So, I'd never been in a tournament before. I have two "streaks" in me--sometimes I'm very competitive, but only when I try to avoid conflict and hypercompetitiveness. If someone's going to freak out over losing, gosh darn it, I want that person to be me.
Still, I was intrigued reading about this new CCG--sorry, TCG--on the block, and wanted to give it a try. No, not World of Warcraft, but The Spoils. The Spoils is set in a kind of steampunk Victorain world, with various factions (Bankers--represented by literal fat cats; Mad Scientists; Arcane Cultists; etc) vying for control of the world. The art is pretty neat; the game has a sense of humor to it--sometimes wry, sometimes juvenile, but I like to see this often overwrought genre taking itself a wee bit less seriously.
So, I was interested, and I learned earlier that there'd be a tournament on Saturday night--first prize, a special The Spoils iPod. I figured I'd give it a shot.
So, 7 PM came around, and the store called everyone to the front desk who wanted to play in the tournament. There I am, standing tall. 7:15, and Carl the manager starts going around trying to drum up some interest. Eventually he finds four of us ready to go, and I see my chances at the iPod dwindle away.
It's a sealed-deck tournament. The four of us go to the table and look over our cards. Two of us had never played before in our lives--me, and a guy named Jeffrey. (I think.) Another guy had played once or twice in the "Beta" release from a few weeks ago. The fourth, a kid (15 y/o?) named John, had apparently played a couple dozen times and hadn't signed up right on the dot since he was stuck somewhere studying his spoiler sheets.
The three of us older (gah!) folk sit around, sorting our cards and talking about our favorite defunct CCGs. (Me: Mythos and NetRunner. Jeffrey was a Lot5R and Hecatomb man. I forget what the third guy liked.) John, meanwhile, is studying his starter and two boosters with the intensity of a nuclear physicist in the lab.
Going through my cards, I felt a little overwhelmed trying to figure out what to play. I thought the mad scientists--or, more properly, the Gearsmiths--looked promising. I should interject here with
I did not take this advice. Neither did Jeffrey. I'll ruin a little suspense and say that we finished fourth and third, respectively. It was generally conceded that I came in fourth because I had the most Gearsmith cards; Jeffrey came in third because he had the second-most. The other two played for the iPod because they had no Gearsmiths, and thus were fairly competitive with each other. Now, they're not totally useless cards, I hasten to add. They're just slow. These games rewarded fast decks that brought out lots of creatures that prick you to death. The Gearsmiths let you build a very efficient infrastructure over time that brings in the Huge Bombs...if you survive that long. You can probably construct a deck that brings the Gearsmiths to the fore, but in a random draw I don't think that's very likely.
After the first game, I started to wonder if I picked the wrong factions to work with. By the end of the second game, I knew I did. In fact, I'm pretty sure--looking back on it--that if I had played with the cards I considered but discarded, not only would I have had a vastly better deck, but I might have actually had the best deck for this particular tournament. I left some great stuff in the box.
There was a round-robin--three games--and then a bracket for the finals. I lost my previous three games, mostly horribly. In one game I was wiped out without dealing a single frickin' point of life hits to the other guy. It was just nasty. Meanwhile, John, the kid, is rolling. He is one with the cards. Not a single move is wasted. He deals out catastrophic hits to us with a calm, but intense heat. It's kind of disturbing. Jeffrey managed to eke out a draw against him--the clock ran out. I, of course, as the fourth seed in the bracket faced John in the first elimination round.
And, gosh darn it, I darn near pulled off the amazing victory. At the very end, just before I got wiped out, I looked down in my hand and discovered that I'd let a powerful card moulder in my hand for who knows how many turns that would have destroyed most of his creatures. And, within minutes, he played a combo that eliminated me.
So I went oh-for-four.
I imagine I'll have a few hits in the next few weeks looking for The Spoils tips and info. To the inevetable complaint that I'm an oh-for n00b offering "pro tips," I can only agree that I have no place doing so. If you won a sealed deck tournament with an all-Gearsmiths deck, I salute you. Just keep on tryin' that. Did I make horrible mistakes? Clearly. I doubt I did anything really "right" the whole night. Frankly, if you're looking for real advice on how to play The Spoils, I can only encourage you to look elsewhere.
So did I like the game? I sure did. The aesthetics are nice, of course, and that always helps. (The best part? The backs of the cards. I'm not kidding. It's a magnificent design--totally abstract, like "real" playing cards, but has a nice kind of Victorian gothic look to it. I'd buy a poker deck with these backs.) I call Mythos and Netrunner "storytelling" CCGs, and M:TG a "fighting" game; I generally prefer the former, but for whatever reason this "fighting" game kind of drew me in. I bought enough cards to make a semi-plausible constructed deck for casual-plus play; that's about all the investment I'll probably make, although I might enter another sealed deck tournament if the entry fee is low enough (and the prizes spiffy enough).
I had fun, despite being slaughtered. That's a sign of a quality game, in my book.
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