The other metagame
ben...@gmail.com
>I advocated for banning/changing some staple cards in this post,
>a few years back:
>
>http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.trading-cards.jyhad/browse_f...
>
>My interest then was, not in creating local banned list, but in the
>evolution of the game.
>
>Since then, we haven't seen core card banned or changed. But we
>have seen a number of new "silver bullet" type cards. Vessle and
>Villein have changed the roll of Blood Doll and Minion Tap. Scourge
>of the Enochians is a powerful counter to breed/boon strategies. Dark
>Influences vs Direct Intervention etc...
>
>The evolution is occurring, but via introduction of new cards that
>target the old ones rather than changing or banning existing cards.
>Overall, I think this is a clever strategy. Changing the dynamic via
>clever design and introduction is preferable to errata and banning.
>
>The trick is getting the "silver bullet" to hit the target just right.
>Make the new cards too weak (Dark Influences?) and the new card
>doesn't change anything. Make it too strong (Villein?) and you've just
>replaced one strong card with a stronger card (actually, I think
>Villein is quite well designed. I just wish it was easier to get.).
>
>So, no, I haven't played with a local banned list. Nor do I recommend
>one. But the changes I advocated for are occurring. Slowly. And by
>targeted design.
The problem I see right now with V:TES is that this "evolution" you
talk about is actually creating a class of cards that exist merely for
the sake of countering each other. It's created a game layer on top
of V:TES that ends being its own minigame.
Oh, you want to hose those weenie decks? Play Scourge, 4th Cycle,
Anarchist Uprising, and Ancilla Empowerment.
You're a weenie deck and don't want to die to the anti-weenie
cards? Play The Uncoiling, Delaying Tactics, and Direct Intervention.
You're running into a lot of big vampire and/or star-player decks?
Play Pentex Subversion and/or Fear of Mekhet.
You're a star player deck and don't want to die to Pentex? Play
Wash, Sudden Reversal, and your own copy of Pentex.
You want to hose those voting decks? Play DT and DI.
You're a voter and don't want to be hosed by DT and DI? Cryptic
Rider, Dark Influences, etc.
This doesn't feel like V:TES to me. It just feels like a mini-game
of magic bullets and magic bullet counters. I understand that there's
always going be an "A" and "Counter-A" aspect to the game (ex. stealth
vs. intercept), but it's the degree of it that's the difference here.
Stealth vs. Intercept and Damage vs. Prevention and such are mechanics
with a broad range of cards, as opposed to the extremely narrow scope
of Scourge vs. Uncoiling or Pentex vs. Wash. I don't like the silver
bullet mini-game we have, and I don't like the continued silver bullet
direction in which we're headed. I'd rather play V:TES.
- Ben Peal
Peter D Bakija
<958d74d2-93ac-42a5...@s21g2000vbb.googlegroups.com>,
ben...@gmail.com wrote:
> The problem I see right now with V:TES is that this "evolution" you
> talk about is actually creating a class of cards that exist merely for
> the sake of countering each other. It's created a game layer on top
> of V:TES that ends being its own minigame.
To be fair, on one hand, I completely agree with you--I dislike "silver
bullets", and don't think that they actually do what they are designed
to do that well (Dominate is *still* too good, even with AI and Touch of
Clarity not withstanding?). But on the other hand, what other options
are there?
A) Ban some cards: I'm not opposed to this, but an awful lot of folks
would be real cranky if, like, we suddenly banned
Givern/Conditioning/Deflection/Parity Shift/whatever. And there would be
an endless argument over what should be banned. And once things got
banned, there would be an endless argument over what *else* should be
banned.
B) Reboot the game from ground zero. This would be catastrophic, from a
consumer point of view. And would likely end the game.
I don't think either of these are great options (although I'd certainly
much rather see some laser guided bannings than a total reboot). And if
you want do do things like "make Dominate less good than everything
else" and "make weenies less dominant and powerful", that leaves "making
silver bullets", and while "silver bullet" game design is never an
optimal plan, VTES has done a *much* better job than, like, the Star
Trek CCG (that had, literally, the silver bullet that said "If your
opponent has played card X, Y, or Z in the current game, they instantly
lose the game."). And, ya know, things like Scourge of the Enochians has
traumatized me enough at this early point that I have changed virtually
*all* my decks to not have 1-2 caps in them. So that is something.
Peter D Bakija
pd...@lightlink.com
http://www.lightlink.com/pdb6/vtes.html
"It's too bad she won't live! But then again, who does?"
-Gaff
Curevei
Not exactly to your point, but:
CCGs put out initial sets. Those initial sets have balance problems
for obvious reasons. Sometimes, those problems are considered
features.
"Natural" fixes arise. People metagame against what's strong. In
multiplayer CCGs, it's often possible to gang up on someone who takes
too big a lead. Some CCG players believe all ills are fixed by such
natural fixes to where there's nothing truly broken. Some more
realize that there are a few things that are truly broken and need to
be errataed/banned/whatever, but that natural fixes will deal with
almost everything. It's not an unreasonable view if the interest is
primarily in a clean, highly competitive game where tech and new sets
can rapidly reshape the metagame.
Moving to the other end of the spectrum, some people clamor for
rewriting games to fix root problems. Close to that is mass bannings
or changing basic rules of the game. Moving towards the middle some
and you get mass errata and targeted bannings. But, some people
despise bannings and/or errata. They want games corrected with
"artificial" fixes but be able to play with their cards. Hosers serve
as artificial fixes that avoid the problems associated with errata/
bannings/rules changes.
But, of course, hosers come with their own problems. In general, they
fail. I've seen it with a number of CCGs, but it was particularly
obvious with Babylon 5, which always had a hoser mentality to fixing
the game.
What I always hope for is the publishing of new strategies or
improvements to existing strategies that naturally correct errors in
previous releases. One may ask how printing something new that
encourages something is really all that different from printing
something new that punishes something. Sometimes, it's not so clear
the difference, but usually it is. As you say, hosers are narrow.
They produce chaotic environments where when they do their job, which
they rarely do, they randomly annihilate someone. Having new
strategies bubble to the top of the metagame is less likely to have
such a severe impact.
The reason one rarely sees the more organic approach to realigning
game balance is that's it's really hard to deal with big problems with
subtle answers. It's ludicrously easy to make hoser cards. I used to
come up with card designs on a regular basis and I'd accidentally
create a bunch of hosers frequently. By being narrow, you can worry
less about unintended consequences, though, the reality is that hosers
have unintended consequences all of the time as well.
It drives me nuts that we get cards like Vessel, Villein, DI2, Two
Wrongs, Narrow Minds, and the like because I see it as a lazy approach
that isn't going to make the game any better while other, better
options exist. In fact, those options have been used, and I think
they've helped.
Don't like weenie decks? Well, make more cards that specify capacity
requirements of 5+ or whatever. Make more multidiscipline cards.
But, it's going to usually be the case that making weenie hosers will
only make games more annoying. For instance, as an example of
unintended consequences, there's a big difference between a weenie
deck and a deck that plays some weenies. Weenie hosers are likely to
hit both decks as hard, but the former deck is likely to be far
stronger and able to absorb the hoser where the latter deck falls
apart. Rather than getting rid of weenie decks, you squeeze out decks
that needed a few chumps to support a more fair strategy, which can
very easily lead to moving into some other unfair strategy.
Anyway, yes, there's more and more counter, counter-counter, counter-
counter-counter creeping into the game and I don't see it doing the
game much service. On the other hand, CCGs also become horribly
bloated over time and it's not really possible to not have more of
everything creep into a game unless you reboot or restrict card pools.
bswai...@hotmail.com
> Ben Swainbank wrote in that "house rule banned list" thread:
>
> >I advocated for banning/changing some staple cards
> >My interest then was, not in creating local banned list, but in the
> >evolution of the game.
>
> >Since then, we haven't seen core card banned or changed. But we
> >have seen a number of new "silver bullet" type cards.
>
> The problem I see right now with V:TES is that this "evolution" you
> talk about is actually creating a class of cards that exist merely for
> the sake of countering each other. It's created a game layer on top
> of V:TES that ends being its own minigame.
>
> This doesn't feel like V:TES to me. It just feels like a mini-game
> of magic bullets and magic bullet counters.
I can see how it could be over-done, and be pretty annoying. But I
don't think it has been over-done, or is going to be.
Really, only Vessel/Blood Doll and DI/DI2 seem to qualify as meta-
magic-bullet-mini games. I've never seen Dark Influences actually
played. So I don't think it has big impact on the game either way. I
like the influence Vessel has had. I don't think it's very good. But,
because Vessel exists (and is played), Blood Doll is somewhat less
good, and thus not as obvious choice for pool gain as it once was.
And, there are some who say we shouldn't be influenced by Vessel at
all.
There may be more magic bullet-type cards in the works. I would be
surprised if we see a flood of them.
Other cards like Uncoiling, or Scourge of the Enochians, are strong,
and may move the meta-game, but aren't really narrow enough to be
magic bullets. Strong cards that impact that game seem like a
desirable and natural by-product of printing new sets.
-Ben Swainbank
Obtenebration
impact but not singularly defeat them.
Vessel impacts Blood Doll but as has been discussed hardly defeats it.
Villein is another story. Not only is it a better card that Minion Tap
(in every way possible), but it then turns around and hoses people who
don’t have enough Villeins to play them instead of their Minion Taps.
bwr...@mail.com
> I can see how it could be over-done, and be pretty annoying. But I
> don't think it has been over-done, or is going to be.
I agree. In particular, cards that mention other cards by name should
be kept to a minimum.
> Really, only Vessel/Blood Doll and DI/DI2 seem to qualify as meta-
> magic-bullet-mini games.
Yeah, Villein/Minion Tap isn't really a mini-game... it's a flat out
trump once you can swing the Villeins.
I think a key thing to note is that Blood Doll and Minion Tap were so
good at doing their job that they make it very hard to add new
variants for the job... so its not surprising that Vessel and Villein
carve their niche by taking a chunk out of their competition.
> Other cards like Uncoiling, or Scourge of the Enochians, are strong,
> and may move the meta-game, but aren't really narrow enough to be
> magic bullets. Strong cards that impact that game seem like a
> desirable and natural by-product of printing new sets.
Yeah, any good card that actively effects what other players decks are
doing is going to qualify for a "use" against certain types of decks.
The only way to avoid that is to add more passive responses like
Protected Resources. Which isn't a bad thing, but if it was the
dominant thing the game becomes more like multiplayer solitare (a
critism of some German style boardgames)... where everyone builds
themselves up but are very limited in how they can respond to what
others are doing. On the other side, when active "take-that" effects
are dominant things become more chaotic... leading to situations where
the win comes to the player lucky enough to slip through the crack
when everyone else runs out of ways to screw the leader (a typical
complaint about the more chaotic American style games). Fortunately,
VtES is still well away from those extremes.
Brent Ross
alei...@stny.rr.com
while now. It's an entertaining game (mostly) that offers a diverse
range of approaches to the problem of getting rid of a prey, which is
one of the elements that I really like about the game a lot. You can
explore a bunch of different strategies and it takes a fair amount of
time to do so (some would argue that it could take forever). However,
this presumes that everyone is, as Ben Peal put it, "playing VtES."
The problem is when the game starts getting a little too much like the
*game* MtG (as opposed to the organized play, distribution, rating
system, or anything else surrounding MtG). The analogy is intended to
point out that in MtG, there's no reason to do anything but employ the
most efficient means possible to get rid of your opponent. There
aren't really thematic reasons not to do so and being less than
optimally efficient doesn't enhance game play by allowing the
employment of different and/or innovative strategies. Tournament VtES
has become very much akin to MtG for me. This is the reason, I think,
that some of the "silver bullets" have been printed....to slow the
game down a bit and allow everyone, regardless of the manner in which
they go about approaching the game, to enjoy it...i.e to "play VtES."
So the question becomes, how does one rectify the situation? The
"silver bullet" approach makes the game more akin to throwing dice in
my opinion. Did you roll a six? You win!! Did you have the Scourge
of the Enochians for my weenie deck? You win!! That doesn't make for
the most entertaining of games...you can do that and make more money
at the craps table. I think Peter probably outlined the most
reasonable options for improving the game significantly, but more
importantly he also succinctly pointed out the huge issues with
implementing them. I would love to see a reboot of the game...I
suspect that a lot has been learned over the years about what could be
done differently to make the game as a whole better if you could start
over with a clean slate. Unfortunately, I also agree with the
sentiment that it would utterly crush the game beyond any hope of it
returning from torpor. Apart from those suggestions, it's possible
that a rotating set restriction (similar in nature MtG's standard
format) might solve some of the problems by excluding cards that many
find so objectionable. Deflection and Govern haven't been printed in
a while, so perhaps allowing only library cards from like, Anarchs
forward (just picking a set off the top of my head...I don't want to
spawn a conversation about that exact set) could solve some of the
perceived problems with the game. However, I strongly suspect that
the lynch mobs would rapidly start forming if this kind of talk ever
got any serious consideration because it's a lot like banning cards.
I really don't know what the solution is, but I do have to applaud a
refreshing exchange of reasonable ideas on the subject.
Juggernaut1981
[insert $0.02]
You start having "rolling legal sets" or similar... then I for one
will not be interested in anything close to "tournament" VTES. The
one massive item of nearly unbridled hatred is the "3 Expansions +
Core Set" restriction on MtG Tournament. If you want your playerbase
to feel like a cow's udder getting milked for every last drop as an
EXPENSE-ion gets released every 6 months wallpapering 400 other cards
you own... go right ahead.
I understand why the Silver Bullets exist. I don't think they're
maybe the best fix, but given option 1) kill the patient and cure the
disease and 2) put the patient on a permanent blood transfusion to
cure haemophilia... I'll take the one that is happening.
If you go to a Type 1 MtG tournament, you do usually play craps... the
luck of the dice are two things: #1 Do you get to go first? #2 Do I
have the cards I need to win in my hand?... answer "yes" to both of
these and congratulations on your 15min glorious ebay-based victory!
Type 2 MtG is basically "Who has googled the super-leet-killer-
efficient <3 turn kill deck and bought the cards?"
VTES isn't there yet. Sure when you go to a Tournament you expect to
see a certain amount of cheese-bleeding... but in Sydney we saw that
stop because one year everyone was SO paranoid about it happening that
every deck at a table had 2+ Archon Investigations. 7 vampires were
Archoned in a single tournament, excluding the final, amongst about
20-25 players. It is possible that "silver bullets" now exist because
people have not found a suitably efficient way to bring decks like the
Tap'n'Caps (AAA, or TGB Vote of Power) or Swarm Bleed of Cheese back
to a non-runaway level. Everyone has sat down and seen a super-
bleeder on their back and been slammed out of the game without getting
the chair warm... it happens because there is more at stake in a
Tournament than a game for the fun of a game.
While there are tournaments, there will be "cheese kill deck" players
who will do everything in their power to make sure they get the best
Tournament result their credit cards can afford. The rest of us will
sit down at our local playgroup and play VTES while LSJ and the Cards
Team work to make new cards and try to find a way to subtly balance
out the power imbalances.
rafa...@gmail.com
have fun just playing with our regular playgroup, but a tournament, I
thought, was a place to take advantage of a big reunion of players to
meet different strategies and test your deck, luckily, against other
four different playstyles at every table, other four different decks.
But that doesn't happen that much, is just S&B, S&B, weenie horde,
wall, S&B, then next game wall, S&B, weenie horde, S&B and S&B.
And yes, we can play at our local store or something while we wait for
things to change but I don't know if it's moving in the right
direction and that's the problem. Scourge is a problem for weenie
decks, as well as AI for bleed decks. But if your not drawing them
within the first 3 turns then you're likely going to lose.
One of the final decks at the last tournament here in Mexico, got
AI'ed on the first action Philippe Rigaud took. Then another Philippe
got out and still got his VP. I mean, yes, those cards are a risk to a
certain strategy, but regularly you cannot beat the odds of drawing it
when you need it: almost always with decks that oust really fast, at
the beginning. Usually people think: "I take my chances, if my vampire
gets burned is after I collected my first VP, so I don't care, or when
I have 4 minions and every single one of them can bleed for 7, so I
don't care, or I got screwed, but in three tables, how many times is
that going to happen to me? even with two copies of those cards in
every 90-card deck, what are the odds?
How many silver bullets we include in order to draw it early, and how
to deal with the counter silver bullets.
Orpheus
> Tap (in every way possible), but it then turns around and hoses
> people who don�t have enough Villeins to play them instead of their
> Minion Taps.
How is villein better than Minion Tap ???
It is more restrictive, costs when accumulated on a minion...
It might be better in the "better for the game" sense, but not better in
itself, by far.
Orpheus
Johannes Walch
[snip]
> This doesn't feel like V:TES to me. It just feels like a mini-game
> of magic bullets and magic bullet counters.
[snip]
> I'd rather play V:TES.
>
>
> - Ben Peal
Could you give a good definition of what "playing V:TES" means for you?
This is not meant sarcastic or something, I am really interested,
because I think the expectations to what V:TES is and should be are
vastly different among the player base.
ben...@gmail.com
> I can see how it could be over-done, and be pretty annoying. But I
> don't think it has been over-done, or is going to be.
>
> Really, only Vessel/Blood Doll and DI/DI2 seem to qualify as meta-
> magic-bullet-mini games.
If you're trying to build a competitive big vampire/star player
deck, the first question you have to ask yourself is, "How am I going
to deal with Pentex?" Then you put in your anti-Pentex cards, aka
Wash, Sudden, or your own Pentex.
If you're trying to build a competitve weenie deck, the first
question you have to ask yourself is, "How am I going to deal with
Anarchist Uprising, Ancilla Empowerment, and Scourge?" Then you put
in the respective counter cards, aka DI, DT, and Uncoiling.
The first questions you're asking yourself aren't things like, "What
will be my answer, if any, to an intercept-combat deck?" or "What is
my defensive strategy against a bleed deck?" You're asking yourself,
"What very specific cards are going to make me lose the game if I
don't put in a very specific counter card?" It isn't about the
general mechanics of the game, but about specific cards that can/will
have a catastrophic effect on your game.
Vessel vs. Blood Doll doesn't even factor into this, as far as I'm
concerned, because the Vessel vs. Blood Doll interaction/metagame
doesn't approach the level of significance of the cards in the magic
bullet mini-game I'm talking about. You're not saying to yourself, "I
will lose the game if someone blows up my Blood Doll with a Vessel",
but you're definitely saying, "I will lose the game if someone plays
Anarchist Uprising."
> There may be more magic bullet-type cards in the works. I would be
> surprised if we see a flood of them.
I don't think we've seen a flood of them, and perhaps the mini-game
is a by-product of 15 years of expansions.
> Other cards like Uncoiling, or Scourge of the Enochians, are strong,
> and may move the meta-game, but aren't really narrow enough to be
> magic bullets.
How on earth is Scourge of the Enochians not a magic bullet? As for
The Uncoiling, c'mon, the text of the card is, "All this card does is
blow up events." It might even be translated as, "All this card does
is blow up The Unmasking, Anthelios, and Scourge."
> Strong cards that impact that game seem like a desirable and natural by-product of printing new sets.
Well, duh. However, there are good approaches and bad approaches.
For example, I very much agree with Ian Lee's comment that the game
would be better served by making large vampires better via more (and
good) multi-discipline cards and cards that require large vampires
rather than making cards specifically to hose weenie decks.
- Ben Peal
ben...@gmail.com
> Ben Peal schrieb:
> [snip]
>
> > This doesn't feel like V:TES to me. It just feels like a mini-game
> > of magic bullets and magic bullet counters.
>
> [snip]
>
> > I'd rather play V:TES.
>
> > - Ben Peal
>
> Could you give a good definition of what "playing V:TES" means for you?
Um...er...that whole stealth, intercept, damage, prevent, press,
maneuver, gain votes thing.
Not the Pentex, DI, DT, Scourge, Uncoiling, Anarchist Uprising,
Ancilla Empowerment, Wash, Sudden thing.
> This is not meant sarcastic or something, I am really interested,
> because I think the expectations to what V:TES is and should be are
> vastly different among the player base.
Likewise. I'll try to be more lucid about it, but right now work
calls. :(
- Ben Peal
Chris Berger
But, Ben, almost all of those cards have been around since Dark
Sovereigns (which was a horribly unbalanced set that has caused
problems ever since, but I digress). The game has always had hoser
cards and anti-hoser cards. I remember the first several tournaments
I went to, Malkavian Demetia was considered almost a must-have. Wash
and DI2 are pretty new, but they're just subtle variations on SR and
DI1, so those shouldn't be that big of a deal. So unless your dislike
of where the game is headed has been slowly building for 10+ years, it
seems like the only *new* cards to upset you are Scourge of the
Enochians and perhaps the 4th Cycle.
While I don't like 4th Cycle, and think it would be super annoying if
I were playing the 1 or 2 decks that are totally hosed by it - it's
not very good because of the pre-conditions, and I don't see why many
people would ever put it into a deck.
Scourge is certainly a card with less opportunity cost, and I know
people are playing it, but it only hoses the cheesy super-weenie
decks. If your deck is all 1- and 2- caps, then yeah, Scourge is BS.
You'll hate it. But how often do you play those? Even my one true
weenie deck that I have put together right now is only about half 1-
and 2- caps. So, it'd suck if Scourge came out, and I'd probably
throw in an Uncoiling (and Anthelios) if I were trying to play it in a
tournament, but it can still survive. And I've been slowly removing
the 1 caps in favor of 3- and 4- caps... not because of Scourge, but
because 1- and 2-caps are weak and don't have disciplines. I guess my
point is, decks will all weenies are cheesy and ignore a lot of the
game - you can certainly win without using a lot of them even in a
weenie deck... but then your deck might actually be more robust and
likely to survive, rather than always be in balance between a sweep or
a quick exit. People like cheese. If you only have a couple of
weenie support vamps, Scourge really doesn't hurt you as much as a
previous poster said.
Otherwise, I don't see that V:TES is becoming any *more* of a hoser/
anti-hoser game than it's always been. Sure, there are more hoser
cards than before, because there are more hosers. I don't think
there's a higher *ratio* of hoser cards being printed...
bswai...@hotmail.com
>
> If you're trying to build a competitive big vampire/star player
> deck, the first question you have to ask yourself is, "How am I going
I think I see what you're driving at. How about we constrain the topic
(or a least I'll constrain this post) to hard to stop cards, that can
go into any deck, and where a single card can kill a certain deck
types.
Specifically I'm thinking of: Archon Investation, Pentex Subversion,
Scourge of the Enochians
I don't think these are intrinsically bad. Do they endanger deck types
we want to see endangered? My thoughts...
Archon Investgation: Good. Discourages mega-bleed decks, but hasn't
eliminated them. And discouraging mega-bleed is a good thing.
Pentex Subversion: Bad. Kills superstar, mono-vampire decks, that
already have plenty of problems, and don't need to be constrained. I
don't even bother with superstar decks any more. I know how that story
ends. Makes my 2009 card hit list.
Scourge of the Enochians: Too soon to tell? I don't mind seeing a new
counter to swarm strategies and I expect it to push the megagame in
what I would consider a positive direction. I expect it'll have a
similar effect to Archon Investiation. Sometimes it kills you. Often
it won't show up, or will show up too late, or the effect will be too
slow to have decisive impact.
Of these, of course, only Scourge is new. And Pentex probably wasn't
deliberate.
But, yeah, this kind of decktype-destroyer card design should be used
sparingly, carefully, and deliberately.
-Ben Swainbank
Peter D Bakija
> Archon Investgation: Good. Discourages mega-bleed decks, but hasn't
> eliminated them. And discouraging mega-bleed is a good thing.
For my money, I'm totally ok with AI. I mean, I would have rather it
not be needed in the first place ('cause it was a lot harder to bleed
for 4+ somehow), but as it stands, it works out ok--it tends to
discourage bleedzookas, unless they are bleedzookas that exist to
circumvent AI (i.e. by looking at your prey's hand before you bleed).
I don't know that it is wildly effective in slowing down big bleeds,
but it has some effect.
> Pentex Subversion: Bad. Kills superstar, mono-vampire decks, that
> already have plenty of problems, and don't need to be constrained. I
> don't even bother with superstar decks any more. I know how that story
> ends. Makes my 2009 card hit list.
Yeah, this one was made long ago, and likely before the idea of the
Super Star Deck was even something anyone thought about. And it does
tend to kill them. Especially ones without obf. It is often a farily
brutal card play. I don't know that I'm real fond of the card. But not
'cause it hoses specific strategies. Mostly 'cause it is often a kiss
of death in a single card, regardless of the stratety involved.
> Scourge of the Enochians: Too soon to tell? I don't mind seeing a new
> counter to swarm strategies and I expect it to push the megagame in
> what I would consider a positive direction. I expect it'll have a
> similar effect to Archon Investiation. Sometimes it kills you. Often
> it won't show up, or will show up too late, or the effect will be too
> slow to have decisive impact.
When it does show up, it is often complely game destroying. And I have
been traumatized by it enough already. And in our KoT draft, a couple
people got them, and Sackett drafted an all 1-2 cap deck. And in both
preliminary rounds, Scourge hit the table, and removed Sackett from
play. Which sucked. The end result is that I no longer include 1-2
caps in my decks (I round up to 3 caps now, figuring the 1 extra pool
is a resonable cost to pay to not have my whole game destroyed once
and a while). But it also makes Hermana Menor decks complete
wallpaper. As I don't know if you can include enough Uncoilings to be
worth the risk.
-Peter
jcrossn...@gmail.com
> The problem I see right now with V:TES is that this "evolution" you
> talk about is actually creating a class of cards that exist merely for
> the sake of countering each other. It's created a game layer on top
> of V:TES that ends being its own minigame.
I can see what you're saying here, though it's not quite clear whether
or not you consider this a new problem. With the exception of the
events, all the cards you mention (or their close analogs) have been
with us for a very long time, even going back to Jyhad. It may be the
case that the reason you're observing this now is that 15 years in,
competitive players have identified most of the effective strategies
and the most effective and card-efficient counters to them. Luckily,
it seems to me that this mini-game you identify takes up a relatively
small portion of deck space, leaving most of the game to work the way
it should.
As for specific cards, I'd say that the votes are fine as they are.
Voting is its own strategy, and often one that's hard to pull off. I
don't see anyone packing Anarchist Uprising into non-vote decks as
anti-weenie tech, probably because it just wouldn't work. The most
successful swarm decks also seem to be breed-boon, which can be quite
tricky to pass votes against. Most of the other cards can easily slot
into just about any deck, which could be seen as a problem. Dark
Influence has clearly failed to hose DI, so the option of banning the
latter could be brought up once more. Pentex Subversion would also be
a completely reasonable target for banning, if you ask me. The anti-
weenie events are a little much, but it really does seem that certain
weenie strategies do need to be reined in by fairly extreme means.
Making these effects events seems to be a good idea though. Since they
require a DPA to play, events are the hardest type of card to cycle,
pretty much by definition. Drawing into an event when you already need
to discard stuff can result in a severely cramped hand. Also, events
tend to be univeral in effect, so when you play one that cripples
weenies, you are very possibly helping another player much more than
yourself. Both of these factors limit the obviousness of hoser events
as an automatic inclusion in every deck, which seems to be Ben's major
concern.
Jesse
Chris Berger
(Pentex Subversion)
>
> Yeah, this one was made long ago, and likely before the idea of the
> Super Star Deck was even something anyone thought about. And it does
> tend to kill them. Especially ones without obf. It is often a farily
> brutal card play. I don't know that I'm real fond of the card. But not
> 'cause it hoses specific strategies. Mostly 'cause it is often a kiss
> of death in a single card, regardless of the stratety involved.
>
It's funny, but when DS came out, my playgroup tended to think of
Pentex Subversion as wallpaper. Why spend 2 pool and a master phase
action just to make them take a single action to get rid of it? It
seemed like it was only good if you got it first turn, and then it
pretty much just saved you a bleed for 1 that turn and then made them
take an action to get rid of it the next turn.
As far as I can tell, though I don't play a lot of tournaments, and
took a pretty long hiatus from the game after CE, Pentex Subversion
wasn't very prevalent in competitive decks for quite a while there.
It's interesting that a card that came out more than 10 years ago has
suddenly become "broken" within the past 2-3 years or so. I'm not
saying it's not nasty (I wouldn't say "broken", but close), I just
think it's funny it took so long to *become* nasty... Meanwhile, back
when Sabbat came out, some lunatic was ranting on the newsgroup about
Fleshcraft and Reform the Body being part of making the Tzimisce
broken (and Lasombra were underpowered?)...
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.trading-cards.jyhad/browse_thread/thread/2dca70044c1a08ea/3c5f929670327648?lnk=gst&q=sabbat+formerly+known+as+jyhad#3c5f929670327648
Also, I said above: "Sure, there are more hoser cards than before,
because there are more hosers. I don't think there's a higher *ratio*
of hoser cards being printed... " Obviously that should be "there are
more hoser cards than before, because there are more *cards*."
Eric Jome
card counter card.
As games fundamentally dependent on luck, when you rely on cards to
counter cards, you make the game more random and less based on
skill... even going as so far as to betting on the metagame by
designing a deck not so much to be good, but to be good against the
field that day.
The general way to do this is to make the action of a single card
quite limited in scope. When a card has far reaching consequences, it
must comes with extremely high play cost or some other major
detriment, or it comes to dominate the strategy. You can see this
distinction in the Villein/Minion Tap. Minion Tap is limited in
scope. Villein affects the entire game state continuously, a very far
reaching and powerful effect.
Despite these things, it is a virtual impossibility to do anything
meaningful about these situations. To date, no developer of any type
of these games has ever determined a solution that will allow the
design space to change while still allowing all cards ever printed to
be legal. In short, set restriction is the only known technology for
keeping the strategy space fresh and dynamic.
And it doesn't sound like the community will ever accept set
restriction. Thus, to get a feel for why the game is what it is today
and understand what the future looks like, you should consider looking
at what the Vintage tournament scene looks like in Magic: The
Gathering. It is remarkably similar to what this game appears to be
like now - well established, dominant strategies are commonplace and
very rarely someone innovates something different. The strategy space
is very fixed.
Isn't that the essential complaint here?
Jeff Kuta
> On Jun 4, 9:45 am, Peter D Bakija <p...@lightlink.com> wrote:
> (Pentex Subversion)
>
>
>
> > Yeah, this one was made long ago, and likely before the idea of the
> > Super Star Deck was even something anyone thought about. And it does
> > tend to kill them. Especially ones without obf. It is often a farily
> > brutal card play. I don't know that I'm real fond of the card. But not
> > 'cause it hoses specific strategies. Mostly 'cause it is often a kiss
> > of death in a single card, regardless of the stratety involved.
>
> It's funny, but when DS came out, my playgroup tended to think of
> Pentex Subversion as wallpaper. Why spend 2 pool and a master phase
> action just to make them take a single action to get rid of it? It
> seemed like it was only good if you got it first turn, and then it
> pretty much just saved you a bleed for 1 that turn and then made them
> take an action to get rid of it the next turn.
>
> As far as I can tell, though I don't play a lot of tournaments, and
> took a pretty long hiatus from the game after CE, Pentex Subversion
> wasn't very prevalent in competitive decks for quite a while there.
> It's interesting that a card that came out more than 10 years ago has
> suddenly become "broken" within the past 2-3 years or so. I'm not
> saying it's not nasty (I wouldn't say "broken", but close), I just
> think it's funny it took so long to *become* nasty...
There are many more good large cap vampires with good disciplines and
specials worth playing these days...besides Arika.Villein has also
made fatties more attractive since you can recoup your pool investment
more easily. Intercept decks have also gotten very strong. As a
result, Pentex Subversion has become even more worthwhile to pack in
an offensive deck's arsenal. And one of the best counters to Pentex
Subversion is contestation, so that also increases its prevalance.
Would be nice if it had a built-in counter to it like Golconda (pay 2
pool to cancel this card and meth gets their 2 pool back).
Jeff
Peter D Bakija
<411b259f-478c-4003...@l28g2000vba.googlegroups.com>,
> As far as I can tell, though I don't play a lot of tournaments, and
> took a pretty long hiatus from the game after CE, Pentex Subversion
> wasn't very prevalent in competitive decks for quite a while there.
> It's interesting that a card that came out more than 10 years ago has
> suddenly become "broken" within the past 2-3 years or so.
Oh, I don't know that is remotely "broken", but in terms of single cards
that hose a whole strategy, Pentex Subversion is a pretty brutal hoser
for Superstar Decks. And a mean one, at that, as often it is a single
card play that ends someone's game, and early at that. But in a general
sense, I don't think Pentex Subversion is anything other than a pretty
strong, utilitarian card.
Juggernaut1981
> Oh, I don't know that is remotely "broken", but in terms of single cards
> that hose a whole strategy, Pentex Subversion is a pretty brutal hoser
> for Superstar Decks. And a mean one, at that, as often it is a single
> card play that ends someone's game, and early at that. But in a general
> sense, I don't think Pentex Subversion is anything other than a pretty
> strong, utilitarian card.
>
> Peter D Bakija
>
> "It's too bad she won't live! But then again, who does?"
> -Gaff
Pentex is gaining more use... Yes.
Is Pentex better than it used to be? Sort of.
Why is Pentex seeing more play/appearing to be better? Wall Decks got
better.
[points finger at KoT Toreador Starter & Eyes of Argus]
A lot of people would have traded their children to potentially get 2+
Sniper Rifles, now you shell out AUD$20 and get more than enough for a
deck or two guaranteed... plus a Bowl of Convergence & some other
random faff (the rest of the cards in the Toreador Starter). Toss in
Eyes of Argus and you have a seriously powerful wall deck coming
along. Quicken Sight + Eyes of Argus + the Bowl (+ Eagle Sight)
I mean we had a Blanche Hill deck at our group with 5 static
intercept... it's not rare to see "You don't act unless I say so" Wall
Decks without Anneke around. As wall-deck tech improved, Pentex went
from "interesting side-trick" to "Way to permanently take Vamp X out
of the game for me". Since a lot of Anti-Wall tech is either Rush or
Unblockable Actions, having a Pentex on a key rush minion (say Hektor)
with a Wall Deck on one side of the Rusher is a certain recipe to
ensure that minion never acts again.
Each card works to enhance one strategy or groups of strategies and
out of that comes tangential ways of using cards... Pentex is no
longer a "powered up" Misdirection, it is locks down a minion. It's a
byproduct of the other improvements to strategies to combat other
strategies. If you want stronger wall decks to stop the strong S&B
"Bleed for 9 at 5 stealth" decks.... then a byproduct of that is that
Pentex shuts down a Rambo Deck (Superstar Rush) and consequently any
other Superstar Deck
Peter D Bakija
<065e5123-837b-4f51...@h28g2000yqd.googlegroups.com>,
I don't know that this is the case--Pentex has always been (well, at
least in my experience) a pretty common staple card that goes in lots
and lots of decks. It has always been a powerful finisher card. And a
great card for getting around a tooled up blocker, superstar or no.
> Is Pentex better than it used to be? Sort of.
I don't think it is--it has always been a good card and a serious Super
Star deck hoser. Which is a drag. But I don't know that it is any better
than it used to be, or that it is anything other than a reasonably
strong card. It is just a Super Star hoser in the same way that, say,
Anarchist Uprising is a serious weenie hoser. I don't think Anarchist
Uprising is too powerful either.
> Why is Pentex seeing more play/appearing to be better? Wall Decks got
> better.
> [points finger at KoT Toreador Starter & Eyes of Argus]
I dunno--wall decks have always been good at stopping things. But they
are yet to significantly improve at ousting folks.
Peter D Bakija
pd...@lightlink.com
chr...@comcen.com.au
> Juggernaut1981 <brasscompo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Pentex is gaining more use... Yes.
>
> I don't know that this is the case--Pentex has always been (well, at
> least in my experience) a pretty common staple card that goes in lots
> and lots of decks. It has always been a powerful finisher card. And a
> great card for getting around a tooled up blocker, superstar or no.
I did some digging a little while ago in the TWDA and Pentex is
definitely showing up more often, at least in tournament winning
decks.
"It appears in 25 of the last 50 TWDs whereas a random sample of 50
TWDs from 2004 show only 5" - Oct 24 2008
So between 2004 and 2008 it went from showing up in 10% of twds to 50%
of twds.
Chris.
librarian
> On Jun 4, 9:45 am, Peter D Bakija <p...@lightlink.com> wrote:
> (Pentex Subversion)
>> Yeah, this one was made long ago, and likely before the idea of the
>> Super Star Deck was even something anyone thought about. And it does
>> tend to kill them. Especially ones without obf. It is often a farily
>> brutal card play. I don't know that I'm real fond of the card. But not
>> 'cause it hoses specific strategies. Mostly 'cause it is often a kiss
>> of death in a single card, regardless of the stratety involved.
>>
>
> It's funny, but when DS came out, my playgroup tended to think of
> Pentex Subversion as wallpaper. Why spend 2 pool and a master phase
> action just to make them take a single action to get rid of it? It
> seemed like it was only good if you got it first turn, and then it
> pretty much just saved you a bleed for 1 that turn and then made them
> take an action to get rid of it the next turn.
>
> As far as I can tell, though I don't play a lot of tournaments, and
> took a pretty long hiatus from the game after CE, Pentex Subversion
> wasn't very prevalent in competitive decks for quite a while there.
> It's interesting that a card that came out more than 10 years ago has
> suddenly become "broken" within the past 2-3 years or so. I'm not
> saying it's not nasty (I wouldn't say "broken", but close), I just
> think it's funny it took so long to *become* nasty...
Maybe it's a factor of the convergence of two developments:
Larger vamps are becoming "better".
There are more vamps. The effect of this: more large vamps for more
varied options for superstar decks. Also, there are more weenies to
support those superstar vamps too.
best -
chris
aleks...@gmail.com
> I dunno--wall decks have always been good at stopping things. But they
> are yet to significantly improve at ousting folks.
Sorry about the following nitpicking but wall decks have gained many
direct and indirect improvements on just that. The innate abilities of
vampires like Elimelech, Neighbor John and Andrew Leroux, just to name
a few, greatly enhance the card efficiency of a wall deck. So do
Abbot, Eyes of Argus, Enkil Cog and No Secrets on the library side. If
you can do a wall deck with half the number of cards it used to take
without losing performance level you can use the rest of the slots on
ousting mechanisms.
Peter D Bakija
> Sorry about the following nitpicking but wall decks have gained many
> direct and indirect improvements on just that. The innate abilities of
> vampires like Elimelech, Neighbor John and Andrew Leroux, just to name
> a few, greatly enhance the card efficiency of a wall deck. So do
> Abbot, Eyes of Argus, Enkil Cog and No Secrets on the library side.
Sure, but in a wall deck, what is the delivery system for ousting?
Smiling Jack has always been a possibility, and isn't any more or less
effective now than before. You can graft in a bleed option, but unless
you also get stealth in ther somehow, you are just doing what the !
Ventrue have always been doing.
And yeah, certainly some new good cards for block strategies, but I'm
not really seeing them as opening up huge new windows of ousting
effectivness--Abbot is good, but just replaces other permacept options
that were already in use. Eyes of Argus is awesome. But really, just
replaces the Wakes that were already in the deck, and doesn't
eliminate the need for other intercept cards (as you can't Eyes to be
able to block and also play it foe intercept. And the intercept only
works on D actions anyway.)
If you have a whole lot of stuff invested in being able to reliably
block, new efficient cards or no, you still have a difficult time
ousting folks. As that is and always has been a problem with wall
decks.
> If
> you can do a wall deck with half the number of cards it used to take
> without losing performance level you can use the rest of the slots on
> ousting mechanisms.
I'm unconvinced that you can do this with half the number of cards it
used to take to be a good block deck. The cards are all slightly
better than they used to be in a lot of cases, but you still need a
lot of cards dedicated to blocking to be able to reliably block.
-Peter
aleks...@gmail.com
> On Jun 5, 9:24 am, aleksinu...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> > Sorry about the following nitpicking but wall decks have gained many
> > direct and indirect improvements on just that. The innate abilities of
> > vampires like Elimelech, Neighbor John and Andrew Leroux, just to name
> > a few, greatly enhance the card efficiency of a wall deck. So do
> > Abbot, Eyes of Argus, Enkil Cog and No Secrets on the library side.
>
> Sure, but in a wall deck, what is the delivery system for ousting?
> Smiling Jack has always been a possibility, and isn't any more or less
> effective now than before. You can graft in a bleed option, but unless
> you also get stealth in ther somehow, you are just doing what the !
> Ventrue have always been doing.
Swallowed By The Night, Deny, Swiftness of The Stag, Random Patterns
and Resist The Earth's Grasp are all awesome cards. Most of these are
not new but there should be more room for them now.
> And yeah, certainly some new good cards for block strategies, but I'm
> not really seeing them as opening up huge new windows of ousting
> effectivness--Abbot is good, but just replaces other permacept options
> that were already in use. Eyes of Argus is awesome. But really, just
> replaces the Wakes that were already in the deck, and doesn't
> eliminate the need for other intercept cards (as you can't Eyes to be
> able to block and also play it foe intercept. And the intercept only
> works on D actions anyway.)
Nobody is suggesting a wall deck with nothing but 12x Eyes of Argus
for reactions. But I'm sure we can both agree that it reduces the
amount of reactions necessary in a wall deck.
> If you have a whole lot of stuff invested in being able to reliably
> block, new efficient cards or no, you still have a difficult time
> ousting folks. As that is and always has been a problem with wall
> decks.
New efficient cards mean that you don't need a whole lot of stuff to
reliably block.
> > If
> > you can do a wall deck with half the number of cards it used to take
> > without losing performance level you can use the rest of the slots on
> > ousting mechanisms.
>
> I'm unconvinced that you can do this with half the number of cards it
> used to take to be a good block deck.
Yeah, "half" is pure hyperbole for most decks (and an underestimation
for others). Nonetheless, you don't need as many reactions to block
reliably as you used to.
> The cards are all slightly
> better than they used to be in a lot of cases, but you still need a
> lot of cards dedicated to blocking to be able to reliably block.
>
> -Peter
But you don't need nearly as many.
I'd also like to restate the importance of special abilities on
vampires. A good special will shave off anything between 5 and 20
cards from a deck.
oriang...@aliceadsl.fr
>
> - Afficher le texte des messages précédents -
Another point is that Pentex Subversion has always been a card very
spread in Europe and not much played in the US.
Some years ago, only few European decks were posted on google groups;
Now they are all here, which also explains the increasing % of pentex
played
Johannes Walch
> Thus, to get a feel for why the game is what it is today
> and understand what the future looks like, you should consider looking
> at what the Vintage tournament scene looks like in Magic: The
> Gathering. It is remarkably similar to what this game appears to be
> like now - well established, dominant strategies are commonplace and
> very rarely someone innovates something different. The strategy space
> is very fixed.
I don�t know, certainly VERY basic strategies (like bleed) are always
the same, but that cant change w/o introducing shady other win options.
Apart from that I would say there is a nice flow of new (sometimes
drastic, sometimes subtle) strategies to be observed at the tournament
level and certainly even more so at the local level (unless people dont
bother with making new decks, but what can you do against that).
Actually the mix of 94-style decks with none to few new cards being in
the same final as decks with mostly new cards and new strategies is one
of the major strong points of the game to me.
And with thousands of available cards and none going away the strategy
space in only expanding. For example often new crypt choices put a good
use to rarely used old cards (or the other way round).
Johannes Walch
> Johannes Walch schrieb:
>> Ben Peal schrieb:
>> [snip]
>>
>>> This doesn't feel like V:TES to me. It just feels like a mini-game
>>> of magic bullets and magic bullet counters.
>> [snip]
>>
>>> I'd rather play V:TES.
>>> - Ben Peal
>> Could you give a good definition of what "playing V:TES" means for you?
>
> Um...er...that whole stealth, intercept, damage, prevent, press,
> maneuver, gain votes thing.
It is basically gambling vs. strategy game. I guess the
"Poker/Blackjack" V:TES players love to take their shot on that silver
bullet chances and the "Chess" V:TES players want to plan out nicely the
stealth/intercept interaction for the next 10 turns (no real comparison
of games intended here, btw).
From what I can tell the game is pretty nicely balanced in the middle
of both, luck, gambling, excitement and tactics/strategy. I think moving
it in either direction would not attract more people from that direction
than you loose from the other one.
I dont think the percentage of silver bullets from the total number of
cards has increased. So there have always been silver bullets and you
have always included none to few in a deck.
> Not the Pentex, DI, DT, Scourge, Uncoiling, Anarchist Uprising,
> Ancilla Empowerment, Wash, Sudden thing.
That IS an interesting mix of cards you name here.
What is wrong with Anarchist Uprising/Ancilla Empowerment? Those are not
magic bullets they are useful in most of the games.
Apparently you also seem not to like (generic) cards with cancel effects
? Why is that?
Pentex? It costs 2 pool and can be removed. Come on, thats not a good
card :-)
The only two real silver bullets there is Scourge. I have my doubts
about that card as well.
Eric Jome
> Apparently you also seem not to like (generic) cards with cancel effects
> ? Why is that?
I'd guess it is because it interrupts his game. This is a very common
feeling among many people.
When we get together to play cards, I would like to play my cards. I
would like to see my deck do the thing I meant for it to do. I don't
necessarily have to win. But I do have to play.
When your deck of cards (and this is hardly limited to VTES) is full
of things that stop me from playing cards at all - you cancel my
actions, tap my minions before I act, freeze, lock, counter - then I
am not playing cards with you anymore. I am watching you go through
the motions while I am forced to do nothing.
This is Not Fun (tm). Is it a great way for you to win? Sure. Is it
a completely legitimate way to play? Sure. But it ruins the game
time for me... and I am unlikely to come back and play the game with
you anymore. And soon no one is ever playing the game.
Years ago, Magic had a card/strategy like this called Stasis. It was
very quickly and very permanently rotated out... and the entire spell
countering culture was largely removed from the game. Exactly for
this reason. It is not fun to play against this kind of strategy.
Eric Jome
Chris Berger
> ? Why is that?
>
are a million cards that person *could* have put in that would have
helped *their* strategy, instead of the SR/DI that just ruins yours.
Considering that V:TES is a 5 player game, hosing myself to hose one
other person is rarely productive (though it can be, if the one other
person is your prey). That's not to say that I never play SR/DI. I
play DI's in the decks that need DI (specifically, No Secrets From
Cesewayo has no other way to stop "block fails"), and I'll play SR or
Wash in decks where I don't have a lot of other master cards to play
and I specifically need to stop certain masters (pool gain, most
likely). I even have a Santaleous deck that mostly works on the
principle of keeping Santa full up so he can cancel stuff, with 4
Washes as backup (though I call it the most annoying deck in the
world, the fact that it at least doesn't cancel minion cards and the
fact that the cancelling is right there on the table with no surprises
tones the dickishness down a little - I mainly built it for Imperator
play, because I was afraid of playing a Malkav deck that couldn't do
anything about Malkavian Dementia).
So, I'm not saying that you can't or shouldn't play counterspells.
But it *is* extremely annoying to get your carefully planned strategy
snatched out from under you with a single counterspell. And I hate
when people just pack them in every deck without thinking, or when
they play like 6 SRs in a deck and just end up playing them all over
the place "to cycle".
> Pentex? It costs 2 pool and can be removed. Come on, thats not a good
> card :-)
>
If you can defend it, it's a game breaker. Seriously, Pentex
Subversion used to be considered a bad card, but I don't know if it's
a change in the metagame, a prevelance of intercept, or just people
figuring it out, but it's very strong.
Juggernaut1981
There are "anti-decktype" cards that have been out there for ages,
mostly to counterbalance different strategies. Most of them seem to
be votes such as the ones below:
Ancient Influence [BigCap], Political Stranglehold [BigCap], Autarkis
Persecution [Weenie Horde], Ancilla Empowerment [Anti-weenie Horde],
Snipe Hunt [Anti-weenie Horde] (one of my favourites actually despite
its apparent 'weakness'), Justicar Retribution [Anti BigCap/ICs],
Wormwood [Anti-BigCap]...
Most of the decks I have seen using Pentex lately have been Wall Decks
or Vote Decks that don't have Obf. Both deck formats seem to use it
to negate the Superstar or Major Blocker of the Prey/Pred (more
commonly the Prey).
RE: Wall Deck ousting.
Wasn't it the usual method to grind down your prey's pool by putting
their minions into torpor at less than break-neck speed (unlike say
Pot-Rush which is snap everything at break-neck speed)??? The wall
sits there, blocks the hunt, blocks the undirected action and then
waits for a new minion to block while you chip away with some forward
actions. The walls that seem to oust have things like Pulse of the
Canaille or Life in the City or Laptops for the "B Team" minions to
use for bleeding prey. Tossing a Pentex on a key minion (either
forward or backward) generally frees up a minion of your's to do
something more productive. It can also help accelerate pressure
around the table by freeing up other minions (say increasing pressure
from the relevant player onto Pred or Grand Pred).
James Coupe
>It is basically gambling vs. strategy game. I guess the
>"Poker/Blackjack" V:TES players love to take their shot on that silver
>bullet chances and the "Chess" V:TES players want to plan out nicely
>the stealth/intercept interaction for the next 10 turns (no real
>comparison of games intended here, btw).
>
>From what I can tell the game is pretty nicely balanced in the middle
>of both, luck, gambling, excitement and tactics/strategy. I think
>moving it in either direction would not attract more people from that
>direction than you loose from the other one.
>
>I dont think the percentage of silver bullets from the total number of
>cards has increased. So there have always been silver bullets and you
>have always included none to few in a deck.
There has been a move towards cards that can cause significant problems
for particular decks - anything from aggravation to near destruction.
There have, of course, always been hosers, but most of the early hosers
are - relatively speaking - not that bad. Even the powerful ones are
only really powerful if you can pull them off at the right time. Like,
Malkavian Dementia is one of the better hosers, but it's only *really*
good if you play it at the right time.
Now, go back and look at the Gehenna expansion. There are a number of
Gehenna events that can just shut down certain deck styles. If someone
plays Fall of the Camarilla, your Prince / Justicar deck is just dead in
the water. When it came out, if you couldn't counter it at exactly the
time it was played, poof. It's not even like Fall of the Sabbat which,
at least, offers you the option of playing Black Hand.
So what do you do? If someone plays it, the deck just dies. You can
plan for all sorts of other things - I've got this much combat defence /
avoidance, I can try to get Secure Haven quickly for Queen Anne (or
whoever), I can use Perfect Paragon instead of Bewitching Oration to get
a bit more "stealth" in my Law Firm... and then someone plays Fall of
the Camarilla and all my deck thoughts go away.
Now, I can play Uncoiling, but that's not perfect, and if I pull it
early (before the Fall comes out), it's easy to burn it. So I might
have to hold it for quite a while, block my hand, see if someone is
playing Gehenna events, hope it works, and still possibly die in a heap
just because someone played Fall of the Camarilla.
Scourge of the Enochians is in a similar category. I can make a set of
careful decisions about my breed boon deck. I choose to play this much
stealth. I choose this many Embraces. I choose this much combat
defence. I play the deck in this way, I make my move at this time and
then... poof, Scourge of the Enochians is in my face.
This isn't like a well-timed rush. I could block a well-timed rush with
a chump blocker. I can easily interact with the deck that makes a well-
timed rush. I have many options for combat defence - chumps, Obedience,
maneuvers, combat ends, damage prevention... When I call my Boon votes,
you can block, you can vote against, you can Delaying Tactics - and you
can pre-emptively try to take out my voters.
With Scourge of the Enochians, you just play it - there's almost no
interaction at that point. With Fourth Cycle, you just play it. With
Fall of the Camarilla, you can just play it. And when it happens, it
can just totally destroy my game.
Silver bullets like Direct Intervention, I don't mind so much. Yes,
they cause problems for toolbox decks (I only have one bleed modifier to
hand, the focused deck has many). I might lose a critical play at a
critical time, but I can still respond and try my best. I can even
think "Okay, I'll assume that one of these cards gets cancelled..."
When someone plays one of the newer, "Play the game of guessing what
hosers my opponent has packed" cards, it's often pretty difficult to
predict or plan anything at all.
--
James Coupe
PGP Key: 0x5D623D5D YOU ARE IN ERROR.
EBD690ECD7A1FB457CA2 NO-ONE IS SCREAMING.
13D7E668C3695D623D5D THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION.
XZealot
> Scourge of the Enochians is in a similar category. I can make a set of
> careful decisions about my breed boon deck. I choose to play this much
> stealth. I choose this many Embraces. I choose this much combat
> defence. I play the deck in this way, I make my move at this time and
> then... poof, Scourge of the Enochians is in my face.
>
> This isn't like a well-timed rush. I could block a well-timed rush with
> a chump blocker. I can easily interact with the deck that makes a well-
> timed rush. I have many options for combat defence - chumps, Obedience,
> maneuvers, combat ends, damage prevention... When I call my Boon votes,
> you can block, you can vote against, you can Delaying Tactics - and you
> can pre-emptively try to take out my voters.
Honestly breed decks are so powerful that if one gets just 1 or 2
embraces into play it can generate so many actions that it simply
overloads and decks defenses until they just fail. Case in point, I
was playing in the Providence, RI qualifier with one of my best rush
decks. My prey was playing Nossie Breed/Boon. I convinced the whole
table to help me oust it. I burnt 7, count that, SEVEN vampires in
combat. The game timed out. The Nossie deck won every single of its
other games.
Breed decks break the paradim of "I have 30 pool to purchase my
minions". I welcome cards like 4th Cycle and Sourge as they are
actually HEALTHY for the game.
suolir...@gmail.com
> Now, I can play Uncoiling, but that's not perfect, and if I pull it
> early (before the Fall comes out), it's easy to burn it. So I might
> have to hold it for quite a while, block my hand, see if someone is
> playing Gehenna events, hope it works, and still possibly die in a heap
> just because someone played Fall of the Camarilla.
That's why hosers are made. They force decks that are considered to be
in need of balancing to include some bad cards or possibly die in a
heap. I'd wager that most of those decks are competitive even with a
handicap of -1 hand size from holding a counter to a counter.
librarian
> On Jun 9, 5:18 pm, Johannes Walch <johannes.wa...@vekn.de> wrote:
>
>> Apparently you also seem not to like (generic) cards with cancel effects
>> ? Why is that?
>
> I'd guess it is because it interrupts his game. This is a very common
> feeling among many people.
>
> When we get together to play cards, I would like to play my cards. I
> would like to see my deck do the thing I meant for it to do. I don't
> necessarily have to win. But I do have to play.
>
> When your deck of cards (and this is hardly limited to VTES) is full
> of things that stop me from playing cards at all - you cancel my
> actions, tap my minions before I act, freeze, lock, counter - then I
> am not playing cards with you anymore. I am watching you go through
> the motions while I am forced to do nothing.
>
> This is Not Fun (tm). Is it a great way for you to win? Sure. Is it
> a completely legitimate way to play? Sure. But it ruins the game
> time for me... and I am unlikely to come back and play the game with
> you anymore. And soon no one is ever playing the game.
>
>
Pokemon has no interrupt effects. Not said as a dis, but merely to
mention a game that has no interrupts.
The final sentence in what I have left of your post seems like an
exaggeration.
But it also has echoes of a nice mantra from a year or two back...
Play.The.Game.
best -
chris
Johannes Walch
> Dark
> Influence has clearly failed to hose DI, so the option of banning the
> latter could be brought up once more.
I have not seen many DiIn played in the games since the release of KoT,
therefore playing DaIn as a hoser card does not seem to be interesting.
On the other hand DaIn could be really powerful for itself, people seem
to miss the "cannot play again this turn clause". This card can, in the
right situation, save your ass much better than DiIn. So I am not sure
it was intended as a DiIn hoser in the first place.
For me today�s main purpose of DiIn is to prevent your allies getting
stolen. Fair enough I would say ;-)
ben...@gmail.com
> > Not the Pentex, DI, DT, Scourge, Uncoiling, Anarchist Uprising,
> > Ancilla Empowerment, Wash, Sudden thing.
>
> That IS an interesting mix of cards you name here.
>
> What is wrong with Anarchist Uprising/Ancilla Empowerment? Those are not
> magic bullets they are useful in most of the games.
You put AU/AE into a deck because you want to blow up weenies.
Weenie decks must include anti-AU/AE cards to avoid being one-
shotted. It's clearly silver bullet.
> Apparently you also seem not to like (generic) cards with cancel effects
> ? Why is that?
Here's an example that I think does a great job of illustrating the
"silver bullet mini-game" problem:
Suppose you wanted to build a Brinksmanship deck for a tournament.
Yeah, Brinksmanship isn't that good, but maybe you figured out a way
to make it work really well. However, you've noticed that every time
you've seen a Brinksmanship deck get played, people would see the
Slaughterhouses hit the table and then sit on a Direct Intervention,
waiting for Brinksmanship. You know that one possible counter-tactic
is to wait until you have 2 Brinksmanships in your hand, but you're
still twitchy about 2 of your 4 opponents having a DI in their hand.
Oh, there's this new card called Dark Influences, which you can use to
foil DI...
So, unless you opt to play the silver bullet mini-game, you can't
build a tournament deck around Brinksmanship - or any card like
Brinksmanship. You're not even thinking, "How can I get past an
intercept wall?" or, "How can I get the vote to pass?" You're
thinking, "How can I get past Direct Intervention?" Very specifically
that card, and not any general strategy or mechanic. One specific
card. It's lazy design on the part of the developer, and it results
in needlessly hindering other strategies.
> Pentex? It costs 2 pool and can be removed. Come on, thats not a good
> card :-)
Huh? You're already expecting it to burn the moment your prey is
ousted. ;)
> The only two real silver bullets there is Scourge. I have my doubts
> about that card as well.
Scourge means that weenie decks pack extra copies of Uncoiling.
Whee.
- Ben Peal
jcrossn...@gmail.com
> > What is wrong with Anarchist Uprising/Ancilla Empowerment? Those are not
> > magic bullets they are useful in most of the games.
>
> You put AU/AE into a deck because you want to blow up weenies.
> Weenie decks must include anti-AU/AE cards to avoid being one-
> shotted. It's clearly silver bullet.
I don't know about that, man. AU and AE both have the effect of
instantly damaging every player's pool, whether or not they're playing
weenies. Generally speaking, if you include them in your deck you're
expecting that it will hurt most others than it hurts you, because
you're expecting to have fairly few minions. There are plenty of good
reasons to want that effect, even if you don't expect to see a weenie
horde.
[snip stuff about DI vs. Brinkmanship]
Without turning this thread into another "ban DI" thread, it does seem
to me that that is the most logical fix to this situation. It's
annoying that DI2 was added to the game, just because I'd prefer that
those effects didn't exist at all. However, it's unlikely that the
latter will ever attain the prominence of the former, whether or not
we see a ban.
Jesse
ben...@gmail.com
> Walch vs. Peal:
> > > What is wrong with Anarchist Uprising/Ancilla Empowerment? Those are not
> > > magic bullets they are useful in most of the games.
>
> > You put AU/AE into a deck because you want to blow up weenies.
> > Weenie decks must include anti-AU/AE cards to avoid being one-
> > shotted. It's clearly silver bullet.
>
> I don't know about that, man. AU and AE both have the effect of
> instantly damaging every player's pool, whether or not they're playing
> weenies. Generally speaking, if you include them in your deck you're
> expecting that it will hurt most others than it hurts you, because
> you're expecting to have fairly few minions. There are plenty of good
> reasons to want that effect, even if you don't expect to see a weenie
> horde.
While that's certainly a use for AU/AE, I disagree that there are
plenty of good reasons to want that. I'm of the opinion that such a
use is very limited in scope, mainly limited by not wanting to hit the
wrong guy and not wanting to unnecessarily make enemies in a
multiplayer game. (insert discussions of table balance vs. letting
people die)
Far more often than not, you're putting in AU/AE for its one-shot
kill effect against breed.
- Ben Peal
ben...@gmail.com
> Breed decks break the paradim of "I have 30 pool to purchase my
> minions". I welcome cards like 4th Cycle and Sourge as they are
> actually HEALTHY for the game.
I'm of the opinion that the answer isn't to make silver bullets to
counter breed decks, but to make better cards for large-caps and non-
bleed mid-cap strategies.
- Ben Peal
XZealot
These cards make large caps and mid-caps better by their very
existance. Also they don't require a narrow range game play to occur
prior to being put into play (i.e. malkavian dementia requires another
player to actually play malkavians). This makes they quite good.
Also they are thematically appropriate.....
ben...@gmail.com
> Ben wrote:
> > Norm wrote:
> > > Breed decks break the paradim of "I have 30 pool to purchase my
> > > minions". I welcome cards like 4th Cycle and Sourge as they are
> > > actually HEALTHY for the game.
>
> > I'm of the opinion that the answer isn't to make silver bullets to
> > counter breed decks, but to make better cards for large-caps and non-
> > bleed mid-cap strategies.
>
> These cards make large caps and mid-caps better by their very
> existance.
Well, in a way, but is it in the right way? So, someone puts a
Scourge in their deck, so the breed guy puts a few copies of The
Uncoiling to counter it. So now we just have a Scourge vs. Uncoiling
game instead of a game of V:TES. It doesn't really change the power
level of the weenies, but rather just adds this silver bullet mini-
game they have to play in addition to V:TES. I think it would be
preferable to make the larger cap vampires more capable, so that the
silver bullet game can be avoided.
- Ben Peal
jwnew...@bellsouth.net
> Norm wrote:
> > Ben wrote:
> > > Norm wrote:
> > > > Breed decks break the paradim of "I have 30 pool to purchase my
> > > > minions". I welcome cards like 4th Cycle and Sourge as they are
> > > > actually HEALTHY for the game.
>
> > > I'm of the opinion that the answer isn't to make silver bullets to
> > > counter breed decks, but to make better cards for large-caps and non-
> > > bleed mid-cap strategies.
>
> > These cards make large caps and mid-caps better by their very
> > existance.
>
> Well, in a way, but is it in the right way? So, someone puts a
> Scourge in their deck, so the breed guy puts a few copies of The
> Uncoiling to counter it.
I don't think he was talking about Scourge. AU and AE make larger
vamps better in comparison to small ones by increasing the effective
cost of all minions.
So now we just have a Scourge vs. Uncoiling
> game instead of a game of V:TES. It doesn't really change the power
> level of the weenies, but rather just adds this silver bullet mini-
> game they have to play in addition to V:TES. I think it would be
> preferable to make the larger cap vampires more capable, so that the
> silver bullet game can be avoided.
The Con Boon/Tribute vs. Anarchist Uprising/Domain Challenge game is
definitely the one I'd prefer.
-witness1
D.J.
(re: 4th Cycle and Scourge of the Enochians)
> These cards make large caps and mid-caps better by their very
> existance.
No they don't; they make weenies worse, which has a similar effect,
but not the same. Especially since they only make weenies worse if
they show up, are not countered, and are applicable. Sure, they've
got to be considered when you're deciding on weenie vs. large/mid
strategy, but it's by no means the same as improving the game for
large/mid caps.
Dragging whatever's in front back to a lower level (sometimes) is
emphatically not the same things as boosting whatever's behind up to
the same level.
- D.J.
ben...@gmail.com
> I don't think he was talking about Scourge.
Norm said, "I welcome cards like 4th Cycle and Sourge as they are
actually HEALTHY for the game."
> AU and AE make larger vamps better in comparison to small ones by increasing the effective
> cost of all minions.
I see what you're getting at, but really, AU and AE are mass kill
cards rather than cost-increasing cards.
>> So now we just have a Scourge vs. Uncoiling game instead of a game of V:TES.
>
> The Con Boon/Tribute vs. Anarchist Uprising/Domain Challenge game is
> definitely the one I'd prefer.
Yeah, on an abstract level, I agree with this. Right now, that
particular game is AU/DC vs. DI/DT, which is a game I don't like.
With respect to breed cards in general, do they cost too little?
i.e. should The Embrace cost 3 blood? Should 3rd Trad/Creation Rites/
Waters/Bamba cost 2 blood?
- Ben Peal
dclo...@gmail.com
This would be the time for that discussion. I come down firmly on the
side of letting people die, and I suspect Jesse does as well.
Anarchist Uprising sees play in our group all the time, and Breed
decks don't crop up that often. I'm going to argue that this is
because doing a massive amount of pool damage to the table is useful,
and in no way limited to hosing weenie decks. In the endgame, doing
3+ pool damage to every player can be very desireable. It can set up
a turn with multiple victory points. These cards also saw play before
breed boon rose to prominence. Maybe this is a metagame thing, but
making enemies isn't that much of a concern here. The instability
that results from "hitting the wrong guy" is often exploitable, and at
any rate prevents time outs.
If someone is loading up their deck with multiple copies of AU/AE,
then I guess they might be hunting for Breed Boon, but I don't think
it is in the same category as Pentex Subversion or Scourge,
principally because it is a vote card and not an Event or a Master.
The defenses against votes are more varied. I would be sad to see AU/
AE get banned, though it wouldn't break my heart.
Breed Boon is a pretty linear deck type. The fact that it is
vulnerable to AU/AE doesn't strike me as unbalanced, at least not in
the same way that the vulnerability to Scourge strikes me as
unbalanced, or the vulnerability of superstar decks to Pentex
Subversion strikes me as unbalanced. The situation with Pentex for
rock star decks is frequently "have Sudden Reversal or die". Scourge
is "Play the Uncoiling or die." AE/AU "have a Delaying Tactics, or
enough votes, or enough pool, or intercept, or convince someone else
with intercept or votes to help out." It isn't a Silver Bullet.
Also, if you aren't facing weenies, Scourge is useless. AU/AE isn't;
it is more a general purpose bullet than silver.
I agree with your main point about silver bullet cards, though. I'm
not opposed to them being banned outright.
-dc
jwnew...@bellsouth.net
> John "I drink the Vessel kool aid" Newquist wrote:
>
> > I don't think he was talking about Scourge.
>
> Norm said, "I welcome cards like 4th Cycle and Sourge as they are
> actually HEALTHY for the game."
Fair enough.
> > AU and AE make larger vamps better in comparison to small ones by increasing the effective
> > cost of all minions.
>
> I see what you're getting at, but really, AU and AE are mass kill
> cards rather than cost-increasing cards.
It doesn't really matter whether you put the pool loss before or after
the minion enters play; it's still an added cost for playing so many.
> >> So now we just have a Scourge vs. Uncoiling game instead of a game of V:TES.
>
> > The Con Boon/Tribute vs. Anarchist Uprising/Domain Challenge game is
> > definitely the one I'd prefer.
>
> Yeah, on an abstract level, I agree with this. Right now, that
> particular game is AU/DC vs. DI/DT, which is a game I don't like.
Suddening a tribute or DI'ing a con boon is as good as playing AU/DC.
So the decks ought to be interacting on multiple levels.
(Also, you left out Poison Pill).
-witness1
Peter D Bakija
> No they don't; they make weenies worse, which has a similar effect,
> but not the same. Especially since they only make weenies worse if
> they show up, are not countered, and are applicable. Sure, they've
> got to be considered when you're deciding on weenie vs. large/mid
> strategy, but it's by no means the same as improving the game for
> large/mid caps.
Well, kinda--as noted, I have been traumatized enough times by
Enochians already that I have changed all my decks that used to be
fraught with 1 and 2 caps to bottom out at 3 caps. Which means I have
fewer minions for the same pool. Which helps big vampires keep up. I
mean, yeah, lots of folks are just going to say "Hell with Enochians!
I'm playing all 1 caps anyway and if it hits the table, I'll probably
die, but what are the chances of that!", just like how a lot of folks
just ignore the existance of AI. But if enough people respond like me
(which remains to be seen, but time will tell), Enochians (for
example) *does* make bigger guys better.
-Peter
Peter D Bakija
> Scourge means that weenie decks pack extra copies of Uncoiling.
> Whee.
I've considered that. A lot. And really, can't see it as a better
solution than just bottoming out at 3 caps. I expect that Enochains
will show up *a lot* in competition (it certainly does on JOL), and
relying on Uncoiling seems risky--how many are in your deck? And even
if you have 6 in your deck, and an Enochians hits the table early,
losing even 2 or 3 guys before you draw into Uncoiling is likely
ending you.
-Peter
XZealot
> On Jun 10, 2:10 pm, XZealot <xzea...@cox.net> wrote:
>
> (re: 4th Cycle and Scourge of the Enochians)
>
> > These cards make large caps and mid-caps better by their very
> > existance.
>
> No they don't; they make weenies worse, which has a similar effect,
> but not the same.
Since all things are relative and not absolute in a CCG by default
making one thing worse is the equivalent to making all other things
better.
> Especially since they only make weenies worse if
> they show up, are not countered, and are applicable.
If they don't show up then it is irrelavent.
> Sure, they've
> got to be considered when you're deciding on weenie vs. large/mid
> strategy, but it's by no means the same as improving the game for
> large/mid caps.
See above, making one think worse makes everything else relatively
better.
> Dragging whatever's in front back to a lower level (sometimes) is
> emphatically not the same things as boosting whatever's behind up to
> the same level.
Actually it is, but in a vastly different way.
XZealot
> Norm wrote:
> > Ben wrote:
> > > Norm wrote:
> > > > Breed decks break the paradim of "I have 30 pool to purchase my
> > > > minions". I welcome cards like 4th Cycle and Sourge as they are
> > > > actually HEALTHY for the game.
>
> > > I'm of the opinion that the answer isn't to make silver bullets to
> > > counter breed decks, but to make better cards for large-caps and non-
> > > bleed mid-cap strategies.
>
> > These cards make large caps and mid-caps better by their very
> > existance.
>
> Well, in a way, but is it in the right way?
Apparently, it is, as no other methods have worked so far.
>So, someone puts a
> Scourge in their deck, so the breed guy puts a few copies of The
> Uncoiling to counter it. So now we just have a Scourge vs. Uncoiling
> game instead of a game of V:TES. It doesn't really change the power
> level of the weenies, but rather just adds this silver bullet mini-
> game they have to play in addition to V:TES.
The problem is that breed is so overly powerful that it is almost a
"must include" card in any deck that doesn't play weenies.
> I think it would be
> preferable to make the larger cap vampires more capable, so that the
> silver bullet game can be avoided.
The problem is that you have a serious mechanical issue where weenies
are just better in almost every way no matter how good that you make
large caps.
Johann von Doom
> Since all things are relative and not absolute in a CCG by default
> making one thing worse is the equivalent to making all other things
> better.
That's only true if those things show up in every game. As you know,
that's not the case with VTES deck strategies.
> > Especially since they only make weenies worse if
> > they show up, are not countered, and are applicable.
>
> If they don't show up then it is irrelavent.
Yeah, that's DJ's point. Weenie hosers are only relevant if there are
weenies around.
If you make midcaps/large-caps better with cards that benefit midcaps/
large-caps, then midcaps and large-caps are better whether or not
there are weenies and/or weenie hosers at a given table.
If you make anti-weenie cards in an attempt to make midcaps/large-caps
better, those only make midcaps and large-caps better if there are
weenies and the anti-weenie cards at a given table.
See the difference?
John Eno
ben...@gmail.com
Depends on the kind of weenie deck. I've been rocking with breed-
boon for years now, and it still amazes me how resilient it is. I've
had games where I haven't drawn a breed card for the first few turns
and it still end up winning. An early Scourge seems like much the
same thing. If you put in 4 copies of Uncoiling, the odds of you
drawing your Uncoiling before their Scourge are very good, and the
damage done by an early Scourge is likely minimal. I have to field-
test this theory, but I'm currently of the opinion that Scourge will
end up being mostly a silver bullet mini-game inducing irritant to a
breed deck. Just add it to the pre-existing DI + DT box of pills.
Not sure how it'll play out for the weenie rush type decks, but
losing guys means losing badly needed momentum for them. Alas, mid-
cap rush still sucks, despite Norm's assertion that it'll be better
'cause weenies get kicked in the jimmy by Scourge.
- Ben Peal
D.J.
wrote:
> On Jun 10, 4:53 pm, XZealot <xzea...@cox.net> wrote:
> > > Especially since they only make weenies worse if
> > > they show up, are not countered, and are applicable.
>
> > If they don't show up then it is irrelavent.
>
> Yeah, that's DJ's point. Weenie hosers are only relevant if there are
> weenies around.
Well, I think I meant if the hosers show up. If the hoser doesn't hit
play, or gets DI'd or whatever, it hasn't actually made the weenies
any worse, whether it was in your deck or not. (Or, to address what
Norm said a little more directly: if they don't show up and aren't
relevant, the hosers haven't made weenies worse at all.
- D.J.
D.J.
No, it's not at all the same thing - playing magic-bullet-the-leader
is only effective situationally and sometimes and is exactly the
problem Ben's bringing up, whereas playing boost-the-straggler is a
strategy of empowerment that actually evens the playing field.
To put it other ways:
If you can invest in either rocket-shoes or a handgun to win a race
against a fast sprinter, rocket shoes always work if you bring 'em. A
handgun only works if you hit the guy in front with the bullet.
"Separate but equal is inherently unequal." "The same thing but in a
vastly different way" is bull. The way is part of what it does.
- D.J.
Peter D Bakija
> Depends on the kind of weenie deck. I've been rocking with breed-
> boon for years now, and it still amazes me how resilient it is. I've
> had games where I haven't drawn a breed card for the first few turns
> and it still end up winning.
Oh, I know--it is one of my solid tournament winners. So I'm with you.
And my current version includes Uncoiling, but I'm waffling on playing
it in the upcoming tournament season specifically for this very
reason, Uncoilings or no.
> Not sure how it'll play out for the weenie rush type decks, but
> losing guys means losing badly needed momentum for them.
Yeah. Lemme tell you--it sucks :-)
One of my JOL tournament games ended badly for me when two of my 2
caps got Enochianed to death. And then my Carleton Van Wyck got stolen
by my prey as soon as he hit the table. But I digress. In any case, I
have changed all my weenie combat decks (Pot rush and/or Ani block) to
bottom out at 3 cap. I haven't seen them in serious action yet, but
they are doing ok when I play them. But they are slower and have fewer
minions. Although a certain 3 cap with POT definitely helps :-)
-Peter
XZealot
wrote:
> On Jun 10, 4:53 pm, XZealot <xzea...@cox.net> wrote:
>
> > Since all things are relative and not absolute in a CCG by default
> > making one thing worse is the equivalent to making all other things
> > better.
>
> That's only true if those things show up in every game. As you know,
> that's not the case with VTES deck strategies.
>
> > > Especially since they only make weenies worse if
> > > they show up, are not countered, and are applicable.
>
> > If they don't show up then it is irrelavent.
>
> Yeah, that's DJ's point. Weenie hosers are only relevant if there are
> weenies around.
This is a non-issue.
> If you make midcaps/large-caps better with cards that benefit midcaps/
> large-caps, then midcaps and large-caps are better whether or not
> there are weenies and/or weenie hosers at a given table.
"better" is a comparitive by definition. If there is nothing to
compare it to then it is not better. It is the same.
If there are no weenies then there is no effect AT ALL.
Simliarly, in a void, if you have two points that are 4 inches apart,
and you move 1 point 2 inches farther away, then they are now 6 inches
apart. Because they are in a void, it is irrelevant which point was
moved.
There are no absolutes in game design. There for to make one thing
worse is the exact same as making all other things better.
> If you make anti-weenie cards in an attempt to make midcaps/large-caps
> better, those only make midcaps and large-caps better if there are
> weenies and the anti-weenie cards at a given table.
>
> See the difference?
No there is no difference because there are no absolutes in the game
design of VTES.
XZealot
> On Jun 10, 4:53 pm, XZealot <xzea...@cox.net> wrote:
>
> > On Jun 10, 3:02 pm, "D.J." <dj...@comcast.net> wrote:
> > > Dragging whatever's in front back to a lower level (sometimes) is
> > > emphatically not the same things as boosting whatever's behind up to
> > > the same level.
>
> > Actually it is, but in a vastly different way.
>
> No, it's not at all the same thing - playing magic-bullet-the-leader
> is only effective situationally and sometimes and is exactly the
> problem Ben's bringing up, whereas playing boost-the-straggler is a
> strategy of empowerment that actually evens the playing field.
If there are only two people in the race then there is no difference.
> To put it other ways:
> If you can invest in either rocket-shoes or a handgun to win a race
> against a fast sprinter, rocket shoes always work if you bring 'em. A
> handgun only works if you hit the guy in front with the bullet.
> "Separate but equal is inherently unequal." "The same thing but in a
> vastly different way" is bull. The way is part of what it does.
You're mistaken.
When you are comparing two groups of things: weenies and non-weenies,
making one group worse is exactly the same as making the other better.
Such is the nature of comparisons.
Juggernaut1981
Do many of you guys actually sit down and have that dialogue in your
minds about the "Silver Bullet Metagame"? Maybe it's just me that
sits down and thinks "This is what I want my deck to do, so I'll build
it towards that end with some generic defences or some kind of
failsafe if something surreal happens..."
The closest I've come to playing the "Silver Bullet" game is including
2 copies of Snipe Hunt in a Nos Royalty deck. If I've got a "swarm of
billions" predator or prey then I will not think twice about calling a
Snipe Hunt because most often the entire table will be happy to see
the Weenie Deck deck tapped out for two turns. It doesn't oust the
weenie deck (so even the weenie deck isn't too stressed unless they're
on crap all pool) but it is all about buying time to do what you
planned to do earlier. And the only other deck with a kind of
"failsafe" is my Ishtarri Rising Sun Bandanna deck (it has no pool
defence other than bleeding with Social Charm/Ubende+Ganhuru and using
Enchant Kindred down) that utilises a handful of Poison Pills and
Delaying Tactics.
In my more weenie swarm decks (Like the Paul Forrest deck v3) I would
honestly consider Irregular Protocols and other sideways angles, but
those are about covering a weakness (no vote power AT ALL otherwise)
rather than playing some kind of "Silver Bullet" game.
*Shrug* If you want to, and think others are, playing the Silver
Bullet Metagame... then maybe its time to find a way to work around
those or stop using tactics that are so narrowly focussed that a
single card will thrash your entire deck.
Peter D Bakija
> *Shrug* If you want to, and think others are, playing the Silver
> Bullet Metagame... then maybe its time to find a way to work around
> those or stop using tactics that are so narrowly focussed that a
> single card will thrash your entire deck.
The point is not that people are specifically playing a "silver bullet
meta game". It is that it is happening without people necessarily
realizing it. The obvious example (that Ben brought up) is Enochians
(if you hate weenies) vs Uncoiling (if you are weenies). There is a
*lot* of that these days.
-Peter
Blooded Sand
> On Jun 10, 4:57 pm, "D.J." <dj...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
> > On Jun 10, 4:53 pm, XZealot <xzea...@cox.net> wrote:
>
> > > On Jun 10, 3:02 pm, "D.J." <dj...@comcast.net> wrote:
> > > > Dragging whatever's in front back to a lower level (sometimes) is
> > > > emphatically not the same things as boosting whatever's behind up to
> > > > the same level.
>
> > > Actually it is, but in a vastly different way.
>
> > No, it's not at all the same thing - playing magic-bullet-the-leader
> > is only effective situationally and sometimes and is exactly the
> > problem Ben's bringing up, whereas playing boost-the-straggler is a
> > strategy of empowerment that actually evens the playing field.
>
> If there are only two people in the race then there is no difference.
One of which happens to be weenies. Hosing that racer only hurts that
racer, it does not help the other racers if weenies are not there. In
fact it hurts the others, as the precious deck space allocated to
weenie hosing is now dead space, because there are no weenies.
>
> > To put it other ways:
> > If you can invest in either rocket-shoes or a handgun to win a race
> > against a fast sprinter, rocket shoes always work if you bring 'em. A
> > handgun only works if you hit the guy in front with the bullet.
> > "Separate but equal is inherently unequal." "The same thing but in a
> > vastly different way" is bull. The way is part of what it does.
>
> You're mistaken.
>
> When you are comparing two groups of things: weenies and non-weenies,
> making one group worse is exactly the same as making the other better.
>
> Such is the nature of comparisons.
Norm, look at the wider scope here. Do you see weenies in every single
game you play? If yes, then I can begin to see your point of view.
However, there are metas where weenies are not seen in every single
game. In those metas having big cap boosting cards would be better
than weenie hosers, as not having weenies on the table means you have
deck space including weenie hosers, which could have been used to
include the big cap boosters.
D.J.
> You're mistaken.
>
> When you are comparing two groups of things: weenies and non-weenies,
> making one group worse is exactly the same as making the other better.
>
> Such is the nature of comparisons.
Umm... Y'know what, I'd forgotten how head-in-the-sand obstinate you
can get sometimes in discussions, Norm.
If you can't actually recognize basic definitions of phrases like
"exactly the same", and can't recognize that while the end comparative
result may occasionally turn out the same that doesn't mean the effect
on the game is the same, and can't admit that the two philosophies
about how it's done have radically different impacts on how the game
is played and how much of a "roulette wheel" feel things get... then I
think I'm done talking about this with you, and I think I've just got
to hope that others recognized the point I was making.
Thanks anyhow. It was worth a try.
- D.J.
XZealot
Yes
> If yes, then I can begin to see your point of view.
> However, there are metas where weenies are not seen in every single
> game. In those metas having big cap boosting cards would be better
> than weenie hosers, as not having weenies on the table means you have
> deck space including weenie hosers, which could have been used to
> include the big cap boosters.
Now you are moving the goal posts. I am talking about weenie hosers
versus non-weenie enhancers. The terminology in this thread has been
midcap/highcap which is the same as non-weenie. You are now further
specifying "big cap enhancer" which is not what I am talking about.
I am not talking about deck design but rather game/card design.
Johann von Doom
> "better" is a comparitive by definition. If there is nothing to
> compare it to then it is not better. It is the same.
Okay...? The midcap/large-cap strategies are better compared to how
good they used to be, if you make cards that make them better. As
opposed to cards that make other strategies worse, which don't make
the midcap/large-cap strategies better unless they encounter the other
strategies (and there's no guarantee that they will).
> There are no absolutes in game design. There for to make one thing
> worse is the exact same as making all other things better.
Again, in a game where X, Y, and Z are present in every game, your
statement is correct. However, VTES is a game where there's no
mechanical guarantee that any given strategy will be at a given table,
so hosing X doesn't actually make Y or Z better if nobody plays X. (As
Blooded Sand points out, it actually makes Y and Z worse if nobody
plays X, since they now have useless or unplayable cards in their
decks.) Conversely, making Y and Z better by giving it performance-
enhancing cards that don't have anything directly to do with X makes Y
and Z better regardless of which other strategies are present at a
given table. If it makes Y and Z better enough that it's now on par
power-wise with X, that's far preferable to making hosers for X
because it means that there's a level playing field for the differing
strategies, rather than a playing field tilted in one strategy's favor
but with some Hail Mary bombs at the other end of the field.
> No there is no difference because there are no absolutes in the game
> design of VTES.
If there are no absolutes, how can you make the claim that hosing
weenies absolutely makes non-weenie strategies better, which you've
said multiple times in this thread?
John Eno
XZealot
wrote:
> On Jun 10, 6:36 pm, XZealot <xzea...@cox.net> wrote:
>
> > "better" is a comparitive by definition. If there is nothing to
> > compare it to then it is not better. It is the same.
>
> Okay...? The midcap/large-cap strategies are better compared to how
> good they used to be, if you make cards that make them better.
When compared historically against itself, I agree.
>As
> opposed to cards that make other strategies worse, which don't make
> the midcap/large-cap strategies better unless they encounter the other
> strategies (and there's no guarantee that they will).
You are using a historical comparison versus a group comparison. The
historical comparison is irrelevant in VTES.
> > There are no absolutes in game design. There for to make one thing
> > worse is the exact same as making all other things better.
>
> Again, in a game where X, Y, and Z are present in every game, your
> statement is correct. However, VTES is a game where there's no
> mechanical guarantee that any given strategy will be at a given table,
> so hosing X doesn't actually make Y or Z better if nobody plays X. (As
> Blooded Sand points out, it actually makes Y and Z worse if nobody
> plays X, since they now have useless or unplayable cards in their
> decks.)
This is a false dilemma. The new cards that are anti-weenie are
neither useless nor unplayable. You put them into play or you discard
them all with the same mechanism, the discard phase. It is just like
any other card that you don't want to use right now.
>Conversely, making Y and Z better by giving it performance-
> enhancing cards that don't have anything directly to do with X makes Y
> and Z better regardless of which other strategies are present at a
> given table. If it makes Y and Z better enough that it's now on par
> power-wise with X, that's far preferable to making hosers for X
> because it means that there's a level playing field for the differing
> strategies, rather than a playing field tilted in one strategy's favor
> but with some Hail Mary bombs at the other end of the field.
If you make Y and Z equally better relative to X then it is irrelavent
when X doesn't show up, as Y and Z are still relatively equal to each
other.
Mathematically speaking if X + Y + Z = 0 and X = 0 then Y=Z
Simlarly if you double both Y and Z such that X +2Y + 2Z = 0 and x= 0
then Y=Z and your outcomes are the same.
This is the same as if you half X such that X/2 + Y + Z = 0 and x = 0
then Y=Z and again your outcome is the same.
> > No there is no difference because there are no absolutes in the game
> > design of VTES.
>
> If there are no absolutes, how can you make the claim that hosing
> weenies absolutely makes non-weenie strategies better, which you've
> said multiple times in this thread?
See the above math.
Johann von Doom
> You are using a historical comparison versus a group comparison. The
> historical comparison is irrelevant in VTES.
Okay.
> This is a false dilemma. The new cards that are anti-weenie are
> neither useless nor unplayable. You put them into play or you discard
> them all with the same mechanism, the discard phase. It is just like
> any other card that you don't want to use right now.
In the situation where you don't want to use those silver bullets, if
you had built your deck with cards to bolster your own strategy rather
than with silver bullets that don't have a use in a given game (either
because their targets aren't present or aren't players whose position
you want to harm), you'd do better in that game. You can see that,
right?
This isn't a new dilemma. The reason people don't often use lots and
lots of Sudden Reversals is because they think that bolstering their
own strategies is a better way to use their MPAs than clipping the
wings of other peoples' strategies. Sound like anything we're talking
about in this thread?
> If you make Y and Z equally better relative to X then it is irrelavent
> when X doesn't show up, as Y and Z are still relatively equal to each
> other.
Bingo! And by doing so, you avoid the need for the silver bullet arms
race that Peal is saying drags the game down.
> Mathematically speaking...[snip math]
Even at the individual card level, VTES design isn't mathematically
sound, so I don't see the relevance of trying to apply mathematical
formulas at the strategic level.
John Eno
XZealot
wrote:
> On Jun 11, 11:29 am, XZealot <xzea...@cox.net> wrote:
>
> > You are using a historical comparison versus a group comparison. The
> > historical comparison is irrelevant in VTES.
>
> Okay.
>
> > This is a false dilemma. The new cards that are anti-weenie are
> > neither useless nor unplayable. You put them into play or you discard
> > them all with the same mechanism, the discard phase. It is just like
> > any other card that you don't want to use right now.
>
> In the situation where you don't want to use those silver bullets, if
> you had built your deck with cards to bolster your own strategy rather
> than with silver bullets that don't have a use in a given game (either
> because their targets aren't present or aren't players whose position
> you want to harm), you'd do better in that game. You can see that,
> right?
Yes, I agree that having cards that you use effectively against your
opponents will improve your performance.
I think that leads to power creep.
I think it is better for the game and life in general that if you see
a problem (such as a leaky pipe) that it is better to fix the problem
rather than change the environment to minimize the problem (such as
turning the room with the leaky pipe into a swimming pool).
Weenies are a problem. Why are they a problem?
1) They cost too little
2) they are resilient to damage
3) they can play most of the cards in the game.
Solution:
1) Eliminate 50% of the weenies.
Seems elegant to me.
> This isn't a new dilemma. The reason people don't often use lots and
> lots of Sudden Reversals is because they think that bolstering their
> own strategies is a better way to use their MPAs than clipping the
> wings of other peoples' strategies. Sound like anything we're talking
> about in this thread?
>
> > If you make Y and Z equally better relative to X then it is irrelavent
> > when X doesn't show up, as Y and Z are still relatively equal to each
> > other.
>
> Bingo! And by doing so, you avoid the need for the silver bullet arms
> race that Peal is saying drags the game down.
I don't agree with the premise that it drags the game down. I see
weenies and breeding as a HUGE, HUGE problem for the game as a whole.
I believe and I think that many, many players will agree that weenies
have such a huge advantage in the game that it is driving new players
away from the game. Also, breed is so good and most of the breed
cards are rares that it is, in fact, the chase rare portion of VTES
that we proclaim doesn't exist, when in fact it does.
Juggernaut1981
*Drags out Maths Degree & Teaching Degree*
If, X + Y + Z = 0 then there are an infinite number of solutions...
If X = 0, then your statement is pointless and you might as well have
said Y = - Z, because Z+Y=0 means either Y = Z = 0 or Y = -Z and
neither =0.
I think the points people are trying to make are this:
XZealot = No matter what you do to a third strategy, if the first to
are approximately equally successful... they will remain equal.
John Eno = Helping X can be done by either: a) reducing the power of Y
& Z (punitive/negative assistance) or b) improving the power of X
(affirmative/positive assistance).
"Silver Bullets" are a punitive assistance. They are designed to
punish a certain strategy or card or trick. They are used by strategy
Y & Z to harm X's strategy rather than push Y & Zs strategy to be
competitive. Ben Peal is saying he wants the arms race to be a
"positive" race instead of a "punitive" race... "how can I improve my
strategies so that all strategies are as effective as each other?"
rather than "how can we punish the effective strategies so that they
are as ineffective as each other?"
The biggest issue then becomes... if Weenies are enough of a problem
that Silver Bullets are proposed... how do you improve Non-Weenie
decks without also helping weenie decks?
So yes, I agree that we need to power-up strategies other than
weenies. But the most common ways to do that are to create cards like
Freak Drive and No Secrets from the Magaji (to give either more
actions or more opportunities to block). And since Freak Drive is
commonly listed as a probably broken card... we hit a deadlock...
XZealot
Enkil Cog, Sense the Savage Way, etc have all be made strickly for the
upper echelons, but it just isn't enough when compared to weenie
embrace which simply overloads its prey's defenses.
Juggernaut1981
>
> - Show quoted text -
But massively multi-acting superstars have almost the same effect.
The core technique of a weenie deck is to have so many actions going
on that your prey has no capability to stop all of them. Isn't this
also the core effect of a Turbo-(Insert Name) deck? Isn't this also
the core effect of a Venture FREAKS deck?
People's eyes do drop out of their skulls when you have a minion take
3 or 4 actions in a single turn and then your other minions start to
act...
The thing to be careful of is this: having big minions untapping and
acting multiple times in a single minion phase is often just as
dangerous as multiple minions acting once. The large minion will have
more disciplines, will have more ability to handle itself in a combat,
will have more ability to avoid the combat itself and so on and so
on. I would be distinctly more worried if Arika et al gained enough
cards to perform 8 actions in a turn and a significant number causing
pool damage... Sure I've got to "only take down one minion" but what
if that job is harder than taking down the horde? (Secure Haven being
a good way to keep a Superstar "rush free") Given the prospect of
trying to take down 5 weenies with my three minions, or one well
protected fatty with the same three... I'd probably prefer the
weenies, because my hit-rate will be higher.
Rehlow
>
> > Bingo! And by doing so, you avoid the need for the silver bullet arms
> > race that Peal is saying drags the game down.
>
> I don't agree with the premise that it drags the game down. I see
> weenies and breeding as a HUGE, HUGE problem for the game as a whole.
>
> I believe and I think that many, many players will agree that weenies
> have such a huge advantage in the game that it is driving new players
> away from the game. Also, breed is so good and most of the breed
> cards are rares that it is, in fact, the chase rare portion of VTES
> that we proclaim doesn't exist, when in fact it does.
I agree with Norm that weenies are too powerful. I also agree that
they need to be nerfed rather than other strategies improved. If you
bring other strategies up to the level of weenies the game will last 6
turns. If all your mid-caps and fatties could each act 2-3 times a
turn and each bleed twice a turn and vote twice a turn it will make
for a very fast game of VTES. I'd like the game a little faster than 2
hours, but the back and forth working towards a slow win is a big
aspect of the game to me.
Traditionally this game has worked very hard to avoid power creep. If
you don't allow for power creep you have to get out a nerf bat.
Later,
~Rehlow
Blooded Sand
> Enkil Cog, Sense the Savage Way, etc have all be made strickly for the
> upper echelons, but it just isn't enough when compared to weenie
> embrace which simply overloads its prey's defenses.
How about implementing something simple, like, as a theoretical,
hypothetical example, vampires do not tap for blocking minions less
than half their capacity?
Johann von Doom
> John Eno = Helping X can be done by either: a) reducing the power of Y
> & Z (punitive/negative assistance) or b) improving the power of X
> (affirmative/positive assistance).
You got it. My main horse in this race is that I take issue with
Norm's assertion that the existence of Scourge and Fourth Cycle make
midcap and large-cap decks better automatically, as that statement is
only true at the abstract level of surveying the card pool, not the
nitty grit of in-the-trenches actual play. And it's the latter that
I'm concerned with. (I now wonder if Norm and I were talking past each
other, which we were if he was actually framing his argument with
respect to the former.)
John Eno
Johann von Doom
> I agree with Norm that weenies are too powerful. I also agree that
> they need to be nerfed rather than other strategies improved. If you
> bring other strategies up to the level of weenies the game will last 6
> turns. If all your mid-caps and fatties could each act 2-3 times a
> turn and each bleed twice a turn and vote twice a turn it will make
> for a very fast game of VTES.
Strawman. Nobody said anything about enabling non-weenie decks to take
twice as many actions per turn. (Which I'm not convinced would make
the game go any faster, actually, as that would just make players'
turns take much longer to complete...but that's a digression that's
got nothing to do with the current discussion.)
> Traditionally this game has worked very hard to avoid power creep. If
> you don't allow for power creep you have to get out a nerf bat.
Just to clarify: You're saying that the silver bullet arms race
doesn't bother you, and that you think it's a good thing? Or that
there should be some other kind of weenie nerfage?
John Eno
Johann von Doom
wrote:
> Strawman. Nobody said anything about enabling non-weenie decks to take
> twice as many actions per turn. (Which I'm not convinced would make
> the game go any faster, actually, as that would just make players'
> turns take much longer to complete...but that's a digression that's
> got nothing to do with the current discussion.)
Heh. Okay, Juggernaut1981 did mention this, but not by framing it as a
desirable thing to see happen. Sorry, I didn't see his post until
after I'd made the one above.
John Eno
Rehlow
wrote:
> On Jun 12, 12:45 am, Rehlow <newsgr...@rehlow.com> wrote:
>
> > I agree with Norm that weenies are too powerful. I also agree that
> > they need to be nerfed rather than other strategies improved. If you
> > bring other strategies up to the level of weenies the game will last 6
> > turns. If all your mid-caps and fatties could each act 2-3 times a
> > turn and each bleed twice a turn and vote twice a turn it will make
> > for a very fast game of VTES.
>
> Strawman. Nobody said anything about enabling non-weenie decks to take
> twice as many actions per turn. (Which I'm not convinced would make
> the game go any faster, actually, as that would just make players'
> turns take much longer to complete...but that's a digression that's
> got nothing to do with the current discussion.)
>
A lot of the strength in weenies is the large number of actions the
Methuselah can take in a turn. Fatties somewhat make up for this in
quality of actions, however weenies can easily come close or match
this quality. An embrace isn't going to bleed for 5 or 6, but it
doesn't take many disciplines to do so. An embrace can still call a
KRC or Con Ag as well as any fattie provided it has enough votes to
push it through (the various each vampire of this clan gains a vote
cards make this fairly trivial).
If you won't nerf weenies, then you need to allow fatties to act more
often or further increase the quality of their actions. I don't think
we want to see larger bleeds, but maybe a new vote like Ancient KRC,
divide 3 points of pool damage among 2 or more Methuselahs, if this
vampire is cap >8 divide 6 points instead, would be a possibility.
However, I think more actions for fatties or more damage output from
fatties is going to result in a game where you try to catch your prey
with a bad hand and get them in a single moment of weakness.
> > Traditionally this game has worked very hard to avoid power creep. If
> > you don't allow for power creep you have to get out a nerf bat.
>
> Just to clarify: You're saying that the silver bullet arms race
> doesn't bother you, and that you think it's a good thing? Or that
> there should be some other kind of weenie nerfage?
Actually I would prefer that weenie decks didn't have any defense
against the silver bullets. Their "defense" should be that they are
overpowered when silver bullets are not in play and still able to
manage with a couple silver bullets attacking them.
FYI - I have yet to see a Scourge of the Enochians hammer away at a
weenie deck. I would think the weenie deck could stay par with the
damage it is doing (replace weenies as fast as they are losing them).
Maybe I am underestimating how devastating it is. Unfortunately, I
haven't had a chance to play too much lately and for various reasons
Scourge doesn't show up in that many decks locally.
Later,
~Rehlow
YMGBen
> My main horse in this race is that I take issue with Norm's assertion
> that the existence of Scourge and Fourth Cycle make midcap and
> large-cap decks better automatically, as that statement is only true
> at the abstract level of surveying the card pool, not the nitty grit of
> in-the-trenches actual play. And it's the latter that I'm concerned
> with.
Yeah, those cards only bring down the power level of weenies (and
thereby increasing the power level of mid- and large-caps) if and only
if people put them in their decks. If they do not, the power level of
weenies remains the same. It's as though you're making an errata card
to be included in all decks. Again, that leads to the dumb silver
bullet mini-game, which isn't about V:TES but is instead about (in
this case) Scourge vs. Uncoiling. It isn't strategy A vs. strategy
B. It's about Card A vs. Card B. You might as well just say, "You
must include these cards in your deck for no other reason than to
counter each other."
Suppose we did create a world where fatties were better than
weenies. Then we'd get into the equally stupid game of Pentex vs.
Wash/Sudden/contested-Pentex. Oh wait, fatties already have to deal
with that.
Regarding Juggernaut1981's suggestion that we stop building decks
that are susceptible to one card totally trashing our game, well, um,
er, are we supposed to just play mid-cap decks from now on? We can't
play weenies or fatties unless we want to play the silver bullet mini-
game. So that leaves mid-caps, with the super-amazing selection of
stealth-bleed, power-bleed, and tap 'n bleed. Mid-cap rush sucks.
Mid-cap vote sucks. Mid-cap wall sucks (Hugh keeps telling me it's
good, but still hasn't explained how it ousts anyone). And, um, why
should weenie and fatties not be viable? Why shouldn't I build a
Cesewayo-advanced deck with these new spiffy cards I just bought?
As for the how-to-depower-weenies and how-to-improve-fatties
discussions...I think a lot of the problem is the desire to allow
people to continue playing with the cards they purchased. Maybe 1- to
3-caps should never have been made. Maybe Embrace, 3rd Trad, Waters,
Bamba, etc, should have cost an additional blood to play. However,
CCP isn't going to ban 1- to 3- caps and isn't going to reprint breed
cards with increased cost updates. That leaves either the silver
bullet mini-game (yuck) or increasing the power of mid- and large-
caps. While I understand the concern about power creep and not
wanting mondo bleedzooka or orbital vote strike decks, I'm of the
opinion that mid- and large-caps can have their power increased
without unbalancing the game - the goal is to balance it, right? So
what if there is power creep if the mid- and large-cap specific cards
weren't good in the first place? It doesn't have to involve crazy
multi-acting. It doesn't have to involve megableeds and megavotes.
It certainly doesn't have to mean that games will only last 6 turns -
where did you get that idea from, Rehlow? I don't recall weenie decks
resulting in 6-turn games. Here's one step for improving fatties: ban
Pentex. Yay. Now I can play Cesewayo.
- Ben Peal
LSJ
> John "Crescent Fresh" Eno wrote:
>> My main horse in this race is that I take issue with Norm's assertion
>> that the existence of Scourge and Fourth Cycle make midcap and
>> large-cap decks better automatically, as that statement is only true
>> at the abstract level of surveying the card pool, not the nitty grit of
>> in-the-trenches actual play. And it's the latter that I'm concerned
>> with.
>
> Yeah, those cards only bring down the power level of weenies (and
> thereby increasing the power level of mid- and large-caps) if and only
> if people put them in their decks. If they do not, the power level of
> weenies remains the same.
Not quite. See Archon Investigation.
Blooded Sand
Um, huh? Not getting you here Scott. What does AI'ing a 2 cap with dom
have to do with anything?
LSJ
"Those cards only bring down the power level of <affected decks> if and only if
people put them in their decks".
AI has had an effect on decks even when nobody at the table actually put one in
their decks.
The existence of Scourge and Fourth Cycle has reportedly[PDB6] had a similar
result: affecting people's weenie decks by their existence, whether or not
anyone at a given table actually put one in their decks.
D.J.
> "Those cards only bring down the power level of <affected decks> if and only if
> people put them in their decks".
>
> AI has had an effect on decks even when nobody at the table actually put one in
> their decks.
While that's true, it's definitely part of the metagame-countermeasure
level thinking Ben's talking about and not enjoying. If folks decide
that AI makes bleeding for more than three too risky, and thus the
metagame shifts to having bleeds at 3 or less (and/or including
Monocle of Clarity in decks specifically to ask about AI/bounce), then
any AI you put into your deck becomes wasted space. Once that's the
case, all it takes is someone to say "Hmm... AI's rare enough that
it's worth the risk. Hell with it, I'm bleeding for 9." And the
game turns back to the roulette level of "do they have the magic
bullet to counter my strategy."
- D.J.
LSJ
> On Jun 12, 2:54 pm, LSJ <vtes...@white-wolf.com> wrote:
>
>> "Those cards only bring down the power level of <affected decks> if and only if
>> people put them in their decks".
>>
>> AI has had an effect on decks even when nobody at the table actually put one in
>> their decks.
>
> While that's true, it's definitely part of the metagame-countermeasure
> level thinking Ben's talking about and not enjoying.
Um. Sure. I was just addressing the "if and only if" assertion.
D.J.
Fair enough. Except that to a degree, for a deck to be an "affected
deck" at the level Ben's talking about, it has to actually *be*
bleeding for 4+; otherwise, it's a different deck. Therefore, AI does
nothing to counter a deck bleeding for 4+ unless the AI is put in a
deck (and drawn, etc). What it does, is create different decks that
don't tend to do that.
- D.J.
suoli
> While that's true, it's definitely part of the metagame-countermeasure
> level thinking Ben's talking about and not enjoying. If folks decide
> that AI makes bleeding for more than three too risky, and thus the
> metagame shifts to having bleeds at 3 or less (and/or including
> Monocle of Clarity in decks specifically to ask about AI/bounce), then
> any AI you put into your deck becomes wasted space. Once that's the
> case, all it takes is someone to say "Hmm... AI's rare enough that
> it's worth the risk. Hell with it, I'm bleeding for 9." And the
> game turns back to the roulette level of "do they have the magic
> bullet to counter my strategy."
>
> - D.J.
That's unlikely. We don't see any huge swings in stealth vs.
intercept, combat defense vs. combat etc. Why would we see it in AI
vs. big bleed?
suoli
> Therefore, AI does
> nothing to counter a deck bleeding for 4+ unless the AI is put in a
> deck (and drawn, etc).
I don't know about that. If I'm bleeding a deck with no access to
bounce Conditioning tends to get played at inferior.
Ben Peal
> "Those cards only bring down the power level of <affected decks> if and only if
> people put them in their decks".
>
> AI has had an effect on decks even when nobody at the table actually put one in
> their decks.
Ok, sure, I see your point about "if and only if". However, if
there was a viable card to counter AI, then perhaps we'd see a rise in
bleedzookas.
> The existence of Scourge and Fourth Cycle has reportedly[PDB6] had a similar
> result: affecting people's weenie decks by their existence, whether or not
> anyone at a given table actually put one in their decks.
If you opt to only look at one data point. Or you could go with
DirkAdvanced's alternate strategy - putting in 4x Uncoiling.
- Ben Peal
D.J.
> On 12 kesä, 22:05, "D.J." <dj...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
> > While that's true, it's definitely part of the metagame-countermeasure
> > level thinking Ben's talking about and not enjoying. If folks decide
> > that AI makes bleeding for more than three too risky, and thus the
> > metagame shifts to having bleeds at 3 or less (and/or including
> > Monocle of Clarity in decks specifically to ask about AI/bounce), then
> > any AI you put into your deck becomes wasted space. Once that's the
> > case, all it takes is someone to say "Hmm... AI's rare enough that
> > it's worth the risk. Hell with it, I'm bleeding for 9." And the
> > game turns back to the roulette level of "do they have the magic
> > bullet to counter my strategy."
> That's unlikely. We don't see any huge swings in stealth vs.
> intercept, combat defense vs. combat etc. Why would we see it in AI
> vs. big bleed?
Sorry if it sounded like I was talking big swings; that wasn't what I
meant to imply. What I was trying to address was the fact that
outliers demonstrate that the "existence depowers target" theory isn't
really valid, all in all. If bleed decks are scared enough of AI that
nobody feels they need to play the AI (since they never get to *play*
the AI in a given game 90% of the time), then when someone decides
"heck with AI, I never see it anyhow" it hasn't lowered their power
level at all. It might make them a lot less frequent, but that's only
because there's a "magic bullet" strategy at work. (*ESPECIALLY* in
the case of cards like AI, which in the absence of a big bleed are
dead cards. The "count-the-minions-and-slap-everyone" votes are not
quite to that level, since they have other uses.)
I'd much prefer a game where such big bleeds were difficult or
expensive enough that they were their own control, rather than rely on
a magic-bullet card to keep them in line. Similarly, I'd rather
weenie decks were self-balancing rather than relying on the other
players' potentially playing a given card. But at this point, those
aren't really options, so we make do.
- D.J.
LSJ
Exactly my point. Changing the composition of a deck will certainly affect that
deck. The existence of AI affects power bleed decks (by players altering their
composition). In the same way, the existence of the weenie hosers affects weenie
decks. The existence of aggravated damage also affects close-range combat decks
(by affecting their construction), even if no aggravated-dealing cards are
played. And so on.
If a card is made whose very existence means that everyone suddenly stops
playing any vampires of capacity less than 8 will certainly "affect weenie
decks", even though (or rather, "in exactly that") no weenie deck is ever played
again.
The current weenie hosers affect weenie decks to a lesser extent. For example,
rather than replacing every weenie in the crypt with an 8-cap, PDB6 simply
replaced the 1- and 2- caps with 3-caps. That change affects the weenie deck.
LSJ
> LSJ wrote:
>> The existence of Scourge and Fourth Cycle has reportedly[PDB6] had a similar
>> result: affecting people's weenie decks by their existence, whether or not
>> anyone at a given table actually put one in their decks.
>
> If you opt to only look at one data point. Or you could go with
> DirkAdvanced's alternate strategy - putting in 4x Uncoiling.
Excellent: two data points. Putting in 4x Uncoiling also affects the deck.
D.J.
> If a card is made whose very existence means that everyone suddenly stops
> playing any vampires of capacity less than 8 will certainly "affect weenie
> decks", even though (or rather, "in exactly that") no weenie deck is ever played
> again.
At which point, why would anyone waste the space in their deck on that
card?
- D.J.
Peter D Bakija
> The existence of Scourge and Fourth Cycle has reportedly[PDB6] had a similar
> result: affecting people's weenie decks by their existence, whether or not
> anyone at a given table actually put one in their decks.
Correct. Much like AI (which has the effect of making people bleed for
more than 3 less often and occasionally makes people design decks to
not even be able to bleed for more than 3, regardless of whether or
not they see one in play in a given game), Scourge seems likely to
make people not use 1-2 caps. I mean, not all the time, sure. But I
certainly changed a large number of my decks to bottom out with 3 caps
after getting traumatized/hosed by Scourge in a few games. I could
also play the silver bullet game of Uncoiling, but in a lot of decks,
just making all the 2 caps into 3 caps seems like a much better plan
(and then including Scourge instead of Uncoiling :-)
Again, is this going to affect everyone like this? No, of course not.
But some (many) people will react to Scourge like they react to AI--
they default to building their decks to avoid these hazards. Sure,
some people will still play all 1 caps and say "Scourge be damned!",
much like some folks still bleed for 7 and say "Well, maybe I'll get
AIed. I can deal." But in the grand scheme, I suspect that the very
existence of Scourge will result in fewer 1-2 caps seeing play in
general.
-Peter
suoli
> Sorry if it sounded like I was talking big swings; that wasn't what I
> meant to imply. What I was trying to address was the fact that
> outliers demonstrate that the "existence depowers target" theory isn't
> really valid, all in all. If bleed decks are scared enough of AI that
> nobody feels they need to play the AI (since they never get to *play*
> the AI in a given game 90% of the time), then when someone decides
> "heck with AI, I never see it anyhow" it hasn't lowered their power
> level at all. It might make them a lot less frequent, but that's only
> because there's a "magic bullet" strategy at work.
This is exactly what I meant. "Heck with X, I never see it anyhow"
should be as true to any other counterparts like stealth vs. intercept
as it is for AI vs. big bleed. In reality the trend is somewhere
between the two extremes of "heck with X" and "X will kill me if I
play this", mostly dictated by the efficiency of those counterparts.
Peter D Bakija
> If you opt to only look at one data point. Or you could go with
> DirkAdvanced's alternate strategy - putting in 4x Uncoiling.
That is certainly a viable plan for certain decks--breed/boon decks,
for example that don't start the game with weenies in play and also
*can't* replace their kids with 3 caps. Such a deck has no choice but
to play with Uncoiling. Which makes the deck less good (as you need to
replace a handful of good cards with Uncoilings, which often will just
be dead draws). If the intention of Scourge was to make decks that
rely on weenie vampires (like breed/boon decks) less good, making them
include a handful of Uncoilings certainly does that. I mean, yeah, I
totally see your point of the silver bullet game being sub-optimal.
But in terms of "Does Scourge reduce the effectiveness of weenie decks
even if it doesn't see play?", I think it does, either by compelling
you to turn all your 1-2 caps into 3 caps or by including a bunch of
Uncoilings. In either case, the deck is less good, even if Scourge
doesn't see play in a particular game.
(My biggest beef, however, with Scourge is that it makes poor Hermana
Menor total wallpaper, and they were fun, funny, and rarely overly
effective. Now we really need some sort of trifle skill card for Blood
Brothers to save them...)
-Peter
suoli
Because they know that every time the pendulum swings it will swing
back slightly less, eventually reaching a point of stability.
D.J.
> On 12 kesä, 23:07, "D.J." <dj...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
> > On Jun 12, 3:54 pm, LSJ <vtes...@white-wolf.com> wrote:
>
> > > If a card is made whose very existence means that everyone suddenly stops
> > > playing any vampires of capacity less than 8 will certainly "affect weenie
> > > decks", even though (or rather, "in exactly that") no weenie deck is ever played
> > > again.
>
> > At which point, why would anyone waste the space in their deck on that
> > card?
>
> back slightly less, eventually reaching a point of stability.
LSJ's purported result was that no weenie deck is ever played again.
I don't see how that's possible.
Given the pendulum theory (which in principle I agree with), once it's
fairly stable at the "well, nobody plays weenies anymore" level,
advantage goes to the players who decide "In that case, I can take
this junk out." And once everyone starts following suit, advantage
then swings to "Oh, looks like I can play blitzkrieg weenies again."
Yes, the pendulum keeps stabilizing (no argument there) a little
quicker each time, and gets a little less extreme, but there's
*ALWAYS* a magic-bullet dynamic left in there, which is arguably the
problem.
- D.J.
D.J.
Stealth vs. intercept *does* do that, at least around here, as does
combat vs. defense, votes vs. anti-vote, etc. - doesn't it for you? I
wouldn't say "big swings" on most of them, but there's a gradual
pendulum factor in the metagame as a whole.
I think we're talking different sides of the same point, though, all
in all - it's a case of whether the thinking is that magic-bullet
effects (which have a more dramatic pendulum possibility due to single-
cardness instead of strategy-wide implications) are too blunt an
instrument due to their inherent poor stabilization, or a good thing
because they're so potentially effective if they work that they create
a psychological shift.
- D.J.
Johann von Doom
> (My biggest beef, however, with Scourge is that it makes poor Hermana
> Menor total wallpaper, and they were fun, funny, and rarely overly
> effective.
This is one of my personal issues with the silver bullets - they often
end up hitting background targets that they weren't aimed at, and
which didn't need to be depowered any more than they already were
naturally. Scourge, for instance, not only harms (theoretically at
least) breed/boon and 1-cap Hack decks, but also superstar multirush
decks that relied on 1-cap dorks to bleed out a prey whose ready
region had been neutered by the superstar.
Again, in theory if not in practice, Improving other strategies and
levelling the playing field eliminates this kind of unwanted
collateral damage rather than accidentally nerfing already subpar deck
types.
John Eno