Official !Malkavian March 2002 Newsletter
Sorrow
Volume 2, Issue 3.
I. Introduction
Sorry for the delay in getting another issue of this newsletter
out. Things have come up at home and at work yadda yadda yadda.
Yeah, I know, there's no excuse. So flog me already....
heheheheh
II. The ever changing section
I can't think of anything profound to say at this time. Except,
maybe, I'm wondering why there weren't any Malkavian Antitribu
in the Clan Novels. We feel gipped. Well, there were alot of
badass fights that we'd rather have not taken part in, so I guess
that's good. What was that vampire at the end of Brujah? That
fight was amazing... It reminds of this one time at band camp...
Oh, I just remembered something I wanted to say. No, lost it.
Oh, right. With the Camarilla edition coming out in a few months,
what do you think is going to happen to the Malkavians? Don't the
Malks now have Dementation in the role playing game? Since there
has been alot of cross over between the RPG and the CCG, there isn't
much reason to think that they won't. I mean, look at Anatole... Of
course, LSJ is always surprising us, so there's no way to be sure.
But if they do, that is going to be insulting. I mean, we were the
special ones. We were the ones with Dementation, not them. They
should stick with their Dominate. Our Dementation is much more fun.
However, if it does happen, I've got 3 words to inspire much fear:
Dementation & Madness Network.
Spread the love.
III. Why us?
Because we're bad asses, ok. Because we can stare down a charging
Brujah, a frenzied Gangrel and a maniacal Tzimisce and cause madness
to descend upon them or cut and run. We may be bad asses, but we
aren't stupid. Crazy, not stupid. There is a distinction.
One of the better tools, when used in bulk, to shut down a deck is
Lunatic Eruption. Here is the relevant card text (as provided by
the Card Monger):
Lunatic Eruption
Type(s): Action
Discipline(s): Dementation
Blood Cost: 2
Set(s): *Sabbat War
Card Text: (D) Put this card on any ready minion. During his or her
minion phase, the minion with this card must enter combat with a ready
minion controlled by his prey as a (D) action (unless the minion must
hunt). Any minion may burn this card as an action.
SUP: As above, and the minion taking the action to burn this card takes
one damage (damage not preventable) when this card is burned.
Revlevant Clarifications and Rulings
The mandatory attack action must be taken before any non-mandatory
actions.
[LSJ 20001127]
Originally I had dismissed this card has being only marginally useful.
It cost 2 blood (which is alot, especially when the !Malks don't have
all that many avenues open to them for blood gain) and is fairly easily
burned. Then I saw it used in a deck during the tournament in Lafayette
in January. When I saw the first one come out, I laughed. When I saw
the second, third and fourth put into play, I was like "Woah". With
those cards, the player was effectively able to shut down their prey.
Not only did it tie up the !Malk's prey's minions with non-ousting actions,
but it also weakened the grand prey's minions. Even if each combat
consisted of nothing more than a single strike for hands, it wouldn't
be long before one or the other minion went to torpor.
Sure, another player may eventually burn the Lunatic Eruptions for your
prey, but generally it's not in their immediate best interest. Each
player is busy to oust their respective prey. It may or may not take
several turns before your grand prey burns the Lunatic Eruptions just
to keep his minions out of constant combat, but those are turns that
you a) don't have to worry about your prey's minions doing anything
to you and b) worry about your prey ousting your grand prey. In that
time, you can go into full bore oust mode.
The best players to pull this stunt on are your prey and your grand
predator, especially if either one are combat decks. Particularly if
they are Assamites. *shudder*. Another deck that this may do well
against is an intercept wall deck. If you have enough stealth, that is.
Lunatic Eruption will force them to eat through all/most of their
untaps just to be able to play the rest of their deck and that is
definitely a good thing.
An excellent card to follow up a Lunatic Eruption would be:
The Haunting
Type(s): Action
Discipline(s): Dementation
Set(s): *Sabbat War
Card Text: (D) Put this card on any minion. The minion with this card
burns one blood or life during his or her untap phase. Any minion can
burn this card as an action. A minion can have only one of The Haunting.
SUP: As above, but this action is at +1 stealth.
Once you nail your prey's vampires with Lunatic Eruptions, preventing
them from taking any other action, nail them with The Haunting. Double
the blood loss fun.
IV. Deck of the Month
Deck included in the 03/02 Newsletter to illustrate the use of Lunatic
Eruption and Haunting
Deck Name: Spread the Love
Created By: Mike Perlman
Description: Haunt, Erupt, and Bleed, at stealth, glued together with
Freak Drive.
Fourth Place (of 15), Crusade: Lafayette, January 2002.
Crypt: (12 cards, Min: 20, Max: 32, Avg: 6.75)
----------------------------------------------
2 Anatole AUS DEM dom for OBF 8, Malkavian
2 Ian Forestal AUS DOM THA 8, Tremere Antitribu
2 Theron AUS DEM for OBF obt 8, Malkavian Antitribu
2 Artemis aus cel DEM for OBF 6, Malkavian Antitribu
1 Gisela Harden aus dem FOR NEC 7, Harbingers of Skulls, Priscus
1 Larry dem for pot SAN 5, Blood Brother
1 Dolphin Black AUS DEM OBF 6, Malkavian Antitribu
1 Yorik dem obf 3, Malkavian Antitribu
Library: (90 cards)
-------------------
Master (8 cards)
3 Blood Doll
1 Club Zombie
1 Dementation
1 Hungry Coyote, The
1 Institution Hunting Ground
1 Jake Washington (Hunter)
Action (43 cards)
2 Call, The
2 Derange
20 Haunting, The
6 Kindred Spirits
7 Lunatic Eruption
5 Restoration
1 Summon the Abyss
Action Modifier (20 cards)
4 Cloak the Gathering
2 Confusion
10 Freak Drive
4 Mind Tricks
Reaction (5 cards)
1 Telepathic Counter
3 Telepathic Misdirection
1 Wake with Evening's Freshness
Combat (3 cards)
1 Reality Mirror
1 Skin of Rock
1 Skin of Steel
Retainer (2 cards)
1 J. S. Simmons, Esq.
1 Tasha Morgan
Equipment (1 cards)
1 Enchanted Marionette
Combo (8 cards)
8 Deny
Variant B, post Bloodlines, includes the following changes:
Subtract: Tasha Morgan, J.S. Simmons, 2x Haunting, Enchanted Marionette
Add: 2x Skin of Rock, Skin of Steel, 2x Fortitude
If you have a deck, comment or combo that you would like to be added
to this newsletter, please feel free to send them in!
Andrew S. Davidson
>Sorry for the delay in getting another issue of this newsletter
>out. Things have come up at home and at work yadda yadda yadda.
>Yeah, I know, there's no excuse. So flog me already....
You're a member of the Sabbat, fer chrissakes. Think Hannibal ...
Lector, that is. If someone dares complain about your schedule, rip
their tongue out and have it for dinner with some fava beans and a
fine chianti.
>what do you think is going to happen to the Malkavians? Don't the
>Malks now have Dementation in the role playing game? Since there
>has been alot of cross over between the RPG and the CCG, there isn't
>much reason to think that they won't. I mean, look at Anatole... Of
>course, LSJ is always surprising us, so there's no way to be sure.
>But if they do, that is going to be insulting. I mean, we were the
>special ones. We were the ones with Dementation, not them. They
>should stick with their Dominate. Our Dementation is much more fun.
>However, if it does happen, I've got 3 words to inspire much fear:
>
>Dementation & Madness Network.
I bought the clanbook recently and liked the comment that the
antitribu Malkavians are really the true clan - it's the Camarilla
ones who are aberrant. I'd like to see some unification of the two as
effects like The Call and the Madness Network are more important in
binding us than the minor issue of sect.
>Originally I had dismissed this card has being only marginally useful.
>It cost 2 blood (which is alot, especially when the !Malks don't have
>all that many avenues open to them for blood gain) and is fairly easily
>burned. Then I saw it used in a deck during the tournament in Lafayette
>in January. When I saw the first one come out, I laughed. When I saw
>the second, third and fourth put into play, I was like "Woah". With
>those cards, the player was effectively able to shut down their prey.
I'm still inclined to dismiss the card. If you can get four Lunatic
Eruptions through then why aren't you bleeding instead? That's a much
more direct way of ousting your prey. The only thing to be said for
it is that the rest of the table will be inclined to keep you around
for amusement value while fast bleed risks rousing a lynch mob.
>An excellent card to follow up a Lunatic Eruption would be:
>
>The Haunting
Again, this is only excellent if your object is to convince the rest
of the table that you're a crazy Malkavian who can be safely ignored -
the card is good because it's bad. Why was this coaster printed in
Sabbat War in place of a useful common like Passion? I didn't even
know that Passion existed until I checked my DB just now and now I
want some, lots of them. We got stiffed in a big way by SW as there's
a whole slew of OOP Dementation cards now:
Blessing of Chaos
Confusion
Derange
Mind Tricks
Mind of a Child
Passion
Wave of Insanity
If the Camarilla Malkavians get Dementation then all these cards
should be reprinted too.
>Deck Name: Spread the Love
>2 Ian Forestal
>1 Club Zombie
>1 Hungry Coyote, The
>1 Jake Washington (Hunter)
>2 Call, The
>2 Derange
>7 Lunatic Eruption
>1 Summon the Abyss
>10 Freak Drive
>4 Mind Tricks
>1 Reality Mirror
>1 J. S. Simmons, Esq.
>1 Tasha Morgan
>1 Enchanted Marionette
>8 Deny
This deck is stuffed with rares. I bought six boxes of VTES boosters
when I was in the US recently and I now have one copy of Deny. This
is a very cool card which should so not have been rare. I'm now
shopping for LotR cards. It's not as bad as other Decipher games but
there are still lots of power rares. It's even worse in VTES because
you can't feel satisfied with just four copies. Crazy.
A card which isn't unique or once-per-game shouldn't be rare. Fill
the rare slot with cards that are unique like vampires. I've opened a
couple of boxes of Bloodlines now and it's clear what the problem is -
most of the uncommon slots have been taken by vampires. This forces
all the non-unique cards to be rare or common and that's too extreme a
divide. I have many copies of all the Bloodlines vampires and I'm
sick of the sight of them. The only vampires that need be less than
rare are go-in-any-deck workhorses like the caitiff.
Andrew
James Coupe
s.net>, Andrew S. Davidson <a...@csi.com> writes:
>It's not as bad as other Decipher games but
>there are still lots of power rares. It's even worse in VTES because
>you can't feel satisfied with just four copies. Crazy.
*sigh*
You *don't have to* feel satisfied with <X> copies (where <X> is a small
number, varying for each different game).
And it's perfectly possible to build highly playable decks using lots of
rares.
This doesn't mean you *have* to have dozens of rares to compete.
Please, either provide some foundation for this continual assertion that
the ability to collect and use lots of rares is a bad thing or stop
making the same assertion.
--
James Coupe Oh, the poor folks hate the rich folks,
PGP 0x5D623D5D And the rich folks hate the poor folks.
EBD690ECD7A1FB457CA2 All of my folks hate all of your folks,
13D7E668C3695D623D5D It's American as apple pie.
Chris Berger
"Andrew S. Davidson" <a...@csi.com> wrote in message
news:1230C7B8C351D537.963218B1...@lp.airnews.net...
>
> This deck is stuffed with rares. I bought six boxes of VTES boosters
> when I was in the US recently and I now have one copy of Deny.
>
of VTES boosters (although you must have gotten it from some other source). ;)
>
> A card which isn't unique or once-per-game shouldn't be rare. Fill
> the rare slot with cards that are unique like vampires. I've opened a
> couple of boxes of Bloodlines now and it's clear what the problem is -
> most of the uncommon slots have been taken by vampires. This forces
> all the non-unique cards to be rare or common and that's too extreme a
> divide. I have many copies of all the Bloodlines vampires and I'm
> sick of the sight of them. The only vampires that need be less than
> rare are go-in-any-deck workhorses like the caitiff.
>
This is a little simplistic. There has definitely been a rare problem in Bloodlines.
But moving all of the vampires to rare is hardly the answer. The solution in Jyhad
was to have ~6 uncommons per pack and have 2 uncommon sheets (one of them the
"vampire" sheet). The vampires from Jyhad have always been traded as approximately
the same as commons, because most commons can go up to 10 in a deck, whereas most
vampires will never be more than duplicated in a deck. If you have 4 copies of a
vampire, that's pretty much all you'll ever need. Rare vampires, however, have
simply upset people. People don't like the most basic resource in a game to be rare.
Someone described it as similar to making all the land in Magic rare. Although you
generally have more than 12 land per deck. People who buy multiple boxes of cards
could probably deal with rare vampires (but most of them would probably not be
happy). Casual players, on the other hand, would be unable to build a deck. As it
is, basically a full box of Bloodlines is needed just to be able to even think about
playing with Bloodlines cards.
The fact that vampires take up all the uncommons *is* a problem. It moves many cards
which should have been uncommon, like Coagulated Entity, Darkling Trickery, Hag's
Wrinkles, Neutral Guard, all of the Condemnations, etc..., and makes them all rares.
It's nearly impossible to get enough of any of these cards for a deck. Darkling
Trickery is a Flash that's an R1, for god's sake. I really would like to see WW go
to a vampire rarity sheet, even if it meant 2 vampires, 2 uncommons per pack instead
of 3. This would increase the rarity of uncommons and vampires, and would mean one
less common card (or one more card) per pack, but I think that would be acceptable.
As I've said before, I'm also of the opinion that rarity should be sligthly flattened
as well, with all commons being C1, and all rares being R2. That's 150 cards, with
room for up to 100 cards on the uncommon sheet (or room for 200 cards an uncommon and
vampire sheet, but if there were 2 vamps and 2 uncommons per pack, U1's would be the
same as rares). Assuming this was enough space for all the cards in the set, this
would also solve the problem somewhat. Bloodlines had something like 75 rares, which
virtually assured that some of the rares would be cards that were highly useful in
multiples. If people buy cards the way I do (and I have to assume they don't,
because no one seems to agree with anything I say around here), this would also make
more money for WW, by pushing back the point at which commons become worthless and
you're only buying packs for the rares. In fact, it could completely eliminate that
point if rares were sufficiently non-utilitarian, as a C1 is actually pretty hard to
get 10 of by buying packs. Personally, I get more and more fed up with buying packs
when the commons start becoming worthless, as I don't like to think I'm spending 3
bucks a pack on one random card. I can buy singles for that price!
Andrew S. Davidson
>Deny is not in VTES, so that would explain why you have only one after buying 6 boxes
>of VTES boosters (although you must have gotten it from some other source). ;)
That's 2 boxes each of SW, FN and Bloodlines, all of which are VTES
expansions. To get 8 copies of Deny, I suppose I'd need to buy
another 14 boxes of SW. No thanks, not even at Potomac prices.
>People don't like the most basic resource in a game to be rare.
>Someone described it as similar to making all the land in Magic rare.
>Although you generally have more than 12 land per deck.
WotC doesn't put _any_ standard land in boosters now, does it? The
best place for basic resources is in starters.
>People who buy multiple boxes of cards
>could probably deal with rare vampires (but most of them would probably not be
>happy). Casual players, on the other hand, would be unable to build a deck. As it
>is, basically a full box of Bloodlines is needed just to be able to even think about
>playing with Bloodlines cards.
That's mainly because the set is fragmented across so many clans and
disciplines. If vampires were rare, you'd still get one in every
booster. Buy 12 boosters and you have enough for a crypt. How
focussed that is depends upon the number of clans not the rarity.
> really would like to see WW go to a vampire rarity sheet, even if
>it meant 2 vampires, 2 uncommons per pack instead of 3. This would
>increase the rarity of uncommons and vampires, and would mean one
>less common card (or one more card) per pack, but I think that would
>be acceptable.
Still sounds like too many vampires.
>If people buy cards the way I do (and I have to assume they don't,
>because no one seems to agree with anything I say around here), this would also make
>more money for WW, by pushing back the point at which commons become worthless and
>you're only buying packs for the rares. In fact, it could completely eliminate that
>point if rares were sufficiently non-utilitarian, as a C1 is actually pretty hard to
>get 10 of by buying packs. Personally, I get more and more fed up with buying packs
>when the commons start becoming worthless, as I don't like to think I'm spending 3
>bucks a pack on one random card. I can buy singles for that price!
I don't like buying more than a box of an expansion. I went to the
store today and bought 2 starters and a box of boosters for both Buffy
(Pergamum Prophecy) and LotR (Mines of Moria). I haven't opened the
Buffy (and have low expectations) but that was just right for MoM as
it gave me almost all the set (still missing the rare Balrog though,
grrr). It's a bad sign that VTES is harder to collect than a Decipher
game.
Andrew
James Coupe
>expansions. To get 8 copies of Deny, I suppose I'd need to buy
>another 14 boxes of SW.
No, you see, people trade cards, borrow cards or buy singles.
It's not hard.
CurtAdams
>> really would like to see WW go to a vampire rarity sheet, even if
>>it meant 2 vampires, 2 uncommons per pack instead of 3. This would
>>increase the rarity of uncommons and vampires, and would mean one
>>less common card (or one more card) per pack, but I think that would
>>be acceptable.
>Still sounds like too many vampires.
The canonical use ratio is 12 vamps: 90 library cards or 1 in 8.5
One vampire per pack is about right, since cards seem to pile up
a bit more readily. However, we definitely need a full set of starters
with that setup. While it's true that you can trade to a reasonable
crypt from 12 such starters, that's a lot of work and requires a
lot of knowledge. Who's going to start the game if the first thing
they have to do is a 2 week trading bout?
Curt Adams (curt...@aol.com)
"It is better to be wrong than to be vague" - Freeman Dyson
Chris Berger
"CurtAdams" <curt...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20020314172007...@mb-dh.aol.com...
>
> The canonical use ratio is 12 vamps: 90 library cards or 1 in 8.5
> One vampire per pack is about right, since cards seem to pile up
> a bit more readily. However, we definitely need a full set of starters
> with that setup. While it's true that you can trade to a reasonable
> crypt from 12 such starters, that's a lot of work and requires a
> lot of knowledge. Who's going to start the game if the first thing
> they have to do is a 2 week trading bout?
>
8.5 is still more than 1 per pack, and that would be the minimum. 2 vampires
per pack would be much more reasonable. Also, Andrew is assuming that vampires
would be the only rare cards, which is again false. Recent sets have been
between 2 and 4 vampires per pack, with 3 vampires being by far the most common.
The main reason that vampires should not, in general be rare, and why many
people were upset that there were *any* rare vampires is that, as the most basic
resource of the game, people like to have enough vampires to make whatever deck
they want to. Not having all of the library cards to make any deck you want is
not as tough a pill to swallow. Being able to collect 1 or 2 of every vampire
from a single booster box is an ideal that I think WW should really strive for.
CurtAdams
>The main reason that vampires should not, in general be rare, and why many
>people were upset that there were *any* rare vampires is that, as the most
basic
>resource of the game, people like to have enough vampires to make whatever
deck
>they want to. Not having all of the library cards to make any deck you want
is
>not as tough a pill to swallow. Being able to collect 1 or 2 of every vampire
>from a single booster box is an ideal that I think WW should really strive
for.
I think the complainers are missing the real crux point of decks, which
is the workhorse cards. I have extras of almost every vampire but not
of Blood Doll, Minion Tap, 5th Tradition, Taste of Vitae, etc. Until you
do a lot of trading, a library shortage means you can't make *any*
decent deck. I think the collecting interest is maximized if everything
is a little bit scarce, and the playing interest if everything gets
printed approximately in the use ratios. By either measure, vampires
are currently too common.
I have an entire box of BL, and I really haven't the library cards to
support any deck. I have enough vamps in most clans to support
mixed clan decks, so I would prefer more library and fewer vampires.
And a BL deck would be using support cards from the rest of my
collection, so it's worse than that.
Frederick Scott
>
> ark...@ugcs.caltech.edu writes:
>
> >The main reason that vampires should not, in general be rare, and why many
> >people were upset that there were *any* rare vampires is that, as the most
> >basic resource of the game, people like to have enough vampires to make
> >whatever deck they want to. Not having all of the library cards to make
> >any deck you want is not as tough a pill to swallow. Being able to collect
> >1 or 2 of every vampire from a single booster box is an ideal that I think
> >WW should really strive for.
>
> I think the complainers are missing the real crux point of decks, which
> is the workhorse cards. I have extras of almost every vampire but not
> of Blood Doll, Minion Tap, 5th Tradition, Taste of Vitae, etc. Until you
> do a lot of trading, a library shortage means you can't make *any*
> decent deck. I think the collecting interest is maximized if everything
> is a little bit scarce, and the playing interest if everything gets
> printed approximately in the use ratios. By either measure, vampires
> are currently too common.
Perhaps. But they shouldn't be rare. If anything is going to be off the
list of things "a little bit scarce", vampires are what I'd choose.
> I have an entire box of BL, and I really haven't the library cards to
> support any deck.
That's because one box of Bloodlines isn't enough, period. Making vampires
rare wouldn't change that. It would just make them one of the insufficient
commodities you didn't have enough of. There are 63 Bloodlines expansion
vampires and 70 rare cards. By increasing the number of R2 rares by seven,
you could make vampires hold all of the rare slots instead of any library
cards. But your 36 packs of Bloodlines will never produce 63 vampires no
matter what you do. You will automatically be cut off from doing certain
things depending on what you do unless you trade.
Sorry, I like the existing situation much better. At least this way, you'll
get the vast majority of the vampires in a single box and your library cards
will therefore pretty much all be usable as it, with support (naturally) from
other expansions - which is a given necessity in any event. You will not be
forced to trade or fill in with singles from the word, "go".
> And a BL deck would be using support cards from the rest of my
> collection, so it's worse than that.
What expansion doesn't require support card from the others, nowadays?
Especially amongst the smaller ones? I'm a little confused by that
comment.
Fred
Joshua Duffin
> I think the complainers are missing the real crux point of decks, which
> is the workhorse cards. I have extras of almost every vampire but not
> of Blood Doll, Minion Tap, 5th Tradition, Taste of Vitae, etc. Until you
> do a lot of trading, a library shortage means you can't make *any*
> decent deck.
Isn't what you really mean here that you can't make any *more*
decent decks? If your collection was so small that you didn't
have enough Minion Taps, 5ths, etc for even *one* deck, you
would also probably not have extras of the vampires.
I think the people arguing for non-rare vampires take the
point of view that players want to be able to make at least
any *one* deck using whatever vampires they feel like using,
not an indefinite number of decks (where the Blood Dolls
and such become a limiting factor). If having one good
deck at a time is your goal, the vampires you have access
to could easily be a more significant limiting factor than
your supply of Minion Taps and Blood Dolls.
(Whether the majority of players buys/constructs decks
this way is another issue, and one we probably don't have
any solid data for. I know that I personally generally
have 4-10 decks put together, and do take decks apart,
either to free up the cards in them for some other deck
idea I have or just because I get tired of playing them;
I also know that some people never take decks apart and
just make new ones out of what they still have available.
I do think that for newer players who want to be competitive,
the least investment-intensive option is to only have enough
"workhorse" or "power" cards for one or two decks and swap
them into new deck ideas with new vampires as desired.)
> I think the collecting interest is maximized if everything
> is a little bit scarce, and the playing interest if everything gets
> printed approximately in the use ratios. By either measure, vampires
> are currently too common.
I pretty much agree with your reasoning, although "use
ratios" can probably never make the really useful workhorse
cards common enough. If you want (just as an example) four
Blood Dolls for each deck, that'd be 4 in every 90 cards,
or 1 per 22.5 cards, or about 1 per 2 booster packs. In
a set with a 100-slot common sheet and 7 commons per booster,
Blood Doll would have to be a C7 to match its use ratio.
> I have an entire box of BL, and I really haven't the library cards to
> support any deck. I have enough vamps in most clans to support
> mixed clan decks, so I would prefer more library and fewer vampires.
> And a BL deck would be using support cards from the rest of my
> collection, so it's worse than that.
I think Fred's right that Bloodlines is just too large and
too fragmented a set for one box to be enough no matter how
the rarities were allocated. If vampires were more rare,
you probably wouldn't have enough of them to support the
library cards you'd have. (This is already almost certainly
true of the scarce clans, where you probably have quite a
number of library cards requiring TEM or OBE but not more
than one or two vampires with each skill.)
Josh
land ho!
Flux
news:a6t5hd$gqehr$1...@ID-121616.news.dfncis.de:
>
> "CurtAdams" <curt...@aol.com> wrote in message
> news:20020314221447...@mb-cg.aol.com...
>
>> I think the complainers are missing the real crux point of decks,
>> which is the workhorse cards. I have extras of almost every vampire
>> but not of Blood Doll, Minion Tap, 5th Tradition, Taste of Vitae, etc.
>> Until you do a lot of trading, a library shortage means you can't
>> make *any* decent deck.
>
> Isn't what you really mean here that you can't make any *more*
> decent decks? If your collection was so small that you didn't
> have enough Minion Taps, 5ths, etc for even *one* deck, you
> would also probably not have extras of the vampires.
Not really.
For example, I have at least 4 or 5 copies of most base VtES vampires, but
I hardly have enough Traditions for even one deck (I think I have about 4
2nds and 4 5ths - barely enough for one deck). That is, I can build
several crypts based on any base set clan, even most base set specific
vampire, yet I can only make one Tradition-based Prince deck, and it won't
have as many Trads as I'd like it to have. Likewise, I don't have that
many ToV or TS, surely not enough to make more than one deck with each.
Blood Dolls and WWEF/FA are also sometimes a problem, but only because
I'll include them in almost every deck I build, and I often have around 10
decks built.
Bottom line: library cards limit the number of decks I can build more than
crypt cards do, even if I stick to using mostly common cards, with a few
uncommons.
Flux
CurtAdams
>> I have an entire box of BL, and I really haven't the library cards to
>> support any deck.
>That's because one box of Bloodlines isn't enough, period. Making vampires
>rare wouldn't change that. It would just make them one of the insufficient
>commodities you didn't have enough of. There are 63 Bloodlines expansion
>vampires and 70 rare cards. By increasing the number of R2 rares by seven,
>you could make vampires hold all of the rare slots instead of any library
>cards. But your 36 packs of Bloodlines will never produce 63 vampires no
>matter what you do. You will automatically be cut off from doing certain
>things depending on what you do unless you trade.
One box may not be enough with any system, but with a little more I'd
be able to make up 2-clan decks if I had more library cards and fewer
vampires. As it is I'll need quite a bit more or substantial trading.
Inevitably, the further the pack ratio is from the use ratio, the more
packs you have to buy per deck.
>> And a BL deck would be using support cards from the rest of my
>> collection, so it's worse than that.
>What expansion doesn't require support card from the others, nowadays?
>Especially amongst the smaller ones? I'm a little confused by that
>comment.
If I make a 2-clan BL + other deck, I'll have about 6 BL vamps and 25
BL library - meaning 6 non-BL vamps and 75 library. The non-BL
portion of my collection - already long on vampires and short on
critical library cards - will be forced to serve up vampires in a
twice the ratio I"m getting them.
CurtAdams
>"CurtAdams" <curt...@aol.com> wrote in message
>news:20020314221447...@mb-cg.aol.com...
>> I think the complainers are missing the real crux point of decks, which
>> is the workhorse cards. I have extras of almost every vampire but not
>> of Blood Doll, Minion Tap, 5th Tradition, Taste of Vitae, etc. Until you
>> do a lot of trading, a library shortage means you can't make *any*
>> decent deck.
>Isn't what you really mean here that you can't make any *more*
>decent decks? If your collection was so small that you didn't
>have enough Minion Taps, 5ths, etc for even *one* deck, you
>would also probably not have extras of the vampires.
Actually I would. You need roughly 1 box of the base set to provide
the basic cards. That lets you use 12 of about 72 vampires. 60
extra. Occasionally you can put together a good deck w/o any of
the basics - but not often enough to change the ratios. SW is better
than Jyhad since it has an extra blood management master and fewer
vampires, but it's still not perfect.
>If having one good
>deck at a time is your goal, the vampires you have access
>to could easily be a more significant limiting factor than
>your supply of Minion Taps and Blood Dolls.
Even if you swap around your MT, BD, Wakes, etc., your library
will still limit you more than your crypt with the current set.
Not only is there a relative excess of vampires to library, library
cards are more often corner case or wallpaper than vampires.
The difference is *way* less than with the power library cards.
>I pretty much agree with your reasoning, although "use
>ratios" can probably never make the really useful workhorse
>cards common enough. If you want (just as an example) four
>Blood Dolls for each deck, that'd be 4 in every 90 cards,
>or 1 per 22.5 cards, or about 1 per 2 booster packs. In
>a set with a 100-slot common sheet and 7 commons per booster,
>Blood Doll would have to be a C7 to match its use ratio.
And this is a problem how? You *could* put in that many Blood
Dolls, Wakes, Minion Taps, Tributes, and Forced Awakenings.
Really, they are almost to Jyhad what land is to Magic and it's
Ok to have plenty. You'd have to bump a lot of low-use commons
to Uncommon but that's not a problem either. Anyone for some
Frenzies? :-)
I'd actually guesstimate C3 is OK. I like about 6 pool management
cards per deck and there's 3 types right now. So 2 each per deck is
good; round down since sometimes you don't use them. 6 more
types would be better, actually, but might tax the Design Team.
Of course, there are business issues. The whole thing boils
down to having to pay a certain amount of $$ per good playable
deck. In SW, with 3 pool management and about 3 per box
(right?) you need about 2/3 of a box per deck, or $60 list
price. Seems steep if you want to expand the player base
(and doesn't it make starters seem like a good deal? they're
currently the best $$ source of the workhorse cards ). All the
way to 1 deck per 90 cards and that's 1 per 8 11 card decks;
$2.50 each is $20 per deck. That's a good price for bringing
in players but low if you want to milk existing players for max
$$. (I know I'm being milked but I don't really mind; as much
as I spend it compares favorably to vacations, computers games,
Starbucks, etc. I can afford it.)
My current concept would be to gear the starters to serve the $20
crowd and the boosters to cash in on well-off committed players.
So, buy a starter for a good playable deck; spend $$ to make it
neat, different, and customized with boosters. Something for everyone.
>I think Fred's right that Bloodlines is just too large and
>too fragmented a set for one box to be enough no matter how
>the rarities were allocated. If vampires were more rare,
>you probably wouldn't have enough of them to support the
>library cards you'd have. (This is already almost certainly
>true of the scarce clans, where you probably have quite a
>number of library cards requiring TEM or OBE but not more
>than one or two vampires with each skill.)
For the scarce clans, I'm finding the ratio is about right. I don't
quite have enough vampires and I don't quite have enough library.
I expect to cross those lines roughly simultaneously. Given that
in an actual deck I'll likely be unable to use all the library due
to inappropriate outferiors, I might come out vampire-long
even there.
Frederick Scott
>
> fred writes:
>
> >> I have an entire box of BL, and I really haven't the library cards to
> >> support any deck.
>
> >That's because one box of Bloodlines isn't enough, period. Making vampires
> >rare wouldn't change that. It would just make them one of the insufficient
> >commodities you didn't have enough of.
>
> be able to make up 2-clan decks if I had more library cards and fewer
> vampires.
> Inevitably, the further the pack ratio is from the use ratio, the more
> packs you have to buy per deck.
You wouldn't get sufficient library cards by rarifying the vampire cards.
The vampire cards don't take up enough of the box that clearing some of
them out would allow you to bulk up the number of library cards sufficiently.
Of course, we both know that how many library cards is "enough" is not an
exact science. But if it were, matching the commonality of the vampires
to the ratio of vampires to library cards in real decks would probably only
make a few percentage points difference in terms of how many packs you'd
need to buy. Like from 3 boxes to 3 boxes and 5 packs or something. But
it's not worth it. You get a lot of flexibility out of those extra vampires
so I'd rather have the vampires.
> >> And a BL deck would be using support cards from the rest of my
> >> collection, so it's worse than that.
>
> >What expansion doesn't require support card from the others, nowadays?
> >Especially amongst the smaller ones? I'm a little confused by that
> >comment.
>
> If I make a 2-clan BL + other deck, I'll have about 6 BL vamps and 25
> BL library - meaning 6 non-BL vamps and 75 library. The non-BL
> portion of my collection - already long on vampires and short on
> critical library cards - will be forced to serve up vampires in a
> twice the ratio I"m getting them.
OK, now I see what you're talking about. But here, we have an issue with the
nature of Bloodlines. All of the expansions have been like this to a greater
or lesser extent, though I suppose the Sabbat expansions were the least so as
they were designed to be standalone. The others were not. Dark Sovereigns,
Ancient Hearts, and Final Nights have very few cards not targeted at the clans
the expansion was dedicated to or the special new disciplines featured by
those clans. Bloodlines is simply the most extreme of the lot in that sense -
and for good reason: 13 peripheral clans and 10 exotic new disciplines. This
leaves little room for support cards and there wasn't supposed to be. When
you create expansions like this, it only works if you create lots of new
vampires to use the new disciplines and clan cards and lots of the new
disciplines' cards and lots of new clan cards and then don't bother with the
"boring old support cards", which the players already had. I suppose you
_could_ reprint such cards (or create new versions of cards having the same
functions), but I suspect White Wolf would view this policy as one that would
make the expansion harder to sell. Sensible or not, most players clamor for
exotic new cards, not more Blood Dolls or new blood-doll-like cards.
I think this is why Bloodlines is stressing your supply of support cards. It
doesn't have that much to do with printing too many vampires per your desired
ratio.
Fred
vermillian
> CurtAdams wrote:
> >
> > ark...@ugcs.caltech.edu writes:
> > I think the complainers are missing the real crux point of decks, which
> > is the workhorse cards. I have extras of almost every vampire but not
> > of Blood Doll, Minion Tap, 5th Tradition, Taste of Vitae, etc. Until you
> > do a lot of trading, a library shortage means you can't make *any*
> > decent deck. I think the collecting interest is maximized if everything
> > is a little bit scarce, and the playing interest if everything gets
> > printed approximately in the use ratios. By either measure, vampires
> > are currently too common.
>
> Perhaps. But they shouldn't be rare. If anything is going to be off the
> list of things "a little bit scarce", vampires are what I'd choose.
Take a lude dude. I don't think hes suggesting that ALL vampires be
rare, but that SOME vampires be rare. Like those 11 caps and those
really kick ass over used 5-6 cap titled dudes (like Rake and Volker),
or kick ass specials (Like The Beast).
> > I have an entire box of BL, and I really haven't the library cards to
> > support any deck.
>
> That's because one box of Bloodlines isn't enough, period. Making vampires
> rare wouldn't change that. It would just make them one of the insufficient
> commodities you didn't have enough of.
Yes, but by making MORE of the vampires rare, it WOULD change that.
And make ONE of the scarce vampires non rare. So we can actually use
these common cards that we have 20 of, but can't play cause we need
2-3 of a certain rare card (or 7 of a common card, Stranger Among Us)
> There are 63 Bloodlines expansion
> vampires and 70 rare cards. By increasing the number of R2 rares by seven,
> you could make vampires hold all of the rare slots instead of any library
> cards. But your 36 packs of Bloodlines will never produce 63 vampires no
> matter what you do. You will automatically be cut off from doing certain
> things depending on what you do unless you trade.
We're already cut off... Like doing anything decent with !Salubri.
Essential cards (like untapping when equipping... man that's such a
power house card. It'll reck the game if its uncommon!).
> Sorry, I like the existing situation much better. At least this way, you'll
> get the vast majority of the vampires in a single box
And do nothing with them. Or trade them all for the library cards you
need and then realize you don't have the vampires anymore. :)
> and your library cards
> will therefore pretty much all be usable as it, with support (naturally) from
> other expansions
Also note: Support from other expansions rares.
> - which is a given necessity in any event. You will not be
> forced to trade or fill in with singles from the word, "go".
>
> > And a BL deck would be using support cards from the rest of my
> > collection, so it's worse than that.
>
> What expansion doesn't require support card from the others, nowadays?
> Especially amongst the smaller ones? I'm a little confused by that
> comment.
Like freak drives and taste of vitaes that are oh so useful and needed
for an !Salubri deck and a Samedi deck.
~SV
Chris Berger
"vermillian" <vermil...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:f987c6cd.02031...@posting.google.com...
>
> Take a lude dude. I don't think hes suggesting that ALL vampires be
> rare, but that SOME vampires be rare. Like those 11 caps and those
> really kick ass over used 5-6 cap titled dudes (like Rake and Volker),
> or kick ass specials (Like The Beast).
>
if I'm wrong, but are you actually suggesting that the vampires which are *more*
likely to see use should be rare?!?
Frederick Scott
>
> Frederick Scott <freds64_at_...@removethis.com> wrote in message news:<3C918B0A...@removethis.com>...
> > CurtAdams wrote:
> > >By either measure, vampires are currently too common.
> >
> > Perhaps. But they shouldn't be rare. If anything is going to be off the
> > list of things "a little bit scarce", vampires are what I'd choose.
>
> Take a lude dude. I don't think hes suggesting that ALL vampires be
> rare, but that SOME vampires be rare. Like those 11 caps and those
> really kick ass over used 5-6 cap titled dudes (like Rake and Volker),
> or kick ass specials (Like The Beast).
Yes, I think that is what Curt is suggesting.
And if a vampire is "overused" - in short, popular - then it *definiately*
should not be rare! To suggest otherwise would be self-contradictory: "We're
making vampires rare so we don't have an overabundance of them in relation
to our library cards." So which ones are we gonna make rares? The ones
that we *don't* have an overabundance of, according to you. Makes no sense.
If you're going to make something rare, make it be the ones we hardly ever
see anyway.
> > > I have an entire box of BL, and I really haven't the library cards to
> > > support any deck.
> >
> > That's because one box of Bloodlines isn't enough, period. Making vampires
> > rare wouldn't change that. It would just make them one of the insufficient
> > commodities you didn't have enough of.
>
> Yes, but by making MORE of the vampires rare, it WOULD change that.
The gain would not be worth the loss. It would become hard to get the correct
vampires, yet it wouldn't be noticeably easier to get the library cards.
Fred
Andrew S. Davidson
>The gain would not be worth the loss. It would become hard to get the correct
>vampires, yet it wouldn't be noticeably easier to get the library cards.
If a card like Deny or Freak Drive is common/uncommon rather than rare
then it's certainly going to be easier to get. You don't need more
than 3 or 4 copies of any vampire for any deck but you might need 10+
copies of a library card. This makes a huge difference to the
feasibility of collecting/trading for the card if it's rare. If a
library card is usable at such high multiples then the players chasing
it will suck up any spare supply quickly and then the trade market
ceases to have liquidity. This is not so true of the vampires because
you need less of them and they have their clan trait which tends to
limit the demand for them - players will tend to be wanting vampires
of a particular clan. I'd be willing to trade away a rare Beast for a
rare Hannibal, say, because I'm more interested in the Malkavians than
the Nosferatu. A rare Obfuscate card like Behind You! is usable by
both clans (plus the Followers of Set and Assamites) and so the
potential demand is even greater to the point that it can't be
satisfied without buying cases of cards.
Andrew
Frederick Scott
>
> On Sat, 16 Mar 2002 00:30:14 GMT, Frederick Scott wrote:
>
> >The gain would not be worth the loss. It would become hard to get the correct
> >vampires, yet it wouldn't be noticeably easier to get the library cards.
>
> If a card like Deny or Freak Drive is common/uncommon rather than rare
> then it's certainly going to be easier to get. You don't need more
> than 3 or 4 copies of any vampire for any deck but you might need 10+
> copies of a library card.
Actually, I dispute that you don't need more than 3 or 4 copies of any
vampire. Certain decks might use more of certain vampires. And if you use a
couple of copies of a vampire you like a lot (I've got a friend who likes
Anson a hell of a lot) in several decks, you'll get past the 3 or 4 copies
level very quickly. But I nitpick. To get to the main issue...
> This makes a huge difference to the
> feasibility of collecting/trading for the card if it's rare. If a
> library card is usable at such high multiples then the players chasing
> it will suck up any spare supply quickly and then the trade market
> ceases to have liquidity. This is not so true of the vampires because
> you need less of them and they have their clan trait which tends to
> limit the demand for them - players will tend to be wanting vampires
> of a particular clan. I'd be willing to trade away a rare Beast for a
> rare Hannibal, say, because I'm more interested in the Malkavians than
> the Nosferatu. A rare Obfuscate card like Behind You! is usable by
> both clans (plus the Followers of Set and Assamites) and so the
> potential demand is even greater to the point that it can't be
> satisfied without buying cases of cards.
Sure. And, for that matter, I agree with Curt's point that a thing like
Wakes or Blood Dolls could standing to be a "Common X" card where 'X' is
some number like 3 or 4 or 6 or 9, even. Freak Drive should have been an
uncommon probably and it would make a good U2 or U3. I think it would be
a good thing to make proven, useful support cards and expected useful
support cards (to a lesser extent) more common than most other library
cards. I think it would be a very doable thing, for instance, in the Cam
expansion if White Wolf wants to listen to a practical suggestion. I just
don't think downgrading (or "raregrading"?) vampires is going to buy you
very much pack space to do stuff like this. And in any event, the two
issues are not much more than peripherally related. Ultimately, if you
want the pack space for more Freak Drives, Blood Dolls, Behind You!s, or
whatever, you can get it perfectly well by taking it from the population
of cards at large. If you want to draw fewer vampires, you can give it
back to the population.
I do have a lot of vampires I've drawn from packs. In many cases, far
more than I'd ever need or use. But I still think vampires are the ultimate
"support" cards, far more so than Blood Dolls or Wakes. They're one thing
that players shouldn't need to trade for or buy as singles.
Fred
CurtAdams
>You wouldn't get sufficient library cards by rarifying the vampire cards.
>... Like from 3 boxes to 3 boxes and 5 packs or something. But
>it's not worth it. You get a lot of flexibility out of those extra vampires
>so I'd rather have the vampires.
Well, I got 93 vampires from one box of BL, so say 2.5 vamps per
pack. The optimal ratio for a general set is 1.3 vamps per 11 cards.
That's about a 14% shortfall, so its 3 boxes and 18 packs to 3 boxes.
Not huge, but not completely trivial either. I agree with your point
that shortages of specific library cards are far more important -
perhaps 200% to all decks due to blood managment masters, 400%
for Potence combat decks and Taste of Vitae, and possibly over 500%
for the Prince decks and the Traditions, which are effectively cards
for possibly the most common "discipline" in the tournament game
(prince/justicar)
You're right that 1 vamp per pack is too few. That leaves vamps 25%
short, which is worse than library 14% short. I.e., 1 vamp per pack
is worse than the BL distribution, for a different reason. There is the issue
of greater variability in vampire distribution since they are effectively
uncommon. For those who don't buy obscene amounts of cards,
you'd want vampires slightly overrepresented to compensate.
I can't offhand figure out how to calculate how much. IMO library
cards are much more likely to be wallpaper or at least very low
value, so that's a reason to overrepresent library. I haven't surveyed
carefully, though.
Re Bloodlines-specific ratios:
Since BL isn't supposed to provide support cards, its vampire
proportion could well be higher. That does, however, aggravate
the library shortfall of the base sets. Whether it's appropriate
to lower the vampire ratio in the base sets for those who buy
expansions isn't clear.
Frederick Scott
>
> fred writes:
>
> >You wouldn't get sufficient library cards by rarifying the vampire cards.
> >... Like from 3 boxes to 3 boxes and 5 packs or something. But
> >it's not worth it. You get a lot of flexibility out of those extra vampires
> >so I'd rather have the vampires.
>
> Well, I got 93 vampires from one box of BL, so say 2.5 vamps per
> pack. The optimal ratio for a general set is 1.3 vamps per 11 cards.
What makes you say this? Unless my calculator is on crack, 1.3/11 cards is
11.8% vampires, not even 12 vampires per 90 cards. I don't know what I
consider "optimal" for vampires, but I'm sure anything less than one-sixth -
12 vampires for 60 library cards - I'd consider to be an absolute crock.
This is even without considering that it's a good thing to have more vampires
than library cards in use ratios due to the absolute requirement of having
vampires and having the right ones to be the foundation of any deck you
build.
> Re Bloodlines-specific ratios:
> Since BL isn't supposed to provide support cards, its vampire
> proportion could well be higher. That does, however, aggravate
> the library shortfall of the base sets. Whether it's appropriate
> to lower the vampire ratio in the base sets for those who buy
> expansions isn't clear.
I guess I just don't agree with your perspective on how all this should
work. What WotC and White Wolf have done in effect is to give us extra
options on how we use our library cards. You get 10 Dom cards, 10 Pre
cards, 10 Pot cards, and 10 For cards. Then you get Bill and Ted who are
Dom-Pre vampires, Al and Joe who are Dom-Pot vampire, Frank and James who
are Dom-For vampires, Jim and Jerry who are Pre-Pot vampires, Steve and
Sam who are Pre-For vampires, and Murray and Melvin who are Pot-For vampires.
There, we have 12 vampires for only 40 library cards. Would you use all
the vampire cards at one time? No. We have our choice of using any two of
the pairs of vampires with 20 of the library cards. (Recalculate all this
for 12-vampire crypts having three disciplines each and decks of 60-90
library cards, but you should be able to get the point.) All of your
library cards get used while 8 vampires sit on your shelf. If you look
at the ratio of total vampires to total library cards, you might think
there were too many vampires. If you were looking to have your total
collection in use at any given moment, this won't work. But I don't think
the obsession of having all of your entire collection in use is necessarily
valid. If what people really want is to be able to reconfigure their
collections into some number of decks that require fewer cards than their
entire collection but still be able to make a large variety of kinds of
decks, then the model where you have fewer support cards and more exotic
cards and more vampires makes sense. I suspect this kind of model was what
was intended from the start.
Fred
Chris Berger
>
>
> > Well, I got 93 vampires from one box of BL, so say 2.5 vamps per
> > pack. The optimal ratio for a general set is 1.3 vamps per 11 cards.
>
> What makes you say this? Unless my calculator is on crack, 1.3/11 cards is
> 11.8% vampires, not even 12 vampires per 90 cards. I don't know what I
> consider "optimal" for vampires, but I'm sure anything less than one-sixth -
> 12 vampires for 60 library cards - I'd consider to be an absolute crock.
> This is even without considering that it's a good thing to have more vampires
> than library cards in use ratios due to the absolute requirement of having
> vampires and having the right ones to be the foundation of any deck you
> build.
>
WW increase pack size by one and include 2 vampires, 2 uncommons in each pack.
Increase the price by a quarter, if you must, but I want 4 uncommons per pack!
8)
The only problem with that scheme is that U1's become R2's, which shouldn't be a
big deal, because apparently WW likes to have lots of rares in each set, so just
make them all either R2's or U1's... you can even have some "rare" vampires
without moving them off the vampire sheet. Then U2's or V2's are normal
"uncommon" commonality... actually equivalent to a U1.5 from other sets (if I'm
doing my rarity math correctly). And a few U3's/V3's or even 4 or 5's to round
out the sheet.
CurtAdams
>What makes you say this? Unless my calculator is on crack,
>1.3/11 cards is 11.8% vampires, not even 12 vampires per 90 cards.
12 vampires per (90 + 12) cards. Pack size count includes both
crypt and library cards.
> I don't know what I
>consider "optimal" for vampires, but I'm sure anything less than one-sixth -
>12 vampires for 60 library cards - I'd consider to be an absolute crock.
Almost all my decks have 90 cards. Even with that, I'd get decked
from time to time and that before those dang Harbingers came out.
>This is even without considering that it's a good thing to have more vampires
>than library cards in use ratios due to the absolute requirement of having
>vampires and having the right ones to be the foundation of any deck you
>build.
I'd say library and crypt are equivalent. Disciplines are useless without
cards, cards are useless without disciplines.
>I guess I just don't agree with your perspective on how all this should
>work. What WotC and White Wolf have done in effect is to give us extra
>options on how we use our library cards. You get 10 Dom cards, 10 Pre
>cards, 10 Pot cards, and 10 For cards. Then you get Bill and Ted who are
>Dom-Pre vampires, Al and Joe who are Dom-Pot vampire, Frank and James who
>are Dom-For vampires, Jim and Jerry who are Pre-Pot vampires, Steve and
>Sam who are Pre-For vampires, and Murray and Melvin who are Pot-For vampires.
>There, we have 12 vampires for only 40 library cards. Would you use all
>the vampire cards at one time? No. We have our choice of using any two of
>the pairs of vampires with 20 of the library cards.
I find vampires far more flexible than library cards. A Pre-For vampire can
Bleed&Briuse, Tap&Bleed, Vote&Bruise, Tap&Vote, and probably some
other things too. A Social Charm is pretty much a social charm. I can
get much more variety by varying the library with the same vampires
than by varying the crypt with the same library. Indeed, I often have
crypts that are 50%+ similar in completely different decks but rarely see
that with library cards. And, for that flexibility, you need extra library
cards.
>If what people really want is to be able to reconfigure their
>collections into some number of decks that require fewer cards than their
>entire collection but still be able to make a large variety of kinds of
>decks, then the model where you have fewer support cards and more exotic
>cards and more vampires makes sense. I suspect this kind of model was what
>was intended from the start.
Maybe. As I said, it boils down to "how much $$ must you spend for a
deck". As long as it's >$60 for any deck and considerably more for combat
and prince decks, this will continue to be a very niche game. (It was even
more before Tribute to the Master) And, if you want to maximize flexibility,
you'll improve it some by increasing the library/crypt ratio.
Chris Berger
> fred writes:
>
> Almost all my decks have 90 cards. Even with that, I'd get decked
> from time to time and that before those dang Harbingers came out.
>
> {snip - everything else that I don't agree with, but don't have a good
argument against}
Frederick Scott
>
> fred writes:
>
> >What makes you say this? Unless my calculator is on crack,
> >1.3/11 cards is 11.8% vampires, not even 12 vampires per 90 cards.
>
> 12 vampires per (90 + 12) cards. Pack size count includes both
> crypt and library cards.
>
> > I don't know what I
> >consider "optimal" for vampires, but I'm sure anything less than one-sixth -
> >12 vampires for 60 library cards - I'd consider to be an absolute crock.
>
> Almost all my decks have 90 cards. Even with that, I'd get decked
> from time to time and that before those dang Harbingers came out.
Maybe. But understand that a lot of people don't. Very few of my decks
contain 90 cards and many of them are under 75. I even have one or two at 60.
I would say I average around 75, myself.
A few times getting decked is no real reason to play 90 cards.
(And I'm pretty sure Harbinger Slaughterhouse decks are not going take the
world by storm, either.)
> >This is even without considering that it's a good thing to have more vampires
> >than library cards in use ratios due to the absolute requirement of having
> >vampires and having the right ones to be the foundation of any deck you
> >build.
>
> I'd say library and crypt are equivalent. Disciplines are useless without
> cards, cards are useless without disciplines.
Even disciplineless cards are useless without vampires. Sure, you need both
to field a deck. But in my book it will always be more important to have the
right vampires than to have the right vampire cards.
> I find vampires far more flexible than library cards. A Pre-For vampire can
> Bleed&Briuse, Tap&Bleed, Vote&Bruise, Tap&Vote, and probably some
> other things too. A Social Charm is pretty much a social charm.
I think we just disagree (vehemently) about this. You can substitute the worse
vampires for better vampires in a deck but you will be hamstrung by crypt
draw more often. To be honest, I don't worry about the support cards you cite.
I have many a deck with no Blood Dolls, many without Wakes, the vast majority
have no traditions, and so forth. Take away my hunting grounds and you may get
some panic but Derek Ray tells me I'm fool about those. But don't ask me to go
into battle with a subpar crypt selection for the library cards I do choose to
choose.
> >If what people really want is to be able to reconfigure their
> >collections into some number of decks that require fewer cards than their
> >entire collection but still be able to make a large variety of kinds of
> >decks, then the model where you have fewer support cards and more exotic
> >cards and more vampires makes sense. I suspect this kind of model was what
> >was intended from the start.
>
> Maybe. As I said, it boils down to "how much $$ must you spend for a
> deck". As long as it's >$60 for any deck and considerably more for combat
> and prince decks, this will continue to be a very niche game. (It was even
> more before Tribute to the Master) And, if you want to maximize flexibility,
> you'll improve it some by increasing the library/crypt ratio.
I disagree. I think it depends more on how many decks you want keep in tact
at any given moment per how many cards you've purchased. As I pointed out above,
if you're willing to do with a relatively small number of decks, then you're
better off with a game in which fewer support cards are printed compared to more
exotic cards and more vampires. And by that, I mean it's more economical that
way. (How much exactly to put a single deck together is somewhat speculative
and depends on a number of things.) It's only when you're trying to maximize
decks built *simultaneously* per packs purchased that you start needing to
worry about ratios in the manner you suggest.
Fred
Derek Ray
Frederick Scott <freds64_at_...@removethis.com> mumbled
something about:
>A few times getting decked is no real reason to play 90 cards.
>
>(And I'm pretty sure Harbinger Slaughterhouse decks are not going take the
>world by storm, either.)
Hardly. I've had far more success playing my Scrying of Secrets/Pulse
stealth-bleed Harbingers deck and pinging away their Minion Taps, Blood
Dolls, and Deflections as they rise to the top of the library.
>Even disciplineless cards are useless without vampires. Sure, you need both
>to field a deck. But in my book it will always be more important to have the
>right vampires than to have the right vampire cards.
You've GOT to have vamps. I have two boxes of BL with a relatively even
distribution -- I find that the only-two-copies I have of some vampires
provides significant limits to my deck construction. For example, I
would love to run the !Salubri alongside a Thoughts Betrayed/Trap/UP
deck, but having only two copies of Wolf Valentine means that the deck
is impossible for me to build -- Adonai is too expensive to be a
suitable alternate, and I -must- have superior Valeren.
(You never knew Ingrid Russo and Ranjan Rishi were combat monsters? The
idea is simple; use TB/Trap/UP to terminate vampires. With S:CE and
strike cards gone, only weapon-based agg or the Gangrel even have a
chance to burn you, and you'll kill anyone who can't press to end. Put
4 copies of Wolf Valentine in, along with 8-10 Sense Vitality; rescue
your guys the same turn they go in for free. Crypt is a little bit
large, but TB helps run you out of blood, and Luccia Paccola can
actually kill people WITHOUT having to use UP. Hunting Grounds, the
Rack, the Coven, anything that will put blood back on vamps is kind of
critical, since you -need- that second blood to play Thoughts Betrayed.
Scouting Mission, Threats, and Foreshadowing Destruction will provide
plenty of oust power, and Redirection works too.)
>have no traditions, and so forth. Take away my hunting grounds and you may get
>some panic but Derek Ray tells me I'm fool about those. But don't ask me to go
>into battle with a subpar crypt selection for the library cards I do choose to
>choose.
Objection. Not a fool. I just don't think they're of as much value as
people claim they are; and they make HUGE targets. (I stole my
predator's Hunting Ground earlier today the turn after he played it.)
If you can't find a concrete purpose to put a HG in your deck, then
you're better off with a Blood Doll. The same deck that stole the HG
had its own HG as well; but the concrete purpose of the HG in THAT deck
is to provide Quentin a perpetual refill, since he usually burns blood
like water. If Quentin wasn't the backbone of the deck, the HG might
not be in. If he wasn't in the crypt, the HG would CERTAINLY not be in.
>I disagree. I think it depends more on how many decks you want keep in tact
>at any given moment per how many cards you've purchased. As I pointed out above,
Bingo. I keep maybe 3-4 playable decks built at any given time. I
store almost all of them in ELDB so that when they get disassembled or
pillaged for other decks, I can rebuild them in 10 minutes.
>and depends on a number of things.) It's only when you're trying to maximize
>decks built *simultaneously* per packs purchased that you start needing to
>worry about ratios in the manner you suggest.
If you're trying to keep tons of decks built, you're going to have to
spend money, no matter WHAT the rarity scheme is. All discussions on
this subject should begin with the assumption that only ONE deck needs
to be created, and someone has their entire collection to work with, as
opposed to "well, all 10 of my 2nd Traditions are in my goofy Toreador
Princes with Guns deck, so I need more 2nd Traditions".
--
"There's no gray. There's just white that's got grubby." -- T.P.
Heikki Poso
> (You never knew Ingrid Russo and Ranjan Rishi were combat monsters? The
> idea is simple; use TB/Trap/UP to terminate vampires. With S:CE and
> strike cards gone, only weapon-based agg or the Gangrel even have a
> chance to burn you, and you'll kill anyone who can't press to end.
And who can't play Apparition, sup Horrid Form/Blood of Acid, Mythic Form
or Skin of the Adder. Also Tzimisce can do some agg damage...
--
Regards,
Heikki
CurtAdams
>CurtAdams wrote:
>> Almost all my decks have 90 cards. Even with that, I'd get decked
>> from time to time and that before those dang Harbingers came out.
>
>Maybe. But understand that a lot of people don't. Very few of my decks
>contain 90 cards and many of them are under 75. I even have one or two at
>60. I would say I average around 75, myself.
>
>A few times getting decked is no real reason to play 90 cards.
Getting decked is extremely costly. Once you're decked your
chance of winning quickly drops to near-nil. On the other hand,
when you're decked it almost always means you've done well
(you've played lots of cards and so should have done a lot). So
it converts a likely win into a near-certain loss. Ouch. You only
expect to win 20% of the time anyway; it doesn't take frequent
decking to substatially reduce your win rate.
The ratio should be adjusted to the "typical play ratio", whatever that is.
I can guarantee it's way more than the 41 library cards implied by the
BL ratios. I'm surprised if significant numbers of people go below
80 cards, for the reason I outlined above. I generally see people
complain about how hard it is to keep deck from bloating over 90.
>Even disciplineless cards are useless without vampires. Sure, you need both
>to field a deck. But in my book it will always be more important to have the
>right vampires than to have the right vampire cards.
It's the cards that make the vampires right. A nice collection of PRE
voters won't help unless you have enough appropriate presence cards.
And, with the current ratios, you'll be out of library way before you're
out of crypt. And, in general, you can make slightly inferior substitutions
much more easily with vampires. If you haven't a Sir Walter Nash, you
can use an Emerson Bridges with a slight loss of functionality. But
if you're short Voter Cap, you're just screwed.
>I think we just disagree (vehemently) about this. You can substitute the
worse
>vampires for better vampires in a deck but you will be hamstrung by crypt
>draw more often. To be honest, I don't worry about the support cards you
cite.
>I have many a deck with no Blood Dolls, many without Wakes, the vast majority
>have no traditions, and so forth. Take away my hunting grounds and you may
>get some panic but Derek Ray tells me I'm fool about those. But don't ask me
to
>go into battle with a subpar crypt selection for the library cards I do choose
>to choose.
You have to have to crypt cards to choose them. With the current ratios,
it's incredibly hard to run out of vampires. I have 2-3 of each in my
collection binder and an entire box of the extras that don't fit there.
I think that I have twice, ever, lacked a vampire I wanted while I'm
short of some library card on almost every deck I build. I recently
set out to use the huge pile of Freak Drives I assembled
for my Freaky Bleed demonstration deck in 1995. I have Fortitude
decks coming out my ears - not only have I used all my uncommons,
I've even used all my Unflinching Persistence! And i *still* have not
had to go to my binder for any vampire, not even Rufina Soledad!
Running out of particular vampires is a problem in an alternative
universe, but not here.
>> Maybe. As I said, it boils down to "how much $$ must you spend for a
>> deck". As long as it's >$60 for any deck and considerably more for combat
>> and prince decks, this will continue to be a very niche game. (It was even
>> more before Tribute to the Master) And, if you want to maximize flexibility,
>> you'll improve it some by increasing the library/crypt ratio.
>I disagree. I think it depends more on how many decks you want keep in tact
>at any given moment per how many cards you've purchased. As I pointed out
above,
>if you're willing to do with a relatively small number of decks, then you're
>better off with a game in which fewer support cards are printed compared to
more
>exotic cards and more vampires. And by that, I mean it's more economical that
>way. (How much exactly to put a single deck together is somewhat speculative
>and depends on a number of things.) It's only when you're trying to maximize
>decks built *simultaneously* per packs purchased that you start needing to
>worry about ratios in the manner you suggest.
A small number of decks per $$ is precisely the problem I'm bringing up.
For those willing to blow wads on the game, it's OK, but it will kill your
ability
to draw in players. I always found the shuffle bit a major headache as I'm
sitting there in the middle of my precious Jyhad play time counting Wakes
in various decks and trying to remember or record how they're moving around.
In terms of practicality, incidentally, it's far easier to shuffle around your
vampires than your library just because they're many fewer of them.
CurtAdams
>>Even disciplineless cards are useless without vampires. Sure, you need both
>>to field a deck. But in my book it will always be more important to have the
>>right vampires than to have the right vampire cards.
>You've GOT to have vamps. I have two boxes of BL with a relatively even
>distribution -- I find that the only-two-copies I have of some vampires
>provides significant limits to my deck construction. For example, I
>would love to run the !Salubri alongside a Thoughts Betrayed/Trap/UP
>deck, but having only two copies of Wolf Valentine means that the deck
>is impossible for me to build -- Adonai is too expensive to be a
>suitable alternate, and I -must- have superior Valeren.
Trick decks that rely on one particular vampire do require lots of vampires.
And trick decks are, what 6% of tournament decks? Most of them
probably library trick decks? I can't see why you'd impair the 95% of
normal decks so you can build the 2-3% that run on a vampire trick
more easily.
Derek Ray
curt...@aol.com (CurtAdams) mumbled something about:
4 vampires is not "lots" -- and it's possible to build a non-trick deck
that requires 4 copies of an individual vampire (a Gabrin-based Sense
Dep deck, for example). The deck idea I listed above is a "trick deck",
yes, but there is absolutely, 100%, NO reason why trick decks should be
discriminated against in favor of decks which only require one copy of
each vampire. There are quite a few decks which use 3-4 copies of
individual vampires that are NOT "trick" decks, as well -- several based
around Jost Werner come to mind, and I qualified for last year's
National Championships with a deck with 3 Gunther and 3 Omaya in it.
If someone claims they needed 12 copies of a particular vampire, I will
be less sympathetic and suggest that trading is always an option. But
having the right vampires is absolutely key to any deck; and sometimes
that means having 4 copies of a single vamp. Making vampires any more
rare than they currently are is a VERY poor option.
Oh, and your numbers are also WAY off... trick decks (by your apparent
definition of trick) are probably 30% of tournament decks, I'd say.
Whether they win or not doesn't mean they're not present.
Frederick Scott
>
> fred writes:
> >CurtAdams wrote:
> >> Almost all my decks have 90 cards. Even with that, I'd get decked
> >> from time to time and that before those dang Harbingers came out.
> >
> >Maybe. But understand that a lot of people don't. Very few of my decks
> >contain 90 cards and many of them are under 75. I even have one or two at
> >60. I would say I average around 75, myself.
> >
> >A few times getting decked is no real reason to play 90 cards.
>
> Getting decked is extremely costly. Once you're decked your
> chance of winning quickly drops to near-nil.
Oh, hey, I don't disagree for a minute. Getting decked in a game is usually
pretty much taps unless your opponent(s) are also near cleaned out or are
already cleaned out. My bone of contention is that except for certain types
of decks, usually combat decks, you won't get decked very often with fewer
cards. Often quite a bit fewer. My target for the average action-based deck
with non-threatening defensive combat is usually around 72 cards, unless
there's some reason it should be particularly card intensive or slow-
developing. For a super-fast acting deck I might whittle it down to 60 cards
to make it as tight as possible, figuring that if I was still around long
enough to get decked, I probably wasn't winning anyhow.
I do get decked from time to time with this philosophy. If it happens a lot
with a particular deck, I add cards. But in all the time I've been playing,
I've only seen fit to adjust one or two decks for this that I can remember.
Actually, I think if you never get decked with a deck you play with a lot and
constantly see it having 1/3rd or more of the library remaining at the end of
your games, it could stand to be tightened some so you'll have a better shot
at drawing all the different types of cards you built into the deck.
Anyway, my overall point here is that I think assuming 90 cards in a library
is off-base. Some people may play that way but I think they're unwise to do
so.
> The ratio should be adjusted to the "typical play ratio", whatever that is.
> I can guarantee it's way more than the 41 library cards implied by the
> BL ratios.
Obviously so if your lower limit for tournament games is 60 cards. But as I
pointed out before, I don't think the ratio chosen for Bloodlines was based on
idea of following the ratios of actual decks with an eye towards maximizing
decks buildable per cards owned.
> I'm surprised if significant numbers of people go below
> 80 cards, for the reason I outlined above. I generally see people
> complain about how hard it is to keep deck from bloating over 90.
I think a lot of people have difficulty disciplining themselves to cut their
libraries down to the proper size. That also seems to be true in Magic, where
people are aware that decks can and should be as close to 60 cards as possible
(in normal circumstances at least) yet you often find 80 and 90 cards decks
because folks are loathe to cut anything that they might just need in a game.
They seem to forget that there's a difference between having a card in their
library and having it in their hand.
> >Even disciplineless cards are useless without vampires. Sure, you need both
> >to field a deck. But in my book it will always be more important to have the
> >right vampires than to have the right library cards.
>
> It's the cards that make the vampires right. A nice collection of PRE
> voters won't help unless you have enough appropriate presence cards.
> And, in general, you can make slightly inferior substitutions
> much more easily with vampires. If you haven't a Sir Walter Nash, you
> can use an Emerson Bridges with a slight loss of functionality. But
> if you're short Voter Cap, you're just screwed.
This I definitely disagree with. Usually, if you haven't a Sir Walter Nash,
you can use an Emerson Bridges. But very often, if you have the Sir Walter
Nash, you *also* use Emerson Bridges. So the comparison isn't Sir Walter
vs. Emerson, it's Sir Walter AND Emerson vs. Emerson alone. Or two Emersons
you can't bring out together. The Voter Cap doesn't seem that important to
me.
In general, I agreed with the first sentence in your paragraph above but not the
second. Although there's no set way of doing things, I usually select the
library I want to play (more or less) and then decide which vampires go with them.
(Which sounds like what you're saying, too.) The succinct way of looking at our
dispute, however, is to ask yourself which is worse: having to adjust library
cards because you don't have the ones you want to play or having subpar vampires
to go with library cards you do want to play. If you eliminate a vampire, thus
having to play with a poorer choice instead in order to add a Blood Doll and
eliminate a less appropriate library card, I think I would seldom like the result.
But there's no direct way of comparing these things. After a certain number of
vampires, there are (admittedly) diminishing returns and likewise library cards.
So it depends on how many cards are purchased, what the current ratio is, and
other points such as the willingness and ability of the player to trade or
go into the singles market for what they want.
I kind of think our dispute is about what we each particularly deal with in
building decks. The kinds of issues I've had with Jyhad building library
decks given my particular means and philosophy of collecting cards makes the
vampire commonality a complete and utter non-issue. I get irritated with the
difficult of finding significant numbers of the rarest, most exotic cards to
make certain decks that thrive on such cards. Dicking around with vampire
ratios is *notnotNOT* going to solve that problem so I wouldn't have WW
play around with it. What I fear is that if you start playing around with it
and making vampires too scarce, the more marginal players are going to find it
too difficult to build any kind of a deck without being forced to trade, which
(in my book) should never be considered a mandatory activity for this game.
Encouraged perhaps, but not mandatory. For one thing, no matter how much you
trade, there's no guarantee you'll find someone trading what you want, or
asking for something that it's reasonable for you to give if you do find that
person.
If, on the other hand, one sits around looking at how many left-over vampires
there are after running out of too many useful library cards to build any
more decks, I guess I can see why you might come to the conclusion that
vampires are over-represented in packs. And perhaps there could stand to be
less of them than in the original base sets. On the other hand, I think the
out-of-print status of certain Sabbat vampires is demonstrating what can be
good about this: many players who bought boxes of The Sabbat and had "too
many" of the non-reprinted vampires are now in an excellent position to trade
or sell them to newer players, who (by all signs) seem to covet them. That
may be particular trait of vampires: if you have many more than 4 of most of
them, you really don't need the excess. But if you have none of a vampire,
you feel the loss a great deal.
> >> Maybe. As I said, it boils down to "how much $$ must you spend for a
> >> deck".
>
> >I disagree. I think it depends more on how many decks you want keep in tact
> >at any given moment per how many cards you've purchased. As I pointed out
> >above, if you're willing to do with a relatively small number of decks, then
> >you're better off with a game in which fewer support cards are printed
> >compared to more exotic cards and more vampires.
> A small number of decks per $$ is precisely the problem I'm bringing up.
I know that that's the issue which you're concerned about. I'm saying I don't
think it's a very important issue.
> For those willing to blow wads on the game, it's OK, but it will kill your
> ability to draw in players.
Again, I don't agree. You're *assuming* that new players are interested in
maximizing *simultaneous* play decks per investment and will feel distressed
if they can make only a few decks out of a modest investment in the game.
But I don't think most players really care about that. I think players tend
to see more problems if they can't make a decent, competitive deck at all out
of their investment. And that consideration is more about being able to get
their hands on exotic cards and the exact right set of vampires. If they're
not trying to build eight decks from two boxes of cards, they'll have enough
Wakes and the Blood Dolls. The question is more about whether they'll be
able to find enough Freak Drives or a couple of Ventrue Justicars or various
stuff like that. And the whole set of Ventrue to have in their crypt without
doubling vampires to pass the Ventrue Justicar.
Fred
CurtAdams
>My bone of contention is that except for certain types
>of decks, usually combat decks, you won't get decked very often with fewer
>cards. Often quite a bit fewer.
>I do get decked from time to time with this philosophy. If it happens a lot
>with a particular deck, I add cards. But in all the time I've been playing,
>I've only seen fit to adjust one or two decks for this that I can remember.
Well, something must be different about the way we make decks.
I am decking-susceptible not just with combat decks but also with
vote decks and with Tap-and-Bleed decks. S&B is the only
deckstyle I don't deck with. I'm very intolerant of handjam and
basically design my decks so that I can play cards very freely,
which may heighten my susceptibility to running out of cards.
In particular, I respond differently to a "slow" deck. Rather than
trimming cards from decks which often have cards left over,
I "speed up" decks that perform poorly. In all honesty, if I had
a deck that tended to have a large library left even after a tough
long game, I'd tend to think of ways to speed it up rather than
to trim it down. IMO faster deckplay is usually better.
>Obviously so if your lower limit for tournament games is 60 cards. But as I
>pointed out before, I don't think the ratio chosen for Bloodlines was based on
>idea of following the ratios of actual decks with an eye towards maximizing
>decks buildable per cards owned.
Since BL is not a base set it isn't necessarily subject to the same
goals as a base set. More BL probably wouldn't increase anybody's
# of decks substantially. But its vampire:library ratio is higher than
optimal for a base set. Does anybody know the Sabbat ratio?
>> And, in general, you can make slightly inferior substitutions
>> much more easily with vampires. If you haven't a Sir Walter Nash, you
>> can use an Emerson Bridges with a slight loss of functionality. But
>> if you're short Voter Cap, you're just screwed.
>This I definitely disagree with. Usually, if you haven't a Sir Walter Nash,
>you can use an Emerson Bridges. But very often, if you have the Sir Walter
>Nash, you *also* use Emerson Bridges. So the comparison isn't Sir Walter
>vs. Emerson, it's Sir Walter AND Emerson vs. Emerson alone. Or two Emersons
>you can't bring out together. The Voter Cap doesn't seem that important to
>me.
I shouldn't have picked princes as they're less substitutable than vampires
in general. But if you want vote-and-bloat, Voter Cap is about the only
way to do it. 2 EB vs EB+SWN is a reduction in efficiency (not too bad;
it's the 3rd vamp which really causes trouble) but a substantial reduction
in VC would kill a vote-bloat deck.
>Although there's no set way of doing things, I usually select the
>library I want to play (more or less) and then decide which vampires go with
them.
>(Which sounds like what you're saying, too.) The succinct way of looking at
our
>dispute, however, is to ask yourself which is worse: having to adjust library
>cards because you don't have the ones you want to play or having subpar
vampires
>to go with library cards you do want to play. If you eliminate a vampire,
thus
>having to play with a poorer choice instead in order to add a Blood Doll and
>eliminate a less appropriate library card, I think I would seldom like the
result.
>But there's no direct way of comparing these things
Theoretically it's difficult but there's a simple way in practice: how often
do you not have a vampire you need vs. how often do you not have a library
card you need. For me, the answer is simple: virtually never vs. often.
That means the ratio was bad in the Jyhad set. To be fair, I can't apply
this metric to the the Sabbat set as I don't have enough of it yet. I would
argue in the specific case of pool management cards that appropriate
pool mangement beats out perfect vampires as pool management
automatically "rightsizes" vampires.
>I get irritated with the
>difficult of finding significant numbers of the rarest, most exotic cards to
>make certain decks that thrive on such cards. Dicking around with vampire
>ratios is *notnotNOT* going to solve that problem so I wouldn't have WW
>play around with it.
Diddling with vampire rarity will not, in itself, fix the problem of
excessively
useful rare cards. It provides an opportunity in that it would probably
increase the number of uncommon cards, which provides spots to
"demote" the semi-power rares, but doesn't force WW to take it.
Related to Andrew's claim of too few uncommons, IMO the current
design team (is that just LSJ?) seems to have a knack for relatively
well-balanced cards: not wallpaper but you don't want a kazillion.
Uncommon is generally the best rarity for such cards. My rough
impression is that BL could have had 2 uncommon sheets. (with
accordingly more slots, of course)
>What I fear is that if you start playing around with it
>and making vampires too scarce, the more marginal players are going to find it
>too difficult to build any kind of a deck without being forced to trade, which
>(in my book) should never be considered a mandatory activity for this game.
Not a problem for collector types like us. Certainly a problem for
beginning players; but even at current rarities it's a problem due to
the large number of vampire categories. That's why I'm hot to trot
for a strong starter deck concept; I think that pretty much fixes
vampire access for marginal players and allows booster vampire
rarity to be optimized for heavy purchasers.
>Again, I don't agree. You're *assuming* that new players are interested in
>maximizing *simultaneous* play decks per investment and will feel distressed
>if they can make only a few decks out of a modest investment in the game.
An test-player is interested in the cost of 1 complete deck. This is
the same as the cost of each deck in a player who demands all
his decks exists simultaneously; because the newbie testing the
game will have nothing to swap with.
>And that consideration is more about being able to get
>their hands on exotic cards and the exact right set of vampires. If they're
>not trying to build eight decks from two boxes of cards, they'll have enough
>Wakes and the Blood Dolls. The question is more about whether they'll be
>able to find enough Freak Drives or a couple of Ventrue Justicars or various
>stuff like that. And the whole set of Ventrue to have in their crypt without
>doubling vampires to pass the Ventrue Justicar.
I think V:tES continues to provide *some* excellent deck styles which
don't need any of the semi-power rares. S&B, any weenie, Giovanni
power bleed, pot/cel rush - these don't need the rares. As long as
those exist, there are routes for new players. If other not-much-better
but possibly more interesting rare-based decks exist to suck money
out of us - well, that's business and I'm not going to lose sleep over
it as long as I have alternatives. My beef with Magic, ST, OnTE, etc.
is that I had no alternative to the $$$ power rare deck.
Chris Berger
"Derek Ray" <lor...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:80ia9uso8c21liffq...@4ax.com...
> In message <20020317201701...@mb-cq.aol.com>,
> curt...@aol.com (CurtAdams) mumbled something about:
>
> >
> >And trick decks are, what 6% of tournament decks? Most of them
> >probably library trick decks? I can't see why you'd impair the 95% of
> >normal decks so you can build the 2-3% that run on a vampire trick
> >more easily.
>
> 4 vampires is not "lots" -- and it's possible to build a non-trick deck
> that requires 4 copies of an individual vampire (a Gabrin-based Sense
> Dep deck, for example).
>
requirement for building clan-based decks (although less so now than in the
past, admittedly) is not guaranteed even buying a full box under the current
system. Perhaps you lose sight of the casual player and expect everyone to buy
multiple boxes of each expansion, or for everyone in a playgroup to buy a full
box and trade for vampires among themselves, but that's not really realistic.
Conversely, the library cards required for a clan-based deck are almost all
common, and so are rarely the limiting factor in deck-building. The only time
that this breaks down is when you expect to be able to build a deck based on
multiple copies of trick library cards that are normally limited-use, or when WW
screws up and makes utilitarian cards rare.
Halcyan 2
>requirement for building clan-based decks (although less so now than in the
>past, admittedly) is not guaranteed even buying a full box under the current
>system.
Well, from my experience, it doesn't seem like to big of a problem.
I bought a single box of FN boosters and got a full set of vampires (R1's
excepted of course).
Similarly, I bought a single box of BL boosters and got a full set of vampires
(rare vampires excepted).
Overall, the vampire distribution was pretty good IMO.
Halcyan 2
Frederick Scott
>
> freds64_at_...@removethis.com writes:
> >I get irritated with the
> >difficult of finding significant numbers of the rarest, most exotic cards to
> >make certain decks that thrive on such cards. Dicking around with vampire
> >ratios is *notnotNOT* going to solve that problem so I wouldn't have WW
> >play around with it.
>
> Diddling with vampire rarity will not, in itself, fix the problem of excessively
> useful rare cards. It provides an opportunity in that it would probably
> increase the number of uncommon cards, which provides spots to
> "demote" the semi-power rares, but doesn't force WW to take it.
That seems a little simplistic to me. I touched on this in another post: there's
no rule that says you have to demote one thing to promote another. Not unless
you're set upon a certain number of cards in each rarity class and the number of
total cards overall and so forth (which can be solved by not being set upon those
things). Besides, I think there's a lot more of a problem with other library
cards besides the underprinted staple cards you're missing being overprinted.
(You yourself mentioned Frenzies.) I'm just saying go ahead and rearrange the
commonality levels to make more sense - just leave the vampires alone. Or don't
hit them to the point of making them 1/3rd as common as they are now. That's
too much.
> Related to Andrew's claim of too few uncommons, IMO the current
> design team (is that just LSJ?) seems to have a knack for relatively
> well-balanced cards: not wallpaper but you don't want a kazillion.
> Uncommon is generally the best rarity for such cards. My rough
> impression is that BL could have had 2 uncommon sheets. (with
> accordingly more slots, of course)
That's a problem, unfortunately. I agree with your assessment of the cards
we're getting. But unfortunately, to make the product viable, there has to
be rares and they have to useful. That's part of the whole problem. I think
it would be terrible to make vampires rare, but it was also bad to make most of
the cards that were R1 in Bloodlines R1. If they could use one-per-deck type
rules: either cards that become unique permanents in play or cards like Giant's
Blood that could be played only once per game, these could be some excellent
choices for R1s. There seems to be a limit to how many such cards the designers
can (or will) create, however. Failing that, you try for extremely specialized
cards. But trying to guess how useful, esoteric, or desirable a card is going
to be before it's printed strikes me as being pretty difficult.
> >What I fear is that if you start playing around with it
> >and making vampires too scarce, the more marginal players are going to find it
> >too difficult to build any kind of a deck without being forced to trade, which
> >(in my book) should never be considered a mandatory activity for this game.
>
> Not a problem for collector types like us. Certainly a problem for
> beginning players; but even at current rarities it's a problem due to
> the large number of vampire categories. That's why I'm hot to trot
> for a strong starter deck concept; I think that pretty much fixes
> vampire access for marginal players and allows booster vampire
> rarity to be optimized for heavy purchasers.
Hmmm. If all the vampires are available in starters, then you could talk me
into it. If some aren't and they're rares in boosters, then I think you'd have a
nasty "good rares" problem, IMHO. If all the vampires are in starters and they're
also rares in boosters, then I suspect you'd get people whining that they made
terrible rares because they can be obtained in the starters. (People tend to
hope for something precious in the rare spot of their booster decks.) Somehow,
I don't think it would work out well, one way or another.
> >Again, I don't agree. You're *assuming* that new players are interested in
> >maximizing *simultaneous* play decks per investment and will feel distressed
> >if they can make only a few decks out of a modest investment in the game.
>
> An test-player is interested in the cost of 1 complete deck. This is
> the same as the cost of each deck in a player who demands all
> his decks exists simultaneously; because the newbie testing the
> game will have nothing to swap with.
Nope, again, don't agree. I don't think you can measure the "cost of 1 complete
deck". How good of a deck? Even as is, using a Jyhad-only environment (no
Bloodlines or other small expansions complicating the issue), I think any such
analysis of cost of the cost of the *first* such "complete deck" will find the
precious resource to be exotic rares, not support cards. By the time you've
purchased enough decks to make something competitive, you should have enough
Blood Dolls and Wakes. The second deck (which presumably would be a different
style of deck, different clan, different disciplines) will require far fewer
additional purchases on top of the stuff you bought for the first deck - but
begin to strain your staple supply a great deal more. The third deck even
more so. So I utterly reject the notion that the cost is independent of the
number of decks one cares to maintain simultaneously. I don't think it works
that way.
> I think V:tES continues to provide *some* excellent deck styles which
> don't need any of the semi-power rares. S&B, any weenie, Giovanni
> power bleed, pot/cel rush - these don't need the rares.
Agreed. But I don't think that's directly relevant to what I said. Maybe
substitute uncommons (e.g. Immortal Grapple for your pot/cel rush) for
"exotic rares" but you need a lot of Immortal Grapples. Along the way
towards collecting enough Immortal Grapples, you'll get most of the uncommons
you'd need for some other such deck so you wouldn't need to buy a lot more
packs. Because you're not buying many more packs for the second deck, you're
not getting many more Blood Dolls so now you're trying to spread the same
supply of Blood Dolls amongst two decks. That's why the your view of how many
staple cards you need hinges on how many decks you want to play simultaneously.
If you're satisfied with fewer decks, staple cards aren't going to be as much
of a problem - for players with modest collections or Mr. Suitcase.
Fred
Andrew S. Davidson
>If you're trying to keep tons of decks built, you're going to have to
>spend money, no matter WHAT the rarity scheme is. All discussions on
>this subject should begin with the assumption that only ONE deck needs
>to be created, and someone has their entire collection to work with, as
>opposed to "well, all 10 of my 2nd Traditions are in my goofy Toreador
>Princes with Guns deck, so I need more 2nd Traditions".
Your assumption is wrong. I currently have about ten VTES decks and,
if I find time and inclination, will ultimately end up with at least
one deck for each clan, i.e. 30+ decks. If lack of certain cards like
Wake With Evening's Freshness stops me doing this then that's a bad
thing. The fact that it's not a bad thing for you (because you do
things differently) doesn't stop it being a bad thing for me.
Andrew
Derek Ray
<F7DD87AB21788D1D.8950328E...@lp.airnews.net>,
Andrew S. Davidson <a...@csi.com> mumbled something about:
>On Sun, 17 Mar 2002 05:42:38 GMT, Derek Ray wrote:
>
>>If you're trying to keep tons of decks built, you're going to have to
>>spend money, no matter WHAT the rarity scheme is. All discussions on
>>this subject should begin with the assumption that only ONE deck needs
>>to be created, and someone has their entire collection to work with, as
>>opposed to "well, all 10 of my 2nd Traditions are in my goofy Toreador
>>Princes with Guns deck, so I need more 2nd Traditions".
>
>Your assumption is wrong. I currently have about ten VTES decks and,
You are not the norm. You have significantly more money than the
average player/person (I am assuming so, since you can afford to travel
a good bit and spend that money to collect and play games you don't
like), and as such the idea of maintaining a large number of "built"
decks is feasible to you, as long as ANY reasonable rarity scheme is
used.
A person with little free income to spend, on the other hand, is limited
primarily by the total number of cards he can purchase, and as a result
will need to shuffle the 8 Wakes he manages to acquire from deck to
deck, as need be, and never keep more than a few completely built.
Gearing the rarity towards people with lots of money simply locks out
lower-income players completely, who often are your primary supporters.
>if I find time and inclination, will ultimately end up with at least
>one deck for each clan, i.e. 30+ decks. If lack of certain cards like
The words here are "time and inclination". You are going to produce 30+
decks on a whim. If you can't see that this puts you WAY off the top
end of the scale as far as money is concerned, then things need to stop
here.
>Wake With Evening's Freshness stops me doing this then that's a bad
>thing. The fact that it's not a bad thing for you (because you do
>things differently) doesn't stop it being a bad thing for me.
It's not a BAD thing insofar as "someone is stupid to do this", but if
you want to keep 30 decks (one for each clan) built simultaneously, then
you are going to have to spend a good chunk of money to do it. Simple
fact of economics.
Some cards are rare. In 30 decks, you will make use of a good quantity
of those rare cards in some form or other -- even if only one per deck
is appropriate. Some cards are uncommon. You will make use of a good
quantity of uncommon cards as well in those 30 decks, and one of those
cards will likely be Wake with Evening's Freshness.
There is no rarity scheme that will give you enough Wakes to build 30
decks without requiring you to spend a good chunk of change. So we
should not even bother designing rarity schemes to suit your needs.
Joshua Duffin
[vampire rarity etc]
> Not a problem for collector types like us. Certainly a problem for
> beginning players; but even at current rarities it's a problem due to
> the large number of vampire categories. That's why I'm hot to trot
> for a strong starter deck concept; I think that pretty much fixes
> vampire access for marginal players and allows booster vampire
> rarity to be optimized for heavy purchasers.
Do you think that the current starter decks (Sabbat War
and Final Nights) aren't good enough? I admit I haven't
played that much with/against them other than in the
prerelease events for each, but they seem pretty good in
my (limited, ha ha) experience. Continuing with starters
along those lines (in the Camarilla set and so on) seems
fine to me.
(If your point is that it'd be nice to have starters for
*every* clan instead of just a few, well, I'd agree, but
it might cost too much to do that. Or not, I don't know.)
Josh
ready to start
Joshua Duffin
"Flux" <fl...@netc.pt> wrote in message
news:Xns91D2A88F01...@130.133.1.4...
> "Joshua Duffin" <jtdu...@yahoo.com> wrote in
> news:a6t5hd$gqehr$1...@ID-121616.news.dfncis.de:
> > Isn't what you really mean here that you can't make any *more*
> > decent decks? If your collection was so small that you didn't
> > have enough Minion Taps, 5ths, etc for even *one* deck, you
> > would also probably not have extras of the vampires.
>
> Not really.
> For example, I have at least 4 or 5 copies of most base VtES vampires, but
> I hardly have enough Traditions for even one deck (I think I have about 4
> 2nds and 4 5ths - barely enough for one deck). That is, I can build
> several crypts based on any base set clan, even most base set specific
> vampire, yet I can only make one Tradition-based Prince deck, and it won't
> have as many Trads as I'd like it to have. Likewise, I don't have that
> many ToV or TS, surely not enough to make more than one deck with each.
> Blood Dolls and WWEF/FA are also sometimes a problem, but only because
> I'll include them in almost every deck I build, and I often have around 10
> decks built.
I think this is really more of an argument that 5th and
2nd are too rare, than an argument that vampires are too
common. If you didn't have 4-5 of each vampire, you wouldn't
be able to build decks that focused on just one or two
vampires. To me that's a substantial loss. Sure, it'd be
great to have a few more 5ths and 2nds in place of a few
of the vampires you're not using, but what you'd really
get in exchange for going to 1-2 of each vampire is 3 of
each of a whole lot of different cards, not all of them
nearly as useful as 5th or 2nd.
In other words, it sounds to me more like you're arguing
for library cards to have rarity assigned according to
how many of them you (or players in general) will want to
have. Which is all well and good - and I'm on the same
bandwagon - but CCG companies apparently need to keep
rarity around to sell enough product to stay in business,
at some point. Taste of Vitae and Torn Signpost are two
more uncommons that maybe "should" be commons. But I
don't think reducing vampire commonality drastically to
make things like that more common would necessarily solve
anything, and it only looks attractive because you're
focusing on the good things you want more of, not the
chaff you'd also get more of, or the possible drawbacks
of much rarer vampires.
> Bottom line: library cards limit the number of decks I can build more than
> crypt cards do, even if I stick to using mostly common cards, with a few
> uncommons.
That's true *now*. If vampires were three times as rare
as they are, you'd only have 1-2 (sometimes 0) of each
of them. How are you going to build a deck around a
particular vampire with that allocation? Even making a
workable deck around a clan at all would probably require
quite a bit of trading. It seems to me like it comes
down more to whether you'd rather have to trade for
vampires or for library cards. (You'd have the same
problems either way, with certain more-desirable cards
(or vampires) being harder to trade for.)
Josh
hypotheticalizin'
Hannigan
Indeed. I personally wish that White Wolf would start printing cards
in such a manner that Dominate and Auspex cards, for instance, were
three times as common as Protean cards in the Camarilla set, and twice
as common as Thaumaturgy cards.
After all, vampires with Dominate are more common. I often find
myself tearing apart a Malkavian or Ventrue deck in order to make a
Tremere deck, simply because I only have enough Dominate cards for two
or three effective decks. This isn't a problem for Thaumaturgy or
Protean - I have enough of these cards to make two or three effective
decks also, but never do, because I don't have enough spare cards in
the other clan disciplines. It's not a HUGE deal, but it's annoying.
It would also be nice if they printed far more Blood Dolls, Minion
Taps, and WWEF; fewer weapons, upped the rarity on all votes that
don't cause pool gain or loss, stopped printing clan hosers, reprinted
about half of the clan Master: location cards with greatly reduced
costs, printed some more good Necromancy cards; reprinted Torn
Signpost, 2nd Tradition, and 5th Tradition as commons, and sent me a
million dollars, but I don't really expect any of that to happen.
Hannigan
Joshua Duffin
> jtdu...@yahoo.com writes:
> >Isn't what you really mean here that you can't make any *more*
> >decent decks? If your collection was so small that you didn't
> >have enough Minion Taps, 5ths, etc for even *one* deck, you
> >would also probably not have extras of the vampires.
>
> Actually I would. You need roughly 1 box of the base set to provide
> the basic cards. That lets you use 12 of about 72 vampires. 60
> extra. Occasionally you can put together a good deck w/o any of
> the basics - but not often enough to change the ratios. SW is better
> than Jyhad since it has an extra blood management master and fewer
> vampires, but it's still not perfect.
Those other 60 aren't really "extras" in my opinion though.
That same box lets you use the other 60 for decks featuring
their skills instead of the ones in the "first" deck -
yeah, you can probably only have one good deck at a time,
since the same staples go in all the decks, but the other
60 vampires aren't really wasted.
> Even if you swap around your MT, BD, Wakes, etc., your library
> will still limit you more than your crypt with the current set.
> Not only is there a relative excess of vampires to library, library
> cards are more often corner case or wallpaper than vampires.
> The difference is *way* less than with the power library cards.
But I'd expect that if vampires *were* a lot more rare than
they are now, they *would* be the limiting factor. And I
don't see how that would be better, especially since (as
Fred Scott's been saying) you don't get *that* much room
in the boosters just by rarifying the vampires.
> >Blood Doll would have to be a C7 to match its use ratio.
>
> And this is a problem how? You *could* put in that many Blood
> Dolls, Wakes, Minion Taps, Tributes, and Forced Awakenings.
> Really, they are almost to Jyhad what land is to Magic and it's
> Ok to have plenty. You'd have to bump a lot of low-use commons
> to Uncommon but that's not a problem either. Anyone for some
> Frenzies? :-)
OK, if we don't mind spending a *lot* more cardsheet space on
the "staple" cards, this could indeed be done. :-) That
might not even be a bad thing. It probably would be dubious
from a business standpoint, though, as you mention...
> In SW, with 3 pool management and about 3 per box
> (right?) you need about 2/3 of a box per deck, or $60 list
> price. Seems steep if you want to expand the player base
> (and doesn't it make starters seem like a good deal? they're
> currently the best $$ source of the workhorse cards ).
Starters *are* a good deal for new players, and that's
probably as it should be. (In fact SW doesn't have any
Blood Dolls or Minion Taps in the boosters, if those are
the pool-management cards you're alluding to - they're
starter-only; Tribute to the Master is the only blood ->
pool card in SW boosters.)
> My current concept would be to gear the starters to serve the $20
> crowd and the boosters to cash in on well-off committed players.
> So, buy a starter for a good playable deck; spend $$ to make it
> neat, different, and customized with boosters. Something for everyone.
I think this is exactly what they're doing, but maybe I'm
wrong...?
> For the scarce clans, I'm finding the ratio is about right. I don't
> quite have enough vampires and I don't quite have enough library.
> I expect to cross those lines roughly simultaneously. Given that
> in an actual deck I'll likely be unable to use all the library due
> to inappropriate outferiors, I might come out vampire-long
> even there.
You should have a lot less than you need of the vampires,
unless you're planning to use them mainly for their old
disciplines and not count on even getting them out. In
one box, you get 36 rares; there are 6 R2 new-skill scarce
vampires out of 100 rare-spots on the sheet... you should
get 4.32 scarce vampires, on average, in a box; if you
wanted to build a deck around using one of their skills,
I'd expect to want at least 3-4 copies of the vampire
you're planning to use (assuming they're not all
interchangeable, and as support I don't think they are -
they have different out-of-clan skills). If you were
going to get 3 copies of each scarce vamp just by buying
packs, that'd be 18 vampire cards, requiring about 4 boxes
of Bloodlines boosters.
Josh
late
Curevei
>down to having to pay a certain amount of $$ per good playable
>deck. In SW, with 3 pool management and about 3 per box
>price. Seems steep if you want to expand the player base
>(and doesn't it make starters seem like a good deal? they're
>way to 1 deck per 90 cards and that's 1 per 8 11 card decks;
>$2.50 each is $20 per deck. That's a good price for bringing
>in players but low if you want to milk existing players for max
>$$. (I know I'm being milked but I don't really mind; as much
>as I spend it compares favorably to vacations, computers games,
>Starbucks, etc. I can afford it.)
>
>My current concept would be to gear the starters to serve the $20
>crowd and the boosters to cash in on well-off committed players.
What $20 crowd? Even the perpetually broke CCGers have to spend far more than
that to keep a game from being stale.
Only someone who plays a game a couple of times and never comes back to it
could get by with so little of an investment. In other words, anyone spending
so little on a CCG does not constitute a meaningful part of the player base.
Little kids who never got around to playing Pokemon spent more on it than $20.
>So, buy a starter for a good playable deck; spend $$ to make it
>neat, different, and customized with boosters. Something for everyone.
Spend money to not get bored to death. Even for those who buy a pack a week,
if they don't plan on dropping $120 (likely more as this is the number I use
for online purchases) on the game, they aren't going to find it interesting
over any sort of meaningful length of time. Or, at least, I've never come
across anyone who found a CCG interesting for any length of time when all they
could put together was one poorly tuned deck.
From what I gather, a company wants to do three things.
1) Make the game *appear* easy/inexpensive to try out for those who want to
see how a game actually plays before they drop $200 on it.
2) Have the existing player base spend $120+ on every expansion to
compete/stay interested.
3) Accomplish these without irritating the existing player base and without
getting a reputation in the CCG player community of being a money game.
Tricky? Sure.
One thing a company doesn't care about is attracting the people who think
spending less than $100 on a CCG will keep them interested. Such people are
being unrealistic and should look at other hobbies.
Having said that, the model I would have for selling the game would have
similarities to what you've suggested.
I would have playable starters, even include a small number of valuable cards
(playwise or collectingwise) in them to give the newbie a feeling they have
something worthwhile.
I would try to find a way to make limited formats enjoyable for everyone.
Unfortunately, IME, when you have precons, sealed is a bore. Tangent - note
that one reason distributions will seem odd is because companies have taken
limited play into account.
I would drop the R1s. Yes, I'm sure they boost sales for a particular set as
players chase after them. However, they produce a great deal of acrimony and
there are similar ways to encourage sales. I still believe the negative
feelings towards them and the perception created outside of the existing player
base once people become aware of them will cause no long term net benefit.
Expanding on this, I see these sorts of gimmicks as being a way to try and
squeeze as much money out of an existing base as possible without addressing
the best way to maximize long term profit, which is to expand the player base.
I would try to figure out promotions that are of benefit to either newbies or
the entire player base as opposed to promotions that serve little to no purpose
other than to give players something to decry. Newbies are always more
enthused when they get something just because. For instance, could have a
reward given to first time tournament goers. While rewarding loyalty through
promotions such as wrapper redemptions (assuming you don't require people to
turn in wrappers for old products that had long since been thrown out, which
I've known at least two companies to have done) is not a bad thing. While such
a promotion does result in the rich getting richer, it has the advantage of
suggesting that good customers are rewarded, which seems fair.
CurtAdams
>The deck idea I listed above is a "trick deck",
>yes, but there is absolutely, 100%, NO reason why trick decks should be
>discriminated against in favor of decks which only require one copy of
>each vampire.
Yes, there is; trick decks are far less common. In addition, decks with
large # of individual vampires aren't discriminated against unless those
vampires are generally in high demand. If you have the right vamp/
library ratio, four of vampire A in deck A makes room for four B
in deck B.
>Oh, and your numbers are also WAY off... trick decks (by your apparent
>definition of trick) are probably 30% of tournament decks, I'd say.
>Whether they win or not doesn't mean they're not present.
My tournament experience, casual experience, and the tourney
winner records all agree - decks with > 2 of an individual vampire
are uncommon and > 3 rare.
CurtAdams
>Not to mention... even getting *1* copy of each vampire, which is almost a
>requirement for building clan-based decks (although less so now than in the
>past, admittedly) is not guaranteed even buying a full box under the current
>system. Perhaps you lose sight of the casual player and expect everyone to
>buy multiple boxes of each expansion
No; not at all. You *may* not get enough of a clan from one box now,
but you absolutely will not have enough library for any decent clan
deck. Reducing the vamp/library ratio will reduce the number of
packs needed for the first deck.
CurtAdams
>A person with little free income to spend, on the other hand, is limited
>primarily by the total number of cards he can purchase, and as a result
>will need to shuffle the 8 Wakes he manages to acquire from deck to
>deck, as need be, and never keep more than a few completely built.
You have to spend about $100 to get 8 Wakes + Forced Awakening
right now. The little free income guy is currently just not part
of the picture. Reducing the cost to get a useful number of the
basic cards is the absolute best thing you can do for them.
CurtAdams
>It would also be nice if they printed far more Blood Dolls, Minion
>Taps, and WWEF; fewer weapons, upped the rarity on all votes that
>don't cause pool gain or loss, stopped printing clan hosers, reprinted
>about half of the clan Master: location cards with greatly reduced
>costs, printed some more good Necromancy cards; reprinted Torn
>Signpost, 2nd Tradition, and 5th Tradition as commons, and sent me a
>million dollars, but I don't really expect any of that to happen.
Excepting the last bit, I think all those changes would help WW as
well as the players. I don't know about likelihoods but it's worth
making the point.
Derek Ray
>lor...@yahoo.com writes:
>
>>The deck idea I listed above is a "trick deck",
>>yes, but there is absolutely, 100%, NO reason why trick decks should be
>>discriminated against in favor of decks which only require one copy of
>>each vampire.
>
>Yes, there is; trick decks are far less common. In addition, decks with
In tournament play, I'd say 30%, and I have a fairly good chunk of
tourney experience. In casual play, I'd say closer to 50%. This isn't
'far less common'. Not all of those decks require multiples of the same
vampire, but they ARE "trick" decks nevertheless.
>large # of individual vampires aren't discriminated against unless those
>vampires are generally in high demand. If you have the right vamp/
>library ratio, four of vampire A in deck A makes room for four B
>in deck B.
In general, decks that pick an individual vampire to load up on are
doing so because he's got something special. Beast, Cailean, Quentin,
Jost Werner, Rebekka, Muaziz, Lazverinus, Agaitas, Egothha, Anvil, Bear
Paw, Basilia, Wynn,... I can keep that list going almost forever. And
an awful lot of those decks are NOT "trick" decks.
Just because you chuck 4 Jost Werner in your "sleazy Presence Marijava
Ghoul bleed deck" doesn't mean you still don't want 2 of him in your
"sleazy Presence vote deck".
>>Oh, and your numbers are also WAY off... trick decks (by your apparent
>>definition of trick) are probably 30% of tournament decks, I'd say.
>>Whether they win or not doesn't mean they're not present.
>
>My tournament experience, casual experience, and the tourney
>winner records all agree - decks with > 2 of an individual vampire
>are uncommon and > 3 rare.
Your numbers are taken from the ones that win. You are not taking into
account the ones that play and lose (fairly likely for "trick" decks,
you have to admit).
CurtAdams
>no rule that says you have to demote one thing to promote another. Not unless
>you're set upon a certain number of cards in each rarity class and the number
of
>total cards overall and so forth (which can be solved by not being set upon
those
>things).
If the % that is one card goes up, the % that is another must go down.
>Besides, I think there's a lot more of a problem with other library
>cards besides the underprinted staple cards you're missing being overprinted.
>(You yourself mentioned Frenzies.) I'm just saying go ahead and rearrange the
>commonality levels to make more sense - just leave the vampires alone. Or
don't
>hit them to the point of making them 1/3rd as common as they are now. That's
>too much.
Yes, it is. I'm talking 1/2, which is just right for me. With your deck
construction of 12:75 it should be about 2/3.
Rearranging commonalities is a separate issue from vampire/crypt
ratios. Commonalities is far more important, but v/c is something,
and it's much easier.
>But unfortunately, to make the product viable, there has to
>be rares and they have to useful. That's part of the whole problem. I think
>it would be terrible to make vampires rare, but it was also bad to make most
of
>the cards that were R1 in Bloodlines R1.
Yes, yes, and yes.
> But trying to guess how useful, esoteric, or desirable a card is going
>to be before it's printed strikes me as being pretty difficult.
Generally, but there are rules. Hard-to-compensate for or bizarre globals
are safe. 1/game is good as you pointed out. Inferior duplicates of
action modifiers are pretty secure. Cards which require your opponents
to be doing certain things are good (e.g. clan hosers). Nonspectacular
clan-specific permanents are good (Resplendent protector). Heck,
for starters, you can do slight improvements to all the wallpaper from
earlier editions :-/
>Hmmm. If all the vampires are available in starters, then you could talk me
>into it. If some aren't and they're rares in boosters, then I think you'd
have a
>nasty "good rares" problem, IMHO. If all the vampires are in starters and
they're
>also rares in boosters, then I suspect you'd get people whining that they made
>terrible rares because they can be obtained in the starters. (People tend to
>hope for something precious in the rare spot of their booster decks.)
Somehow,
>I don't think it would work out well, one way or another.
If starters provide a good number of the workhorse cards and vampires become
about 1/2 as common I think we're looking at a situation which would be better
than the current one in almost every way. An average collection would have
10-14% more potential decks and as many coexisting ones as the owner chooses to
pay for. The only shortfall would be re "workhorse vampires", by which I mean
vampires with handy-dandy special abilities who aren't in the starters for
whatever reason. Examples would be Beast, Theo, and Anson. My inclination
would be to double their appearance rates on the vampire sheet, which would
return those individual vampires to their current plenty-adequate appearance
ratio.
>Nope, again, don't agree. I don't think you can measure the "cost of 1
complete
>deck". How good of a deck? Even as is, using a Jyhad-only environment (no
>Bloodlines or other small expansions complicating the issue), I think any such
>analysis of cost of the cost of the *first* such "complete deck" will find the
>precious resource to be exotic rares, not support cards.
I can't see that. I don't have any trouble making decks w/o rares. I have
trouble making them without Blood Doll, Wakes, etc.
>> I think V:tES continues to provide *some* excellent deck styles which
>> don't need any of the semi-power rares. S&B, any weenie, Giovanni
>> power bleed, pot/cel rush - these don't need the rares.
>Agreed. But I don't think that's directly relevant to what I said. Maybe
>substitute uncommons (e.g. Immortal Grapple for your pot/cel rush) for
>"exotic rares" but you need a lot of Immortal Grapples. Along the way
>towards collecting enough Immortal Grapples
Well, IG is an underprinted card even at uncommon. It's basic to Potence
decks in the current environment and should be common. The current
IG/Blood Doll ratios is in the region of reasonable, they're just both
too uncommon. More Blood Doll is more important as that affects 90%
of decks instead of 20%.
>If you're satisfied with fewer decks, staple cards aren't going to be as much
>of a problem - for players with modest collections or Mr. Suitcase.
Well, what about putting adequate #s of the basic cards in the starters
and making the boosters just boosters?
Derek Ray
>lor...@yahoo.com writes:
>
>>A person with little free income to spend, on the other hand, is limited
>>primarily by the total number of cards he can purchase, and as a result
>>will need to shuffle the 8 Wakes he manages to acquire from deck to
>>deck, as need be, and never keep more than a few completely built.
>
>You have to spend about $100 to get 8 Wakes + Forced Awakening
>right now. The little free income guy is currently just not part
>of the picture. Reducing the cost to get a useful number of the
>basic cards is the absolute best thing you can do for them.
I can't tell whether you mean 8 Wakes and 8 FA, or just 8 total.
Doesn't matter. Let's do the numbers, because you're way off.
From the Final Nights starter-box checklist:
the Assamite precon has 2 Forced Awakenings
the Setite precon has 2 Forced Awakenings
the Giovanni precon has 2 Wake with Evening's Freshness
the Ravnos precon has none of either? I could've sworn it had a couple
Wakes in it, but we'll say it has none for now.
Anyway. Starter boxes of FN, from Potomac's latest price list mailed to
me on 3/14/2002, are listed at $49. This means you can spend fifty
bucks to get 8 Forced Awakenings, 4 WWEF, 8 Blood Dolls, and shedloads
of other useful stock cards. I heartily recommend that newbies do just
that at every opportunity, by the way -- purchase two of the same
starter deck and mix together well with a few boosters to create one
clan deck, then go on from there buying mostly starters in some form or
other for awhile.
The checklist on the WW site is a bit like gibberish to me for Sabbat
War, but the two relevant lines are as follows:
Wake with Evening's Freshness PB2/PL4/PV2
Forced Awakening C/PB2/PT5/PV2
I read this as 2 WWEF in the !Brujah starter, 4 in the Lasombra starter,
and 2 in the !Ventrue starter. FA is a Common(?), 2 in the !Brujah
starter, 5 in the Tzimisce starter, and 2 in the !Ventrue starter.
This means that a SW starter box contains 16 WWEF and 18 Forced
Awakening. That's huge. It also contains the previously mentioned 8
Blood Dolls.
SW starter boxes aren't listed on Potomac's list. The boosters are
listed at $74, and lacking a better price we'll use that (although
starter boxes for FN are slightly cheaper than booster boxes for FN).
Mix that together, and you get $125 -- slightly more than your $100, but
also containing about three times as many cards as you claim, as well as
many other useful "stock" cards that I haven't even mentioned.
Now, the upcoming Camarilla set is going to be the new "base" set. How
easy do you think it'll be to get Wakes, FA, and Blood Dolls in THAT?
The "little free income" guy is very much part of the picture.
CurtAdams
>Do you think that the current starter decks (Sabbat War
>and Final Nights) aren't good enough? I admit I haven't
>played that much with/against them other than in the
>prerelease events for each, but they seem pretty good in
>my (limited, ha ha) experience. Continuing with starters
>along those lines (in the Camarilla set and so on) seems
>fine to me.
Even as they are, the current starters are a very good thing.
The current starter have 5 problems IMO:
1) Each lacks enough "workhorse" cards for a decent deck.
Maybe the intent was to buy 2 of each starter: combine
the workhorses for a play deck and put a set of vampires
into your collection stock. In that case, they are just a
smidgen low on workhorse cards. I suppose at current
prices I shouldn't complain: that's $20 for a playdeck
which has been my target.
2) They aren't too well balanced against each other. I've
read about the 4/5 Lasombra finishing tables. Unimportant
for serious players, but a problem for expanding the
market. If !Brujah fan sits down with his friends Lasombra
fan and Tzimisze fan to try the game with starters and gets
his face pounded in 4 times in a row he probably won't
keep playing.
3) They're incomplete. I so want a !Malk starter!
If Brujah fan wants to play with his friends and gets
told the his Tor fan friend can buy a 10-$20 starter
but he's got to buy an entire box to *maybe* have
a deck, oops, we've lost a potential player.
4) They're toolboxy. I can't really decide if this is
good or bad. Harder to learn, harder to play, converts
more cards to lower commonality, no exposure to
fast decks - all bad. Better exposure to clan possibilities,
less likely to be useless against a given opponent - good.
5) They need a little advice on how to play them.
Will a newbie know how to balance a rush deck or
force votes? We need to tell them.
CurtAdams
>Those other 60 aren't really "extras" in my opinion though.
>That same box lets you use the other 60 for decks featuring
>their skills instead of the ones in the "first" deck -
>yeah, you can probably only have one good deck at a time,
>since the same staples go in all the decks, but the other
>60 vampires aren't really wasted.
Decks without pool management and Wakes are junk 90%
of the time. Shuffling the staples around, by my calculations,
is a bad deal timewise for anybody who doesn't get a kick
out of clerical work.
>But I'd expect that if vampires *were* a lot more rare than
>they are now, they *would* be the limiting factor. And I
>don't see how that would be better, especially since (as
>Fred Scott's been saying) you don't get *that* much room
>in the boosters just by rarifying the vampires.
Some, not a lot. If you don't overrarify the vampires,
14% to my deck construction standards,
11-12% to the small-deck advocates. Adjusting workhorse
commonality is far more important, yes (~ 200%)
> (In fact SW doesn't have any
>Blood Dolls or Minion Taps in the boosters, if those are
>the pool-management cards you're alluding to - they're
>starter-only; Tribute to the Master is the only blood ->
>pool card in SW boosters.)
Oops! I was sure I'd gotten some. Must have shuffled
them in from starters.
>you should
>get 4.32 scarce vampires, on average, in a box;
I got 7. If I had gotten 4, I'd be singing a different tune
about scare vampire rarity. 7 seems about right. 4
is be too few. Was I lucky?
Chris Berger
> ark...@ugcs.caltech.edu writes:
>
> No; not at all. You *may* not get enough of a clan from one box now,
> but you absolutely will not have enough library for any decent clan
> deck. Reducing the vamp/library ratio will reduce the number of
> packs needed for the first deck.
>
plenty of Obeah cards (PLENTY! Sure... I'm low on Neutral Guard, which is
definitely a power rare, but there are plenty of great commons to build a deck
out of). But I have only *one* Salubri, which I had to trade for. I easily
have the library cards for Nagarja disciplines (they're all from old sets, but
that's what you should expect of new vampires... you can use them with a lot of
the library cards you already have), but only one of each Nagaraja. The True
Brujah, I have not nearly enough of either vampires or library, but that's
because they're very rare intensive.
Not that you could build a straight clan deck for the Scarce clans, but it gives
you some idea what life would be like with all rare vampires. You wouldn't even
have one of each vampire after 3 boxes! That's ridiculous.
The problem is not uncommon vampires. The problem is power rares. Bloodlines
did not need to have so many power-rares... White Wolf designed it this way.
They put more cards on the rare sheet than on any other sheet. Was it because
they were short-sighted, or was it because they figured they could make more
money that way, regardless of whether or not it annoyed people? Who knows. I
guess we'll know for sure how they feel about customer service when the number
of rares is made public for the new Cam set (100 R1s, anyone?).
I'm not sure why so many people complain about Wakes and Blood Dolls. Can you
honestly not build a deck without both of those cards? Did you honestly not get
enough out of SW and FN starters? If not, there's an easy way to get more, and
most of those starters have some other great cards in them too. Sure, *most* of
my decks have Wakes and Blood Dolls, and I was running a little low before the
precon starters came out. But just by buying one of each, I'm back to having
more than I know what to do with (and that's one of each starter *total* for the
3 people that I share cards with, and pooled together with our old Jyhad cards,
we are always short of cards for decks, even some Jyhad uncommons, but never
ever short on Wakes).
CurtAdams
>>My current concept would be to gear the starters to serve the $20
>>crowd and the boosters to cash in on well-off committed players.
>What $20 crowd? Even the perpetually broke CCGers have to spend far more than
>that to keep a game from being stale.
>Only someone who plays a game a couple of times and never comes back to it
>could get by with so little of an investment. In other words, anyone spending
>so little on a CCG does not constitute a meaningful part of the player base.
The $20 crowd are the ones trying the game. Few will try a new game
style for $100. We need new people.
>From what I gather, a company wants to do three things.
>1) Make the game *appear* easy/inexpensive to try out for those who want to
>see how a game actually plays before they drop $200 on it.
>2) Have the existing player base spend $120+ on every expansion to
>compete/stay interested.
>3) Accomplish these without irritating the existing player base and without
>getting a reputation in the CCG player community of being a money game.
>Tricky? Sure.
I think my proposals address this pretty well. V:tES has deep *play*;
I can play a good deck over and over again. With strong starters, this
is an option; you can buy a $20 starter, a few boosters for trading,
and play interesting games for a long time. However, said players
have a strong lure to buy more. Luring to more without absolutely
forcing it; I think that's the ticket.
>One thing a company doesn't care about is attracting the people who think
>spending less than $100 on a CCG will keep them interested. Such people are
>being unrealistic and should look at other hobbies.
But then you're leaving out a) those who don't know if they like
it and don't want to commit a lot first and more importantly, IMO
b) those who don't have a lot now but will in a couple of years.
I spend a lot now on games I haven't played since college, particularly
Runequest.
(snip what you'd do to make the game go)
I don't see any substantial differences between our suggestions, actually.
I would like to keep R1s, just make sure they're virtually wallpaper.
The RPG connection should make it possible to make low-play-value
cards collectible by virtue of game reference. But this isn't because
I want that per se, I just think WW could make more money that way
without getting in players' ways.
Derek Ray
>4) They're toolboxy. I can't really decide if this is
>good or bad. Harder to learn, harder to play, converts
>more cards to lower commonality, no exposure to
>fast decks - all bad. Better exposure to clan possibilities,
>less likely to be useless against a given opponent - good.
"No exposure to fast decks" = good. Newbies hate being slaughtered
before getting a chance to play, so the fact that all the starters will
have some difficulty being "superfast" without an incredibly lucky draw
is actually a good thing.
Harder to learn? I don't know. You just play the cards as they come
into your hand in a toolbox environment -- and save them for when you
REALLY need them, if you want. And it certainly showcases each aspect
of the game (a little bleed, a little intercept, a little fight, etc),
something which is important to "hook" new players.
Converts more cards to lower commonality is your whole idea? =)
CurtAdams
>I just find that absolutely untrue. I bought just over a box of BL. I have
>plenty of Obeah cards (PLENTY! Sure... I'm low on Neutral Guard, which is
>definitely a power rare, but there are plenty of great commons to build a deck
>out of). But I have only *one* Salubri, which I had to trade for.
I have about 20 Obeah cards. But I could never use more than 12 in a deck,
as I don't have any decks that use presence, fortitude, animalism, and
auspex at once. I have 2 Salubri. Double that, and I have 4 Salubri
with about 24 usable Obeah cards. Perfect.
>I easily
>have the library cards for Nagarja disciplines (they're all from old sets, but
>that's what you should expect of new vampires... you can use them with a lot
of
>the library cards you already have), but only one of each Nagaraja.
But there's not such thing as a Nagaraja deck, since they don't have
a unique discipline, nor are they complementary. I could see a good
case *they* shouldn't be scarce, as all 3 are pretty handy in a number
of decks and don't actually need any BL support.
>The True
>Brujah, I have not nearly enough of either vampires or library, but that's
>because they're very rare intensive.
I'm not envisioning them as rare intensive; if you do of course you will
have way too many vampires. As with my Salubri, mine are about
right.
>The problem is not uncommon vampires. The problem is power rares. Bloodlines
>did not need to have so many power-rares
Point yielded. Engling Fury, rare? Jeez. The Salubri and Blood Brothers
are the only ones that spring to mind where the commons drive the clans.
>I'm not sure why so many people complain about Wakes and Blood Dolls. Can you
>honestly not build a deck without both of those cards?
Almost never. You have to be able to reclaim pool from the vampires
you bring out in all but some weenie decks.
>Did you honestly not get enough out of SW and FN starters?
No. Typical starters provide about 2 of each (varies a lot).
I need about 3 starters per deck. I suppose I could just pay for
them, and I did just order a box
of FN starters, which should give me enough for about 3 more decks.
I have enough Wakes because I bought them.
CurtAdams
>Harder to learn? I don't know. You just play the cards as they come
>into your hand in a toolbox environment -- and save them for when you
>REALLY need them, if you want.
Not my experience. With focused decks, you play what you can
and toss what you can't - it'll show up later. With toolboxes,
you often have to hang on to cards you can't play because
companions or opportunities will come up later; you must deliberately
assemble your combos. Likewise you may have to refrain from
playing something usable because better opportunities will show
up later.
>And it certainly showcases each aspect
>of the game (a little bleed, a little intercept, a little fight, etc),
>something which is important to "hook" new players.
Yes, that's what I meant by exposure.
>Converts more cards to lower commonality is your whole idea? =)
No, just workhorse cards. Keeping a lot of cards relatively rare
is essential to the marketing system. In an extreme case, suppose
we had 7 clan starters with 60 unique cards each. Oops, 420
cards - nothing left for boosters.
Halcyan 2
>>get 4.32 scarce vampires, on average, in a box;
>
>I got 7. If I had gotten 4, I'd be singing a different tune
>about scare vampire rarity. 7 seems about right. 4
>is be too few. Was I lucky?
I got 7 too in a single box of BL.
4 Salubri (2 Matthias, 2 Miriam)
2 Trujah (1 Krassimir, 1 Nu)
1 Nagaraja (1 Kanimana)
Halcyan 2
Chris Berger
> ark...@ugcs.caltech.edu writes:
>
> >I just find that absolutely untrue. I bought just over a box of BL. I have
> >plenty of Obeah cards (PLENTY! Sure... I'm low on Neutral Guard, which is
> >definitely a power rare, but there are plenty of great commons to build a
deck
> >out of). But I have only *one* Salubri, which I had to trade for.
>
> I have about 20 Obeah cards. But I could never use more than 12 in a deck,
> as I don't have any decks that use presence, fortitude, animalism, and
> auspex at once. I have 2 Salubri. Double that, and I have 4 Salubri
> with about 24 usable Obeah cards. Perfect.
>
are 1/3rd of your deck. 1/9th of your crypt's resources are thus devoted to
Obeah. Devoting more than 10 cards in your library to Obeah is reasonable, but
is a waste of your crypt's resources. I doubt that you regularly include 24
cards that are only usable by 1/3rd of your crypt (in a discipline that doesn't
have skill cards). You *might* do such a thing for a Scarce clan, with Stranger
Among Us, but you were suggesting that all vampires be rare, not just Salubri.
So, pretend that the Salubri are a non-scarce clan, but with all rare vampires.
24 cards for each discipline would work out about right, although leaving only
18 cards for disciplineless and master cards. That's a little slim, especially
if you're putting 6 Wakes in every deck. And then there's great stuff like
Sport Bikes and Mr. Winky and Tasha/J.S., and then there's Fake Out which is
often necessary in decks without a solid combat support discipline (for only
counts if you have superior). Maybe you go 24 cards for Obeah, 20 cards each
for Auspex and Fortitude.
So you have 4 vampires for your deck, but plenty of library cards for their one
discipline that was printed in that set. Looks like you're short some vamps.
Approximately 1/3rd short.
Halcyan 2
>have the library cards for Nagarja disciplines (they're all from old sets,
>but
>that's what you should expect of new vampires... you can use them with a lot
>of
>the library cards you already have), but only one of each Nagaraja. The True
>Brujah, I have not nearly enough of either vampires or library, but that's
>because they're very rare intensive.
>
>Not that you could build a straight clan deck for the Scarce clans, but it
>gives
>you some idea what life would be like with all rare vampires. You wouldn't
>even
>have one of each vampire after 3 boxes! That's ridiculous.
I've personally found that scarce vampires are remarkably easy to get a hold
of. Most of the people I know have plenty and are more than willing to trade
them for other cards. I have more than my share of scarce vampires as well...
Halcyan 2
Chris Berger
"Halcyan 2" <halc...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20020319014703...@mb-mc.aol.com...
>
> I've personally found that scarce vampires are remarkably easy to get a hold
> of. Most of the people I know have plenty and are more than willing to trade
> them for other cards. I have more than my share of scarce vampires as well...
>
Salubri (Matthias and Blanche Hill) at all, just because OBE is so over the top,
and the two vamps have nifty specials as well. I can't imagine anyone with
fewer than 4 copies of either that would be willing to trade them, although I'll
keep trying.
Andrew S. Davidson
>You are not the norm.
I have no idea how many decks Norm has - he can speak for himself.
>You have significantly more money than the average player/person
I've got about 8000 VTES cards which I've mostly bought for much less
than full retail. I still find that I'm unable to build many of the
decks that I see posted because I'm lacking 10 Bloodforms, a Powerbase
Montreal or whatever. I judge this puts me somewhere in the middle
between the card lords and the dabblers.
>The words here are "time and inclination". You are going to produce 30+
>decks on a whim. If you can't see that this puts you WAY off the top
>end of the scale as far as money is concerned, then things need to stop
>here.
There are 30 clans and if you buy boosters you get cards for each of
them. It seems only natural to go on to build a deck for each clan.
It's what I routinely do in other games of this kind. VTES just has a
lot more clans.
>There is no rarity scheme that will give you enough Wakes to build 30
>decks without requiring you to spend a good chunk of change. So we
>should not even bother designing rarity schemes to suit your needs.
I don't have a particular problem with Wakes - I seem to have enough
for now. It's the other cards which can be used in high multiples but
which are rare that bug me. Behind You! for example. I've bought box
after box of the base VTES set and still have nothing like enough.
And I've got lots of useless duplicate vampires instead - that's my
beef.
Andrew
Xian
[Chris wrote]
> >I'm not sure why so many people complain about Wakes and Blood Dolls.
Can you
> >honestly not build a deck without both of those cards?
>
> Almost never. You have to be able to reclaim pool from the vampires
> you bring out in all but some weenie decks.
I have to agree with you on this. I either include either Blood Dolls or
Minion Taps in almost every single deck I build. Not every deck, but almost
every one.
> I have enough Wakes because I bought them.
On the other hand, I think that at least 1/3 of my decks have no wakes/untap
of any sort. Well, maybe 1/4, but somewhere around there. I could do
without as many wakes as I have, but I suppose I'm not *complaining* about
having quite a few.
Then again, I tend to build a lot of rush...maybe that's why I don't use the
wakes so much? :)
Xian
Xian
> On Mon, 18 Mar 2002 15:28:41 GMT, Derek Ray wrote:
> >You have significantly more money than the average player/person
>
> I've got about 8000 VTES cards which I've mostly bought for much less
> than full retail. I still find that I'm unable to build many of the
> decks that I see posted because I'm lacking 10 Bloodforms, a Powerbase
> Montreal or whatever. I judge this puts me somewhere in the middle
> between the card lords and the dabblers.
Probably. Of course, you (theoretically) could have 10 Bloodforms if you
were to trade away some of your other rares, but this would no doubt be
unsuitable, as then you would be missing those rares, and some other obscure
deck type you couldn't build would be the source of complaint. I doubt that
most people playing a 10 Bloodform deck actually bought all of them...in all
likelihood, 9 out of 10 players that have built that deck traded for most of
the Bloodforms, shorting other portions of their collection.
I think that you are going to have to accept that this is a fact of
CCGs/TCGs: if you do not spend a large amount of money on them, you are not
always going to have all the cards you need to build every single
conceivable deck. You may be able to trade for the cards you want, at the
expense of variety in the cards you own.
I suspect that I have about 3000 or so Shadowfist cards, maybe a little
more, maybe a little less. I don't have enough Monkey Chang or Shell of the
Tortise to build a deck I want to build, but hey, that's because I don't
have enough cards, or I haven't traded with the right people. That's life.
> There are 30 clans and if you buy boosters you get cards for each of
> them. It seems only natural to go on to build a deck for each clan.
To you, perhaps. I'm not sure why it doesn't seem "natural" to build a deck
for each discipline, instead. Or for each of the major combination of
disciplines instead of strictly by clans.
> It's what I routinely do in other games of this kind. VTES just has a
> lot more clans.
So you just build a mono-Hand deck, a mono-Architects deck, a mono-Ascended
deck, etc.? That seems...incorrect, given some of your decklists. :) Or
were you referring to other games that you have a smaller investment in? In
Magic, you just build one deck of each of the five colors? While this seems
to give you a taste of what each of the different factions can do, I suspect
that most people would say that you're missing out on the synergism of
mixing the factions together...I'm not sure why you would want to build 30
clan decks, but not build any that crossed vampires over.
> >There is no rarity scheme that will give you enough Wakes to build 30
> >decks without requiring you to spend a good chunk of change. So we
> >should not even bother designing rarity schemes to suit your needs.
>
> I don't have a particular problem with Wakes - I seem to have enough
> for now. It's the other cards which can be used in high multiples but
> which are rare that bug me. Behind You! for example. I've bought box
> after box of the base VTES set and still have nothing like enough.
Of course, they were rare, in V:tES, theoretically on the premise that
Obfuscate is not a "combat discipline," so the most useful (IMO) combat card
available to it is more rare. This was, of course, WotC's design...I am
unsure if Behind You (if reprinted in a booster format) would still be rare.
Maybe, maybe not.
Xian
Joshua Duffin
"Chris Berger" <ark...@ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote in message
news:u5yl8.66954$ZR2....@rwcrnsc52.ops.asp.att.net...
> I
> guess we'll know for sure how they feel about customer service when the
number
> of rares is made public for the new Cam set (100 R1s, anyone?).
Actually, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see 100 R1s in
the Cam set. VTES had 89 rares, Sabbat had 99, and Sabbat
War had 107. (SW's count may be Monger-overstated though,
if it's counting starter-only formerly-rares.)
Sure, I'd rather see 50 R2s in the Cam set, and lots more
cards at uncommon/vampire/common, but I don't think they'd
run out of stuff to print with 100 rare slots. Nor is
100 rares in a big set entirely unreasonable - though it
does mean spending a lot more on cards than we used to
have to, when Jyhad boosters were $5 a box...
Josh
medium rare
Joshua Duffin
> Even as they are, the current starters are a very good thing.
> The current starter have 5 problems IMO:
>
> 1) Each lacks enough "workhorse" cards for a decent deck.
> Maybe the intent was to buy 2 of each starter: combine
> the workhorses for a play deck and put a set of vampires
> into your collection stock.
Or double up on the vampires you like.
> In that case, they are just a
> smidgen low on workhorse cards. I suppose at current
> prices I shouldn't complain: that's $20 for a playdeck
> which has been my target.
Seems reasonable to me. :-) At online-retail prices,
you can instead get 4 playdecks for about $50, which is
even better.
> 2) They aren't too well balanced against each other. I've
> read about the 4/5 Lasombra finishing tables. Unimportant
> for serious players, but a problem for expanding the
> market. If !Brujah fan sits down with his friends Lasombra
> fan and Tzimisze fan to try the game with starters and gets
> his face pounded in 4 times in a row he probably won't
> keep playing.
I don't think they're that unbalanced. If anything I
think it was the !Ventrue (among the SW decks) that
was most-generally considered the weak one. It's
probably very difficult, though, to make four (or more!)
decks that are all well-balanced against each other, in
any possible seating order. Their toolboxiness, I'd
think, should actually help here.
> 3) They're incomplete. I so want a !Malk starter!
> If Brujah fan wants to play with his friends and gets
> told the his Tor fan friend can buy a 10-$20 starter
> but he's got to buy an entire box to *maybe* have
> a deck, oops, we've lost a potential player.
Here I totally agree. I think it'd be very cool if
the Cam set has eight starters instead of four (assuming
that eight is the appropriate number for packaging/
production reasons). (Making one of them cross-clan
or something instead of Caitiff would also be cool
in my book.)
> 4) They're toolboxy. I can't really decide if this is
> good or bad. Harder to learn, harder to play, converts
> more cards to lower commonality, no exposure to
> fast decks - all bad. Better exposure to clan possibilities,
> less likely to be useless against a given opponent - good.
I think this is a good thing. Better exposure to all
different types of cards, too. I disagree that they're
harder to play; I think you're thinking too much about
your toolboxy decks. In a precon starter, you just play
what you get as you get it, or discard it if it seems
useless right now. Waiting for combos and "the right
situation" and all that will only have you sitting around
doing nothing when you could at least be accomplishing
*something*.
> 5) They need a little advice on how to play them.
> Will a newbie know how to balance a rush deck or
> force votes? We need to tell them.
If they were more focused, I think they'd need more
advice. As toolboxy decks, my thought would be that
they explain themselves through use. You're right,
though, that some strategy advice would be *great*.
I wish such a thing existed for new players. Not
enough to write it myself, of course. :-)
Josh
lazy bones
Joshua Duffin
> Decks without pool management and Wakes are junk 90%
> of the time. Shuffling the staples around, by my calculations,
> is a bad deal timewise for anybody who doesn't get a kick
> out of clerical work.
I was speculating about players who, say, put together
a deck, and play only that deck for a week or two. Then
maybe they take some of their other vampires and their
cards for other disciplines and make a different deck,
taking apart the original and reusing the staples.
Of course, we're really way off the deep end in the
guessing we've been up to about how new players want to
make decks, buy cards, and play the game. At least, I
don't have much actual data to go on here, especially
regarding players who come into the game "on their own",
without an existing playgroup to throw cards at them/
teach them the game/etc.
> >you should
> >get 4.32 scarce vampires, on average, in a box;
>
> I got 7. If I had gotten 4, I'd be singing a different tune
> about scare vampire rarity. 7 seems about right. 4
> is be too few. Was I lucky?
I may've written misleadingly there - that's 4.32 of the
scarce vamps *with new skills*, ie Salubri or True Brujah.
I didn't count Nagaraja because they don't have any cards
to themselves in Bloodlines. (Or Huitzilopochtli, because
he's not scarce, though he does have a new skill.)
Counting all rare vamps, there are 20 of 100 rare-slots
taken up by the R2 vampires in Bloodlines, which is on
average 7.2 rare vampires per 36-pack box. But only
4.32, on average, will have Temporis or Obeah. So, if
you got 7 Salubri/Trujah, you got lucky (though probably
not amazingly lucky, there's plenty of variance on that
4.32 average I'm sure); if 7 total rare vamps, not so
much.
Josh
ritin' readin' n' 'rithmaticin'
Frederick Scott
>
> Actually, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see 100 R1s in
> the Cam set. VTES had 89 rares, Sabbat had 99, and Sabbat
> War had 107. (SW's count may be Monger-overstated though,
> if it's counting starter-only formerly-rares.)
Sheesh, where are getting your information from, Josh? If
Monger, I suspect it's not a very good source for this kind
of thing.
There were 120 cards on the rare sheet in Jyhad, of which 28
different cards were R2s, for a total of 92 different actual
rare cards. 64, therefore, were R1s.
V:tES had had 91 different rares, all R1s, by my count. Basically,
Monocle of Clarity and Rowan Ring got pulled, Protected Resources
got added. The R2s from Jyhad are all reported as R1s in V:tES
and I've never had any reason to suspect otherwise. I've never
opened nor observed anyone opening many boxes of V:tES, however.
(The reason I bring it up is that I suspect some weird stuff going
on in V:tES with respect to some of the other rarity levels.)
The Sabbat had 110 rares, all R1s.
Not surprisingly, Sabbat War had 100 rares, all R1s. (Not
surprisingly because all rarity levels of all of the White Wolf
expansions that I've been able to count up seem to have gotten
printed on 100-card cardsheets.)
I'm not going to go through and calculate how many starter-deck-
only cards were originally rare in The Sabbat as it's not really
relevant.
Fred
Curevei
>> >get 4.32 scarce vampires, on average, in a box;
>>
>> I got 7. If I had gotten 4, I'd be singing a different tune
>> about scare vampire rarity. 7 seems about right. 4
>> is be too few. Was I lucky?
>
>I may've written misleadingly there - that's 4.32 of the
>scarce vamps *with new skills*, ie Salubri or True Brujah.
>I didn't count Nagaraja because they don't have any cards
>to themselves in Bloodlines. (Or Huitzilopochtli, because
>he's not scarce, though he does have a new skill.)
>
>Counting all rare vamps, there are 20 of 100 rare-slots
>taken up by the R2 vampires in Bloodlines, which is on
>average 7.2 rare vampires per 36-pack box. But only
>4.32, on average, will have Temporis or Obeah. So, if
>you got 7 Salubri/Trujah, you got lucky (though probably
>not amazingly lucky, there's plenty of variance on that
>4.32 average I'm sure); if 7 total rare vamps, not so
>much.
I'm not sure lucky is the word I would choose, but of Salubri and Trujah, I got
4 per box with a low of 3 and a high of 6.
Curevei
>hold
>> of. Most of the people I know have plenty and are more than willing to
>trade
>> them for other cards. I have more than my share of scarce vampires as
>well...
>>
>Hmm... that's odd. I haven't really been able to get my hands on the good
>Salubri (Matthias and Blanche Hill) at all, just because OBE is so over the
>top,
>and the two vamps have nifty specials as well. I can't imagine anyone with
>fewer than 4 copies of either that would be willing to trade them, although
>I'll
>keep trying.
I can't find Matthias in the Succubus Club search database, but there's 20 or
so people with Blanche, Halcyan has 4 offered and someone else has 5 offered.
I only have one.
If you don't like trading with strangers, should be able to pick up either on
eBay for $2.
Joshua Duffin
"Frederick Scott" <freds64_at_...@removethis.com> wrote in message
news:3C977E2A...@removethis.com...
> Joshua Duffin wrote:
> >
> > Actually, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see 100 R1s in
> > the Cam set. VTES had 89 rares, Sabbat had 99, and Sabbat
> > War had 107. (SW's count may be Monger-overstated though,
> > if it's counting starter-only formerly-rares.)
>
> Sheesh, where are getting your information from, Josh? If
> Monger, I suspect it's not a very good source for this kind
> of thing.
I think you're right about that. Rarities seem to have
been altered when cards were reprinted at new rarity levels
or something. (eg Immortal Grapple doesn't appear in the
"rare cards in Jyhad" list.)
[snip]
> I'm not going to go through and calculate how many starter-deck-
> only cards were originally rare in The Sabbat as it's not really
> relevant.
OK, I can now see that my numbers were pretty much all
wrong. My only point, though, was that 100 rares isn't
an unreasonable number for a large set, so I wouldn't
be shocked if the Camarilla set does have 100 R1s, like
Sabbat War did. :-)
Josh
not easily shocked (today)
Chris Berger
"Joshua Duffin" <jtdu...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:a77k56$jaltu$1...@ID-121616.news.dfncis.de...
>
> "Chris Berger" <ark...@ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote in message
> news:u5yl8.66954$ZR2....@rwcrnsc52.ops.asp.att.net...
>
> > I
> > guess we'll know for sure how they feel about customer service when the
> number
> > of rares is made public for the new Cam set (100 R1s, anyone?).
>
> Actually, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see 100 R1s in
> the Cam set. VTES had 89 rares, Sabbat had 99, and Sabbat
> War had 107. (SW's count may be Monger-overstated though,
> if it's counting starter-only formerly-rares.)
>
having 77 (?) rares. Which, on reflection, wouldn't be bad excpet that it's a
small set. Percentage would have been a more reasonable way to say it. A set
that is more than 30% rare is a real PITA to collect. When more of the set is
commons, it makes the commons tougher to get a full "playset" of, and keeps me
buying packs a lot longer.
LSJ
> Yeah, I realized after posting that that I was basing my number on Bloodlines
> having 77 (?) rares. Which, on reflection, wouldn't be bad excpet that it's a
> small set. Percentage would have been a more reasonable way to say it. A set
> that is more than 30% rare is a real PITA to collect.
Typically, a set is about one-third rare when no vampire sheets (three
sheets, one of which is "rare") are used and about one-fourth rare when a
vampire sheet is used (four sheets, one of which is "rare").
BL is 35.7% rare (70 out of 196).
FN is 33.3% rare (54 out of 162)
SW is 33.3% rare (100 out of 300)
In FN, the complaint was that there weren't enough R1s.
In BL, ...
(You get used to this phenomenon after a while. :-)
--
LSJ (vte...@white-wolf.com) V:TES Net.Rep for White Wolf, Inc.
Links to revised rulebook, rulings, errata, and tournament rules:
http://www.white-wolf.com/vtes/
Joshua Duffin
> Yeah, I realized after posting that that I was basing my number on
Bloodlines
> having 77 (?) rares. Which, on reflection, wouldn't be bad excpet that
it's a
> small set.
Well, small in relation to VTES or Sabbat. Somewhat large
in relation to Final Nights. And very broad in scope.
> Percentage would have been a more reasonable way to say it. A set
> that is more than 30% rare is a real PITA to collect. When more of the
set is
> commons, it makes the commons tougher to get a full "playset" of, and
keeps me
> buying packs a lot longer.
I agree. I don't really even yet have a full playset of
commons for Bloodlines, although that really only applies
to the C1s I guess. heh. So many rarities, so little time..
Josh
when i think about you i anesthetic touch myself
Joshua Duffin
"LSJ" <vte...@white-wolf.com> wrote in message
news:3C97A31A...@white-wolf.com...
> In FN, the complaint was that there weren't enough R1s.
> In BL, ...
>
> (You get used to this phenomenon after a while. :-)
To be fair, I think the complaint is always that cards
people want are too rare. They may have focused on
different facets of too-rareness, but the problem was
always that it's too hard to get the cards they wanted.
I think we all now recognize that that has to be the
case at least to some extent for CCG companies to stay
in business, but excessive rarity is never pleasant
from the players' point of view. :-)
Josh
too much is not enough
Chris Berger
> FN is 33.3% rare (54 out of 162)
> SW is 33.3% rare (100 out of 300)
>
> In FN, the complaint was that there weren't enough R1s.
> In BL, ...
>
as complaining that there are "too few" R1's. People would have been at least
as happy with 0 R1s as they would be with 40 R1s.
The problem that I see with FN is that there only seem to be 7 commons, because
I get the same ones in every pack (okay, there are 54, but still not enough
commons). If the small number of cards in FN had to be preserved, why not 50
rares, 50 uncommons, and 62 commons? If I'm paying $3 for the same 7 cards
over and over again, I quit pretty quickly - much too quickly to bother trying
to collect R1s.
33.3% rare is more rare-heavy than I'd like, but I guess you can't please
everyone. When it's *more* than 1/3rd rares, it gets to be ridiculous.
Curevei
>In BL, ...
No, the complaint was that there were R1s. Fred simply pointed out that if
there must be R1s and R2s that a small number of R1s is worse than having most
of the rares be R1s.
Very simple way to get people to stop spending time focussing on R1s v. R2s -
have all of the rares be of equal rarity.
LSJ
>
> "LSJ" <vte...@white-wolf.com> wrote in message
> news:3C97A31A...@white-wolf.com...
> >
> > BL is 35.7% rare (70 out of 196).
> > FN is 33.3% rare (54 out of 162)
> > SW is 33.3% rare (100 out of 300)
> >
> > In FN, the complaint was that there weren't enough R1s.
> > In BL, ...
> >
> That's BS. The complaint was that there were 8 R1s in FN. That's not the same
> as complaining that there are "too few" R1's. People would have been at least
> as happy with 0 R1s as they would be with 40 R1s.
Fred Scott Re: BL rarity vs. FN rarity: "Under the circumstances, I'm happier
that they're just allowing a plentiful supply of R1s ..."
> The problem that I see with FN is that there only seem to be 7 commons, because
> I get the same ones in every pack (okay, there are 54, but still not enough
> commons). If the small number of cards in FN had to be preserved, why not 50
> rares, 50 uncommons, and 62 commons? If I'm paying $3 for the same 7 cards
> over and over again, I quit pretty quickly - much too quickly to bother trying
> to collect R1s.
>
> 33.3% rare is more rare-heavy than I'd like, but I guess you can't please
> everyone. When it's *more* than 1/3rd rares, it gets to be ridiculous.
BTW, Re: your earlier statement about the pain with which a set is completed
being related to the percentage of rares:
If there had been 100 C1s on the common sheet and 100 U1s on the uncommon
sheet, you'd have 25.9% Rares in the set. And you'd have *exactly* the same
difficulty in completing your set (or, actually, the difficulty would be
slighty increased).
The real basis for the PITA level is the composition of the rare sheet and
the number of rares per booster pack.
Chris Berger
> Chris Berger wrote:
> >
> > "LSJ" <vte...@white-wolf.com> wrote in message
> > news:3C97A31A...@white-wolf.com...
> > >
> > > BL is 35.7% rare (70 out of 196).
> > > FN is 33.3% rare (54 out of 162)
> > > SW is 33.3% rare (100 out of 300)
> > >
> > > In FN, the complaint was that there weren't enough R1s.
> > > In BL, ...
> > >
> > That's BS. The complaint was that there were 8 R1s in FN. That's not the
same
> > as complaining that there are "too few" R1's. People would have been at
least
> > as happy with 0 R1s as they would be with 40 R1s.
>
> Fred Scott Re: BL rarity vs. FN rarity: "Under the circumstances, I'm happier
> that they're just allowing a plentiful supply of R1s ..."
>
> > 33.3% rare is more rare-heavy than I'd like, but I guess you can't please
> > everyone. When it's *more* than 1/3rd rares, it gets to be ridiculous.
>
> BTW, Re: your earlier statement about the pain with which a set is completed
> being related to the percentage of rares:
>
> If there had been 100 C1s on the common sheet and 100 U1s on the uncommon
> sheet, you'd have 25.9% Rares in the set. And you'd have *exactly* the same
> difficulty in completing your set (or, actually, the difficulty would be
> slighty increased).
>
Why is the difficulty increased? Do you think commons are 7 times more useful
than the rares you have chosen for the bloodlines set? I'd trade 2 Earth
Swords for 1 Darkling Trickery any day, assuming they were the same rarity.
(Since they're not the same rarity, I'd have to trade more like 20 to 1, if
anyone was willing to do it at all, but that's neither here nor there.) Most
other rares are at least 1/6th the usefulness of an average common, if not
more.
> The real basis for the PITA level is the composition of the rare sheet and
> the number of rares per booster pack.
>
That depends on how you define PITA level. If you define it as # of packs
bought, then you are correct, and it's in WW's interest to always maxmize PITA
level as long as there is still consumer demand. If you define PITA level as I
do, which is a factor of useless cards in a booster (i.e. something like PITA =
dU/db, where U is the number of cards in a given booster that are essentially
useless, and b is the number of boosters bought), then you are wrong. If you
define PITA like this, then the more commons in the set, the less of a pain it
is to collect it. It will cost more *money* to have a decent playset, but each
pack you buy will be more likely to give you 11 useful cards, rather than a
schlep-load of crap, 3 vampires that you already have, and a rare that *might*
be what you were looking for.
In this case, it would be to WW's advantage to maximize the number of different
commons (and uncommons, to a lesser degree) within a set, while still leaving
enough rares to make it interesting. It's debatable whether this describes the
buying criteria for the average customer, but I'm saying that it *does* define
*my* buying criteria, and seems like a reasonable criteria for other customers.
It would surprise me if such a set was a disappointment for any players of the
game, and I would not be surprised if they bought much larger quantities of it
than, say, Final Nights, with its 54 commons. Collectors might not like it,
but V:TES has never been a collectors game, since its earliest days, and I
doubt that will change too much.
It's true that making limited-use cards common is a bad idea, so if you have 70
limited-use cards, you should not make them common just to make me happy. But
Darkling Trickery, Coagulated Entity, Siren's Lure, Echo of Harmonies, Neutral
Guard, Bond With the Mountain... these are all cards that could be useful with
6 or more to a deck... all rare, mostly, IIRC, R1s.
Frederick Scott
>
> lor...@yahoo.com writes:
>
> >A person with little free income to spend, on the other hand, is limited
> >primarily by the total number of cards he can purchase, and as a result
> >will need to shuffle the 8 Wakes he manages to acquire from deck to
> >deck, as need be, and never keep more than a few completely built.
>
> You have to spend about $100 to get 8 Wakes + Forced Awakening
> right now.
I'm not sure what "8 wakes + Forced Awakening" means but you should get
about 3-4 Wakes in a box of Jyhad. If you insist on 8 wakes being a
minimal number (I'd hate to tell you what percentage of my decks have not
a single Wake, FA, 2nd Tradition, Cat's Guidance or anything like that),
that would be 2 1/2 boxes of Jyhad. I think you could probably get that
for less than $100, even nowadays. And you can probably lay your hands on
8 Wakes as singles for considerably less than that.
Realistically, I'm not sure I care about trying to limit the entry
requirement to under $100 for someone who's envisioning himself playing
competitive, no-limits constructed-deck Jyhad, either. I think the game's
gotten plenty popular without such a concept and it will stay that way.
I do think it would be nice to limit some of what I consider to be the
unwise excesses of some of the existing power rares: Disarms, Freak Drives,
Mind Rapes and those kinds of things. But this is a tweek, not a major
overhaul. The Cx thing for Wakes and Blood Dolls will also help, but I
don't think it's going to make anyone a competitive constructed player for
less than $100, no matter what. It definitely isn't if the cost is making
someone buy 3-4 boxes to get all the vampires!
Fred
Frederick Scott
>
> In FN, the complaint was that there weren't enough R1s.
> In BL, ...
>
> (You get used to this phenomenon after a while. :-)
I can see where that would get frustrating. Of course,
(hopefully!) you're hearing the contradictory complaints
from different sets of people.
If it makes you feel any better, I still think Final Nights
was the wrong thing to do. (Um, I think that came out
wrong. :) ) Bloodlines was definitely better IMO, and I
feel vindicated that R1s in Bloodlines, over time, have been
much easier to get (with maybe a few stubborn exceptions)
than the R1s in Final Nights.
The ideal thing to do, if you're stuck with 100-card cardsheets,
is to stay as close to 100 cards in each rarity level without
going over as possible. I guess the way to do a small expansion
would be to print a rare cardsheet with no more than 50 cards
doubled up so you don't create a small number of R1s. You can
also make some "near-rares" on the uncommon sheet as U1s if you
must. I doubt anyone would mind that terribly.
Fred
Frederick Scott
> > > In BL, ...
> > >
> > That's BS. The complaint was that there were 8 R1s in FN. That's not the same
> > as complaining that there are "too few" R1's. People would have been at least
> > as happy with 0 R1s as they would be with 40 R1s.
>
> Fred Scott Re: BL rarity vs. FN rarity: "Under the circumstances, I'm happier
> that they're just allowing a plentiful supply of R1s ..."
Gee, Scott, doesn't sound like a "complaint" to me! I'm glad you're reading the
nicer things some of us write as well as the actual griping.
Seriously, though, Chris is actually representing my point of view correctly.
It isn't that I actually _want_ rarer cards. I accept that rarity is an evil
you take with the good of having actual new cards for sale in order to make sure
the nice folks at White Wolf get adequately paid for their efforts. But having
a relatively small number of the rarEST cards magnifies the problem of obtaining
them, while probably not helping overall sales all that much. They're all
easier to get if each pack is much more likely to contain one, as is certainly
true in Bloodlines in relation to Final Nights. Furthermore, one distinct
problem in both Bloodlines and Final Nights that never existed in any of the
WotC printings was the ratio of rarest to most common cards: a whopping 14 to 1
when comparing C2s to R1s. Even WotC never ventured over 11 to 1 at their
worst.
> > 33.3% rare is more rare-heavy than I'd like, but I guess you can't please
> > everyone. When it's *more* than 1/3rd rares, it gets to be ridiculous.
>
> BTW, Re: your earlier statement about the pain with which a set is completed
> being related to the percentage of rares:
>
> If there had been 100 C1s on the common sheet and 100 U1s on the uncommon
> sheet, you'd have 25.9% Rares in the set. And you'd have *exactly* the same
> difficulty in completing your set (or, actually, the difficulty would be
> slighty increased).
If Chris was pointing at the percentage of rares having a direct correlation
with how hard it is to obtain a set, I didn't see it. You are correct, it
isn't necessarily directly related. However, as Chris also said:
> > If the small number of cards in FN had to be preserved, why not 50
> > rares, 50 uncommons, and 62 commons?
This is more germane to the point. Once there's over 50 rares, you are forced
to print R1s on the raresheet. That's the point at which it gets a lot harder
to collect a set. Now if you could make each cardsheet at each rarity level be
whatever number you wanted (instead of always being exactly 100), then 54 rares
wouldn't be much worse than 50. It would just be a situation where the fewer
rares the better, and the percentage of rares would therefore be directly related
to how hard a set was to collect (also assuming the number of total cards in the
set was kept constant, of course).
Fred
Frederick Scott
>
> jtdu...@yahoo.com writes:
> >you should
> >get 4.32 scarce vampires, on average, in a box;
>
> I got 7. If I had gotten 4, I'd be singing a different tune
> about scare vampire rarity. 7 seems about right. 4
> is be too few. Was I lucky?
Um, I'm not sure Josh is right about this one. There's 10
vampires on the rare sheet but they're all R2s, thus 20 copies
of vampires on a 100 card sheet, 20% of all rares. 20% of 36
rare cards would be 7.2, note 4.32. (How did your calculations
work, Josh?)
Fred
CurtAdams
>Seriously, though, Chris is actually representing my point of view correctly.
>It isn't that I actually _want_ rarer cards. I accept that rarity is an evil
>you take with the good of having actual new cards for sale in order to make
sure
>the nice folks at White Wolf get adequately paid for their efforts. But
having
>a relatively small number of the rarEST cards magnifies the problem of
obtaining
>them, while probably not helping overall sales all that much.
I don't mind rare cards, even chase cards, at all. What I mind is rare cards
which are necessary in number for proper functioning of common cards.
At least in the past here, that's been considered a real no-no for design.
Engling Fury, Gift of Bellona, and Blessings of the Name are cards that
obviously violate that rule for Ahrimanes and !Salubri, respectively.
I haven't even seen all the rares; I'm sure there are other examples.
There are several other cards, like Art's Traumatic Essence which,
while not essential to proper function of the clan decks, are way too
good for rares. There are a lot of perfectly reasonable rares in BL,
say, Regenrative Blood, Bastille Opera House, Dust to Dust, the Herald
- but even a few big boners leaves a very bad taste in my
mouth.
Curt Adams (curt...@aol.com)
"It is better to be wrong than to be vague" - Freeman Dyson
LSJ
>
> LSJ wrote:
> >
> > Chris Berger wrote:
> > >
> > > "LSJ" <vte...@white-wolf.com> wrote in message
> > > > In FN, the complaint was that there weren't enough R1s.
> > > > In BL, ...
> > > >
> > > That's BS. The complaint was that there were 8 R1s in FN. That's not the same
> > > as complaining that there are "too few" R1's. People would have been at least
> > > as happy with 0 R1s as they would be with 40 R1s.
> >
> > Fred Scott Re: BL rarity vs. FN rarity: "Under the circumstances, I'm happier
> > that they're just allowing a plentiful supply of R1s ..."
>
> Gee, Scott, doesn't sound like a "complaint" to me! I'm glad you're reading the
> nicer things some of us write as well as the actual griping.
Not at all. There were complaints on the FN side.
The above quote was illustrating the non-BSness of my statement.
> This is more germane to the point. Once there's over 50 rares, you are forced
> to print R1s on the raresheet. That's the point at which it gets a lot harder
> to collect a set. Now if you could make each cardsheet at each rarity level be
> whatever number you wanted (instead of always being exactly 100), then 54 rares
> wouldn't be much worse than 50. It would just be a situation where the fewer
> rares the better, and the percentage of rares would therefore be directly related
> to how hard a set was to collect (also assuming the number of total cards in the
> set was kept constant, of course).
True. But unfortunately, the "if" doesn't apply.
LSJ
> > being related to the percentage of rares:
> >
> > If there had been 100 C1s on the common sheet and 100 U1s on the uncommon
> > sheet, you'd have 25.9% Rares in the set. And you'd have *exactly* the same
> > difficulty in completing your set (or, actually, the difficulty would be
> > slighty increased).
> >
> Why is the difficulty increased?
Consider a given C2. Treat the instances of the C2 on the Common sheet
as instance A and instance B.
There is the possibility that you complete your set but without ever
getting a B copy of the given C2. It's a remote possibility, to be sure,
given the number of cards you'd have to get to complete the set, but
it is non-zero.
Now if the C2 were replaced by two C1s (one occupying the slot on the
sheet where A was and the other where B was), then you'd no longer
have completed your set in that remote case.
> Do you think commons are 7 times more useful
> than the rares you have chosen for the bloodlines set?
Ostensibly. The exact ratio would vary wildly, of course, depending on
the given rare and the given common.
> I'd trade 2 Earth
> Swords for 1 Darkling Trickery any day, assuming they were the same rarity.
> (Since they're not the same rarity, I'd have to trade more like 20 to 1, if
> anyone was willing to do it at all, but that's neither here nor there.)
I'd consider anti-weapon cards of more limited utility than general
ranged strike cards, in general, sure.
> Most
> other rares are at least 1/6th the usefulness of an average common, if not
> more.
Well, good. I was beginning to think you didn't like any of it. :-)
> It's true that making limited-use cards common is a bad idea, so if you have 70
> limited-use cards, you should not make them common just to make me happy. But
> Darkling Trickery, Coagulated Entity, Siren's Lure, Echo of Harmonies, Neutral
> Guard, Bond With the Mountain... these are all cards that could be useful with
> 6 or more to a deck... all rare, mostly, IIRC, R1s.
I gather you'd rather the Earth Swords be rare and Darkling Trickery be
common from above (although Earth Swords seems more useful in numbers to
me), but which sanguinus card would you replace Coagulated Entity with?
Likewise Siren's Lure, etc.?
Matt Green
[snip]
> I gather you'd rather the Earth Swords be rare and Darkling Trickery be
> common from above (although Earth Swords seems more useful in numbers to
> me), but which sanguinus card would you replace Coagulated Entity with?
> Likewise Siren's Lure, etc.?
Good grief, this is too easy:
Unwholesome Bond is a better rare than Coagulated Entity given that the
Blood Brothers are a combat orientated clan (given Potence and
Fortitude) and should make far more use of an 'enter combat' card than a
gain blood card. You certainly need fewer of them than Coagulated
Entities for the majority (though not all) of Blood Brothers deck
strategies.
As for Siren's Lure, see: Toredaor' s Bane. Siren's Lure is fantastic in
multiples, whereas Toreador's Bane is situational and very difficult to
play given the relatively loww average capacity of the clans' vampires.
Yet is a common.
With Mytherceria, given the problems of making rare combat cards good in
multiples (see Bloodform), per combat, Darkling Trickery is more useful
in multiples.
mattgreen
--
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG
Joshua Duffin
"Matt Green" <mgre...@bcuc.ac.uk> wrote in message
news:838653c1d4fe02ba89f...@mygate.mailgate.org...
> "LSJ" <vte...@white-wolf.com> wrote in message
>
> [snip]
>
> > I gather you'd rather the Earth Swords be rare and Darkling Trickery be
> > common from above (although Earth Swords seems more useful in numbers to
> > me), but which sanguinus card would you replace Coagulated Entity with?
> > Likewise Siren's Lure, etc.?
>
> Good grief, this is too easy:
>
> Unwholesome Bond is a better rare than Coagulated Entity given that the
> Blood Brothers are a combat orientated clan (given Potence and
> Fortitude) and should make far more use of an 'enter combat' card than a
> gain blood card. You certainly need fewer of them than Coagulated
> Entities for the majority (though not all) of Blood Brothers deck
> strategies.
heh, I'd actually disagree here. The Blood Brothers vamps
are expensive enough that Unwholesome Bond seems pretty
important to making them usable, even if combat is what
you want to do with them otherwise.
I'd say Brother's Blood is the one to make rare - as far
as I can tell it's only occasionally worth playing at all,
let alone very useful.
> As for Siren's Lure, see: Toredaor' s Bane. Siren's Lure is fantastic in
> multiples, whereas Toreador's Bane is situational and very difficult to
> play given the relatively loww average capacity of the clans' vampires.
> Yet is a common.
Good point. Tourette's Bane is also rather special-use
considering that all the Daughters have some kind of
blocking disadvantage.
> With Mytherceria, given the problems of making rare combat cards good in
> multiples (see Bloodform), per combat, Darkling Trickery is more useful
> in multiples.
Two of the MYT rares are pretty good - Steal the Mind and
Basilisk's Touch are both pretty specialized. So is
Darkling Trickery at superior Myt, but at inferior it's
general-purpose enough that it might make a better common
than, say, Absorb the Mind. Or not, but its inferior
definitely makes more sense at common than rare. :-)
Josh
commoner
Chris Berger
> Chris Berger wrote:
>
> > I'd trade 2 Earth
> > Swords for 1 Darkling Trickery any day, assuming they were the same rarity.
> > (Since they're not the same rarity, I'd have to trade more like 20 to 1, if
> > anyone was willing to do it at all, but that's neither here nor there.)
>
> I'd consider anti-weapon cards of more limited utility than general
> ranged strike cards, in general, sure.
>
both, but who cares about the superior?)
> > It's true that making limited-use cards common is a bad idea, so if you
have 70
> > limited-use cards, you should not make them common just to make me happy.
But
> > Darkling Trickery, Coagulated Entity, Siren's Lure, Echo of Harmonies,
Neutral
> > Guard, Bond With the Mountain... these are all cards that could be useful
with
> > 6 or more to a deck... all rare, mostly, IIRC, R1s.
>
> I gather you'd rather the Earth Swords be rare and Darkling Trickery be
> common from above (although Earth Swords seems more useful in numbers to
> me), but which sanguinus card would you replace Coagulated Entity with?
> Likewise Siren's Lure, etc.?
>
Coagulated Entity - Brother's Blood. Siren's Lure - Toredor's Bane. Echo of
Harmonies - Tourette's Voice. Neutral Guard - Panacea. Bond With the
Mountain - umm.... umm... Collapse the Arches?
Note, these are just my opinions, and the relative usefulnesses of these cards
are debatable (I'd be happy to debate them, however). I'd rather there just be
fewer rares and more commons, the reasons for which I described in the portion
of my post that you snipped.
vermillian
> "Andrew S. Davidson" wrote:
> >
> > On Sat, 16 Mar 2002 00:30:14 GMT, Frederick Scott wrote:
> I do have a lot of vampires I've drawn from packs. In many cases, far
> more than I'd ever need or use. But I still think vampires are the ultimate
> "support" cards, far more so than Blood Dolls or Wakes. They're one thing
> that players shouldn't need to trade for or buy as singles.
I don't think everyone should have many copies of the beast or other
odd vampires like that ventrue chick with serpentis... SOME vampires
can be rare (like that Hutziputz guy...)...
~SV
Frederick Scott
>
> I don't mind rare cards, even chase cards, at all. What I mind is rare cards
> which are necessary in number for proper functioning of common cards.
I certainly agree. I think you'll have a tough time finding much argument there,
except for the people who actually like the whole chase-and-own thing with power
rares.
> At least in the past here, that's been considered a real no-no for design.
> Engling Fury, Gift of Bellona, and Blessings of the Name are cards that
> obviously violate that rule for Ahrimanes and !Salubri, respectively.
I wouldn't point at "the past" as any gleaming example of rarity correctness,
there, Curt. Surely, you'll recall Freak Drive, Immortal Grapple (before
reprinting as uncommons in Sabbat), Pulled Fangs (before errata), Kine
Dominance, Temptation, Return to Innocence (before errata and banning), Direct
Intervention, Succubus, War Ghoul, Nephandus, Derange, Mind Rape (even with
errata), Legacy of Pander (before reprinting modifications), Awe, and Disarm.
I'm kind of leaving out anything that could be arguably justified for being
unique or something (Tomb of Ramses III, before errata) and some personal
favorites that don't seem to be everybody's bag (Art Scam). But IMHO, the
WotC printings have been every bit as guilty of this as the White Wolf
expansions. I agree that Bloodlines may be a bit worse than usual, but I
don't think it touches The Sabbat for underprinted power rares.
Fred
LSJ
> I don't mind rare cards, even chase cards, at all. What I mind is rare cards
> which are necessary in number for proper functioning of common cards.
> At least in the past here, that's been considered a real no-no for design.
> Engling Fury, Gift of Bellona, and Blessings of the Name are cards that
> obviously violate that rule for Ahrimanes and !Salubri, respectively.
I'd disagree with Gift of Bellona, esp. with "obviously" in there.
Gift is an at-the-time-of-equipping card. Not a high-utility card.
Which common cards is this impeding the function of? You can
still equip without it.
Engling Fury?
Again, doesn't obviously require quantities. Doesn't restrict the
functioning of common cards.
Blessing of the Name is also not necessary in number. And certainly not
"obviously" so. And again I don't see any common cards that depend
on having quantities of it.
Thomas Pichler
> In message <1230C7B8C351D537.963218B1...@lp.airnew
> s.net>, Andrew S. Davidson <a...@csi.com> writes:
> >It's not as bad as other Decipher games but
> >there are still lots of power rares. It's even worse in VTES because
> >you can't feel satisfied with just four copies. Crazy.
>
> *sigh*
>
> You *don't have to* feel satisfied with <X> copies (where <X> is a small
> number, varying for each different game).
>
> And it's perfectly possible to build highly playable decks using lots of
> rares.
>
So you agree with that? You actually agree with the statement that it's
possible to build some pretty darn neat decks with, say, lots of Deranges? I
wasn't so sure you had noticed.
> This doesn't mean you *have* to have dozens of rares to compete.
> Please, either provide some foundation for this continual assertion that
> the ability to collect and use lots of rares is a bad thing or stop
> making the same assertion.
>
Foundation:
Point out any 3 fortitude decks posted on this NG in the last month that did
not include 3 or more copies of Freak Drive.
Failing that (which you will), admit that - despite your feeble attempts at
denying this - there is a very broad base for the assertion that this is a
power rare that fits in any fortitude deck.
Try to trade for 3 Freak Drives and realize this is equally impossible if
you're not going to put your Disarm, your Call the Great Beast and your
Black Metamorphosis (which, since you don't have dozens of rares, you can't
possible be in possession of, anway, because the odds are just too damn high
against someone pulling all three from less than 4 boxes) up for grabs.
Pretty much, the card in question can only be acquired through buying boxes,
at, as far as I remember, 1 Freak Drive in 121 rares, and 363 rares certaily
constitutes dozens (and just over 10 boxes). [Side note: 10 boxes must, at
some point in time, have been purchased, leaving lots of people with dozens
of rares for *one* person to have 3 copies of the useful one.]
Cheap Jyhad prices available through Potomac at some point in the past are
irrelevant as the prices have risen and this offer is not equally available
to everyone.
That's just the facts, which people are perfectly egligible to point out and
express their dislike about it.
So, quit your asinine flaming anyone who does - even if it's just to save me
the trouble of posting equally asinine flames trying to get you to
acknowlege both the fact of statistics and the fact that others are entitled
to not like a fact you seem to think is really really cool.
Thomas
Frederick Scott
>
> I don't think everyone should have many copies of the beast or other
> odd vampires like that ventrue chick with serpentis... SOME vampires
> can be rare (like that Hutziputz guy...)...
Perhaps a few. Very few, though. And it's really hard to predict which
ones those should be since a desire to play with a given set of disciplines
or some new function of some new card may suddenly show a use for a vampire
that didn't appear to be one many would like. Huitzilopochtli is an
excellent example. I use 12 of him in my "Huitzi and the Beast" deck, as
he turns out to be the only vampire printed that can reasonably use Call the
Great Beast. He should not not have been rarer than the others. Nor should
Beast, Leatherface either. Anyone who likes combat can find something to
do with him.
Fred
Frederick Scott
>
> CurtAdams wrote:
> > I don't mind rare cards, even chase cards, at all. What I mind is rare cards
> > which are necessary in number for proper functioning of common cards.
> > At least in the past here, that's been considered a real no-no for design.
> > Engling Fury, Gift of Bellona, and Blessings of the Name are cards that
> > obviously violate that rule for Ahrimanes and !Salubri, respectively.
>
> I'd disagree with Gift of Bellona, esp. with "obviously" in there.
> Gift is an at-the-time-of-equipping card. Not a high-utility card.
Gift is combo card - doesn't work without weapons and if you play with weapons,
it's the kind of a card you want to make using them more worthwhile. As such,
if you do it at all, you want to have a lot of repeats of the card so that
a synergy will develop between the plentiful weapons and the plentiful GoBs
in the deck. Or at least, that's a principal of deckbuilding I tend to follow.
How many GoBs one would need to make a good anti-Salubri deck isn't clear to me
since I've yet to try building one. But obviously, I'm not the only one who
thinks there should be more than a few in the deck.
> Which common cards is this impeding the function of? You can
> still equip without it.
Do you notice many weapons decks with clans that lack celerity as a common
discipline? The point is that weapons alone are not that much of an
attraction.
> Engling Fury?
> Again, doesn't obviously require quantities. Doesn't restrict the
> functioning of common cards.
Engling Fury doesn't require quantities to use. But it's a card that's got
very little drawback to it in terms of opportunity cost. One can continue
to throw more and more Engling Furies into a single-clan (or heavily populated)
Ahrimanes deck and benefit from them up a point that's well past a number
you would expect of a rare card in a single deck. Art Scam works the same
way for weeny anti-Toreador decks.
> Blessing of the Name is also not necessary in number. And certainly not
> "obviously" so. And again I don't see any common cards that depend
> on having quantities of it.
Everybody I've seen using Blessing of the Name seems agree with my own
instincts about it: if you're going to use, you need to use a bunch of
them. For one thing, it's got the same synergy issues with weapons as
Gift of Bellona. For another thing, if you're going to use it at all, it
makes a lot more sense to have enough of them that you can use one every
turn except when you just plain get unlucky. It's very much like a booze
hangover: due to the tapping penalty on the card, you want play another
one next turn and drink a "hair of the Blessing that bit you".
Fred - waiting to see what card they're going to invent that's like
smoking pot
Chris Berger
>
> Fred - waiting to see what card they're going to invent that's like
> smoking pot
>
has more pizza than you... etc...), and makes me want to order a pizza.
Arika - makes me paranoid and jumpy.
Secret Horde - lets me oust myself so I can just sit there staring stupidly at
the wall until the next game starts.
CurtAdams
>>Yes, there is; trick decks are far less common. In addition, decks with
>In tournament play, I'd say 30%, and I have a fairly good chunk of
>tourney experience. In casual play, I'd say closer to 50%. This isn't
>'far less common'. Not all of those decks require multiples of the same
>vampire, but they ARE "trick" decks nevertheless.
Quite literally, I don't think I've ever seen a deck in casual play
with 4+ of the same vampire. Certainly it's very rare thing.
In tournaments I saw a few decks which might have had high
multiple numbers but it still doesn't make any sense to fill
boxes with useless Brujah to make Theo Bell decks a little easier.
If the multiple vampire trick decks are that valuable, just print
a little more of the few vampires which show up in them.
CurtAdams
>>You have to spend about $100 to get 8 Wakes + Forced Awakening
>>right now. The little free income guy is currently just not part
>>of the picture. Reducing the cost to get a useful number of the
>>basic cards is the absolute best thing you can do for them.
>I can't tell whether you mean 8 Wakes and 8 FA, or just 8 total.
>Doesn't matter. Let's do the numbers, because you're way off.
I'm calculcating from boosters. You need > box SW for the
FA.
It would be about $40 list from FN starters and $20 list
from SW starters. I know they're cheaper from Potomac,
but the target market is people trying the game and they
are not going to order wholesale quantities from the cheapest
place on the net. The limitation in the starters is the pool
management cards, which are 1-2 per booster (mostly 2)
2 is OK ($20-30 per deck) but 1 is too few.
>SW starter boxes aren't listed on Potomac's list. The boosters are
>listed at $74, and lacking a better price we'll use that (although
>starter boxes for FN are slightly cheaper than booster boxes for FN)
SW starters are almost out-of-print at this point. It seems
that the !Brujah sold out; don't ask me why. I thought maybe
they were bought for Taste but there's only one each so that
doesn't seem enough. Maybe if you count in all the other
POT combat less-than-commons they were worth it.
CurtAdams
>Realistically, I'm not sure I care about trying to limit the entry
>requirement to under $100 for someone who's envisioning himself playing
>competitive, no-limits constructed-deck Jyhad, either. I think the game's
>gotten plenty popular without such a concept and it will stay that way.
It's not that popular. The play group seems quite small; it's just that
we seem to be a relatively mature and bright group and so spend
enough each to float the game. Over time, though, we will age and
quit.
>I do think it would be nice to limit some of what I consider to be the
>unwise excesses of some of the existing power rares: Disarms, Freak Drives,
>Mind Rapes and those kinds of things. But this is a tweek, not a major
>overhaul.
That can make a big difference. I may post a rant on the Dementate
rarities. At present we're OK since there are still those many archetypes
which need very few rares. It's disturbing to see clans where if you
wanted to play them you would just automatically throw in 6 or so
of a rare; ie. the clan needs 15+ boxes to make one deck go. I don't
know if things are getting worse; Freak Drive *is* from the original
set, but I'd think they'd be getting better.
>The Cx thing for Wakes and Blood Dolls will also help, but I
>don't think it's going to make anyone a competitive constructed player for
>less than $100, no matter what. It definitely isn't if the cost is making
>someone buy 3-4 boxes to get all the vampires!
I'd be shooting for about 2 for a full-sized set. Certainly after 2
boxes of SW I'm very library-limited where I can't bail myself
out with Jyhad or starters. That's Dementate, Sabbat, and clan
cards, and that's why I noticed the wacky rarities on Dementate.
Curevei
>news:3C9888B5...@white-wolf.com...
>> Chris Berger wrote:
>>
>> > I'd trade 2 Earth
>> > Swords for 1 Darkling Trickery any day, assuming they were the same
>rarity.
>> > (Since they're not the same rarity, I'd have to trade more like 20 to 1,
>if
>> > anyone was willing to do it at all, but that's neither here nor there.)
>>
>> I'd consider anti-weapon cards of more limited utility than general
>> ranged strike cards, in general, sure.
>>
>Darkling Trickery is a maneuver/press, not an anti-weapon card. (okay,
>it's
>both, but who cares about the superior?)
I've had the superior played against me twice. But, from the bizarre to the
relevant, I'd always put the card in for the inferior and would often want to
be able to put in multiples.
I never focussed much on Shadow Step for a variety of reasons, one being that
people either didn't have them or didn't have enough of them for it to see
common play. More recently, I'm just blown away by how useful the card would
be to have in multiples. I couldn't care less about setting range, which was
likely why it was made rare, even though that effect is useful. As with
Darkling Trickery, I'd want lots of copies in order to play the inferior.
Actually, it could be argued that one of two things is the problem with these
cards. Being rare could be one. The other would be if the inferiors were not
so useful, then they would make sense (or, at least, more sense) as rares.
Though, if DT's inferior was as wacky as its superior, probably wouldn't be any
point to it at all.
>> > It's true that making limited-use cards common is a bad idea, so if you
>have 70
>> > limited-use cards, you should not make them common just to make me happy.
>But
>> > Darkling Trickery, Coagulated Entity, Siren's Lure, Echo of Harmonies,
>Neutral
>> > Guard, Bond With the Mountain... these are all cards that could be
>useful
>with
>> > 6 or more to a deck... all rare, mostly, IIRC, R1s.
>>
>> I gather you'd rather the Earth Swords be rare and Darkling Trickery be
>> common from above (although Earth Swords seems more useful in numbers to
>> me), but which sanguinus card would you replace Coagulated Entity with?
>> Likewise Siren's Lure, etc.?
>>
>Coagulated Entity - Brother's Blood. Siren's Lure - Toredor's Bane. Echo of
>Harmonies - Tourette's Voice. Neutral Guard - Panacea. Bond With the
>Mountain - umm.... umm... Collapse the Arches?
Most, if not all, of these choices sound about right.