge fan of the theme, and there aren’t really any cards I want in the set, but it set itself apart mechanically. Rooms feel fantastic, which makes it a shame that we likely won’t see them again for a while after this. Manifest Dread can also be quite exciting.
As a set, I don’t really have any big thoughts or worries, frankly. Historic Brawl is my primary format. I’m sure we’ll have things that shake it up, but it doesn’t look like there’s a Nadu 2.0 just yet.
Some Friends’ Decks
As is tradition, here are the decks of my friends at the event, and their records.
This belonged to the friend who kicked my butt. Someday we won’t get paired in round 3, and I won’t get salty, but that was not today. They cruised to a 3-0 overall, only dropping 1 game.
Finally, we’ve got my other friend. They ended up going 1-1-1 off their midrange Red/Green list.
