I think it’s normal for creative types to experience a measure of jealousy in the entertainment they enjoy. “Why didn’t I think of that?” “How do they do that?” “What are they doing right that I’m doing wrong?” So go the thoughts one can have when consuming media in line with what one wants to create themselves. Jealousy can become trepidation and even fear. Why try to create something new where something new that’s very similar has already been created?
When I run into this question, I try to remind myself of what I feel is the correct answer: Try to create anyway.
It’s difficult, at times, not to care about the works other have done that lay within our interests and skill set. We want to know the competition, after all, to gauge our chances at meeting with the same level of success. We want that knowledge, that assurance, even if it means we have to give up on our ideas because, according to all of the evidence, the ideas don’t stand a chance.
That knowledge, as essential as it seems, gives rise to our fears. We’re afraid our dreams aren’t good enough. That our ideas will never find an audience. That at the end of all things, all we’ll have to show for our desire to create is some disconnected scraps of thought and art, a bitter feeling of repeated and callous rejection, and a whole lot of wasted time.
You shouldn’t be afraid of these things. And if you want to give your dreams a fighting chance, you can’t be afraid of them.
It doesn’t matter if what you want to do has been done. What matters is, how are you going to do it? What parts of your creation will set it apart from others? Why is it yours? Answering those questions, instead of the others I posed, will help you move forward, create more, and bring your dreams to life. You’ll find confidence and joy in doing so. And you will leave your fears behind.
The world needs more creators. Go forth, and make something new. And when you do it, do it without fear.
You might think, from the title, that this is going to be another post about Netrunner. As much as I could ramble about cyberpunk card games until the post-apocalyptic cows come home, I want to talk more about the weather. No, not the weather in Night Vale, that’s yet another post. Lately the weather where I live has been cold. The winds have teeth. Snow is everywhere. And slowly but surely, almost every surface has languished under a coat of ice.
We’ve had to dig ourselves out of weather like this, situations like this, before. Even if you haven’t (in which case, consider yourself very fortunate), I’ll enumerate to facilitate better understanding. We have a bit of a hibernation instinct, the impulse to withdraw from the biting winds and damaging cold, to retain all the warmth we can by staying as huddled and insulated as possible. Whatever we leave behind, whatever escaped our notice in our withdrawal, becomes encased in that ice we’re desperate to avoid.
So it is with projects we leave behind. It could be for any number of reasons – fatigue, stress, more pressing projects, mere distraction – but whatever the cause, we put our ideas on a shelf in the freezer of the mind, to preserve it for later. Thankfully, ideas do not themselves suffer from freezer burn; the only real danger is that time may have made the idea too hip or too passé to be completely actionable. But no idea is completely without merit. All you have to do is break the ice around it and see what you have to work with.
This goes back to reinterpreting the entire concept of writer’s block. I maintain that it doesn’t really exist, at least not in the form of some ineffable construct that simply appears in the path of the writer. What does exist is this reshuffling of priorities in our heads. If you feel like something is preventing you from doing what you want to do, all it takes is some time to recharge, rethink your approach, and maybe break the ice covering something in your mind that hasn’t had attention in a while. I’m sure, in some case, there are truly daunting things in the way that can mess up one’s personal productivity, so I don’t mean to generalize. However, for the most part, if you’re wondering what’s happened to that idea you once had, if it’s any good or if there’s something fresh about it you can use elsewhere, I encourage you to dig it out from the back of that mental freezer, chip off that ice around it, and see what you can do.
I find myself wondering: is this going to be a thing? I don’t mean Netrunner, that is most definitely a thing. It’s a thing I’ve fallen in love with all over again. I can’t remember why I stopped playing the new iteration of Richard Garfield’s cyberpunk asymmetrical card game of bluffs and gambles and deception and tactical thinking. I think it was due to a lack of local players. I don’t know.
I’m actually wondering if this 500-words-on-a-Friday thing I’ve done twice in a row now is going to be a thing. “Friday 500”? In lieu of full-length reviews? Time seems to be at a premium these days. I have things I’m planning for, work schedules to plow through, and other projects I’m trying to line up to get knocked down, but time always seems to slip through my fingers. I’m going to try and get back on track in a few ways in the next couple weeks so I’m not completely out of sorts when big changes start happening.
Anyway, back to Netrunner. What’s changed since the last time I rambled about it? Quite a bit. I mean, not mechanically – it’s the same game of one player establishing large monolithic constructs full of juicy information (or deadly traps) while the other player pokes said constructs to extract the information and generally undermine all of those carefully laid plans. And it’s still pretty damn fantastic. But now I’ve started going down the rabbit hole of Data Packs.
Let me explain. Instead of randomized booster packs, Fantasy Flight releases 60-card ‘Data Packs’ on a regular schedule. There are ‘cycles’ of packs, all related thematically, with six packs per cycle that release each month for six months. Between cycles are larger expansions that focus on two identities – one Corp, one Runner. The interesting thing about these expansions is that each of them contains 3 copies of every card. You normally only have to buy one Data Pack to get the card you want, and you’re certain to have enough to put into your next deck. It saves money in the long run and keeps the playing field nice and level. It also appeals to the part of my brain that loves putting decks together. The Core Set does not have the same distribution of cards, which is unfortunate, but I think another $30 for a second Core Set is a better investment than spending that much on a single card in Magic: the Gathering’s somewhat cutthroat second-hand market.
How good is this game? Quinns won’t shut up about it. His friend Leigh loves it. Communities and subreddits remain abuzz about it. The competitive scene is going strong.
This game is so good that my long-suffering wife, with a rather well-documented history of disliking games like Magic, plays it, and doesn’t hate it.
She’s even gone so far as to buy me a copy of Neuromancer to help maintain my dystopian cyberpunk-y mood.
It’s a good game, and you should definitely play it.
The Strategy Cards, as compared to an ordinary Reference Paw.
The galaxy is a dangerous place, Your Excellency, and it is always changing. With the Lazax Empire gone and so many leaders vying for power, the situation is as mutable as the stars themselves as they wheel in their courses. If you mean to prevail, you need to draw back from the tactical view and see the galaxy as a whole. You need to plan around and ahead of your opponents. You need the right strategy.
Last week, we discussed the very basics of Twilight Imperium, in the form of Tactical and Transfer actions. But I also mentioned these large, trapezoidal cards that determine the order of play in a given round. These are Strategy cards, and they have a pretty large part to play as the game progresses. As previously discussed, you can activate your Strategy card when it’s your turn instead of taking a Tactical action or using an appropriate Action Card. It does not have to be the first thing you do in the round. It is also worth noting that you cannot pass your turn until after you’ve activated your Strategy for the round.
I’m going to go over the broad categories of each Strategy, and then highlight some specifics from the expansions. Note that most of these cards have primary and secondary abilities. While the primary ability usually applies entirely to the player using the Strategy, other players can use the Secondary ability, in clockwise order from the active player, usually by spending a Command Counter from their Strategy Allocation area.
What follows is a breakdown of all 8 Strategies, what they do, and how you can benefit from taking the card in question.
1 – Initiative/Leadership
In most circumstances, the biggest benefit to taking this Strategy card is that it allows you to go first in the round. In the base game, Initiative lets you claim the Speaker token, which means you also go first when choosing the Strategy next round. It also saves you Command Counters when executing secondary abilities on other player’s Strategy cards.
Leadership, on the other hand, grants its user new Command Counters. The secondary ability lets all players spend Influence to pick up more, including the active player.
2 – Diplomacy
There are times when words are more powerful than weapons. Diplomacy allows the player to ease some of the pressure they may be feeling from their opponents in a direct fashion that does not involve combat. The basic game lets the player force a peace between themselves an opponent for a round, and allows the other players to refresh previously exhausted systems. The expansion’s Diplomacy II instead allows the active player to establish a Demilitarized Zone for a round, marking a system so that NONE of their opponents can activate it. The card also allows for the peaceful annexation of an unoccupied system.
3 – Political/Assembly
Ah, politics. A process simultaneously more civilized and more vicious than warfare itself. In Twilight Imperium, there is a deck of Political Cards filled with agendas from bans on weapons research to dispensation of resources to another player. The basic Political Strategy lets the primary player manipulate the deck after they resolve the top card, as well as providing Action Cards and Command Counters. Assembly, on the other hand, offers the active player the choice of taking the Speaker token for themselves while naming another player to resolve an agenda, or resolving one of their own agendas while naming someone else as Speaker. This is also where players can refresh planets when using Assembly.
And then, there’s the option for Political Intrigue, which I will go into next week.
4 – Logistics/Production
Since the role of the Logistics card (providing Command Counters) is taken by the Leadership card in the expansion, we have Production instead. The active player gets to produce units at one of their space docks without activating the system. The secondary ability is similar, but limits production capacity. It’s a very straightforward Strategy.
5 – Trade
The base game of Twilight Imperium and each of its expansions all have different versions of this Strategy. In all three of them, players negotiate to exchange Trade Agreements, and collect Trade Goods from those agreements to supplement their resources. The base game is a bit harsh in that players using that card’s secondary ability must spend one of their precious Command Counters to get the goods. Shattered Empire does way with that portion of the card, and seems rather friendlier. Shards of the Throne includes Mercenaries in its Trade Strategy, and I’ll give a primer on who they are and how they work next week.
6 – Warfare
War in Twilight Imperium is all about Tactical Actions, moving your fleets and armies into position for the perfect strike. The basic Strategy card lets you take back one of your Command Counters used for a Tactical Action, allowing you to use it again elsewhere, while secondary players can move some of their smaller ships. Shattered Empire instead introduces us to the High Alert token, a far more visible way to get your point across. Placing a system on High Alert means all ships in that system get bonuses to movement and space combat. The token can move with the fleet at the player’s option, or it can remain there as a deterrent for any potential invaders. Secondarily, the improved Warfare Strategy lets players move ships, regardless of class but limited in number, without activating their destinations.
7 – Technology
This Strategy Card is how players expand the technological repertoire of their burgeoning empire. The card in Shattered Empire lets the primary player do so more quickly, while the secondary ability is cheaper for the other players. There is a simplified tech tree I’ll make available to you, courtesy of someone over at Board Game Geek. You may find it useful for planning purposes.
8 – Imperial/Bureaucracy
Twilight Imperium is won by its Objective Cards. Some of them are Public Objectives anyone can claim if they meet the requirements, while others are Preliminary or Secret Objectives specific to the individual player. The Imperial strategy lets the active player reveal one of the Public Objectives, then grants them free Victory Points, while the secondary abilities allow for the production of units. Bureaucracy, on the other hand, grants no free Victory Points but instead lets the active player manipulate the Public Objectives, and lets them score one if they can, something not normally possible before the end of the round. This allows for more flexible and, arguably, more fair play, while keeping up the pace of the game. Which is important when the game takes up your entire day.
With this knowledge, you are now prepared to play most of the game! All that remains is to break down some more specifics.
