Francois popped by for an evening of Tick-watching and light cardboard flopping. We settled in for a trio of duels.
We began with Initial D. I still had my tricked-out Trueno, with a Power of 8 and a Traction of 9 and a heap of high-level maneuvers. Francois had a much smaller, cheaper car and more stylin’ car, with mods that increased the counter value of his maneuvers.
The fact that the car was cheaper was decisive: we played on one of his tracks, and I drew the Akina Uphill Battle, which features a lot of curves (my forte), but also reduces everybody’s power by 2 (my downfall). Most of my maneuvers required power of 7 and above, which meant that I was discarding at least two or three cards per round of the game.
Nonetheless, it was a tight race that went down to the last stage, basically because my large maneuvers went a long way towards depleting Francois’ hand. Appropriately enough, I lost the last stage by discarding what was left in my hand to play “Risk It,” which Francois was able to counter with “Lucky Recovery.”
Risk was a theme in our other two games as well. In Legend of the Burning Sands, I played my first attempt at a Senpet Speed Jinn deck, which involves casting lots of cheap flying jinn to attack from the very first turn. Naturally, I only played one Jinn the entire game. Fortunately, it was on the first turn, so I was able to deplete Francois’ water right away.
Francois played a strong Moto raiding deck, and stole the water right back for me. That was the risk. I had to find a way to destroy more water than he could steal. And that’s when the secondary theme of my deck kicked in: Followers and Elephants. I played Elephants as followers on my characters, and went on the attack. As you might imagine, the pachyderms did considerable damage to the water reserves, and the defenders were rarely able to inflict sufficient retaliatory damage.
The biggest scare came when Francois played the battle omen “Voices of Ten Thousand Gods,” which reduces a follower’s strength to zero. I had planned to play “A Commander’s Courage” which doubles the strength of a follower attached to a Senpet hero, but the battle omen stymied me. Fortunately, my elephant was attached to Nepherus, who can discard omens as a battle action. So, I was free to trample away!
The wildest game was 7th Sea, which set my Corsairs-Ramming Speed deck against a Vesten boarding deck. I built up my crew, Francois built up his, and then he attacked me. I let him, and didn’t retaliate. I simply sank crew, and played damage-reducing attachments that increased my ship’s move cost, and I made sure to leave my captain untacked and my first mate alive.
When the boarding ended, all of Francois’ crew were tacked. Then I played “Ramming Speed,” which inflicts hits equal to my ship’s move cost +4 against my opponent, and then deals hits equal to the other ship’s move cost +1 against me.
That card killed off everyone but our two captains. The next turn began, and I had initiative plus another “Ramming Speed” in my hand.
For unrelated reasons, Francois declined my offer of a lift home.
Posted by Stephen