Monday, Ben and I played Warhammer 40K: Conquest on OCTGN. This was primarily so that I could learn the OCTGN interface, but it was also fun to play a game, of course. I ran my Ku'gath Plaguefather deck, and Ben ran his current Eldorath deck. I ended up losing, and probably should have mulliganed my opening hand. I struggled out of the gate, and then struggled to get anything going, leading to a pretty handy defeat. Lessons learned!
Tuesday, I played a game of Netrunner with Rob- I ran my Blue Sun deck against his Valencia Keyhole/Eater deck. Early game went quite happily in his favor, and he got to three agenda points pretty quick (partially due to Notoriety). I finally managed to get set up, was able to manage the Bad Publicity with Eliza Mills, and start scoring agendas. However, he finally managed to get a Keyhole out and made some runs on R&D, which did grab a few agendas. However, he didn't have a convenient way to access Archives.
I finally managed to score my last agenda points, and Rob informed me he had a Hades Shard in his hand, which would have given him a way to access Archives, and a Notoriety he thought he could pull off. The game ended with a final score of 7-3.
Following that, we played two Lord of the Rings games, with me teaching John, Ben, and Brendon (Rob also played, but he already knew the rules, so wasn't being taught), using the decks posted here.
First, we played the Passage Through Mirkwood in a 4-player game. Went pretty easily- I was playing Tactics, and grabbed Ungoliant's Spawn when it came up, and was helped by Ben dropping a Forest Snare on it, which let me kill it at my leisure. So we easily won it.
We then played Journey Down the Anduin in a 3-player game, with Brendon taking the Tactics deck. Once again, an early Forest Snare kept the Hill Troll from wrecking havoc, and our early game was fine... until the locations started piling up. Thankfully, a Northern Tracker played by me (now running the Spirit deck) popped up and started clearing them out, and we had a few very favorable Encounter Deck draws. Things were going well... until we reached the third stage of the quest, and two copies of The Necromancer's Reach came up, and I was basically completely exhausted. Ugh. I ended the turn with only Dunhere and Eowyn on the table, both badly damaged, and plenty of new Enemies on the table. Thankfully, some careful management let us deal with the enemies, and finally beat the quest. Definitely a close call!
On Thursday, I played two games of Legend of the Five Rings (L5R). With the new tournament (Kotei) season starting again soon, I figured it was time to start getting my decks a bit more stabilized (prior to the release of Twenty Festivals next month) so that I can prepare. I brought a Spider swarm deck, running a lot of 3-5 gold cost Personalities, and lots of efficient Strategies to handle particular decks in the meta. In addition, many of these cheap Spider personalities have Battle actions, which lets me stall a bit in the battle, and hopefully get into a position I can use the Strategies later in battle to win it.
Anyway, the first game was against Naj's Phoenix deck, which used Fortifications and send home actions to try to delay me from winning the game long enough for him to win by honor. The early game went pretty well for him, as I launched my first attack on turn 4, but he managed to keep his province safe (at a cost of two cards from his hand). The second turn, however, I successfully take a province, and at this point I had so many bodies on the table he couldn't draw enough ways to stop me, and soon conceded.
Second game was against Kyle's Unicorn deck. I start the game getting pretty gold screwed, only getting a Kumite Grounds to bolster my economy, whereas Kyle was up and running by the second turn. He recruited a personality (an infantry personality, critically), and a Bring Them Forward. I get more gold on turn 2, but Kyle loads up on Followers, and takes one of my provinces Turn 3.
My Turn 3 sees me recruit a Daigotsu Teruo and a Kokujin Dairu, the former of which I immediately use to get my hand overfilled. He attacks again, seeing only a single 3F personality... and I proceed to use a few fear and bow effects to weaken his personality. He responds by dropping more followers on the Personality... and I finish by sending him home (twice) using Ideological Differences.
Buying all those followers leaves him no gold to buy Personalities during the Dynasty Phase, and on my turn, I recruit a Ninube Shiho, another small guy, and more gold. Afraid of Shiho (a non-Cavalry personality can't avoid him!), Kyle doesn't attack next turn... but I do with everything on my next turn. He defends with a few guys, and immediately Fears out Shiho to prevent me from dumping all his followers. A long battle later, and with his hand nearly empty, I barely manage to break the province and take out his two non-Follower filled Personalities. We're now at one province down apiece... and I finish the turn recruiting 4 (!) more Personalities.
Kyle, realizing that the tide is turning against him, decides to attack while Shiho was bowed. I blow a few Battle actions that are already on the table, in order to 'draw him in' more (for instance, having him recruit his Reserve personality AND use the Fear effects he has on the table). I then use Sudden Movement to bring in Shiho, use Shiho's Battle action to get the followers off of his personality... and handily win the battle. With no army, and facing an ever growing horde, Kyle concedes.
Overall, a pretty good week of gaming! Next week may not see me play as many card games, but the following week is sure to be filled with more!
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