A different sort of card game last night, as one of the regulars had a prior engagement, leaving just the two of us playing. I'd not tried the EVE CCG in a two player game yet, and it quickly became apparent that this makes for a much quicker sort of game, although my increasing familiarity with that actual rules must be helping too.

Two teams vs three is an interesting design decision for any PvP type of game really, and seems to make an entirely different sort of war. With two teams (World of Warcraft, Star Wars: Galaxies) it's easy to see where you stand - you have one enemy, and they're definitely coming for you. This kind of straight fight is a much more immediate affair, and in our case, meant we got four matches played, compare to the one extended three player games we'd been managing in the same span. Two sided wars tend toward a quick and straight-forward victory, in general.

A three-sided war (Planetside, Dark Age of Camelot) is a more subtle and protracted thing - going after one opponent leaves you vulnerable to being stabbed in the back by the third, so careful consideration is needed of defence from two possible angles of attack, and any offensive action become a more waiting kind of game, hoping that one of the other two players will expose themselves first, letting you get an easy attack on an undefended flank. All this makes three way wars
slower, and tend toward stalemate, unless a significant advantage can be gained by one side.

I have my own cards now, but was in a bit of a hurry picking them up, so only managed to find a ‘The Day of Darkness’ starter set, containing pre-made theme decks for Amaar and Minmatar. Full card lists here. I took the Minmatar deck, as packaged, gave it a shuffle, and got to it. My opponent was Caldari mostly.

The basic Minmatar deck is becoming quite familiar to me now, and having only one opponent made things a lot easier. The basic strategy seems revolve around getting as many cheap Burst, Thrashers, Reapers and Probes out as fast as possible, and then going on a rampage. The bigger cards; Cyclone, Rupture and Thrasher aren’t quite so important, compared to the more dependable steady flow of cheap disposable frigates, it seems.

The Caldari was working at something similar, but their Frigates seem a bit more expensive and take longer to work through their Assembly stages – turns where the ship has to sit it out while it’s notionally being ‘built’, and can’t be used. He was also playing a deck that quite a few larger Cruiser ships in it, more powerful of course, but also more tricky to get out into play – costing more and taking longer to Assemble.

The first game was over in a shockingly short time. We both raised Frigates, he played something that prevented me form playing any Regions – a Starbase Structure, I think – then a region of his own. We kept driving each other out of the region with Frigate feints, when I suddenly realised I had enough Frigate attack points to kill his undefended Starbase outright. I charged, and won. Only took three Frigates to do, as well - somewhat removed from the Massive Titan-based Siege-mode hijinks that Towers in the MMO need in order to be taken out.

I think I tend to lose track of the overall objective in games like this, and RTS too – I get all fascinated with the twiddley bits, and structures and technologies, when as the end of the day, if you can apply seven or more points of damage to the Caldari Starbase, unopposed, you win. It’s that simple, and I think I was just as startled as the Caldari when it happened, perhaps six turns in. Much quicker, and leaving us time for several more games.

The second match went similarly, although the Caldari pulled ahead on income cards and could get his slightly more expensive, slight more powerful ships out in sufficient numbers to swat mine, and crush my Starbase.

Third match went on a bit longer, both of us now painfully aware of the vulnerability of our own Starbases. This caused us to build up a bit more than before, but a lucky shuffle gave me my Cyclone early on, which as a 10 Attack, 5 Defence ship, is capable of one-hitting the Starbase, if no upgrades of +Defence structures have been added. He had one Heron guarding it, but I paved the way with an ship-destroying News card, then sent in the Cyclone, getting me Best of Three.

We played a Fourth game, this time with me using the pre-constructed Amaar deck instead – totally unfamiliar to me, and my opponent using a very custom Minmatar deck. This was trickier – the Amaar starter deck, as far as I can tell, seems a more defensive sort of thing, designed to buy you time to get the big stuff out. Quite a bit of Outer Region play, and a variety of enemy Cruisers about the place. Just because you have a Minmatar Starbase, doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t field Gallente, or Amaar, or Caldari ships, and cards are allowed, or not allowed in a Minmatar deck on a card by card basis, shown by the little race symbols on the side of it. My Minmatar adversary had pulled in all manner of different ships, often in the mid-range Cruiser category – all individually powerful.

I flipped my Starbase, which then granted an attacking bonus to all ships, and tried to use this as the lynch-pin of a sudden Frigate charge on the region with the Crusiers in. I did well, although lost a vital Sensor Dampening ship (Crucifier) to a well played News card. However, this left my Starbase only really protected by a Juggenaut Platform – a passive structure that just boosts the Starbase’s hitpoints. The Minmatar hit it with some bad News, blowing a hole in my defences, and warped in while my main fleet was occupied elsewhere. It’s a traaaap! We finished on 2:2.

I think I’m quite used to how the Minmatar deck works now though, so will probably be developing that up further.


Card of the Match this time is actually four cards, which all have the same broad function – News event cards that get around defences, and go right for the throat:

  • ‘Adaster’s Disaster’ – does three points of sudden damage to target ship, ideal for one-hitting enemy low-end frigates, or tipping the balance in a fight the enemy thought they’d just won. Two of these, played together, can even kill the otherwise indestructible Guardian.
  • ‘Gravity Storm’ – destroys a target Starbase Structure. Very handy for weakening well defended Starbases (Juggernaut Platform, etc) in preparation for the real attack, or just getting rid of game effects that aren’t helping you much.
  • ‘Armageddon Project’ – Like Gravity Storm, but takes out Location cards instead – asteroids, moons, outposts etc. Good for putting a dent in the enemy’s income, or again, clearing out particular effects.
  • ‘Mind Control’ – this one destroys News cards that the enemy has just played, a kind of anti-news card, which is very useful for keeping your own cunning strategies from being stopped by a pesky Mechanic news, or similar, and ensures that all of the above cards will go through.

All four of these are ‘News’ cards, and can be played at any time, even during the opponent’s turn, and are worth it just to see the look of confident superiority crumble when you go ‘Ah…not so fast!’ and slap one down, completely derailing some very clever, very complicated massive combo attack. Just make sure you keep enough spare ISK at the end of your turn to pay for them when needed. The Minmatar starter deck contains all these cards, perhaps to compensate for it’s lack of ship-buffing News cards, but I think I’ll hunt around and try and bring the deck count up to it’s maximum of four copies of any particular card – 16 of these lurking in the deck can only help!