June 2018 – AggroChat

Battle Box Playtest

June 28, 2018 by Belghast

So last night I did a thing… and unfortunately did not stop to take any photos of said thing I did. I’ve said before that we have a friend in town and have been occasionally meeting him for dinner. This friend happens to play Magic the Gathering and last night we met up at one of our favorite Mexican restaurants that is not super busy on week nights… and commandeered the table for a significant amount of time. In theory we got there around 5:30 which means it probably took until 6 for us to get our food and eat it… then we hung out playing magic for a couple hours leaving sometime after 8. Thankfully I am in there often enough and tip well enough that the wait staff did not bat an eye at us doing this.

Firstly I am pretty sure that my friend is a way more serious magic player than I am. I would probably put me in the collector niche that likes to play weird and quirky decks but not really going to make much headroom at a Friday Night Magic because I am not super focused on the meta. I did not however actually bring my “real” decks but instead something else for us to try out. Some time ago I watched the above video from the Professor and it planted an idea in my head. We have a bunch of folks at work that are former magic players or ones that were interested in potentially finding out more about it. That said most people didn’t really have decks anymore… and most definitely not decks all at the same power level.

The theory was to assemble a series of decks that were of roughly equal power level and try and create a sort of starter magic experience out of it so we could drop in and play a few games over lunch without much effort. This didn’t really gain much traction until I happened upon the Tribal Warfare Battle Box set from Card Kingdom. One of the cool things for me personally about the Ixalan block was that it added a bunch of interesting Tribal cards and combinations, since theme decks have always been a thing I enjoyed greatly. This set of decks included White Black Vampires, Red Black Pirates, Green Red Dinosaurs, and Blue Green Merfolk… giving a pretty wide range of play styles and card types. So I assembled this batch of decks into an Ultimate Guard Stack ‘n’ Safe box leaving two of the six slots for counters and dice and created a packaged experience.

I still need to get something to number the decks with but in theory the slots are going to be numbered 2,3,4,5 and each players start by rolling a d6. Whoever rolls highest chooses “play or draw” but also begins the picking of decks. There still need to be some working out the kinks but the theory is a little something like this…

Roll 1 – You get to choose the deck your opponent is going to play, after choosing re-roll to determine your own selection
Roll 2 – You play the deck in slot 2
Roll 3 – You play the deck in slot 3
Roll 4 – You play the deck in slot 4
Roll 5 – You play the deck in slot 5
Roll 6 – You get first pick from any of the decks

Now there are some problems with this… I was wanting to go with the whole “botch” roll concept but it doesn’t seem like it will work out so I might shift things to the slots being numbered 1-4 and 5 being the choose any deck and 6 be choose your opponents deck. That makes sense given that you want the quirky one to override the other options numerically. Whatever the case I listed how we played last night and more or less it seemed to work out just fine. We started off with three rounds of White/Black Vampires vs Blue/Green Merfolk and they seemed like extremely even match-ups with me winning the first one and not quite getting the cards I needed to win in the last two. Next up we played Green/Red Dinosaurs vs Black/Red Pirates… and once again over the course of the three rounds the two decks felt extremely even.

I am super thankful to my friend for helping me play test this concept and I think it is finally read for prime time to start trying it out at work. Ultimately the Card Kingdom Battle decks seem really fun, and while they were slower than the decks he is used to playing… they still had just the right amount of power. Ultimately what I was hoping was for matches that lasted long enough to allow players to get a feel of the game rather than simply getting shut down on turn three. Feeling like you don’t have a chance is the sort of thing that makes learning magic against a veteran player an extremely frustrating concept. These relatively balanced battle decks really do give the feeling that you have all of the power you need… you just have to get things to work together in the right combination to build your win condition. Regardless it was an extremely fun night and were the AC not on the fritz at the restaurant we would have potentially stayed longer.

Always a Blink

June 27, 2018 by Belghast

That feel when you catch your character in a blink animation but don’t realize it until you go to post the picture. Oh well.. you get sleepytime Belghast… or maybe he is just frustrated that he has to kill another batch of cultists to close yet another anchor. Last night I continued on with my journeys in Deshaan and wrapped up the main story. There are still a few areas of the map that I have not explored and turned the black icon to white signifying that I have completed it. So I fully expect to spend a night doing some basic mop of of quests but unfortunately that likely will not be tonight. Tonight is the night I am meeting friends to play Magic the Gathering at a local restaurant… that I am hoping is not terribly busy. There is a group that meets there to play Dominos… and I am hoping that it is going to be perfectly copacetic to sit there and play MTG.

One of the weirdest things about Elder Scrolls Online is the way all of the screenshots end up being my character off to one side and then showing off what is happening in the background. I mean I could take a shot of my backside… but this always seemed like a better option to turn and face the virtual camera. There is always the option of zooming in to first person and stowing my weapons to take a screenshot, but I rarely actually do that. Instead I do this sorta selfie mode where I have my character to one side of the screen and a pretty picture going on in the background. In a way it feels more touristy than the standard screenshot faire, like “here is me at this place” sort of feel that I dig. So much of this game is about me wandering around and finding interesting sights… and because of that especially it just sorta fits.

I have really enjoyed Deshaan as a zone goes with its main story arc, but I will say about the time I wrap up a zone… I am more than ready to move on past it. I honestly thought Eastmarch was next in the sequence but it seems like the quest chain is leading me to go start Shadowfen and check out some disturbance happening at Stormhold. I am wondering if they shifted the order of things at some point or if I just don’t have a main story quest for the entirety of Eastmarch. Whatever the case I need to sort out what my next destination will be, and I am still several steps away from The Rift where the Belghast namesake exists. There is a driving force in me that wants to get past the Ebonheart content so that I can in good conscience start the DLC areas… beginning with I believe Orsinium. Still having an awful lot of fun and I guess my goal is to make a significant dent in the game before Battle for Azeroth inevitably and begrudgingly pulls me elsewhere.

Exploring Deshaan

June 26, 2018 by Belghast

This is going to be a bit of a weird week for me personally, and as a result probably a weird week for the blog. My wife has a friend in town for a conference and as a result it is causing us to vary our normal patterns… and also as a result there is probably going to be significantly less gaming to talk about. Now one major exception is that said friend is a Magic the Gathering player and tentatively Wednesday night we have plans to get together and play some casual decks for fun. That will of course be probably something that I write about and I am going to attempt to take some “board state” photos as the matches go. I have built up a box of four battle decks from card kingdom that are all themed and roughly the same power level thinking it would be a quick and easy drop in and play magic option. The grand idea was to bring it up to work for some lunch time gaming, but it hasn’t actually happened yet.

Last night when we got home from Joe Momma’s one of our favorite downtown pizza places, I crashed on the sofa and played some Elder Scrolls Online. I am essentially doing what I always do which is push into the corners of the map that I have yet to explore and complete whatever quests I happen across there. I remember this game had a rather frosty reception… but in truth the longer it lives the less I can distinguish it from a normal numbered Elder Scrolls game. I realize some players approached those games in vastly different ways than I did… but for me it was always about killing monsters, collecting loot, running quests… and ABOVE ALL ELSE… wandering around aimlessly and exploring the nooks and crannies of the map. All of those game play styles are supported in ESO and as a result whenever I pick it back up it sorta feels like returning to an old friend.

One of my favorite parts about returning to the game is something that dates back to alpha. The original alpha players were referred to as the Psijic Order, and on the official game forums there is still a hidden forum area that never got closed out from that area where we occasionally chat back and forth. Similarly there was a guild formed on launch day made up of players from this same alpha pool and in truth it is one of the more active guilds that I have access to. I am super thankful that after all of this time and all of my wandering away and back again that no one punted me from it. I am deeply connected to this title because of my experiences testing it for so long, and I am happy to for some remnant of that early community that I still have access to.

I am cutting off the post short this morning as it is election day here in Oklahoma. I am going to attempt to vote before work, and if you too are having a primary I highly suggest you drag your butt to the polls as well.

Shornhelm Resident

June 25, 2018 by Belghast

When I play an MMO a curious thing seems to happen. There will be one town or public area that I tend to gravitate towards. In World of Warcraft that was Ironforge which makes sense given that was the location of the only Alliance Auction House for years. However long after that fact I still visit it pretty often because as far as a city goes it just feels comfortable. Even when I hang out in Stormwind as the later expansions have pushed us… I tend to hang out in the Dwarven Quarter because again… it feels right for my character. I am sure if you were to ask me to cobble together a roleplaying back story it would involve the fact that Belghast was a human living among Dwarves in Iron Forge as a sort of adopted son.

In Elder Scrolls online… my home is Shornhelm located in the Rivenspire zone of Daggerfall Covenant. While I chose to play an imperial for the bonuses… in my mental canon I am from Shornhelm and grew up there. It doesn’t hurt that I absolutely love the look of this town, but in truth what drew me to it in the first place was the ease of crafting. There is a Wayshrine a few steps from the Smithy and Lumbermill and around the corner from that is the bank. A few steps away is the entrance to the thieves guild, and the only thing that is inconvenient is the Enchanter for breaking down my enchants and jewelry. All told it is just a simple and convenient way to get into town and do my business without needing to run all over the place.

I spent the better part of the weekend playing Elder Scrolls Online chilling on the sofa. At this point I have gone through at least half of Deshaan which appears to be a very large zone in the grand scheme of things. Once I got past CP160 my overall champion rating doesn’t really seem to matter anymore but I believe I am somewhere around 230. This is nothing compared to the players I see roaming around in their 700s. One of the things I find interesting about this game is the fact that the champion system helps to buffer things… but if you are not paying attention and get too much hate from too many targets… you still can pretty easily die. I of course have Green Dragon Blood cheats which helps me recover from dumb things… but it isn’t like I can reliably solo the zone mini boss type mobs yet.

I am still largely playing the same way I always have as a sword and shield dragon knight favoring stamina a bit, but in truth a fairly balanced character otherwise. There are many builds that appear to be faster at killing things than mine, and I am sure I could swap stuff around to get to one of those. However this one makes me happy and it involves me charging in… debuffing the target and then just wailing on them with my weapon. I am perfectly fine with that style of gameplay. Now were I dipping my toes into PVP I am sure I would quickly be confronted with my inadequacies.

The system that I stumbled onto yesterday that I had never experienced before was the Outfit Station. I have largely been wearing an disguise that I picked up from some crates since I really dig the whole platemail robes thing that the World of Warcraft paladins had going on. As a result I have not really worried too much about what sort of gear I was wearing, but eventually wandered past a machine I had not seen before. This allows you to change the appearance of every slot you are wearing and set three levels of color dye. One of the things I deeply appreciate is that the same regions on every piece seem to be the same dye slot. In both GW2 and Rift there are times where the primary item may represent the metal pieces… but in other items it could be the secondary dye slot. In ESO it seemed to be reliable that the first slot represented the metal bits, the second the highlights, and the third any underlayment.

Ultimately what this tells me is that I need a lot more dye pots, but I am not really sure how one gets those apart from buying them on the in game store when they are offering up a color scheme you like. I cobbled together something I am largely okay with however. That said… the real win for the night was learning how to dye my disguise so that I could keep wearing my plate robes appearance but just change up the color scheme a bit. I am having yet another renaissance with this game, and I am wondering how long it will last. As my friend Squirrel said… it will likely last right up until some other game catches my attention since I do tend to flit back and forth between every MMO I have ever played. Really enjoying the story of Ebonheart Pact and it is so much more “me” than what was going on over in Aldmeri Dominion.

One parting comment… if you are out there playing some ESO feel free to add me to your friends list. If you friend @belghast it will do so at an account level, making it easier to track if I am on an alt. The truth is however… I don’t really play alts.