Well, it certainly has been a while since I posted here. And, sadly, I have little new news to report. Oh, there is one thing: a new card game. A new, random, apparently dumb card game. It is the Shaman King collectible card game.

Unbelievable. Un. Believe. Able. To not bother reading my thoughts on this game of War with illustrations and more complex rules, skip the next few paragraphs.

"This card game is similar to War. . . ." That is taken directly from the first page of the game's rulebook. What could Upper Deck (the game's makers) possibly be thinking by putting that in the rulebook? Or putting that anywhere a potential player might read it? Or even likening this game to the most random, luck-driven card game on the face of the planet? They DO want people to buy this, right?

Anyway, the $20 starter comes with two randomly inserted shaman, who represent the players, enough cards to comprise two decks, and a disk with 2 full episodes of Shaman King on it. I wonder which two . . . anyway, basically one player makes the starting attack, and the defender gets an extra free point of furyoku in exchange for defending first. I should point out that the player who attacks first is said to "kick", and the player who defends first and gets that one more free energy is said to "receive". Why did they have to call it "receive"? Why not just "defend" or something? That just reminds me of . . . never mind. *sigh* ><

Anyway, the defending player flips cards from his main deck one at a time into one of his three energy zones, starting from the lowest (green) and on to the highest (red). If the card he flips into the green zone is incapable of stopping the incoming starting strike card, he flips a card into the yellow zone, and so on. If he fails to stop the strike in the green, yellow, and red zones, the opponent scores a point and then the defending player chooses to "kick" or "receive". If the card flipped is a strike capable of stopping the starting strike, it does so and now counterattacks the opponent. The defending player is now attacking and vice versa. The game goes back and forth as such.

These strikes cost energy to play, which you "replenish" while attacking. To make a complicated explanation shorter, the game rewards the attacking player by "replenshing" more energy for attacking through more of the opponent's energy phases. In other words, I would get more energy back if the opponent failed to counterattack in 2 energy phases than in 1. While this makes sense; I replenish energy as my shaman/avatar/whatever the series calls it beats on the opponent, in terms of game balance this only makes it harder to come back from a losing position. Well, maybe not so lopsided since this also punishes weak, unsuccessful strikes with less energy. And the opponent could "focus" the card he flipped over on defense, essentially adding it to the pool of energy on that level.

Also, there are "teamwork" and "advantage" cards which you could possibly flip over, in addition to strikes. These also cost energy to play/cast/whatever, and are like spells and enchantments in Magic or spells cards in YGO.

Essentially the game is messed up because there appears to be only one way to win: scoring points off your opponent. And there is only one way to do that: have your strikes be bigger and better than the opponent's. With this in mind, either everyone will play the same shaman and the game will be completely draw dependent (which it already is, since it is like War and you have no hand of cards) . . . or it will not really matter which shaman you play and everything will be pretty much equal. And games will be draw dependent. Or flip dependent. Granted, I should probably play the game myself before making final judgment, but having watched two games which looked pretty much the same . . . yeah.


review of Shaman King card game ends here


In other news . . . this weekend has too much shit happening at the same time. I want to go to Carnival/Variety Show. I also want to play in release events of Betrayers of Kamigawa on saturday and Marvel Knights on sunday. Bah. I need to be able to clone myself or something.

*sigh* I do not know. I have been playing Vs. for around eight months now, close to half as long as Vs. has been out on the market. People seem to think I am good at this game, I heard once that even Jeff thinks I am good at this. But . . . the more I play, the more wrong about me those people seem to be. My performance at the last (and first in Hawaii) major tournament of Vs. seems to have been a fluke. I went undefeated both days, until losing and being eliminated in the semifinals on Day 1 and getting smashed by Dane in the final round of Day 2. Regardless of what they say, I doubt I am on the level of Dane or Jeff, and certainly leaps and bounds behind Matt. I guess I have to play some more and keep training. And my M:tG skills . . . "skills". Do not even ask.

Other than that . . . yeah. Everything else seems to be in order. The war for survival continues.

Only now, it is a war I intend to win. < /cool ending to entry>