I mean, it's a post, I guess

So it may or may not be 3:16am (at least it's not 4:16am -- thanks Day Light Savings*)**. And I may or may not be extremely tired. So. I'm not going to do anything crazy for this post. I came so close to missing this week's post; I'm really glad I didn't. 8 left to go in this year after this one! Pretty crazy. Not sure what I'm going to do for next year -- I think my current gameplan is to swap to an every other week schedule, but I also might just swap back to a 'I'm going to post at random times with no set schedule' schedule. Okay, I'm going to sleep. Good night***.

***Except not really good night quite yet because I've still got to write these footnotes real quick****

****Yes, yes, the footnotes are seemingly out of order. And yes, yes, that footnote did just have a footnote.

*Really wish they would just get rid of Day Light Savings, but I will still thank the extra hour we get back every fall. Except not really because it gets dark SO early. But for that singularly night of sleep, it's quite nice, quite nice.

**Friend came in town that Ben and I haven't seen in a while, so we stayed up playing Smash Ultimate with him. 'Twas a blast. I swear, like, 93% of days this semester I've gone to bed at a good time.

Report on my other 2 Lorcana Store Championships

Wanted to report on my other two Lorcana Store Championships that I went to the two Saturdays after the one that I reported on during this blog post.

Had toooons of fun. I love Lorcana and competing in Lorcana. There's this super big tournament in Seattle happening right now and part of me wishes I had made the arrangements and up and gone. There are so many fun and intriguing decisions, and I think the meta is super cool right now. Super glad I decided to go to all three Store Championships.

2nd Store Championship:

In Swiss:

I fought against 2 aggro decks, which I feel quite comfortable against. One got really close, but I managed to get the win in the end 2-1. The other one I had a tight grip on the whole time and got a clean 2-0. 

Fought against an Emerald Steel Discard deck. Got quite lucky Game 1, I put out 2 Flynn Frenemies and my opponent didn't draw any of their removal, so I won very quickly. Game 2 was a lot closer, but a well timed Be Prepared won me the game. (Neat side story: He was looking into the company that I'm currently doing my internship for, so I got to tell him a lot of information. Felt like a neat little tender mercy for him that I got to be a part of). 

Fought my good buddy Austin who I met when first going to Lorcana tournaments. Him alongside me and my two roommates were the consistent group that went to tournaments every week. We had an extremely competitive set and I was able to clutch it out in the end 2-1:) 

My last opponent in Swiss (John, the goat) and I decided to a agree to a draw so we both got guaranteed top 8 (this is very common behavior in competitive Lorcana). Finished with the top seed.

In top 8:

My first opponent was an aggro deck, which as stated before I feel comfortable against. Won with a clean 2-0.

My 2nd round opponent was a super cool guy named Alex. We had a very tight set and he clutched it out 2-1. Some of the most fun games I've played (he stated this the following week as well). Was happy with how I played because he said he normally feels super comfortable against my deck (Ruby Amethyst) with his deck (Emerald Amethyst) and thinks the match up is heavily in his favor, so to get that close to winning was awesome. He said he was very impressed with how I played.

Final placement: 3rd.

3rd Store Championship:

In Swiss: 

Was one turn away from losing to a Queen combo-wombo, but won the turn before that happened. Won 2-0. 

Fought in the mirror match, which is such a wonky match-up. We split 1-1.

Won against a hyper aggro deck, 2-0.

Had two of the closest games you could possibly dream up, barely winning 2-0 when my opponent was at 19 lore at the end of both games (quick reminder: you need 20 to win). Heckin' wild games.

My last opponent (Tim, super cool dude) and I agreed to draw to both get guaranteed top 8. Finished with the 2nd seed.

In Top 8:

Round 1 was not somebody I wanted to fight against and I was quite nervous going into it. They played Emerald Steel Discard, and I know I won that match-up against a different player the previous week, but I don't feel comfortable in the match-up. Feel like I made some smart decisions and was able to get a dominating board presence in both games. Big Sisu (a card I added in for this tournament) being the finisher in one of them. Won 2-0 advancing into top 4.

Round 2 I fought John who was piloting Steel Sapphire. He got some really unfortunate draws and I won in a fairly anti-climatic 2-0.

Round 3. Fighting Tim piloting Ruby Sapphire. Winner takes the tournament. And I'm fighting against a good match-up for me! Too bad I lost 0-2, haha. Yes, I got some bad card draw luck, and he stated that he got some really good card draw luck, but that's the way it is sometimes. Really wanted to take home to victory, but my run ended at 2nd.

Final Results:

So in the end I placed 5th/24, 3rd/25, and 2nd/18. John totaled up the points from all the tournaments and I ended up getting 3rd overall. Tons of fun.

Winnings:

Won a $10 gift card in a drawing completely unrelated to my placement. Spent a couple bucks extra to get 2 packs with it.

Won a lot of packs (19 in total from the 3 tournaments, I believe), got some very playable cards, although nothing really pricy. Still waiting to open my first enchanted. 

Won 3 Mirabels valued around $40 each right now, one for each top 8 (picture below).

Won a Mirabel playmat for my top 2 placement (picture below).

I, uh, can't seem to find a way to rotate the images from within blogger, and I've decided to let them be the way they are.

My Staple Party Game Recommendation

Is Just One the best party game of all time? Quite possibly. Is it my favorite party game of all time? No, I really like Scattergories, but let me tell you why if I'm to recommend a party game to somebody, I will almost always bring up Just One.

Just One might just be a perfect party game. It honestly kind of blows me away. Here are some reasons why in no particular order:

1. Super flexible with player counts.

It says 3-7 on the box. 3 player games are fun, although miss some of the magic. 4 player games are good if you're up for a challenge. But 5-7 work just wonderfully. I've played games with more than 7 and it still works great, even up to 10 works great. Other games need more specific numbers*, but Just One really works fantastically with any count between 5-10, which is just so convenient.

2. Players can easily flow in and out of them game.  

New player shows up at the party? Not a problem, they can hop in at any time.

Player gets a phone call? Not a problem, they can hop out at any time.

It is simply so easy for people to come and go and needed, which is incredibly nice for a party game.

3. Variable time length.

In the rulebook it gives a specific number of rounds to play, but you can really do however many you want. Only got 10 minutes? A-okay, give it a whirl for 10 minutes. Want to play for 40 instead? Go for it! This is yet another reason it is so easy to get to the table.

4. It's incredibly simple to explain.

It legit takes, like, less than a minute to explain. Such a good thing for a party game.

5. (Practically) all ages can understand and play.

Young? Middle-aged? Old-ish? Don't matter. I've seen all age ranges have a blast with this game.

6. It's simply fun.

Perhaps the most important of them all. It's just a lot of fun. Literally every individual I've introduced to this game has a great time. Literally every single one. Okay, I guess my gramps struggled understanding what was going on so he didn't have a great time, but besides that: Literally every single one.

Seriously, I swear this is the best party board game of all time. It blows me away. And it's sold at a very affordable $20-25 (amazon link here). Like, it's actually insane. If I had to name good qualities for a party game, Just One has every single one.

Is it even a game though?? Or just an activity?? Perhaps I shall have to write a different blog post about some thoughts on this fascinating ongoing discussion of what counts a game and what doesn't.

*See last week's blog post.

Best Player Counts in Board Games

Decided to bold the most important sentences so you don't have to read the whole thing to get the gist because there's a whole lot of fluff in here, I think.

So I started typing up a different blog post and then one of the footnotes was growing too long with no sign of slowing down, so I decided to make it it's own blog post, haha. And then when I post the original blog post presumably next week, I'll just link this blog post as the footnote, haha. Granted, I realize now that I could probably do that with several different parts of said blog post, but for now here's this one.

I find it is frequently difficult to get the proper number of people for many board games. Specifically party games.

Many other games work just fine and dandy with 2-3, which is quite easy to obtain (well, depending on how much the people around you like board games, but that isn't the point of this post).

But, man, party games just have weird sweet spots that can be tough to hit exactly.

Now this is not to say the games listed below don't get to the table, they most certainly do. I'm just saying how sometimes needing a specific player count is tough and a little awkward. This fact is important for a small part of my next week's post and I've chosen to talk about it in-depth here.

Captain Sonar. Fantastic game, love it tons. It really does feel like you're in a submarine hunting another submarine. But you really want exactly 8. Two teams of 4 with each team member on a specific task is just prime. Any less than that and you start sacrificing. 6 is the second choice as two teams of 3 with one person on the two easiest tasks works just fine. 7 is a bit awkward because one team inherently gets an advantage. Anything less than 6 is just a no go.

Secret Hitler doesn't work well on odd player counts (I think every odd player count?) due to a silly bad guy exploit. If the bad guys kill a good guy, then half the players remaining are good and half are bad. Tied votes are considered failed. From there on out the bad guys just vote no over and over again, effectively flipping over the top policy over and over again. With an overwhelming number of bad guy policies, they are very likely to win. Of course, if no one knows this exploit than the game still functions. 

On top of that, social deduction games similar to Secret Hitler really want higher player counts. 7+. Lower than that is just not prime. And with Secret Hitler needing to avoid odd player counts, that leaves 8 or 10. 10 could be argued to be too many, although does work just fine. So 8 or 10 players it is. 8 (or 10) players being the only actually good player count for Secret Hitler is kind of rough. Especially when the box says 5-10 players is possible. It looks so easy to get a group of 5-10 players, but really it's 8 or 10. 

Just talked to my roommate about prime number of people in a game of Avalon and he said 7. He even went on to say that pretty much every other player count is arguably just not good. 8 is fine, he says, but can be rough due to some game balance issues, 9 would probably be his 2nd choice. And then 10 is just too many people with too few rounds. 5 and 6 are just not enough players.

Letter Jam you really want 5 or 6. Any less than that and it just doesn't work as well with so many letters not tied to peoples words.

Now perhaps it's not that big of a deal; even my more specified numbers are pretty feasible. It just makes it a tad more uncomfortable to get to the table sometimes, something that a party game definitely wants to avoid.

Of course, again, reiterating, that it's not that big of a deal. I've had great 3 or 4 player games of Letter Jam. Great games of Avalon and Secret Hitler with all player counts above 6. And Captain Sonar working just fine with 6-8 is honestly a pretty good range. So, yeah. Not big deals. But the point I'm trying to get across will hopefully make more sense in my next blog post. 

Oh, and happy late 24th birthday to me, I suppose.

My First Lorcana Store Championship

Went to a local Lorcana Store Championship yesterday! I had to miss the afternoon session of General Conference for it, but it's okay, I'll watch them soon.

Here's a quick recap of how the tournament went:

Played a Ruby Amethyst Bounce Control deck! I'll link my decklist here. I plan on making a couple card swaps for the next two store championships that I plan on attending this upcoming two Saturdays. I sold pretty much all my other expensive/meta-relevant cards in the other colors, so Ruby Amethyst it was! But that works out just fine because I enjoy its flexible playstyle and it's a meta-relevant deck right now.

There were 24 attendees. It was Swiss-Style for 4 rounds, and then they did a top 8 cut. The top 8 proceed into a single elimination bracket.

My Round 1 opponent was a person whose husband plays a lot of Lorcana. They play it with them, but this was actually their first tournament. They played a hyper-aggro Amber Amethyst deck. I got a couple really helpful Brawl's and Fox's that kept their aggro under control enough to win 2-0.

My Round 2 opponent was a fellow Ruby Amethyst player. Overall, did not feel super happy with how I played this match-up. Took some risks that really back fired. Maybe that was just me being unlucky, idk, but I lost game 1. I got a solid curve game 2 and just played much safer to win game 2. We didn't have time to finish game 3, so it went in as a draw.

My Round 3 opponent played an interesting aggro Amber Ruby deck. Felt like it was pretty much just worse aggro Amber Amethyst. Won with an easy 2-0. We played a friendly game after against a different deck of theirs. That deck was so goofy funny, I love it. It was a deck revolving around The Queen - Disguised Peddler.

My Round 4 opponent, I fought an opponent who was undefeated thus far. Super cool dude, we talked quite a bit while waiting after our round. He played Sapphire Ruby Control non-Sisu oriented. Sapphire Ruby is always scary, but I managed to get enough early presence game 1 and game 2 to win 2-0. Was very happy with that victory.

Which means I made top 8. As the 2 seed! Very exciting.

My Round 1 in top 8 was against a cool dude named Ryan who I lost to in a weekly back at the beginning of the year. He was also playing Sapphire Ruby Control, but he did have Sisus. We had a very very competitive set with back and forth gameplay. All came down to game 3.

I was slowly able to get some questers on board getting work in as he continues to ramp up. And then the ending of the game happened. And, well, I'll just post a screenshot of my messages I sent to my two friends Joe and Tyler after the game happened:

(Lady Tremaine and Tamatoa and Lucky Dime and Goat links for reference. Note: You need 20 lore to win)

So freakin' sad. I had it! But, alas, tcg's do be like that sometimes. Did some rough math, and it was about a 5% chance that I draw two uninkables in a row there.

Had a blast overall though! Love getting in some competitive game playing in. Super satisfying. Got 5th overall (due to my 2nd seed in the final bracket, I placed higher than the other people who lost at the same time as I did in top 8), which is definitely respectable. Excited to hopefully compete in two more store championships the upcoming two Saturdays!

This time around, I won 4 packs (all of which were garbage), a Nala Promo, and a Mirabel Promo (scroll down slightly to see the promo version). Not sure how much Mirabel Promo will sell for yet, but we shall see.