Vampire on the mind

I failed to distinguish between Nergal and Mysql at a glance today - I think my subconscious is trying to tell me something (whether it's about vampire or MySQL is open for debate, though).

Motorcycling

The bits that aren't either terrifying, frustrating or miserably uncomfortable are frickin awesome (and sometimes things are awesome anyway).

Wednesday's Social game

I arrived somewhat late, due to SANUM stuff, and, with various people leaving early, and such, was only able to play 2 games, one 4 player and one (surprisingly slow) 3 player game. In both, I tried the !Malk deck, which I'm trying to fix (I had a fairly successful 90 card version, which I trimmed to 80 cards, and ended up making it overly finicky and fragile).

In the first game, Dan (Assamite melee weapon bruise and bleed) (starting) was bleeding me, bleeding Olivier (Tzimisce bleed), bleeding Roberta (!Brujah bruise and bleed). The combat setup, a large number of titles on the table, and not drawing stealth until quite late in the game meant I never really got much momentum going. Olivier ousted Roberta, who's deck struggled to make much of an impression on Dan's Assamites, which farmed quite efficiently. Dan's deck used Seraph Seconds and Tattoo Signals to do a ridiculous number of actions a turn, most of which was spent on setup. I was eventually able to oust Olivier when he transferred out an extra minion, and brought himself into lunge range on one of the few turns I found myself with stealth in hand, but, by that stage, I was struggling to keep my minions out of torpor, and was quickly overwhelmed by Dan's deck. Dan and Olivier bouncing minions into torpor, with Olivier's Tension in the Ranks on the table, helped my single lunge as well, but, ultimately, I took too long to oust him.

In the second game, I (starting) was bleeding Robert?'s Akunanse bloat deck, bleeding Dan playing a Saulot deck. I started off much better this game, and was able to combo a coma and diablerie to burn Saulot, which was great. Robert's deck was able to farm very successfully (Parthenon plus Secret horde plus blood dolls meant he was regularly pulling back 3 or 4 pool a turn). I made a couple of tatical errors as well - I should have force him to burn the Major Boon much earlier, and I should not have blocked a particular rescue attempt - I was hoping he would put more pressure on Dan, who was allowed to recover from having Saulot burnt with very little effort, and was ultimately ousted. Dan did eventually oust Robert, although, with the bloat of both decks, it did take a long time. A somewhat annoying game from my perspective, mainly because I should have managed to do better from the position I found myself in.

In both games, I drew too little stealth, and too many untap cards, which highlights a major problem with the card distribution. I also need to tweak the balance between vote and bleed a bit, since the deck ends up struggling with both not quite enough vote push or bleed push to finish off the prey. Probably pushing it to be a bit more stealth bleedy, and keeping the votes as a bloat and occasional aggressive sideline is the way to go. The crypt may also need tweaking - while Aristotle is very nice, he does tend to attract table hate, and the lack of a title is an issue. Perhaps replacing him with an extra Korah and a couple of other titled vamps is the way to go.

Misc Geekery

(or wasting time with elementtree)

Like many people, I have attempted and pretty much utterly failed to maintain the classic list of links style web-page. This is most notable example is my list of web-comics I read, which is both out of date, and horribly incomplete.

Part of this, is, of course, the effort to manually create the webpages needed, and fill in the content. However, since galeon's bookmark are stored in nicely structured xml, and I group the comics I follow in a not completely broken manner, I hit on the bright idea of pulling the bookmarks out using elementtree, and, furthermore, I can use galeon's bookmark notes to do the documenting about the comics.

So, after a couple of hours of prodding (much of it spent trying to get an overly complex design working before an important light-bulb went on), I now have a little python script that pulls all the data out, and writes a nice, standards conforming html file with all details - Now I just need to actually go through and sort out my comics bookmarks a bit, and I'll actually have a much more maintainable way of generating the list.

Of course, when I eventually move away from galeon (I've been using epiphany exclusively on my laptop for a while now, so it's likely to be not too far off), I'll have to tweak the script, and probably fiddle with the bookmark's conversion a bit to get all the comments across properly, but such is progress.

ah, the idle amusements of a life around computers.
(and to think I'd planned to spent the evening working on Sutekh)

Curse you, James Barrie

For never finishing "Shall we Join the Ladies".

Yes, I knew it was an incomplete play (it even says so in the stage directions). That is of absolutely no comfort whatsoever.

And I can't even swear revenge, what with the march of history and all that.

Darn and botheration.

VtES social game report

(A "relying on blogger not to lose my notes" post)

So, Monday's social game was quite fun. I managed to fit 4 games in, the last (admittedly a 3 player), in just over 35 minutes, and tried different decks each time. I didn't try my !Malk deck, which I had wanted to play, since I somehow left out 2 vampires when reconstructing it, which was somewhat daft.

In the first game, I was playing an experimental Samedi deck. The table was Phillip, playing a !Salubri deck, bleeding Brendan's !Tor combat deck bleeding my Samedi, bleeding Marc's potence combat deck. A very combat heavy table. The Samedi deck didn't do particularly well, which, given the thrown together nature of it, is not that surprising. Damage prevention was a major issue, so I should prehaps add some Fortitude to the deck idea. I think there's a potentially fun vampire bloat module using Genina + Compress + Amaranth + Ritual of the Bitter Rose, and then rescue Genina if the blood hunt sends her to topor, but I need more Amaranths and Rituals to make that work. The concept of using Reanimated corpses and Shambling Hordes didn't come out at all, which partly reflects how the deck struggled. Marc's potence deck eventually swept the table, thanks to dealing vast amounts of damage, and gradually building up a stock of useful devices to boost bleed.

The second game saw me playing my Blood Brothers deck, bleeding Brendan with a Settite deck, bleeding Val's Eze bloat deck, bleeding Phillip's experimental deck, bleeding James' !Brujah bleed deck (I think I started, although that may be incorrect). Val's bloat strategy worked exteremely well, while Phillip's deck never really got going. I was able to oust Brendan, using Walk of Caine for a 5 bleed, but ran into the problem of not being able to fill up blood quickly enough to put pressure on Val. Having Angelo Banished twice in the game certainly didn't help me, either. I should look at adding the Sermon of Caine's, to get blood redistribution, and I need some additional pool gain (maybe a Powerbase Chicago?). I'd dearly love to have some Hungry Coyotes for the Hermana's hunting, but that will probably require searching eBay, and a secure ahven or two for Angelo is probably also a good idea, since the deck is heavily reliant on him. Anyway, 1 VP for that deck is not bad, and I can blame Brendan for not putting enough pressure on Val for my later troubles :).

The third game saw Val, playing a weenie gun deck, bleeding James (the deck never got going, but looked bruise-bleed'ish), bleeding Phillip, playing a Nossie bruise bleed deck, bleeding me, playing my Toreador Alexandra star vampire deck, with Val starting. Val got off to a very fast start, as the weenie's are prone to do, and, by adding camera phones, was setting up to be very dangerous. James never got into the game, not being able to defend against Val succesfully. I had a good opening few draws, pulling Alexandra early, being able to minion tap her, enchant down, and pull Elliot quickly as well, followed by another Minion Tap, leaving me with two minions,. Alexandra's untap ability and surprisingly good pool levels. While I never had the vote lock, since Phillip pulled out several titles, the early pressure from Val, and a well timed Scorn of Adonis enabled me to get a Kine through. A couple of bleeds, and I was able to oust Val before he ousted James. I did have a uncovered haven slapped on Alexandra, but was able to draw enough strike combat ends to survive that. James was quite weak, and I was able to get a couple of Aching Beauties down, so I ousted him quickly. Phillip had got a Army of Rats into play, but I was generating pool fast enough that I could cope. In general, the cards were very kind to me, in addition to the two minion taps, I drew three Aching Beauties, and both the Hunting Ground and the Art Museum quite early. which helped me keep my vampires sufficiently healthy. Due to the number of minions, the endgame between Phillip and me got quite tight, but, with two minions with Aching Beauties, I was able to oust him successfully. Despite not having the vote dominance the deck usually has, I'm quite pleased with how it went. Had Val been my predator, though, things would likely have gone rather poorly for me. Like any star vampire deck, the Toreador deck is rather fragile, but it can be very effective.

The final game was a three player game between me, playing my Ahrimane deck, bleeding Simon, playing his !Salubri deck, bleeding James, playing Micheal's Osebo deck. This game was rather madcap, since we were pushing to be over by midnight, and only started at just after 11:30 pm (in the end, me finished at 0:06, which was't a bad effort). I was able to sweep the table, thanks largely to how the table interaction fell out - James, while doing quite a bit of damage, never got enough blood back onto his minions, so was scrambling to keep them out of torpor by the end. Simon suffered from having a minion burnt in combat early, and I was able to get a Army of rats in paly, and defended it for long enough for it to significantly reduce his pool. I also was able to get good use out of the Carrion Crows + Aid from Bats combo, sprinkled with a few Strength of bear's + Scorpion Stings, so I was able to do enough damage in combat to be OK. I did have several vampires got to topor, and one vampire burnt. I also drew Ohoyo for the first time since I started using the deck. He provided some useful additional combat options, and the ability to swap him in to a combat was most useful. While he was burnt after only a few turns, he did enough damage to be worth the cost, and it allowed to to play a Vulture's Buffet with good effect. I eventually was able to play Tier of Souls, which, with the added bleed, gave me sufficient momentum to oust Simon and then James. A game, which, despite ultimately sweeping the table, was quite tight, and generally good fun. I think the Ahrimane deck is actually shaping up reasonably well now. While not A-class, it's got enough going for the bruise and bleed option to be quite dangerous when things go it's way.

Humanity

I'm usually fairly upbeat about humanity. I generally believe that most people are pretty decent, and so forth, despite the, at times, overwhelming evidence to the contrary. On days when I have to be early, though, this tends to be much less true.

While part of this is due to my just not being an early morning person, and the consequent bad mood that puts me in, much of the blame is due to having to deal with early morning traffic. The selfishness, lack of forethought, general stubbornness and sheer stupidity to be seen in a few minutes of driving is enough to severely strain my tolerance.

Of course, this raises all sorts of questions: Is driving merely well suited to bringing out the worst in people? Are people always like this, and I just don't notice most of the time? Is it just because I'm really irritable at that time of the morning (and usually running late)? All of them?

Probably the only firm conclusion that can be drawn is I really do need to work harder at avoiding early mornings.