Swings and roundabouts. Last weeks supremacy in the two-player EVE CCG bouts turned into quite a different story this week, and as I fear, the introduction once more of the third fleet caused a great deal of difficulty for my predominantly early-zerg Minmatar strike force.
It was Caldari and Amaar opponents this time, and I'm quickly seeing that having two different decks, or at least a swap in and out 'sidedeck', a sub-set of extra cards, purely aimed at beefing my little throwaway single-enemy deathsquad up a bit, might allow it to hold it's own once the larger fleets of my enemies have built up a bit, in multiplayer games.
Two games of three players were played, and one two player (me vs Caldari), and in both, I did reasonably well during the early stages.
In the first match, I played and then occupied the Stain Outer Region very early. Card Text: Opponnents cannot play Outer Regions. I figured that keeping extra regions out of play would favour me, since previous experience showed that I seem to do best when not trying to hold down vast tracts of the galaxy with my underpowered ships. Also, I need to use my Ambush commands, and I know the Caldari player will try to play Khanid Kingdom as soon as able, forcing me to pay him lots of money to activate Ambush. This early lockdown and a lucky Gravity Storm had the effect of starving the Amaar player of income, and the Caldari (flush with plenty of locations attached to his starbase) swatted him shortly after. That just left me, and the Caldari, who by now, had built up a more powerful fleet than me.
There definitely seems to be a very distinct pivotal point in any game of EVE: CCG. You build up, and build up, and build up, and then charge! Trouble is, it's a very mathematical exercise really, and if you bugger up your sums, or get hit with an unlucky news card, you're screwed, and will lose most of your ships, and be unlikely to survive the following counter-attack. I suspect I wasn't paying quite enough attention at this point, but one thing led to another, and he wiped my fleet out, probably in counter-attack to a spectacular misunderstanding/miscount of the cards arrayed on the table.
Second match saw me take the early hit, having to use up all my spaceships to bring down the Caldari's Ferox, a big-hitter capable of mashing whole starbases, and being eliminated one turn later by the rest of the Caldari's smaller ships.
The Amaar and Caldari then went into Irresistible Force, Immovable Object mode again, and the Amaar conceded about an hour and a half later, himself having gotten some very obscure rules interpretation, or maths, wrong it seemed, and being unable to effectively continue, after his fleet was wiped out by a similar Caldari counterattack.
The two-player game, ever a brutal 'step wrong and you're screwed' type of affair, I conceded three turns in, having stupidly thrown away my initial three ships against one of his ships with an Ambush command activated that I didn't notice, or something. It's unlikely I could have recovered form such a big early loss, and it was getting late anyway.
All in all, the Caldari owned everyone, partly because of his skilled play and cunning deck design, but mostly because he could read and count, I think. Oh well, more next time. I think my deck is fairly sound - just me I worry about!
Card of the Night for me this time, was Moon Harvester, a Starbase Structure, Uncommon, Cost 3isk, +1 Starbase Shield, cannot be used by Caldari, and for each opponent turn during which your Starbase took no damage, you get +2 Isk income. Handy in a two-player game, this really picks up with more players, as it kicks in for each opponent. I had two of these out at one point, and was gaining 8isk in between my own turns, in addition to my normal income step. Easily enough to get all my ships out in preparation for huge assault against a bemused Caldari, which subsequently went very badly wrong, and lost me the game. Still, handy cards to have!
Most annoying card of the night was the Caldari Griffin, a fairly cheap frigate with 5 defence - just enough to make life very difficult for my lowbie attack ships, and with an Ambush of 2, which I didn't notice and which cost me the last game. Grr!