More EVE card game hijinks, and this time, two matches, two players each. Game one went much the way the two-player fights seem always to, with myself, as Minmatar, with my usual and only minimally refined Frigate Swarm deck, pitted against a continually evolving and somewhat disjointed Caldari opponent deck.

Each of the four races does seem to have an underlying theme to their cards on the whole, and strategies that suggest themselves. I've figured out mine quite comfortably now, and for Minmatar, it really does seem to be about getting cheap ships out early and often, and not getting too attached to them, as seen by this game, where I held for a brief spell, played 7 points of Kamikaze Frigates, and bang! I win game one, despite the Caldari War Machine building up fair momentum. It really is difficult to effectively defend against a finely honed Minmatar Kamikaze deck. Starbase structures with +Shield, to up the required amount of damage to be done, and continual and frequent pre-emptive attacks on the ships with the Kamikaze ability - constant awareness of the number of Kamikaze points building up, and keeping one step ahead of the threat.

The Caldari did manage to beat me off for a few turns, with the Black Ops Command starbase structure, which allows it's owner to discard cards from his hand, and do one point of damage to any ship for each card discarded. He hit me for six or so this way, ruining my careful build up of self-destructing ships. Luckily, my usual choice of Starbase - Liberty Tower - let me have all those ships back in play within two turns, and a lucky Gravity Storm news card took out the Black Ops Command, stopping him from doing that to me every turn. A few turns after that, I got him, although a tense Computer Glitch (News, target ship can't warp or activate commands. Irritation of the Night.) played on one of my bombers nearly scuppered the whole plan. Luckily I had a spare Mind Control handy to negate it, and the attack went through as intended.

I'm not entirely sure what the Caldari deck's design theme actually is. Lots of midrange ships, all with decent offence and defence, with fairly high play costs. The ships have a mixture of Ambush and Patrol commands, making it all a bit of a Jack of All Trades deck really. The games I've seen, the Caldari has always done better, the longer the match progresses, making it very potent in the three player games, but in one vs one match against my 'Go For The Throat' deck, it doesn't seem to have time to get properly started really.

(The Amaar Deck, not present tonight, is very much about defence, able to dig in and create and almost impenetrable fortress which needs a number of quite specialised cards and combos to beat. It's somewhat weaker on offence, and so seems best used to buy time for the more exotic Victory Conditions, which don't require a straight military victory to win. Several of these exist, including the one detailed previous on one of the Amaarian starbases itself.)

The next game was quite different. The Caldari player, determined to beat the simple efficiency of my Minmatar deck, switched to an untested Gallente deck, which was a nice change. We've not see much Gallente action on EVE CCG nights, and similarly, I don't really know what the Gallente are actually for. The rare goes I'd had with decks based on them seem to generate huge amounts of money, via trade and mining, but don't seem to hit the opponent very hard. I suspect there are a number of cards out there that allow the Gallente player to convert raw ISK, directly into damage, or spend the cash in other useful ways. Gallente seem to be money-making decks, but it's still necessary to turn that into a win somehow.

My Gallente opponent had noticed the above as well, and it was mostly a deck forged out of cast-off extra cards that aren't allowed, or aren't useful, in a Caldari deck, so was a bit of a pot pouri of Gallente and Amaarian Frigates and Destroyers. We started play, and very early, he played the Metropolis Outer Region card, and then piled all his ships on it.  It's two to play, generates one income, and has room for two Locations. Card of the Night, and here's the text:

Enemy ships cannot warp into your home region. An opponent may pay you ISK(4) for each ship you control in this region: Negate the effect of Metropolis until end of turn.

It's an interesting card, because it forces gameplay out into the Outer Regions, and is also a very good defence against my usual Kamikaze rush, that I'll try if I can get away with it almost every time. With Metropolis in enemy control, I can't even get to the enemy starbase to suicide bomb it in the first place, unless I can pay the 4 ISK per ship on it, to be allowed to bypass this effective 'border control' region. I couldn't, and for the next couple of turns, I'd add income sources, just to see him increase the frigate defence on it, further increasing the bypass cost, maintaining the defence.

I could certainly use Kamikaze on ships instead of a starbase and punch a hole, but against other ships, many of my Frigates do more damage by attacking properly, so I charged out to Metropolis, ready for a fight, only to have him run away, back to his home base, then in his turn, unable to attack my own undefended starbase because now I controlled Metropolis and it's effect was now working for me, he came back, and I ran away, not wanting to lose any ships I'd need for a starbase hit.

This went back and forth for quite some time. Khanid Kingdom and Sansha's Nation Regions came out and all sorts of skirmish fighting went on, and for a two player game, it took ages. No real clear strategies emerged, other than "Build Up for a Kamikazi hit", and "Keep adding +shield to stop a Kamikaze hit", and in the end, mostly through normal hit and run ship to ship combat, I managed to gain the upper hand slightly, mostly due to the Warp Scarmble ability on my Vigil stopping some of his fleet escaping, during one of his retreats. Divide and conquer!

Eventually, despite holding Metropolis, he didn't have enough ships to make the toll prohibitive, so I paid up, swooshed on through, and after a well placed Gravity Storm or two bumped his shield down to manageable proportions, I charged in and killed his base, remarkably, by not ramming ships into it, but instead with guns, properly. My pilots actually came home for once! Sucks to be a Minmatar pilot in MY deck...


A new expansion has recently been announced, 'The Exiled', and not before time I think, as although enjoyable, these matches are starting to becoem a little samey. The new set of cards will add the four pirate factiosn to the game, Angels, Blood, Guristas and Serpentis, and these cards will apparently be interchangable with the existing races - e.g. I can have Angel cards in my Minmatar deck if I want, and possibly some of the others.

I'm not entirely sure I want that though. While not precisely 'perfect', my Minmatar deck as it stands is quite satisfactory in it's potency and playability, and those games I do lose, are mostly down to unlucky shuffles, or me just borking the maths up and doing stupid assaults for the hell of it. Hah, last time I tweaked it, I even took the two Destroyers out - too expensive, not fast enough - swapping them for more small cheap frigates. I've completely gone off the idea of Cruisers or even Battleships, and see no real need to buy more cards at all, to be honest. The game suffers, I think, from being too perfect out of the starter packs, which is great for the player, but not so great for the maker.

Trouble is, it is getting a bit samey now, but is that reason enough to move away from something that I know works, and start dabbling in more outlandish deck designs?