MadCast: Munsa

I just opted in to the Total War: Elysium Closed Beta and immediately received access. https://store.steampowered.com/app/844370/Total_War_ELYSIUM/ It borrows heavily on the visual language and card/unit interactions of Hearthstone, but adds in a front line/back line mechanic and a few other straight forward mechanics like a phase-of-day system to create a tidy little deckbuilder. Worth the 15-20 minutes it takes to get through 4 tutorial games.

Don't forget, there is no Sun, only the shattered remnants of a broken star, so these pirates basically do this in the damn dark.

I wanna make an entire team of max str fighters that just jump EVERYWHERE.

Saturday afternoon, perhaps. I work early, but afterwards I'd love to throw down some MP. It looks like Hotfix 2 got most of the big MP crashes, and any remaining are taken care of by loading a previous save, so whomever is hosting needs to be clever with the F5. ....dibs on Warlock

Update: Munsa is moved and then got sick, but I am on the mend and looking to get an event organized once I get few things off my plate. If anyone else wants to start the ground work of affirming a date/time and concept, I will take care of administrivia should it come together.

How do you gather and certify consent for what those regulations should be? Is that not, whatever form it takes, a proto-governance?

How would an anarchic society provide optimal outcomes for problems like... standards for vehicle safety?

Not only can we help you, part of the discussion tonight is about including other games that share similar systems, like RoR2, into the fold.

This is in an hour, I will be there.

100% This Guy

How does 10PM EST on the 17th sound?

I can absolutely do later on the 17th.

So, real talk. In two weeks, I'm moving (starting the 24th, with the following weekend to set up new spot). If we wanted to have an organisational sitdown prior to my disruption, the best day for ME would be next thursday, the 17th, at anytime in the afternoon/evening (4PM EST and onward.) If that doesn't work, that is okay, and we will schedule something once I am moved in.

I am tickled to see that folks not only share my love of deckbuilding, but also my love of cooperative dungeon crawlers. Y'all played For the King?

Deckbuilding, as a genre, covers a wide variety of experiences. The brands that immediately leap to most folk (Magic: The Gathering, Yu-gi-oh, Pokemon, Hearthstone, et al) all trend toward the PvP side of the genre, and provide a wide depth of simple to complex play. Further into the genre is a wealth of singleplayer and cooperative deckbuilding experiences (Slay the Spire, Monster Train, LOTRLCG, and a slew of other titles) that take the mechanics of competitive deckbuilding and apply them to familiar genres like RPGs, Roguelikes/lites, and Strategy to tell good stories or provide near infinitely repeatable instanced gameplay (a la Binding of Isaac). Deckbuilding games are unique in that they provide two distinct-but-overlapping modes of play. Actually playing the game covers the majority of the venn diagram, but there is a crescent moon of "other" peeking impishly out from behind it which comprises the various theories and analyses of how to construct your deck. Some games blur this distinction more than others, such as constructing your deck as you play vs fully constructing your deck prior to play, but either way you end up with this deep pool of knowledge that is not exactly independent to each game. While each game can vary wildly in HOW these mechanics are inserted into play, the mechanics of a deck are relatively uniform across most of these games. A deck is, at its core, a bounded set of repeating, changing possibilities, and an individual game can only bend this truth so much before it strays from the genre. Across the genre, even in games that deliver starkly different experiences, there is a shared language and set of mathematical principles that tie these games together. The more deckbuilding games you play, the more these harmonies become apparent and the easier it becomes to adapt to new titles. Thusly, I think it would be foolish to construct a gaming group around a single title. Instead, I am proposing that we identify in this thread a group of soon-to-be fellow enthusiasts. If you chat on the regular with another FM about Slay the Spire or Magic: The Gathering, my intent is for this club to provide a way for anyone with a love of the genre to associate with similarly interested people and discover communal ways to enjoy these games. I have some very specific ideas and conceptions in my head of the sorts of activities this club can engage in. We can structure competitive nights for the PvP CCGs. We can do group-play of singleplayer titles, where the hot seat rotates and the direct player streams to the group and we collectively strategize. We can also get together to chill and have a discussion about various games. My hope would be that, given some time to get the groove right, we could even turn these discussions into collaborative creative products like guides and essays that could fulfill one of the options under the Full Membership Terms. If this interests you, please enter this thread with all of your own ideas for what we could do as a group, and give an inkling into what games you currently play. For example: Munsa's Deckbuilding Games Currently Playing: Monster Train, Slay the Spire, Griftlands, Steamworld Quest (Switch) Has Experience With: MTG, Hearthstone, Eternal CG, LOTR LCG (both physical and digital)