This article is an attempt to starting clarifying my (evolving) thoughts about Slay the Spire II by putting them into words. There are presumably (much) better players than me, but are they writing anything? My normal answer is ‘Nope.’ but actually Youtube is awash with videos by people who monetize content, so actually there are. But you are here, so presumably you like the printed word over audiovisual.

I’ve played … a lot. Probably 200-250 hours solo¹. Right now I’m at a roughly 5²% solo win rate³ on the most difficult ascension level (A10) in Slay the Spire II, which is approximately where I was at on the most difficult ascension in the first game first game, but that was with Act IV, which doesn’t exist yet.

So … not great, but not terrible. Good enough to pounce on a great card/combo when it shows up; not good enough to jury-rig a win out of spare parts. (This influences my thoughts). My “micro” could be better. I often take a few extra points of damage due to negligence; which is a huge leak on my win rate; but I’ve been getting quite a few more “almost” wins, which is a good sign.⁴

This post is just a mish-mash of thoughts, but not really re-hashing general thoughts from the first Slay the Spire that transfer. (A few for emphasis). I was going to write some thoughts on cards/etc, but those are ever changing. For clarity, I’ll do this as bullet points.

(Also check out Jorbs’ recent video on “How to win with Silent (and other Characters)“⁵

General Concepts

• You play three of your five cards each turn (in a simple world where everything costs one). So you’d like 1) huge attack(s), to end the fight or when you aren’t attacked 2) huge block(s), when you are being attacked 3) flexibility for the remainder (often long term scaling, covering weaknesses, etc).
  • You don’t care how many “cards” you convert to attack/block/whatever, you want to be able to convert your mana to attack/block/whatever efficiently. This means a “2 Mana — Block 12” card is often (much) better than a “1 Mana — Block 7/8” … you’d get more with two of the latter in your hand, but that also requires two card picks.
  • Realistically, early on you’ll play 2/3 mediocre attacks/blocks. Starter decks lack density.
  • Playing two-three cards leaves room for cards that are dead most of the time (or all of the time for curses), but solve an important fight or two.
  • But, Dead cards leave you vulnerable to variance, particularly multiple dead cards. If you only have three cards you can play, your only choice is the order/targets. So (some decks) may want a bigger deck, to double the staples, which creates space for more specialized cards.
• Extra block survives more variance than extra attack (because if it doesn’t win right now, you take a hit). Even in Act I the elites (and some hallway fights) dish out 20+ damage a turn.
  • The more I play the happier I am taking two cost block cards.
  • This does lead to decks that block for 5 turns then get outscaled, but I lose less often that way than to being to aggressive. I still need to tune that variable.
• As I get better I’m more prone to save a potion for a boss/problem floor.
• I’m fine skipping elites in later acts once I’ve bottled the lightning, unless I’m just confident in the matchups. Even a good start needs to snowball.
• The Act II ancients give you a lottery ticket that’s a winner, but often just a small/medium winner. The Act III Ancients usually grant a golden ticket.⁶ I am OK having no idea how I’m going to beat the Act III bosses if I feel confident that I can get to Act III, and let the blessing (hopefully) clarify things.

Act I

Act I is tough⁷. In StS 1 I’d sometimes die to an early Gremlin Nob (before the middle floor treasure) or the Act I boss; in this version I perished in Act I often — a too early elite or just damage accumulating 3-4 floors in a row. The elites hit hard. For a while I was skipping most of them, but you have to start engine building. To win you need a cornerstone: a card/relic that provides a clear direction towards victory. It may not be the best option, but a cornerstone is an understandable option.

In early games, I hit an early elite and died … then realized my deck would have lost to any of the elites. But that just delayed the loss to the Act I boss or early Act II You need to start that snowball of growth. A good deck will roll through the second half of Act I like butter. Now I prioritize hitting as many late elites as I can, or trying to highroll a gift from Neow into a deck that can hit an early one … and then decide how many elites to take. Ideally I’d fight 3-4 elites in Act I (as late as possible).

Why fight them? If you get 10 relics 7-8 of them are going to be “yeah, that’s OK” but the great ones really help and form your cornerstone. (Best get it early, then you can work on combos and covering weaknesses). Elite fights are lottery tickets, but you aren’t going to win on slow steady investments. You need to hit the lottery (rare card or relic). As you get better what counts as a hit will grow.

And it’s not like the hallway fights are cakewalks. (Moreover, there are only three elites and you won’t duplicate until you’ve seen them all, so you can often tailor your picks against them. The hallway fights have a much bigger pool to select from). Even the events are a mixed bag.

Neow’s Gifts

(I have much less experience with the new ones that just appeared a few weeks ago).

Great

Leafy Poultice is my top pick. You trim out two basic cards via transformation … and get two lottery tickets that may have downside (at worst, a do nothing curse), but usually are strict improvements. Sometimes you high roll and a solid foundation. Losing Max HP is next act’s problem (mostly).

Silver Crucible — Getting an early “Common Attack+” or “Common Block+” really helps your deck’s density and with three upgraded cards you can handle the early elites (maybe not well, but you’ll likely survive). An early upgraded uncommon (or rare) can snowball.

Cursed Pearl … sure the curse is bad (a dead card roughly every other turn at the start), but that first store will hopefully give you at least a spark to bottle, if not lightning. (Golden Pearl to a lesser extent, and these both assume an early store).

Stone Humidifier is another big deal. I know I said Max HP could be ignored for now, but Stone Humidifier can let you skip a few elites for extra rests. Each rest becomes “Upgrade a card OR take a +5HP relic when you rest” (if upgrading a card isn’t that important. Also, Miniature Camp and Waterfall Giant are in the game and a high max HP is a great way to avoid a random loss due to variance. But in the last few weeks I think I might downgrade this a notch.

Winged Boots — These let you path very aggressively into multiple elite fights where variance would likley kill you 25%+ of the time. You take the first fight, if it goes great, you take the second. If not, you jump over to a rest.

Avoid

Precarious Shears — Removes two cards (like the Poultice), but has no possible upside and 13 damage (as compared to Max HP) is a big problem right now.

Lava Rock — You need help now, not at the end of act I.

Neow’s Torment — 10 Damage and some cards back is OK, but there is almost always a better option.

Anything not listed is OK … I certainly take Lead Paperweight and Pomander often enough, I’m just not terribly psyched when doing it. I’m actually kind of fond of Neow’s Talisman, which just upgrades a strike and defend. Partially because the Spiral enchantment event shows up fairly regularly (replay one) and also because removing all your strikes and defends is much harder in this game than in the first. You are probably carrying a 1-2 of them throughout the game. The defend (in particular) can really help with the chip damage accumulating across fights.

Overgrowth vs Underdocks

This has been discussed elsewhere (Jorbs covers it in a video) so I’m not going to touch on it too much, but be aware of which elites are in the pool and which aren’t. The big “Bomb” in the Overgrowth is the Bygone Effigy, a cakewalk if you can slam out the 132 (!) damage by the end of turn 3 (or turn 4, taking a single hit). Without the Effigy, if you can just block for 15-20 a turn (and still do reasonably damage) you’ll be fine, particularly if you have some AOE damage. With the Effigy‘s high HP and massive hits, you need a damage source (or slow source). Both Byrdonis and the Phrog Parasite scale up …. Byrdonis by adding strength and the Parasite by shoving junk into your deck. So you are going to want to favor attack over defense, since long term fights don’t favor you. (Byrdonis is arguably more dangerous than the Effigy, but it’s less of a Bomb. Both are damage races; both can kill you but since Byrdonis attack each turn you probably have to eat 20 damage even if you win on turn three (just going all out) but Effigy gives you three free turns, so a one turn difference is a bigger jump.

But in the Underdocks you can focus more on block than in general. Sure, the Phantasmal Gardners grow (slowly), but they punish multiple hits (and the Skulking Colony caps damage per turn). The Terror Eel is trickier, but big block + poison will work great, unlike in the Overgrowth.

The Underdocks (literal) Bomb is Waterfall Giant, responsible for over 8% of my deaths in the game⁸. Impressive considering it only shows up in ~16% of the games! If your deck is a fast attack deck, you might kill it but still need to tank a hit for 30 (either having block or enough HP left), and if your deck is a big block deck, you are probably slower and will need to tank a bigger hit. The Waterfall Giant is one reason I like the Stone Humidifier. A higher Max HP means a higher current HP in your final fight, so you can eat a bigger hit. This is also true of the Act III double bosses, where you need a buffer (unless your deck is absolutely purring), but with the Giant you need it.

Part II at some point …

1. I am retired, after all. ︎
2. There are few enough runs that a single win will drive it up and then drift down, but “1 in 20” seems roughly correct. ︎
3. Multi-player games are a whole different thing, with a win rate around 15%. I attribute this to the fact that a) either player can “go off” and win the run more-or-less solo (or with a the partners dealing with a troublesome fight and/or providing support) and b) sometimes you die due to variance in either game, but in multiplayer you get resurrected when your partner survives the fight, a recovery not possible in solo. ︎
4. My win rate also crept up after the first adjustments, make to make Act I easier and Act III harder, and I think this is not variance. I have not tried the Beta branch. ︎
5. Cliff note’s version: 1) Improve your Worst turn, 2) Improve your Best Turn, 3) Condense your Solution, 4) Improve your initial velocity, 5) Don’t overscale, 6) Understand Short term value vs Scaling Density & 7) There is a max hand size ︎
6. Darv (the merchant who offers relics from the first game) complicates things because he can show up in either Act. ︎
7. Written before the first balance patch of ~3 weeks ago. Still true, less so. ︎
8. This was written a month ago, before the patch, and a) he is now slightly weaker and b) I have really focused on beating him. Now he’s back in line with the rest of the baddies. ︎

So, in late Jan/Early Feb I heard Dark Pact was coming out soon and asked my FLGS to get a copy. One month later they were sure it was coming into their distributorship “soon” and a month after that it was sold out at the distributorship and they never got a copy. It is things like this that make me wonder if they are money-laundering front for … someone¹. (Despite that they have a pretty good selection of games). So I got it from Amazon.

I don’t like Ascension, the game Dark Pact is closest to (IMO). Looking at my archives², I never really get into it, but there are a few things that jump out at me.

• The random nature of what’s available at any given moment means that often the game is decided by “Oh, he bought a great card, a terrible card showed up. I bought the best thing available … and the next person got a great card.” At least, it feels like that. (Or you can get combat points when you want money points and vice-versa).
• It’s a snowball, but it takes a long time to roll downhill.

OK, two things.

Since Dark Pact is by Tom Lehmann, I naturally assumed he’d address both of those problems and they are … mitigated. (It is probably impossible to eliminate them).

First — each player has a grimoire of a few staple cards that they can buy if they don’t like what’s on the offer.

Second — what counts as a victory point depends on which Dark Pact(s) you purchase. For Player A it may be curse cards, for Player B it may be treasures, Player C might want Insight Points, etc. “One mans trash is another’s treasure” means that you might be fighting over cards, but you might not.

On the other hand, you need a Dark Pact to win³ and it’s possible that the only ones you see are terrible. But in my five games so far that hasn’t been an issue. (I did play with the “everyone starts with a reasonable Dark Pact” variant once).

Dark Pact still has flaws. I’ve seen people complain that they played their turn and then flipped up Gold/Multiplier cards (which are usually good) for the next player (the first flaw above), and that when it’s not your turn sometimes another player is taking a 2-3 minute turn of play a card, draw some cards, play a card, etc and running through their deck and that you have nothing to do.

That’s true, but it’s also common for the genre. Dominion can (depending on the setup) have that in spades. But for Dark Pact, it is usually a sign that the game is about to end … that player’s engine is up and running …. whereas in Ascension/Dominion you have to wait for the supply (of cards or points) to empty. But Dark Pact has sudden death⁴ … when a player draws their entire deck, the game is usually over on their turn (or perhaps a turn or two later if they’ve figured out which card their engine is missing).

It’s not totally flawless … setup and teardown take longer than Ascension (or a game of Dominion with just a set or two) unless you always play with the same # of players, but any other flaws are pretty much built into the game’s DNA (unless you object to the art or the theme, I suppose).

Dark Pact is admittedly tedious if you are playing with someone struggling to build an engine, who takes too long on their turns. But that’s always true. I don’t think that Dark Pact is going to be one of Tom’s games that easily flies to 50+ plays,⁵ but a few dozen plays seem likely.

Rating — Suggest

1. Occam’s Razor suggests I’m overthinking things. ︎
2. Most of the searches for “Ascension” turn up Slay the Spire stuff, since I am referring to Ascension levels there…. ︎
3. Probably ︎
4. Or Sudden Enlightenment ︎
5. I expected Dice Realms to make fifty, and it didn’t, but he’s got more than any other designer (for me). ︎

Games Played and quick notes (on new-to-me games)

• 1846 x3
• Dark Pact x3 — I finally got my copy just prior to the Gathering and played several games. I will have a review soon.
• Tricktaker’s Guide to the Galaxy x3 — I would definitely buy this if it were easily available. You deal out your hand, play a game of “No Thanks” to get rules (which give you +5 points if you fulfill them and -20 if you don’t) and then play the hand out. Nice fast filler.
• Bomb Busters x2
• The Gang (Deluxe Edition) x2 — Has rules for up to 10 players. Surprisingly … they work.
• Quartermaster General WW2 (2nd Edition) x2 — Really wanted to try the second edition. But didn’t have the expansion. I hear 2nd edition cleaned things up, but …. there were obvious mistakes on the box (2-5 players? Seriously?) and downgrades on the board (no SOP), so I wonder how carefully they cleaned up the cards.
• Scout x2
• Sides x2 — Cooperative password-ish game where you have to use clues starting with specific letters. Perfectly fine.
• 1822MX — Note to self, do not try to play using PNW rules for the first hour.
• 18EU (Minor Powers Variant) — I don’t know if the variant has been published, but it makes it similar to Railways of the Lost Atlas.
• Azure — Surprisingly good abstract filler that I’m still thinking about. Might buy, even though I dislike abstracts.
• Dice Realms
• Dune
• Fast Sloths — Cute enough, probably has good replay value with all the different animals you can put in the game (who carry around the sloths).
• Got Five! — Reasonable deduction game.
• High Frontier 4 All — Decided to splurge and upgrade my set. Played a 3 hour teaching game, not the 10+ hour game.
• Liar’s Dice
• Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship — Very clever improvement to the Pandemic system, and you can feel the theme. Not a purchase for me, but I’d play again. This was getting constant play
• Magical Athlete — Fun but stupid game-adjacent activity. “Bunco for Gamers” as Mrs. Tao might say.
• Meister Makatsu — Another Reiner card game filler, so … it works. Would play again.
• My Book Nook: Cozy Word Building Game — Good idea, mildly infuriating execution in that you score based on word length, but the hard letters give trivial bonuses (instead of saying “Count word as longer” or something). But do we hold cozy games to the same standards? (I do).
• Oath
• Petiquette — A clever party game idea (you get a sequence of animals with hats of various colors, with a ? and the judge decides which animal/hat/color combination should go there, and everyone tries to guess). But it got old way too fast. Avoid.
• Santa Fe
• Soothsayers — Maybe I got a bad rules explanation, but avoid and play Glory to Rome or any game in that family instead.
• Time Agent
• Titan
• & Two Unpublished Prototypes of which I will not speak. I also saw several other prototypes that I didn’t feel the need to play, because I mostly don’t play prototypes and they seemed like “I will not like this” or the occasional “I will simply buy this when it shows up¹).

So … most of the new games² are fine (nothing set my world on fire), whereas many of the older games had spectators and onlookers going “Wow, I haven’t seen that in ages.”

Part of me wants to do some stats on my games played by year (or counting by “hours played” instead of “plays,” which should shove the date several years back further) but I am tired right now. Perhaps later, unless there is a tool that already exists to do this?

Also, there was a nice memorial to Bill Cleary, who died last summer.

Update — Put a few stories on BGG.

1. More Mage Knight ︎
2. “That I played,” and I had a pretty high standard (the new game shelf covered a wall) although sometimes I just agreed to a blind game for the company. There were many new games that were obvious avoids if you share my tastes … point salads, etc. ︎

After playing 18CZ (again!), I was trying to pin down why I thought it was “OK” and not “Great.” Why does 1822 PNW make me want to get it back to the table, while CZ is merely a “Yeah, sure.” (I mean it’s still a positive feeling, but more “indifferent plus” than “suggest” or “enthusiastic“) and I think this comes down to one thing that I have touched upon a few times over the years, but bears repeating.

Entanglement — The (Not So) Secret Sauce

By their nature 18xx games are more entangled than most business games. In typical games, each player controls their own (single) corporation. What is good for the company is good for the player, and vice versa. In 18xx, a player can juggle multiple (competing) interests; it can be great to trash a company under your control (shifting its assets to a ‘better’ company).

This brings up the Principal-Agent Problem , but also Implicit Collusion because there might be other shareholders and they will want to know if the company is going to pay out or with-hold, and if it will be headed for a glorious future or Chapter 11.

It can be impossible to state the “right” play is for a company merely by looking at the board. You need to understand the stock split dynamics. Does the president own 60% (and 40% is in the IPO/Bank). Or is it a 40%/30%/30% (in a three player game). Treating those situations identically is a recipe for disaster.

So — The board position is entangled with the players’ stakes. That’s the “hook” of 18xx.

(Acquire also does this, and is rightly acknowledged as one of the greatest games of last century¹. Its board play is much simpler, the stock entanglement does the heavy lifting. In Chicago Express the entire game play revolves around implicit collusion — getting the incentives right so that others make plays to your benefit)

Of course there are levels of entanglement, and ripples to the chaos.

How many companies (and which ones) will open?

If the same companies open in the same order every game, the game will likely start to feel the same (although various splits of minors still have interest)². Varying how many companies (and which) provides variety because the “train rush” is triggered by that one additional company operating. In many games, there might be “semi-permanent” trains. If X companies open, they last. The X+1st company opens and they rust.

Some games (like the ’22 family) randomize the order that some companies show up in, this forces each play into a new line but also means that the number of viable companies might change, which has implications on the train rush.

More subtlety, 1846 achieves the same effect by having some dubious companies that frankly aren’t great. Is it worthwhile to open a second company? Uh, sometimes. For a long time the fact’ that the game’46 had mediocre companies puzzled me, but borderline companies are a ticking time bomb. If the incentives are right, someone will open them just to watch the world burn trains rust. The fact that their ROI isn’t great is borderline.

Thinking about this with 18CZ; I suspect that it does do better at this that I thought … but three players is not its sweet spot³. The train limit is a bit too generous at that count (at least in our meta). Again compare this against ’46, where the number of companies (and trains) varies based on player count to keep things tight.

How entangled is the board?

The game board should be small enough so that each company’s track plays have ripple effects.

The game that best exemplifies this is, naturally, Go. There are “joseki” — opening lines that theoritically should provide roughly equal chances for either side … in that particular corner. Professional players spend an inordinate amount of time on the first 20-30 moves (out of 150-250 ish) because the corners influence each other and the josekis will combine. Joseki A (in the NW corner) may be great if Joseki B is in the NE corner, but terrible if Joseki C is in the NE corner.

So you want to leave things in flux and arrange joseki(s) that work together in your favor.⁴

In our last few games of CZ, Eastern Side of the Board never impacted the Western Side … everyone met up at Prague, which held enough token slots that most companies could get through, and the ones that didn’t at the end had their runs on the appropriate side. Sure, there was jockeying between companies on each side, but the corners never impacted each other. (Again, might be a problem that is solved at more players).

Which is not to demand that “every company cares about every other company,” but there should be some tension and chokepoints; companies fighting to place track or station tiles. For example, ’46 has Chicago (and Toledo, and Indianapolis). PNW has Seattle and Portland literally fighting over growth.

CZ (at least with three) felt like it had walled off suburbs. My branch in the SE eventually merged with the NW companies (and the Northerner), but it was a minor event. Like finding a run worth an extra few dollars in share. A rounding error, not a bomb.

(1862 almost achieves “every company really cares about every other company”; because of merger opportunities but also because the board is so tight and different company charters will have very different track preferences).

And even companies far apart and destined to ne’er meet; they might compete over tiles. Every 18xx player knows the sinking feeling when you discover a needed tile is missing.⁵⁶

What doesn’t interest me

Hunting out the extra dollar and operations minutiae all the time. (Hunting out extra money in the opening is the entire point of compound interest). Yes, sometimes that extra dollar really matters. A few bucks might make the difference between buying another certificate. In that case, the extra few dollars is a “bomb⁷” (a big deal).

Token wars, snatching up the right train, ownership battles, dumping companies … those are always bombs. If the few extra dollars is a bomb only 1% of the time, it can be simplified away. But I’ve learned that in order to entangle the board (and stock) you have to have the possibility of not entangling it. Sometimes even great games can have a relatively dull run.

There are other things that don’t interest me. (I’m no longer fond of the ’30 family’s script of “first company low, second company saves first.” Nothing wrong with that play … but I’ve seen it enough). But in general I’m looking for a reason to play an 18xx title and most of them give me plenty.

1. The BGG HoF got some things wrong, but they got that right. ︎
2. I owned 1835 back in …. ’92 or ’93, but never got to try it. I know it has its defenders and variants…. ︎
3. After writing this, I went and checked BGG and 4p is listed as best with 3p and 6p having the lowest recommended numbers. ︎
4. I don’t play Go well enough to know how to do this; but I played enough to know this is true. See the proverb “Memorizing Joseki loses two stones.” ︎
5. Yes, its a horribly gamey thing …. why should the fact that some company hundreds of miles away built a branch mean you can’t? Well, just imagine that they got a compliant politician to hose you. ︎
6. Also, I swear that 1846 is influenced by Coriolis rotation of the earth, because tiles that are mirror images with 4 each will have one set empty and the other set untouched. ︎
7. For those readers unfamiliar with the term, I am using the meaning of “bomb” from a Jonathon DeGann Article, which is still available on the Wayback machine. ︎

In S. J. Simon’s book, “Why you lose at Bridge” he invents a character “Futile Willy.” Futile Willy isn’t bad (per se) but his defining feature is making bidding decisions that have limited rewards, but huge risks. Playing in a two session event with Roxie, our opponents are mostly what I deem “experienced novices” (playing for years, know a bit of bidding, but have not progressed far) mixed with intermediates. Perhaps two pairs are of similar caliber.

There are many ways to judge experience; one is knowing when to compete. And when not to compete.

Experts love …. LOVE … to get in the bidding, but also know when to shut up.

Example #1

I pick up something like xx AJxx Kxx JTxx and it goes 1D by Partner and 1S on my right.

I make a (negative) double, LHO passes, Partner bids 2C and RHO rebids two spades.

My negative double only guaranteed hearts, not clubs (I have five hearts with a hand too weak to bid); I actually have four clubs. So (despite having no extra values) a raise is reasonable because a) you never want to let them play at the two level unless they are in a misfit¹ and b) my hand is mostly “working”. The King of diamonds is probably golden given that partner has 8 or more minor cards, aces are always nice. (If I had points in spades, I’d be much more content to defend).

LHO hems and haws and then bids 3 Spades. Roxie and I are done, and I am happy to have an easy safe lead of the jack of clubs. (I could lead a diamond, to be sure, but it’s matchpoints).

The final auction

LHO CHO RHO Me
     1D  1S X
  P  2C  2S 3C
 3S  All Pass

Dummy is a massive surprise. Sure she has two spades, but also five clubs (Q9xxx)! Passing gets her an above average board, doubling gets a likely top and her actual bid gives her a terrible board. Afterwards neither partner and I could believe it.

Example #2

Later on I pick up a regular 1NT opening with something like S: Qx H: KJx D: KJxx C: AJxx.

Roxie responds 2 Hearts (a Jacoby Transfer, indicating spades) but before I bid RHO doubles (showing good hearts).

Roxie and I haven’t discussed it (at least — I’m not sure we have) but typically I play that accepting the transfer over a double confirms three (or more) in that suit. With only two spades I can pass, and partner can redouble to “re-transfer” or bid spades herself. (It probably doesn’t matter on this hand, but if she had the king of hearts instead of me…).

So I pass. Roxie then bids …. 4NT.

This is a quantitative slam try. I am at a minimum, so normally I’d pass … but my hearts are well placed. If RHO has AQxxx of hearts, I have two heart tricks, so my KJx of hearts is worth closer to six or seven points instead of four². Therefore, I bid six NT.

I get a surprise when Roxie shows up with Ax of Hearts. Was RHO doubling on Queen – sixth? Nope, just Qxxxx.

But in any case there is nothing to the play³ because LHO did not find the killing lead and instead led the suit partner had asked him to lead. Doubling on AQxxx and out is reasonable … you tell your partner what to lead. There’s a risk of getting redoubled (with KJTx or so behind you). but its an acceptable risk.

But with just a queen empty suit, the odds of a redouble (or other “bad luck” as in this hand) are high and do you really want partner to go out of his way to lead a heart?

Example #3

The most egregious example.

I pick up a strong NT, but I’m third to bid. Partner opens one club.

My hand is flat (4324) so the only issues are: A) do we have a major fit and B), does partner have extras.

I bid 1 Spade and partner rebids 1 NT. So the answers are A) No and B) No, therefore I’m bidding 3NT.

Except my RHO (who couldn’t bid over 1 Club) has doubled. They are vulnerable, we are not. 3NT is probably +400 to +460. We can get much, much more by defending. So, redouble.

Despite a slip up on our part, we get +500 easily for what should be a top (except that someone bid a hopeless slam and was allowed to make it). Without the slipup we easily beat the mere +990 for the non-vulnerable slam. What was RHO’s double? A semi-balanced ten count, after opener had fully described her hand. It would be one thing to double if I passed 1NT … then there would be an expectation points were (roughly) evenly divided.

In this case the double did nothing but offer me a fielder’s choice.

With us encountering three Futile Willys (or Wilhelminas), our mistakes merely turn tops into “almost tops”, so it’s a highly successful day.

1. And while they might be, nothing about my hand suggests so. Even if dummy has no spades, RHO’s spades are probably fine playing opposite a stiff, and partner’s spades and underneath them. ︎
2. KJx opposite xx is averages 1 trick (if honors are split) and gets 2 tricks 24% of the time and 0 tricks 24% of the time (when honors aren’t). So if KJx with no knowledge is one 4 points, KJx expecting both honors onside is worth more. (And 24% instead of 25% due to the Law of Vacant Spaces, which Wikipedia calls “Vacant Places” but OK) ︎
3. In fact, I missed a small risk-free line to make the overtrick; but it didn’t matter, because everyone else passed 4NT (assuming their partners even bid it). ︎

This video on the attempted hacking of XZ (and therefore, all of Linux and most of the Internet) is great, not only for the story but for the clear/concise descriptions of key exchange, public key encryption and compression work¹. (And I wasn’t aware of some of the other aspects, like audit hooks).

How far back can you understand English? A story where the language jumps 100 back every few paragraphs.

Play NetHack … in Factorio.

Why water infrastructure is so hard to get right, and the noble efforts of Ek Son Chan to fix it in Phnom Pen, including facing down an Army general and his body guards while personally installing a water meter on the general’s house.

That famous shot of Bigfoot has finally been exposed as a hoax (according to a new documentary).

Benjamin Franklin apparently coined many common terms related to electricity, which makes a lot of sense in hindsight.

Brick Technology (a video channel of Lego builds) programs cars to act like (simple) humans or robots and then sees how changes jam traffic.

I might have bought a Vizio TV in the past, before they required you to have a WalMart account.

A Crossword from Wei-Hwa Huang.

1. Because of my background was aware of some of them, but even so, well done. ︎

The computer version of Space Empires 4x (Space Imperia) has a steam demo and I took some time away from Slaying the Spire to try it.

This is a faithful implementation, nothing else. Right now the demo is against a (poor) AI only and with only parts of the tech-tree available but it was good enough for a demo. The full game promises multiplayer support. Given that Space Empires 4x is all about fog of war, feints and the balance of terror, multiplayer support is required (IMO) and a computer implementation would be a Very Good Thing as it would replace all the fumbling for chips and accounting errors.

A good AI would be a “nice to have” bonus feature, but I get it. It’s perfectly reasonable to learn the game. (I would hope that the full game would implement one of the solitaire variants/scenarios, but who knows?)

But what is it with GMT and computer implementations? Look, I get that programs have bugs (I submitted a few bug reports), but there is just a basic level of …. I don’t want to say incompetence, but maybe “I ain’t got time for that” on the developer’s side. (I rarely worked with graphics engines, but I’ve designed plenty of Graphical User Interfaces in my day). From what I saw:

• I’ve played SE4x multiple times (the last a few years ago) and even then sometimes I couldn’t do anything and would have to try and figure out why. It was usually correct, but the game never said “This vessel can’t explore” or anything useful.
• No Undo button for a misclick. I get that there are certain points you can’t undo, but there are many you should be able to.
• Frequently windows pop up over other windows, some buttons are hard to see against the background. (I thought the game had locked up but nope, some clear-bordered modal buttons were lurking.)
• When firing in combat, sometimes you must click multiple times to select a ship+target before the “fire” button appears.
• If there’s only one class of target, you still have to select it and fire for each ship instead of just having a “go ahead and just keep on that one class” (maybe just once/round, and then you can have your retreat/screen options).
• No way to speed up combat, or turn off the “yes, commander” when you select a ship (or the random blather they say when firing, just a few options and they got old very quickly) Yes, I could adjust the volume, but the one time they have some effects they are just annoying.
• If there was a way to combine stacks (that have the same exact stacks) I didn’t see it. I did see how to split stacks.
• The board would zoom into combat (fine) and zoom out, but then often back to a weird view. Honestly it feels like whenever they want to try to do something cool, it just makes it more confusing.

Also, because this is a computer game, I hope there are options like “No countermix limit.” The countermix limit existed in the board game because, well, yeah, there are limited counters. Maybe that makes the board game better. Maybe not.

Despite liking the board game, I doubt I will be purchasing the computer game.

Expanding on the Spoiler Free thoughts I had a week ago. Putting the rest in an expandable block, (in case you want to not see).

(For reference, I have cleared Ascension 7 with all characters but the NecroMancer, and have now played a half dozen ish games of co-op, including a brutal floor six loss.

Anyway, still enjoying it.

(This is not intended to spoil things, but it will mention things that could be construed as such if you want to be totally surprised. You have been warned).

Slay the Spire is a “Roguelike¹” you are trying to get through a procedurally generated dungeon and beat the boss. But combat and character progression was inspired by Dominion. You get better by adding cards to your deck (and removing bad cards from your deck). There are non-card based ways of getting stronger, like artifacts that grant you abilities (sometimes in combat, sometimes in the “master board” to borrow a phrase from Titan) or potions.

And Slay the Spire was massively influential. Right now I’m seeing ads on steam for Roguelike games but “using poker instead of dominion” (Balatro) or what not. Most are clear cash-in knock offs (though I’m told Balatro was good). So many (like me) were waiting anxiously to get their hands on the new version … Slay the Spire II has over 500,000 people playing concurrently.

But given that Mega Crit (the developers) were aware of Dominion and other popular games (and frequently drop in Easter eggs)², I wondered what mechanisms would show up in Slay the Spire 2.

What I’ve noticed so far:

Card Forging

In the first Slay the Spire, cards could be upgraded (“Foo” could become “Foo+”), and any Strike that was upgraded was the same. Typically some numbers on the card got better (and each card could only be upgraded once, with one exception). But StS2 has Card Forging. Cards can still be upgrade, but each card now has a slot that can add an “enchantment” and these enchantments are not specific to the card, but uniform. So if you say there are ~300 cards, in STS v1 there were 600 cards (300 base cards, 300 upgraded). If you keep the exact same cards in STS v2, but now there are X enchantments³ which means there are up⁴ to 600 times X valid card combos. And now a Foo could be Foo(+) and Enchantment-A or -B, -C, -D, etc.

And (some) enemies put negative enchantments on cards.

As a fan of combinatorics, love it. I’m wondering if they were inspired by Mystic Vale or Dice Forge or Dice Realms (or just thought of it independently). They didn’t go “whole hog” on it (at least, not in this version) but for the amount of programming of a few artifacts they’ve greatly increased the decision space.

Card Evolution

Arguably just a riff on card forging, these are cards that go into your deck in one form but can be triggered into a different form (usually via the masterboard). I took one of these quests (picking up a useless card that would be removed with a big reward later) and then at the final fight realized I’d never actually went to a space to evolve the card, which actually took a bit of work on my part.

Cooperative Play

Still haven’t tried it, but no doubt they were thinking of this even before the Slay the Spire board game. This required a ton of programming⁵ (unlike the card forging). Not much to say.

Alternate Masterboard Paths

This is probably pretty common in games, but just as in the Lord of the Rings expansion you can sometimes skip some location boards for others, now in StS II there are alternate acts. (I am not sure if you can control them, though. It’s more of a variety). I didn’t actually register this the first few times it happened, only when I saw some new regular (non-elite) encounters and wondered about it did I realize that “Acts” were switching between games. This is pretty common in expansions, though.

I don’t know if I’ll notice (or think of) more, but we’ll see….

Also — on an admin note, I have created a category for “Slay the Spire” (as well as tagging articles), so you can now click on that for articles. Most of the obvious ones should be in that category by now, but a few stragglers may not be.

1. As in “Based on Rogue, the computer game.” See the 20th Century Project’s entry on Rogue/Nethack. But the exact definition is highly debated, and some argue StS doesn’t qualify and is actually a “Roguelike-like” or “Rogue-lite.” This doesn’t matter for my article, but Wikipedia has more info if you care. ︎
2. For example the “Inserter” artifact, which is depicted as a Factorio inserter. ︎
3. I’ve seen five or six, and there might be more lurking about ︎
4. Some enchantments can only be added to some card types, so that’s a ceiling, not an exact number. ︎
5. Even before gameplay concerns, communication between computers and synchronization are a major pain to deal with. ︎

(I wrote this before seeing Fred’s comment in the prior post, but was tired and wanted to look at it before posting).

I’ve been slowly unlocking ascensions (I think there are 10 so far). I’ve unlocked up to the Asc 3 for all characters. This means there are still some things I haven’t unlocked.

TL;DR — It’s $25. Ridiculously cheap if you like deckbuilding games. There is a co-operative mode! If you liked the StS board game, this is the real thing. (All players would have to buy a copy, I think, which is still cheaper than buying the board game)

Some actual notes:

• Graphics — I liked the rough quality of the first edition, but the new one looks great. Animations are amazingly fluid. (Looking at you, Seapunk).
• I do wish they hadn’t arbitrarily changed icons/names for some potions/cards but it’s a minor nit.
• Overall I like the improvements to gameplay:
  • The new characters are interesting at first glance, although I have some concerns that one my be somewhat railroaded. (That was the comment discussion mentioned above)
  • There are now many more “boss relics” (which happen at the opening of the next act now).
  • There seem to be more potions and artifacts, which will again make things more variable between games.
  • The combinatorics (not small for the first game) are through the roof, because of … spoiler-y new things.
• I have not tried multiplayer, but I’d be open for it. I suspect it isn’t balanced well.
• I have laughed out loud several times at jokes in the game, but I did that for the first few hundred hours of StS, too.
• For the most part I easily clear the ‘old’ characters (which I am used to) and one of the new characters, but another new character I lost 6 times before getting my third wins (at 0,1 and 2). (I did like having the Run History in the first edition; it was detailed, and maybe its just hidden in some menu I haven’t seen, or a TBD feature. Update — Found it.)
• I also like what is missing — cards (and artifacts) that were ‘easy wins.’
  • Also missing is Watcher, which I’m not actually great at; but was a rather tedious character to play. She is not missed. I often just rotated the other three characters and skipped her.
• The minions and bosses continue to find new “bombs” (in game design terms) — Several are hard counters to certain strategies. Despite having only a handful of “regular’ monsters/elites/bosses, the mix seems quite good.

SO …. I think the deckbuilding has gotten more complex (not to mention the pathing and other strategy concerns), which is a good thing. I hope to try co-op.

Update — I’ve decided to buy an “Air Mouse” so I can at least stand up while playing. I’ll see if it’s any good.

Magic, L5R, Shadowfist, Bridge — Small potatoes. (Bridge is pretty close though, but although I’ve played it for nearly 40 years, for fifteen of those years I likely only played only a few sessions a year).

I’ve played more Slay the Spire than any other game. Whereas other people would come home and watch TV, I’d Slay the Spire. I am currently in the steam store trying to download Slay the Spire II. Talk amongst yourselves.

(Actually, my transaction got bonked and I can’t buy it! Trying again in a few minutes).

Update — And … we’re off.

I’ve now played High Frontier, 3rd Edition, High Frontier 4 All and I owned Rocket Flight (aka Lords of the High Frontier). I’ve never played 2nd Edition, but as far as I know, there was no second edition, but I’m sure a comment will correct me. I’ve gone from “indifferent” to “suggest” back to “indifferent” and I’m back to “suggest.”

Not a blanket suggest …. I see a yearly game that involves all of the expansions¹ and that 10 hour behemoth is not for me. High Frontier has a snowball growth. The first exo-factories give you better patents (hopefully) which means your second rocket has first opportunity to explore and exploit key sites.

This may not be true of the most experienced players (several of which are in that yearly game). but it’s certainly true at my level and in one of my three games so far this year I busted site after site in my first hour, squandering my early launch advantage. If I had rolled well, though, I would have snowballed in a positive way. Like many of Phil Eklund games, HF is more simulation than game, with scoring tacked on. That sounds too harsh — the scoring scheme is actually reasonable. Quite often the ‘winner’ is the person that objective observers would say “Yeah, that space agency did the best.” But me personally, when I’m getting snowballed, it’s can be a bit of a drag. Three hours is often enough to determine that.

There is also the brain-burn factor. High Frontier isn’t as complex as Magic Realm, although the fact that its in the same conversation is telling. No, High Frontier’s brain burn is the paradox of choice. In the Realm, you start of with a world where you are going to wander around for a bit … the great treasures could be anywhere. Sure if you are hunting dragons you will have some preferred destinations, but the early game is exploration. In space, we’ve got decades of exploration done before the first mission launches. The map is known, and cosmically complex.

Even ignoring anything past the asteroid belt², your first mission has plenty of options limited by hydration, distance in burns and/or time, landing thrust …. and also preferences relating to spectral type and risk management. Then you have to calculate fuel, and High Frontier’s ingenious implementation of Tsiolkovsky’s rocket equation take some time to think about. Even initiates with a few games under their belt (such as myself) have to ponder mission planning.

After about three hours, I’m tired.

That being said, I’d like to learn the Bernal and TW thruster rules (some modules in HF4), so I watched the heavy cardboard rules video (and am watching the playthrough) and I’ve set up a solo game (of HF3) which I might play off and on. A solo game has the “I can get up and come back to it tomorrow” advantage.

So, High Frontier is back into the suggest rating. I’ve re-caught that particular bug.

1. Possibly including expansions still under development ︎
2. Possibly a mistake, and I also typically ignore Mercury and Venus (a definite mistake) ︎

(I forgot to publish this earlier).

Games Played

Quarters — Bridge (60+ sessions)

Dimes —1846 (2x), Chu Han (2x), The Gang, Pagan: Fate of Roanoke

Nickels — Air Baron, Jump Drive, 1862, Fishing, Glory to Rome, LotR: FotR Trick Taking Game, Race for the Galaxy, Shards of Infinity

A fair chunk of gaming was with the TaoLing¹. All of Pagan, Air Baron, Jump Drive & Shards were with him (and most of my ’62 and Chu Han). Now that he is no longer a student, I expect a much lower count next year …

I think I played ~90 unique titles, which is honestly fairly high. Full List on BGG

New to Me Games

As is always the case, most new games are firmly in indifferent category, but maybe with a novelty bonus. I think my Game of the Year is likely Chu Han, but even that is somewhat disappointing, because for games by Tom Lehmann, I’m hoping for 100+ plays, Chu Han petered out just north of 20. It’s a disappointment that most designers would kill for, but still.

And that was kinda it. Nothing set my world on fire. A mediocre year, in my book. Other new games of note were Dragon’s Down (my thoughts on DD vs Magic Realm), the new Caylus 1303

I’m also saddened that I only got in 3 games of Stationfall and Pastiche. Those need more plays.

Trends and Notes

My Weds night group has pivoted into 18xx for a large percentage of the sessions which accounts for most of my ’46 plays (20+) as well as Shikoku 1889, 18 India, 1822PNW, 1822MX, 1848 Australia. I got in a game of 1833NE, and am looking forward to its GMT release. (I also play some 18xx online on 18xx.games)

I’ve also been writing most weeks at the 20th Century Project.

1. When he was home for a few months before relocating for a job, or back for the holidays. ︎

Every now and then you see a monster hand. Playing with Roxie in a special club game I pick up:

S: KQx H: QJ9x D: 9x C: K98x.

I am not against opening light, but balanced, aceless eleven counts don’t require any pushing (in second seat). It goes around to fourth seat and my partner bids Two Clubs. I have a monstrous hand opposite a two club opening, so I make a waiting Two Diamonds bid (which creates a Game Force). Partner bids Three Diamonds (a real suit). I have a real problem. I do have four hearts, and I can bid it, but I only have four hearts. I bid Three Hearts. Hopefully partner will bid 3 NT and then I can bid … I’m not sure. 6 NT should be safe, but I’d love to have 5NT as “Bid 6NT with a minimum, and 7NT with extras.” But I’d never seen used that bid in 37 years … now I’ve had two hands in under twelve months where I could use it.

Partner now bids Four No Trump. Ugh. Is that blackwood? Quantitative showing extras? I’m clearly not passing. Unfortunately in our version of Roman Key Card Blackwood my correct bid (assuming I think it’s blackwood) is Five Diamonds (showing no key cards). I’d hate for us to be on the wrong wavelength and playing in 5 Diamonds when 6 NT should be ice cold …. although it may only be cold if I’m declarer, and I wouldn’t be. (The opening lead could be a club through my king into RHO’s AQ). I wish my correct bid was five clubs, because then I’m sure I wouldn’t be passed. But I grit my teeth and bid Five Diamonds.

Partner bids Seven Hearts.

I was totally going to pull “Six” hearts to no trump, but should I pull seven? Well, now I’m sure partner must have four hearts (at least). Partner bid seven hearing I have no key cards …. so why ask at all? Partner must have AKxx(x) of hearts and a solid diamond suit. Either partner has the black aces, and I’m not sure what the point of key card was, or partner has a black suit void and was looking for the last ace to decide between hearts and no trump.

We don’t play Exclusion Key Card (the most dangerous convention), so hrm. In the end, I figure that this is a club game and any grand slam should be a 75% even when its as obvious as this. If I convert to 7NT and it’s right, I gain maybe 2 matchpoints. If we’re off an ace I give up 10-12. The only real issue is that sometimes 7NT makes when 7H is off, due to a bad trump break. But against that on a bad diamond break I may need to ruff the suit good (imagine partner with AKQxxx or AKxxxxx).

I pass, but not without some thought. If I get doubled I’ll run. (In fact, a clever expert versus another expert may double a making 7H knowing that 7N goes down … but against this pair I needn’t worry about that). LHO leads a diamond …

I’ve seen monster hands before, but Roxie puts down …. a kaiju. Calling it a monster truly understates how powerful the hand is.

S: A H: AKxx D: AKQJTxx C:A

When the opening lead doesn’t get ruffed and both follow to one round of trumps I quickly claim.

I’m still not sure what the 4N bid accomplished. Sadly with us playing 14-30 Key card, my five diamond response gives no real followup to ask for the heart queen (If we played 03-14 where five clubs shows zero, then 5 Diamonds would ask¹ … In hindsight I think that perhaps Roxie should have bid 5NT which typically shows all the key cards and then see what I do. But normally the response is to show kings, and she really wants to know that I have the Q (and hopefully J) of hearts, or Q of hearts and a black king.

Roxie just decided that I was likely to have the HQ or 5+ hearts, and hope for some luck, but I think she should have bid 7NT directly … a bad heart break would doom 7H, but 7N might make if I had the diamond nine! and both black kings or a KQ pair (all of which I had).

This is one of the hand where a relay system² (which lets you ask for Aces, then Kings, then Queens and sometimes even Jacks) would be useful, but the memory burden of that system daunts even me.

Checking the scores I am at least comforted to know that my guesses at the end were right. 7NT scored 14/15 (three tables bid it³) and 7H was 12/15, and the rest of the field were in various small slams (or 7D).

In any case, Roxie’s hand is now the new record holder. This hand was pat of TheCommonGame, which encourages clubs to all use the same hands (during the same day) so that multiple clubs can compare records (and experts who analyze the hands can share them wider) so presumably lots of people playing bridge yesterday picked up Hand #17 and went “Wow!”

Update — Apparently Schenken would handle this nicely, see comments.

1. Which way to order them is a hot topic. Eddie Kantar’s 200+ page book on RKC goes into great detail on this, and advocates swapping them around based on if the strong or weak hand is asking, but despite being able to quickly absorb new conventions and entire systems readily, I found myself very confused on reading it and normally just play Kickback (where you bid 4 Spades to ask for aces instead of 4 NT), which alleviates the issue by ensuring you always have more space. Kickback has it’s own set of problems, but I understand them. ︎
2. See my review of one such book. ︎
3. My hand opened once, which I imagine made 7NT much easier to contemplate. ︎

Had a small group and so I played two games of Attika, which is an excellent two player game. Some people (not me) like it with three, but nobody (that I know) likes it at four. Reminscent of Hex or Go, a ‘connection’ abstract but you also are managing resources (cards and more importantly tempo) to try to get all your pieces down. If you make a connection its an auto win, so you mainly exploit it by threatening when it will be expensive for your opponent to block. Fast and on my fifty by fifty list.

Rating — Suggest.