Concealed Weapon - proposal 1.1

Someone had an idea to see what the interest was on errata'ing CW to be discaplineless. This thread is in essence a sign up sheet for that. Feel free to voice disenting views as well. cast your votes on the issue below: NAME EMAIL VOTE Jason sirt...@aol.com FOR

> Someone had an idea to see what the interest was on errata'ing > Concealed Weapon to be disciplineless. This thread is in essence > a sign up sheet for that. Feel free to voice dissenting views > as well. cast your votes on the issue below: > > NAME EMAIL VOTE > > Jason sirt...@aol.com FOR Lasombra bi...@scn.org FOR -----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==----- http://www.dejanews.com/ Now offering spam-free web-based newsreading

> Someone had an idea to see what the interest was on errata'ing > Concealed Weapon to be disciplineless. This thread is in essence > a sign up sheet for that. Feel free to voice dissenting views > as well. cast your votes on the issue below: > > NAME EMAIL VOTE > > Jason sirt...@aol.com FOR > Lasombra bi...@scn.org FOR Lupus A jbwh...@dorsai.org FOR Lupus Australis ____ ____ \ \----/ / |()__()| __\ __ /__ / __\()/__ \ |/ \==/ \| | || |

SirTemple wrote: > Someone had an idea to see what the interest was on errata'ing CW to > be > discaplineless. This thread is in essence a sign up sheet for that. > Feel free > to voice disenting views as well. cast your votes on the issue below: > > NAME EMAIL VOTE > > Jason sirt...@aol.com FOR Mike Mi...@leila.ping.de FOR

SirTemple <sirt...@aol.com> wrote in article <19980311230...@ladder02.news.aol.com>... > Someone had an idea to see what the interest was on errata'ing CW to be > discaplineless. This thread is in essence a sign up sheet for that. Feel free > to voice disenting views as well. cast your votes on the issue below: > > NAME EMAIL VOTE > > Jason sirt...@aol.com FOR > Celt tirn...@mindspring.com FOR

: SirTemple <sirt...@aol.com> wrote in article [ quoted text not captured ] A. Kaiser vann...@op.net AGAINST I hate to be the dissenting voice, but I think making CW disciplineless destroys the spirit of the card. The whole idea is that you've got Obfuscate, so you're gonna be able to pull off hiding a weapon, but otherwise, someone will notice (what with Vampires' enhanced senses and all). Also from the point of view of playing the game, this could make some Rush Decks pretty obscene, in my opinion... CW doesn't seem to be broken, so I don't think it needs to be fixed. Just my two cents. Andy

In article <6e7jdc$i23$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, Lasombra <bi...@scn.org> wrote: > > > > Someone had an idea to see what the interest was on errata'ing > > Concealed Weapon to be disciplineless. This thread is in essence > > a sign up sheet for that. Feel free to voice dissenting views > > as well. cast your votes on the issue below: > > > > NAME EMAIL VOTE > > > > Jason sirt...@aol.com FOR > Lasombra bi...@scn.org FOR Robert G robert...@studio.disney.com FOR [ quoted text not captured ]

robert...@studio.disney.com wrote in article <6e95b8$m7k$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>... > In article <6e7jdc$i23$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, > Lasombra <bi...@scn.org> wrote: > > > > > > > Someone had an idea to see what the interest was on errata'ing > > > Concealed Weapon to be disciplineless. This thread is in essence > > > a sign up sheet for that. Feel free to voice dissenting views > > > as well. cast your votes on the issue below: > > > > > > NAME EMAIL VOTE > > > > > > Jason sirt...@aol.com FOR > > Lasombra bi...@scn.org FOR > Robert G robert...@studio.disney.com FOR Steve Bucy tb...@lainet.com FOR

|> > > Someone had an idea to see what the interest was on errata'ing |> > > Concealed Weapon to be disciplineless. This thread is in essence |> > > a sign up sheet for that. Feel free to voice dissenting views |> > > as well. cast your votes on the issue below: |> > > |> > > NAME EMAIL VOTE |> > > |> > > Jason sirt...@aol.com FOR |> > Lasombra bi...@scn.org FOR |> Robert G robert...@studio.disney.com FOR Olivier M oliv...@bristol.st.com FOR

In article <6e94jl$gqo$1...@picasso.op.net>, vann...@op.net (Andy Kaiser) wrote: > : SirTemple <sirt...@aol.com> wrote in article > : <19980311230...@ladder02.news.aol.com>... > : > Someone had an idea to see what the interest was on errata'ing CW to be > : > discaplineless. This thread is in essence a sign up sheet for that. > : Feel free > : > to voice disenting views as well. cast your votes on the issue below: > : > > : > NAME EMAIL VOTE > : > > : > Jason sirt...@aol.com FOR > : > Celt tirn...@mindspring.com FOR > > A. Kaiser vann...@op.net AGAINST > > I hate to be the dissenting voice, but I think making CW disciplineless > destroys the spirit of the card. The whole idea is that you've got > Obfuscate, so you're gonna be able to pull off hiding a weapon, but > otherwise, someone will notice (what with Vampires' enhanced senses and > all). Also from the point of view of playing the game, this could make > some Rush Decks pretty obscene, in my opinion... CW doesn't seem to be > broken, so I don't think it needs to be fixed. Just my two cents. > And I hate to be in the majority, but I really do think that Lupus was dead right about this one. From the point of game-play, Concealed Weapon as an Obfuscate card is inexplicable, since it is worse than Disguised weapon but it costs the same. And it is obviously a misprint that runs counter to game design philosophy, because of the card numbers that Lupus so diligently researched. From the point of view of role-playing the proposed change makes perfect sense ["Haha! Foul fiend of darkness! You think to take me unawares? Then how about meeting my friends Smith and Wesson!!! BLAM! BLAM!]. Finally, from the game point of view it boosts Allies and ADDS something to the game, rather than taking something away, which is the [in my view regrettable] tendency of most of these posts. Legbiter james.m...@port.ac.uk FOR. Also, can I point out that Jason's email is spelt wrong? It is sirt...@aol.com. Sorry if this breaks your anti-spam cover, matey!

Whoops... Change my earlier vote to "FOR" - I was mistaking Disguised Weapon for Concealed Weapon... (Thatnks, Lupus, for pointing that out.) Just ignore all the comments I made, and give me the "Doh!" award for March 1998. :) Andy Andy Kaiser (vann...@op.net) wrote: : A. Kaiser vann...@op.net AGAINST : I hate to be the dissenting voice, but I think making CW disciplineless : destroys the spirit of the card. The whole idea is that you've got : Obfuscate, so you're gonna be able to pull off hiding a weapon, but : otherwise, someone will notice (what with Vampires' enhanced senses and : all). Also from the point of view of playing the game, this could make : some Rush Decks pretty obscene, in my opinion... CW doesn't seem to be : broken, so I don't think it needs to be fixed. Just my two cents. : : Andy

> > : SirTemple <sirt...@aol.com> wrote in article > > : <19980311230...@ladder02.news.aol.com>... > > : > Someone had an idea to see what the interest was on errata'ing CW to be > > : > discaplineless. This thread is in essence a sign up sheet for that. > > : Feel free > > : > to voice disenting views as well. cast your votes on the issue below: > > : > > > : > NAME EMAIL VOTE > > : > > > : > Jason sirt...@aol.com FOR > > : > Celt tirn...@mindspring.com FOR > > A. Kaiser vann...@op.net AGAINST > Legbiter james.m...@port.ac.uk FOR. T_Ban...@Premier-Lending.com FOR I have always felt that this was the original intention for the card. This would be great to help out allies. I have been playing Jyhad since the game came out and I have only seen a few different allies played at all. Way to many anti-allies cards in the game when no one plays allies. TB

In article <6eaodc$6...@milkwort.bri.st.com>, olivier wrote: > > |> > > Someone had an idea to see what the interest was on errata'ing > |> > > Concealed Weapon to be disciplineless. This thread is in essence > |> > > a sign up sheet for that. Feel free to voice dissenting views > |> > > as well. cast your votes on the issue below: > |> > > > |> > > NAME EMAIL VOTE > |> > > > |> > > Jason sirt...@aol.com FOR > |> > Lasombra bi...@scn.org FOR > |> Robert G robert...@studio.disney.com FOR > Olivier M oliv...@bristol.st.com FOR David McCarty rai...@mich.com FOR [ quoted text not captured ]

Results to date: John Whelan wrote: > > Someone had an idea to see what the interest was on errata'ing > > Concealed Weapon to be disciplineless. This thread is in essence > > a sign up sheet for that. Feel free to voice dissenting views > > as well. cast your votes on the issue below: > > > > NAME EMAIL VOTE > > > > Jason sirt...@aol.com FOR > > Lasombra bi...@scn.org FOR > Lupus A jbwh...@dorsai.org FOR > Robert G robert...@studio.disney.com FOR > Steve Bucy tb...@lainet.com FOR > Olivier M oliv...@bristol.st.com FOR > David McCarty rai...@mich.com FOR > Mike Mi...@leila.ping.de FOR > Celt tirn...@mindspring.com FOR > T_Ban...@Premier-Lending.com FOR > A. Kaiser vann...@op.net FOR Chris Shorb ino...@ix.netcom.com FOR -- Chris Shorb & Tammy Martin ino...@ix.netcom.com "In fuzzy logic, there's no rule to design or make a model, and that's probably why people don't like fuzzy logic. That's the most important point." -Yuzo Kato

On 13 Mar 1998 07:48:59 GMT, olivier wrote: >|> > > Someone had an idea to see what the interest was on errata'ing >|> > > Concealed Weapon to be disciplineless. This thread is in essence >|> > > a sign up sheet for that. Feel free to voice dissenting views >|> > > as well. cast your votes on the issue below: >|> > > >|> > > NAME EMAIL VOTE >|> > > >|> > > Jason sirt...@aol.com FOR >|> > Lasombra bi...@scn.org FOR >|> Robert G robert...@studio.disney.com FOR > Olivier M oliv...@bristol.st.com FOR Tony Van To...@TheGrid.net FOR

Tony Van wrote: [ quoted text not captured ] Autarch dark...@ozramp.net.ay FOR

I think this is everyone who voted thus far. It is 15-0 for making Concealed Weapon discaplineless. Here are the reasons to support the change that we have advocated. Given card text: Concealed Weapon: "Equip this minion with a weapon card from your hand at the begining of a round. Pay weapon's equip cost from blood poll, as normal. The weapon cannot cost more than two pool or do more than 4 damage. Disguised Weapon: "Equip this vampire with a weapon card from your hand. Only usable at the beginning of a round. Pay weapon's cost from blood pool as normal. AS ABOVE, BUT USABLE WHEN CHOOSING A STRIKE. 1. It is not logical to have two cards doing the same thing, especially when one is a limited version of the other. For the same cost DW does what a concealed weapon does, and possibly more. There is no reason to use a Concealed weapon in the game when you can use Disguised Weapon. 2. Card text supports CW being discaplineless. DW specifies that it is usable only by a vampire, while CW allows any minion to use it. Since only Vampires may possess Obfuscate, it once again makes sence for DW to require it and CW to be discaplineless. 3. Card format supports proposition. DW is set up with a basic and supperior level like most discapline based cards. CW is set up like most discaplineless cards, only one version, no superior. 4. Card concept supprts change. It is quite feasible to supprise an opponent with a small concealed weapon. CW does this by limiting thae weapons cost and damage. DW on the other hand is the use of a super-natural ability, and therefore can produce any weapon. 5. Card picture supports this concept. The character on CW is simply pulling a small gun out of his coat. He is not using any special tricks, simple pulling out his concealed weapon. Does anyone else have an additional reason before we submit the proposal? Results to date: NAME EMAIL VOTE Jason sirt...@aol.com FOR Lasombra bi...@scn.org FOR Lupus A jbwh...@dorsai.org FOR Robert G robert...@studio.disney.com FOR Steve Bucy tb...@lainet.com FOR Olivier M oliv...@bristol.st.com FOR David McCarty rai...@mich.com FOR Mike Mi...@leila.ping.de FOR Celt tirn...@mindspring.com FOR T_Ban...@Premier-Lending.com FOR A. Kaiser vann...@op.net FOR Chris Shorb ino...@ix.netcom.com FOR Tony Van To...@TheGrid.net FOR Autarch dark...@ozramp.net.ay FOR Legbiter james.m...@port.ac.uk FOR.

There was one other reason. In the original set, all disciplines had 10 cards. The exceptions were Thaumatugy(9), Fortitude(11), and Obfuscate(11). The missing Thaumaturgy card was Blood Fury (Rage?), which was misprinted as a Fortitude card (thus evening out those two disicplines). The extra obfuscate card was obviously Concealed Weapon. [ quoted text not captured ]

On 16 Mar 1998, SirTemple wrote: > Does anyone else have an additional reason before we submit the proposal? Yes. All of the above is convincing as far as it goes. But the Powers That Be were probably already aware of much, if not all, of it. Still, rather than add to the already expanding list of errata, they chose to simply discontinue the card as the redundant wallpaper it was (this decision being based on your reason #1). Thus, Concealed Weapon was dropped from the V:tES set to make room for some new Anti-Bleed cards. That is why I assume they dropped the card instead of trying to salvage it with errata: 1) they wanted to make room for the anti-bleed cards, 2) they did not want to add to the errata lists, and most importantly 3) they did not think a disciplineless version of DW was needed for the game. If we want the Powers That Be to change their minds, we need to convince them that they were wrong about reason #3. We need to convince them that Concealed Weapon, if properly fixed, would improve and benefit the game. If it were merely an issue of saving CW itself from being wallpaper, then I would see no reason not to let it rot in wallpaper hell along with the original "Chainsaw". The proposed fix would not merely save CW from being wallpaper. It would help save a whole host of other cards from being wallpaper too. It would give both weapons and allies, both of which are horrendously underused, a needed boost, adding to the balance, variety, and unpredictability of the game. I think this is what needs to be emphasized. I need not elaborate further, since my arguments along these lines were detailed in my original post. [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <19980316170...@ladder01.news.aol.com>, sirt...@aol.com (SirTemple) wrote: > I think this is everyone who voted thus far. > It is 15-0 for making Concealed Weapon discaplineless. <snip, but agree with all of it> > Does anyone else have an additional reason before we submit the proposal? I thought Lupus's point about there being too many Obfuscate cards [12 instead of 11? Lupus please help!] if CW really is one of them was especially telling.

sirt...@aol.com (SirTemple) wrote: >I think this is everyone who voted thus far. >It is 15-0 for making Concealed Weapon discaplineless. >Here are the reasons to support the change that we have advocated. "Why not play Devil's Advocate?" I thought, and dive right in. I'll put my vote in AGAINST, quite simply because Concealed Weapon as a disciplineless card would eliminate most Equip with Weapon actions. Effectively, just about every smaller weapon becomes a Combat card (like Zip Gun) when used in conjunction with a disciplineless CW. You'd be foolish to ever consider an action to equip ever again. I always felt that the Powers That Be changed CW over to Obfuscate when they realized there would be no real need for DW, and no "pseudo-equipping" advantage to the Obfuscate discipline, if CW were to be disciplineless. >Given card text: >Concealed Weapon: "Equip this minion with a weapon card from your hand at the >begining of a round. Pay weapon's equip cost from blood poll, as normal. The >weapon cannot cost more than two pool or do more than 4 damage. What weapons _aren't_ covered by the above limitation? Assault Rifle Submachine Gun RPG Launcher Flamethrower Gas Powered Chainsaw Any others? I take most of these weapons and throw them in the Horrid Reality Deck, or in a dark corner of the den. Mostly, they aren't used in quantity. CW doesn't sufficiently limit exactly what weapons it allows minions without Obf to get without risk of a blocked action. Sorry, but I _like_ the fact that there's at least a shot of blocking someone from equipping with the Ivory Bow, even if its just a wistful thought, as my Nosferatu look on in abject horror ;-) That opportunity to block is gone once CW is disciplineless. This would also speed up weenie gun decks, as there is no delay for the equip action. Another negative, IMHO. >Disguised Weapon: "Equip this vampire with a weapon card from your hand. Only >usable at the beginning of a round. Pay weapon's cost from blood pool as >normal. AS ABOVE, BUT USABLE WHEN CHOOSING A STRIKE. >1. It is not logical to have two cards doing the same thing, especially when >one is a limited version of the other. For the same cost DW does what a >concealed weapon does, and possibly more. There is no reason to use a >Concealed weapon in the game when you can use Disguised Weapon. But the two are nearly interchangeable, unless you're going for that big weapon... >2. Card text supports CW being discaplineless. DW specifies that it is usable >only by a vampire, while CW allows any minion to use it. Since only Vampires >may possess Obfuscate, it once again makes sence for DW to require it and CW to >be discaplineless. It may have originally been intended as a disciplineless card, before playtesting... I think the above arguments might have been part of the reason for the change to Obf... >3. Card format supports proposition. DW is set up with a basic and supperior >level like most discapline based cards. CW is set up like most discaplineless >cards, only one version, no superior. Moot, really. So does Army of Rats. >4. Card concept supprts change. It is quite feasible to supprise an opponent >with a small concealed weapon. CW does this by limiting thae weapons cost and >damage. DW on the other hand is the use of a super-natural ability, and >therefore can produce any weapon. CW doesn't limit the weapons cost and damage enough to support a "real world" analogy like the one above. You can still CW an Ivory Bow, or a Bastard Sword (it should take an immortal Highlander to do that ;-) >5. Card picture supports this concept. The character on CW is simply pulling >a small gun out of his coat. He is not using any special tricks, simple >pulling out his concealed weapon. > !?!?! And the artist's signature is in the bottom corner, meaning it should only be played by him... This is really stretching it... >Does anyone else have an additional reason before we submit the proposal? > Think a bit about the effect of a disciplineless CW on the game, and try to see why WotC might have consiously changed the card to Obf. from disciplineless... >Results to date: >NAME EMAIL VOTE >Jason sirt...@aol.com FOR >Lasombra bi...@scn.org FOR >Lupus A jbwh...@dorsai.org FOR >Robert G robert...@studio.disney.com FOR >Steve Bucy tb...@lainet.com FOR >Olivier M oliv...@bristol.st.com FOR >David McCarty rai...@mich.com FOR >Mike Mi...@leila.ping.de FOR >Celt tirn...@mindspring.com FOR >T_Ban...@Premier-Lending.com FOR >A. Kaiser vann...@op.net FOR >Chris Shorb ino...@ix.netcom.com FOR >Tony Van To...@TheGrid.net FOR >Autarch dark...@ozramp.net.ay FOR >Legbiter james.m...@port.ac.uk FOR. R. David Zopf guenh...@mindspring.com AGAINST Regards, R. David Zopf guenh...@mindspring.com Atom Weaver & V:EKN Prince of Boston

In article <6emumc$u...@camel21.mindspring.com>, you wrote: >sirt...@aol.com (SirTemple) wrote: > >>I think this is everyone who voted thus far. >>It is 15-0 for making Concealed Weapon discaplineless. >>Here are the reasons to support the change that we have advocated. > >"Why not play Devil's Advocate?" I thought, and dive right in. I'll >put my vote in AGAINST, Well I'm glad someone did. The unanymity was beginning to seem eerily wrong. >quite simply because Concealed Weapon as a >disciplineless card would eliminate most Equip with Weapon actions. >Effectively, just about every smaller weapon becomes a Combat card >(like Zip Gun) when used in conjunction with a disciplineless CW. True, though why is that wrong? The "wasted time" of an equip action is one of the reasons why equip actions are so rarely done, and weapons are just not a part of combat, as I believe they were intended to be. >You'd be foolish to ever consider an action to equip ever again. Well, that's simply not true. I play with Nossies all the time, and we certainly do take equip actions. We even occasionally take equip actions with weapons. There is not always room in the deck for both the weapons I want and the DWs to help bring them out. Or maybe my deck has only one or two weapons in it. In that case, even if I do put in one or two DWs to complement them, there is an excellent chance that I will not be lucky enough to have both in my hand at the same time. I will either have my hand jammed with 2 DWs, which I will be forced to discard, or with 2 weapons, obliging me to take an action to equip. >I always felt that the Powers That Be changed CW over to Obfuscate when >they realized there would be no real need for DW, and no >"pseudo-equipping" advantage to the Obfuscate discipline, if CW were >to be disciplineless. I don't think the greater advantage of Obfuscate was meant to be pseudo-equiping. It is the Brujah, not the Nossies or the Malkavians, who were supposed to be the typical and most efficient weapon users, especially as they have the Arms Dealers to help them to coordinate CW and Weapon in their hand at the same time. The advantage of the inferior version of DW over CW is no greater (and, I would argue, no less) than that of Undead Strength over Lucky Blow. The superior version of DW, however, I would argue gives a significant advantage, especially if your minion is not the acting one, as your opponent does not know when he strikes that you will be pulling out Talbot's Chainsaw or Bomb. >>Given card text: >>Concealed Weapon: "Equip this minion with a weapon card from your hand at the >>begining of a round. Pay weapon's equip cost from blood poll, as normal. The >>weapon cannot cost more than two pool or do more than 4 damage. > >What weapons _aren't_ covered by the above limitation? > Assault Rifle > Submachine Gun > RPG Launcher > Flamethrower > Gas Powered Chainsaw > Any others? First, Gas Powered Chainsaw should not be on the list. You left off.... Combat Shotgun (as good as a submachine gun to most Nossies or Malks) Bomb Talbot's Chainsaw >I take most of these weapons and throw them in the Horrid >Reality Deck, or in a dark corner of the den. Mostly, they aren't >used in quantity. I put a few Assault Rifles in my Nossie Blood Generator Deck once, and whipped them out with DW. A real unpleasant surprise for those guys who thought we Weenie Voter Consanguinous Boon Callers were helpless. >CW doesn't sufficiently limit exactly what weapons >it allows minions without Obf to get without risk of a blocked action. I would have preferred that Unique Weapons be excluded, but this because I am just a little jealous of my Nossies' privileges, not because I think it makes Weapon-based combat too powerful. >Sorry, but I _like_ the fact that there's at least a shot of blocking >someone from equipping with the Ivory Bow, even if its just a wistful >thought, as my Nosferatu look on in abject horror ;-) That >opportunity to block is gone once CW is disciplineless. To a large extent it is, but why should it not be this way? Are you really afraid that weapon-based combat will become TOO powerful? The difficulty and time getting weapons into play is one of the major reasons (along with their cost) they are not played at all. > This would also speed up weenie gun decks, as there is no delay for >the equip action. Another negative, IMHO. The only thing wrong with Weenie Gun decks, that I can see, is Zip Gun/DBR, but that is a separate issue. A disciplineless CW has not a chance to be nearly as abusive as that combo. Look, if weapon-based combat becomes a problem for you, heres what you can do: Shattering Blow: Destroys his stuff before he can use it. Canine Horde: Destroys his stuff at long range before he can use it. Fast Hands: Takes his weapon away from him (then you additional strike and use it against him). Peace Treaty: Forces Players with Weapons to pay again or burn them. Immortal Grapple: Prevents opponent from using weapon strikes. Blood Rage/Blood Fury: Prevents opponent from doing damage with weapons. Drawing out the Beast: Prevents opposing vampire from using any stuff. Frenzy: Prevents opposing vampire from using any stuff. With judicious use of the above cards, you really should be able to deal with weapon-based combat if it becomes a persistant nuisance. Note that allies are immune to the last 2 effects, an important boost for them as DOTB is one of the most deadly and reliable of all weapon hosers. Allies need the boost that CW will give them. I did not include the expansion cards, which include some handy equipment hosers as well. Fractured Armament for one. Note that most of the above cards (from the original set) are on everyone's wallpaper list. Only those that have additional uses besides hosing weapons are generally used or seen. Each of the original combat disciplines has some way of dealing with weapons, which it was thought would become a major part of the game. Weapon did not become a significant part of the game, however, and so few people put them in their decks that specialized weapon hosers are complete wallpaper. Why are they Wallpaper? Because weapons never became a significant part of combat as they were intended to. They lost CW, which was intended to be their most important support card. >It may have originally been intended as a disciplineless card, before >playtesting... I think the above arguments might have been part of >the reason for the change to Obf... A significant possibility, though I doubt an errata's CW would seriously enhance weapons in the current play environment. Players are too experienced and discipline-based combat too strong. >>3. Card format supports proposition. DW is set up with a basic and supperior >>level like most discapline based cards. CW is set up like most discaplineless >>cards, only one version, no superior. > >Moot, really. So does Army of Rats. The point is not conclusive, but it does support the position of the card's original intent. >>4. Card concept supprts change. It is quite feasible to supprise an opponent >>with a small concealed weapon. CW does this by limiting thae weapons cost and >>damage. DW on the other hand is the use of a super-natural ability, and >>therefore can produce any weapon. > >CW doesn't limit the weapons cost and damage enough to support a "real >world" analogy like the one above. You can still CW an Ivory Bow, or >a Bastard Sword (it should take an immortal Highlander to do that ;-) Nonetheless, that is clearly the concept behind the limitation. If you want justification -- Ivory Bows have some advantages in that no-one expects that funny-shaped packet you are carrying to be an obsolete weapon, as it is the wrong shape to be a gun. It might not look much like a bow until you string it. It can also pass through metal detectors with ease. If Bastard Swords bother you, use Meat Cleavers from the Sabbat set. >>5. Card picture supports this concept. The character on CW is simply pulling >>a small gun out of his coat. He is not using any special tricks, simple >>pulling out his concealed weapon. >> >!?!?! And the artist's signature is in the bottom corner, meaning it >should only be played by him... This is really stretching it... It's not stretching it at all. You have already conceded that the card could easily have been intended as disciplineless before the design change, so what are you arguing about? The picture, title, restrictions, and lack of a superior version are all consistent with the disciplineless card concept. >>Does anyone else have an additional reason before we submit the proposal? >> >Think a bit about the effect of a disciplineless CW on the game, My position has always been that its effect would be a good one. If weapon-based combat were to even slightly out of hand (and this is EXTREMELY unlikely), then the worst that would happen is that the weapon hosers might stop being wallpaper for a while. I seriously doubt that this will happen. The Malkavians and the Nossies already have a superior version of CW, and it has not done much to turn them into powerful combat clans. Your alarmist fears are way off the wall. The major beneficiaries of this card would be the Allies, who are almost wallpaper as it is. Now if allies were to get out of hand (don't make me laugh) there are plenty of things that could be done about THAT. For starters, a single Cryptic Mission will get rid of Loyal Street Gang AND his .44 magnum that cost his Methuselah a combined 3 pool, and their is certainly more than one way to skin THAT cat. >and >try to see why WotC might have consiously changed the card to Obf. >from disciplineless... Quite possible, but if so, it was inadvisable. I really believe the game would benefit from it being disciplineless. >R. David Zopf guenh...@mindspring.com AGAINST This makes it more interesting, don't you think? -- [ quoted text not captured ]

>Big discussion about CW and DW becoming discipline-less... ------SSSSSNNNNIIIIIIIPPPPP!!!!!!!---------------:) What you guys should all be doing is joining up a playtest game in which these cards are discipline-less. I think the answer to all disputes like these should be settled by a nice, long playtest game. I am not sure about the website address, but I can say that if you are interested in playtest games, contact Justin Fang. Conveniently, I can't tell you how to do that so could someone please direct future playtest players in the right direction for me. Chris Aitchison Aza...@newave.net.au ------------------------------ If a man says something in the woods, and there are no women around to hear him, is he still wrong?? ---------------------------------

John Whelan <jbwh...@dorsai.org> wrote in article <slrn6guin8....@amanda.dorsai.org>... [ quoted text not captured ] I think this is the key. Sure it will give you a free equip action, but only if you can afford to put a bunch of them in the deck. A deck with 6 + DW is likely to get that free equip, but will be limited by not being able to use the card space for something else useful. I don't think that is unreasonable to take a free equip in exchange for a card slot. Steve Bucy

In article <6emumc$u...@camel21.mindspring.com>, Richard D. Zopf <guenh...@mindspring.com> writes >>Results to date: > >>NAME EMAIL VOTE > >>Jason sirt...@aol.com FOR >>Lasombra bi...@scn.org FOR >>Lupus A jbwh...@dorsai.org FOR >>Robert G robert...@studio.disney.com FOR >>Steve Bucy tb...@lainet.com FOR >>Olivier M oliv...@bristol.st.com FOR >>David McCarty rai...@mich.com FOR >>Mike Mi...@leila.ping.de FOR >>Celt tirn...@mindspring.com FOR >>T_Ban...@Premier-Lending.com FOR >>A. Kaiser vann...@op.net FOR >>Chris Shorb ino...@ix.netcom.com FOR >>Tony Van To...@TheGrid.net FOR >>Autarch dark...@ozramp.net.ay FOR >>Legbiter james.m...@port.ac.uk FOR. >R. David Zopf guenh...@mindspring.com AGAINST James Coupe ja...@obeah.demon.co.uk AGAINST I would have to sort of agree here. Much as I think weapons do need a helping hand, and equipment in general, I don't think this is the way to go. I don't want to see people throwing down Ivory Bows, Sengir Daggers, Bastard Swords, Bang Nakh etc. left, right and centre. I think the ability to get out a weapon is Obfuscate's major saving grace when it comes to its lack of combat ability. Only a very few cards are excluded and you can do more than enough damage with the ones that are left to not make it worth your while bringing out others. The Brujah and Toreador would have a field day - their major problem in weapon decks is the lack of stealth to get them out - you'd have to give them Obfuscate, or get them out under stealth and Heidelberg them or smoething - or just hope and prey no-one has intercept, and intercept locations or fairly common. As said, you'd hardly ever equip a weapon again! Malkavians have very little combat defence - Auspex has a dodge or two, and a little damage prevention. Dominate is very poor (besides the broken TB). Obfuscate lets them have that surprise value - at a price, the cost of a weapon. It's not likely to be great because a pure combat deck likely has damage prevention cards, or flak jackets etc. But it is there, for security. Assamites can have fun with it, Obfuscate Celerity being very useful. They are, to my mind, underpowered though, so it's not as bad as the Brujah and Toreador - they can vote, bleed and fight. The Assamites can only do the last one and, perhaps, bleed a little. So I come in, drop in my .44 Magnum and blast away like merry hell - a good thing that only their clan has GOOD access to (City Gangrel also in parts). Nosferatu are good but need a hand in combat. As has been said before by very experienced Nosferatu players, their disciplines just don't mesh too easily. Disguised Weapon lets them drop in a fwe weapons now and then to mean that you don't have to go for high capacity Nossies with fortitude or whatever. Basically, I don't care about the INTENT of the card. We've already proven that the card probably was meant to be disciplineless. Personally, I don't agree that, even though it was planned to be, that it SHOULD be. Personally, I believe that the ability to drop weapons into a game should be restricted to Obfuscate - handing it out willy nilly just isn't right. AND even if the RT do say "Yeah, alright, you can have it as disciplineless, we were wrong" or something, what does this mean in real life, as opposed to JOL? Well, any player who is new to the game or who has difficulty accessing Jyhad cards (I'll say for myself that it's now quite difficult in Britain simply because of the fact that most stores can't order them anymore and that places in America are saying "Yeah, only 5 dollars a box - just order 75 billion of the things.") Anyone who hasn't been playing the game from the start or who doesn't frequent the sealed booster tournaments or who is edgy or finds it difficult to buy cards from places such as the Edgeman is at disadvantage. They don't have this wonder card which will let them do wonders for weapons - no, they still have shitty old Disguised Weapon. And you want to do that? You want to put new players to the game at a serious DISADVANTAGE? Most of the cards removed from Jyhad were done so because they were dross so no player is at a disadvantage there if they only own V:TES. Now you want to say "Yeah, well, being as you're new, we're playing with some kick ass old cards. Oh, and by the way, they don't sell them anymore at Local Gaming Store X. <evil laugh>" Just doesn't seem right to me. -- James Coupe (change "nospam" to "obeah" to reply by e-mail) You were my strength when I was weak. You were my voice when I couldn't speak. You were my eyes when I couldn't see. You saw the best there was in me. Lifted me up when I couldn't reach. You gave me faith because you believed. I'm everything I am because you loved me.

Richard D. Zopf (guenh...@mindspring.com) wrote: : sirt...@aol.com (SirTemple) wrote: : >I think this is everyone who voted thus far. : >It is 15-0 for making Concealed Weapon discaplineless. : >Here are the reasons to support the change that we have advocated. : "Why not play Devil's Advocate?" I thought, and dive right in. I'll : put my vote in AGAINST, quite simply because Concealed Weapon as a : disciplineless card would eliminate most Equip with Weapon actions. : Effectively, just about every smaller weapon becomes a Combat card : (like Zip Gun) when used in conjunction with a disciplineless CW. : You'd be foolish to ever consider an action to equip ever again. I : always felt that the Powers That Be changed CW over to Obfuscate when : they realized there would be no real need for DW, and no : "pseudo-equipping" advantage to the Obfuscate discipline, if CW were : to be disciplineless. Hmmm. Well, you make some reasonable points here, but I have to take issue with at least one of them: You suggest that the designers knowingly changed CW to Obfuscate, so as to keep it from being disciplineless and screwing up the game. But that implies stupidity on their part even beyond what we usually attribute to them. ;-) If DW was already going to be there for Obfuscate, what possible reason is there to give CW also to Obfuscate? It is the purest form of wallpaper, because there is another card, at the same rarity level, which is always and in every case better than it. As for the rest of the issue, I feel that making CW disciplineless is pretty unlikely to unbalance the game (or weapons, or weapon usage) to as great a degree as the sudden barrage of devil's advocates are suggesting. As someone pointed out already, there are rather a number of weapon hosers available in several cardsets, which get (as far as I know) basically zero play right now, because weapons are inherently not all that effective, part of which is because you do have to take the equip action unless you have the Obfuscate for Disguised Weapon. Allowing everyone to get to skip equip actions with CW would make equip actions (for weapons; other equipment still (naturally) has to be equipped) less common, certainly, but I don't think that's really such a terrible thing. I'm not rabidly in favor of changing CW over to disciplineless, because there are so many wallpaper cards in Jyhad/VTES that I can't really condone 'officially' changing them all to make them useful (especially when we still haven't changed the cards that are over-useful to bring *them* in line). But I think the arguments against changing CW are pretty weak. Josh abstaining from the actual vote due to lack of conviction

John Whelan wrote: > Fast Hands: Takes his weapon away from him (then you additional strike > and use it against him). The parenthetic comment is not correct. Stolen equipment cannot be used by the minion stealing it until the next round of combat. (Rulebook: 8.3) -- L. Scott Johnson (vte...@wizards.com) Official VtES Net.Rep for Wizards of the Coast. (*) - Subject to review by Rules Team

Yup! rai...@mich.com wrote: > In article <6eaodc$6...@milkwort.bri.st.com>, > olivier wrote: > > > > |> > > Someone had an idea to see what the interest was on errata'ing > > |> > > Concealed Weapon to be disciplineless. This thread is in essence > > |> > > a sign up sheet for that. Feel free to voice dissenting views > > |> > > as well. cast your votes on the issue below: > > |> > > > > |> > > NAME EMAIL VOTE > > |> > > > > |> > > Jason sirt...@aol.com FOR > > |> > Lasombra bi...@scn.org FOR > > |> Robert G robert...@studio.disney.com FOR > > Olivier M oliv...@bristol.st.com FOR > David McCarty rai...@mich.com FOR Jaysen jay...@compusmart.ab.ca FOR [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <6epdch$a...@newsstand.cit.cornell.edu>, Joshua Duffin <du...@newton.ruph.cornell.edu> wrote: > >I'm not rabidly in favor of changing CW over to disciplineless, because >there are so many wallpaper cards in Jyhad/VTES that I can't really >condone 'officially' changing them all to make them useful (especially >when we still haven't changed the cards that are over-useful to bring >*them* in line). But I think the arguments against changing CW are >pretty weak. > >Josh > >abstaining from the actual vote due to lack of conviction I agree with Josh. I do think that the change makes some sense, but it would have marginal effect, and isn't worth extra errata. Although, it's a fairly simple fix to make, since card text doesn't need to be changed, and it's hardly going to screw with anyone's deck that relies on Concealed Weapon. ;-) -- /\ Jasper Phillips /VVVVVVVVVVVVVV|~"~"~"~"~"~"----------........____ jaz j^^^^^^^^^^^^^\/"~"~"~"~-----------........._____ ~"~--. * http://www.engr.orst.edu/~philljas/ "~"~'--`

"Chris" <beb...@newave.net.au> wrote: >>Big discussion about CW and DW becoming discipline-less... >------SSSSSNNNNIIIIIIIPPPPP!!!!!!!---------------:) >What you guys should all be doing is joining up a playtest game in which >these cards are discipline-less. >I think the answer to all disputes like these should be settled by a nice, >long playtest game. >I am not sure about the website address, but I can say that if you are >interested in playtest games, contact Justin Fang. Conveniently, I can't >tell you how to do that so could someone please direct future playtest >players in the right direction for me. And deny ourselves the right to banter aimlessly about insignificant aspects of the game? Bah!!! ;-) ] [ quoted text not captured ]

jbwh...@dorsai.org (John Whelan) wrote: >In article <6emumc$u...@camel21.mindspring.com>, you wrote: >>sirt...@aol.com (SirTemple) wrote: >> >>>I think this is everyone who voted thus far. >>>It is 15-0 for making Concealed Weapon discaplineless. >>>Here are the reasons to support the change that we have advocated. >> >>"Why not play Devil's Advocate?" I thought, and dive right in. I'll >>put my vote in AGAINST, >Well I'm glad someone did. The unanymity was beginning to seem eerily >wrong. >>quite simply because Concealed Weapon as a >>disciplineless card would eliminate most Equip with Weapon actions. >>Effectively, just about every smaller weapon becomes a Combat card >>(like Zip Gun) when used in conjunction with a disciplineless CW. >True, though why is that wrong? The "wasted time" of an equip action is >one of the reasons why equip actions are so rarely done, and weapons are >just not a part of combat, as I believe they were intended to be. It seems that most people who vote for DW being disciplineless look at the advantages of the card as disciplineless, whereas the few Against are looking at the difficulties it will present in defense... As a theoretical defender against a person who is planning to use equipment, I don't like the idea that my option to block the equip action could be summarily eliminated by the changing of one card to disciplineless. What you call "wasted time", I see as a necessary risk element that the equipping minion has to take. If you want to elimate that risk, go through the trouble of building Obfuscate into your equipment combat deck... (Anvil with obf Hidden Lurkers, Torn Signpost, pulls a Sengir Dagger with CW, and Undead Strength strikes... Now _that's_ impressive...) >>You'd be foolish to ever consider an action to equip ever again. >Well, that's simply not true. I play with Nossies all the time, and we >certainly do take equip actions. We even occasionally take equip actions >with weapons. There is not always room in the deck for both the weapons >I want and the DWs to help bring them out. Or maybe my deck has only one >or two weapons in it. In that case, even if I do put in one or two DWs to >complement them, there is an excellent chance that I will not be lucky >enough to have both in my hand at the same time. I will either have my >hand jammed with 2 DWs, which I will be forced to discard, or with 2 >weapons, obliging me to take an action to equip. Providing for adequate cardflow is the dilema of every V:TES deck. It is handled by proper ratios of card content, and a methodology to cycle excess cards when needed. This is neither more nor less difficult a task with CW being disciplineless versus disciplined. My point was that CW being disciplineless eliminates the opportunity to block most equip actions, and allows for weapons to be brought out at a higher rate than if an action were needed to equip. This advantage should be limited in its scope of application to V:TES minions, as it is a significant one. The existing limitation is that you must have of acquire obfuscate, and it is necessary and sufficient. [ quoted text not captured ] >You left off.... [ quoted text not captured ] Thank you for completing this too short list. So what does that mean you can us CW with? Everything else... A list that is much too long for a disciplineless card. I might be swayed in this argument if there were additional limiting provisions (non-unique weapons, only and/or lower damage/cost thresholds) >>I take most of these weapons and throw them in the Horrid >>Reality Deck, or in a dark corner of the den. Mostly, they aren't >>used in quantity. >I put a few Assault Rifles in my Nossie Blood Generator Deck once, and >whipped them out with DW. A real unpleasant surprise for those guys who >thought we Weenie Voter Consanguinous Boon Callers were helpless. And you probably needed the blood gain aspectof the deck to support the prohibitive cost... >>CW doesn't sufficiently limit exactly what weapons >>it allows minions without Obf to get without risk of a blocked action. >I would have preferred that Unique Weapons be excluded, but this because I >am just a little jealous of my Nossies' privileges, not because I think >it makes Weapon-based combat too powerful. Allowing any minion to pull out an Ivory Bow with impunity doesn't make weapon based combat too powerful?!? Sure. >>Sorry, but I _like_ the fact that there's at least a shot of blocking >>someone from equipping with the Ivory Bow, even if its just a wistful >>thought, as my Nosferatu look on in abject horror ;-) That >>opportunity to block is gone once CW is disciplineless. >To a large extent it is, but why should it not be this way? Are you >really afraid that weapon-based combat will become TOO powerful? The >difficulty and time getting weapons into play is one of the major reasons >(along with their cost) they are not played at all. I object to eliminating the rules-provided, tried and true method of denying a minion equipment... to block. It's the best way to pre-empt any action based stategy by any opponent, and it would be summarily denied by this suggested correction. As for weapons "not being played at all" that's a function of your meta-game, definitely _not_ so in mine... >> This would also speed up weenie gun decks, as there is no delay for >>the equip action. Another negative, IMHO. >The only thing wrong with Weenie Gun decks, that I can see, is Zip >Gun/DBR, but that is a separate issue. A disciplineless CW has not a >chance to be nearly as abusive as that combo. Sure it does... it just lets you DBR with any gun within the context of combat, without needing to equip first. >Look, if weapon-based combat becomes a problem for you, heres what you can >do: >Shattering Blow: Destroys his stuff before he can use it. >Canine Horde: Destroys his stuff at long range before he can use it. >Fast Hands: Takes his weapon away from him (then you additional strike > and use it against him). >Peace Treaty: Forces Players with Weapons to pay again or burn them. >Immortal Grapple: Prevents opponent from using weapon strikes. >Blood Rage/Blood Fury: Prevents opponent from doing damage with weapons. >Drawing out the Beast: Prevents opposing vampire from using any stuff. >Frenzy: Prevents opposing vampire from using any stuff. >With judicious use of the above cards, you really should be able to deal >with weapon-based combat if it becomes a persistant nuisance. >Note that allies are immune to the last 2 effects, an important boost for >them as DOTB is one of the most deadly and reliable of all weapon hosers. >Allies need the boost that CW will give them. >I did not include the expansion cards, which include some handy equipment >hosers as well. Fractured Armament for one. All of these options were available before, but I'm interested in preserving one more; Block the equip action. All blocking requires a source of intercept (in the case of equipping), and all the other stuff listed above is just gravy. I'd like to point out that with CW disciplineless, you'd be forcing players to include the esoteric suggestions above, instead of just blocking., like they could before. >Note that most of the above cards (from the original set) are on >everyone's wallpaper list. Only those that have additional uses besides >hosing weapons are generally used or seen. Each of the original combat >disciplines has some way of dealing with weapons, which it was thought >would become a major part of the game. Weapon did not become a >significant part of the game, however, and so few people put them in their >decks that specialized weapon hosers are complete wallpaper. Why are they >Wallpaper? Because weapons never became a significant part of combat as >they were intended to. They lost CW, which was intended to be their most >important support card. Specialized weapon hosers aren't wallpaper merely because weapons aren't heavily played, they're just plain limited in scope. Defense provisions should be more diverse in order to be included in a good deck strategy. Again, I dispute your claim that weapons are used so little... That is a result of your meta-game. While not problematic in mine either, it is balanced mostly because there is an opportunity to pre-empt the strategy of cheap weapons fast on small minions by blocking the equip action... >>It may have originally been intended as a disciplineless card, before >>playtesting... I think the above arguments might have been part of >>the reason for the change to Obf... >A significant possibility, though I doubt an errata's CW would seriously >enhance weapons in the current play environment. Players are too >experienced and discipline-based combat too strong. >>>3. Card format supports proposition. DW is set up with a basic and supperior >>>level like most discapline based cards. CW is set up like most discaplineless >>>cards, only one version, no superior. >> >>Moot, really. So does Army of Rats. >The point is not conclusive, but it does support the position of the >card's original intent. Rebutted as well by my theory of a last minute change. The cards were already at the printers, and all that could be done was to add a discipline, you couldn't even remove it without needing a redo of the sheet layout... >>>4. Card concept supprts change. It is quite feasible to supprise an opponent >>>with a small concealed weapon. CW does this by limiting thae weapons cost and >>>damage. DW on the other hand is the use of a super-natural ability, and >>>therefore can produce any weapon. >> >>CW doesn't limit the weapons cost and damage enough to support a "real >>world" analogy like the one above. You can still CW an Ivory Bow, or >>a Bastard Sword (it should take an immortal Highlander to do that ;-) >Nonetheless, that is clearly the concept behind the limitation. >If you want justification -- Ivory Bows have some advantages in that >no-one expects that funny-shaped packet you are carrying to be an obsolete >weapon, as it is the wrong shape to be a gun. It might not look much like >a bow until you string it. It can also pass through metal detectors with >ease. If Bastard Swords bother you, use Meat Cleavers from the Sabbat >set. I reject most real-world analogies as moot. My point though was that the Ivory Bow has power that goes beyond the pool/damage limit provided for by CW. So do several other weapons. Dimensional arguments about weapon size are just about as silly as the artwork argument below... >>>5. Card picture supports this concept. The character on CW is simply pulling >>>a small gun out of his coat. He is not using any special tricks, simple >>>pulling out his concealed weapon. >>> >>!?!?! And the artist's signature is in the bottom corner, meaning it >>should only be played by him... This is really stretching it... >It's not stretching it at all. You have already conceded that the card >could easily have been intended as disciplineless before the design >change, so what are you arguing about? The picture, title, restrictions, >and lack of a superior version are all consistent with the disciplineless >card concept. The fact that the artwork fits your interpretation (debateable, but an aimless discussion, anyway) is coincidental. An artist was told there was a card named "Concealed Weapon" and asked to come up with card art. He came up with what we see on the card today. I think its quite silly to think that the artist had any interest in game mechanics to the extent you imply... He was just looking to get his art printed. It's no surprise that he came up with what he did, considering the title of the card, but it's quite foolish to extrapolate intent in the game from the artwork that was included (Cf. Torn Signpost, The Death of My Conscience, etc, etc ad nauseam) >>>Does anyone else have an additional reason before we submit the proposal? >>> >>Think a bit about the effect of a disciplineless CW on the game, >My position has always been that its effect would be a good one. If >weapon-based combat were to even slightly out of hand (and this is >EXTREMELY unlikely), then the worst that would happen is that the weapon >hosers might stop being wallpaper for a while. I seriously doubt that >this will happen. The Malkavians and the Nossies already have a superior >version of CW, and it has not done much to turn them into powerful combat >clans. Your alarmist fears are way off the wall. You overrate my fears by labeling them alarmist. But this change will eliminate another opportunity to block an action. Think about what you ordinarily have to go through to make an action unblockable (fortitude, Concotion of Vitality, etc) and realize that this is the sort of power that you're providing to all minions on the equip with weapon action... >The major beneficiaries of this card would be the Allies, who are almost >wallpaper as it is. Now if allies were to get out of hand (don't make me >laugh) there are plenty of things that could be done about THAT. For >starters, a single Cryptic Mission will get rid of Loyal Street Gang AND >his .44 magnum that cost his Methuselah a combined 3 pool, and their is >certainly more than one way to skin THAT cat. That Cryptic Mission makes it foolish to equip the LSG with a costly weapon in the first place, regardless of CW discipline status. >lil snip >This makes it more interesting, don't you think? Indeed. :-) [ quoted text not captured ]

On Thu, 19 Mar 1998, Richard D. Zopf wrote: > jbwh...@dorsai.org (John Whelan) wrote: > > >>quite simply because Concealed Weapon as a > >>disciplineless card would eliminate most Equip with Weapon actions. > >>Effectively, just about every smaller weapon becomes a Combat card > >>(like Zip Gun) when used in conjunction with a disciplineless CW. > > >True, though why is that wrong? The "wasted time" of an equip action is > >one of the reasons why equip actions are so rarely done, and weapons are > >just not a part of combat, as I believe they were intended to be. > > It seems that most people who vote for DW being disciplineless look at You mean CW, of course. > the advantages of the card as disciplineless, whereas the few Against > are looking at the difficulties it will present in defense... I see that, though I frankly do not understand the concern. > As a > theoretical defender against a person who is planning to use > equipment, I don't like the idea that my option to block the equip > action could be summarily eliminated by the changing of one card to > disciplineless. Sometimes it seems as though the opponents of this move imagine that turning CW to disciplineless would turn all weapons into Zip Guns, such that the option to block is completely removed. I cannot help wondering if you have ever played a Nossie or Malkavian weapon deck. If you do, you will discover that 1) 8 weapons + 8 DWs take up alot of deck space, 2) The weapons better be grenades and wooden stakes mostly, or you're going to be losing alot of pool, 3) Only one of them is going to be an Ivory Bow, since you don't want to contest yourself, 4) odds are good that you are either going to get weapon hand-jam or DW handjam--weapon handjam can be solved with equip actions, whereas DW handjam forces you to discard DWs, possibly forcing you to take equip actions later in the game. I cannot help wondering if you have ever actually tried to construct and play a disguised weapon deck? If you had, I do not think you would regard it as so scary. > What you call "wasted time", I see as a necessary > risk element that the equipping minion has to take. Why you see it that way is completely beyond me. Did it ever occur to you that this Arms Dealer you have Bum's Rushed might *already* have posessed a handgun or two before he was even brought into play? He *is* an Arms Dealer, after all. Maybe it was there all the time, but you just didn't know about it. What's so amazing about a Brujah Weenie having a concealed handgun or two, or any of the Brujah allies. Without CW, all the Brujah Allies are pointless. If you get into a combat with a Loyal Street Gang, do you really have any right to be surprised if one of them has a cheap handgun, or a Meat Cleaver he stole from his mom, or some Brass Knuckles? If you get into a fight with a Muddled Vampire Hunter, do you really have any right to be surprised if he just happens to have a Wooden Stake? You seem to feel you should have had the opportunity to block. Why, for God's sake? Maybe Muddles just pulled a stick off the tree and sharpened it while the sun was blazing high above him. How are your vampires gonna block that? And it it is easy for allies to have weapons you don't know about, why not vampires, even weenie vampires. A Brujah might pick up a weapon or two from his victems on a night out hunting, and if the weapon is small and easily carried, why should anyone know about it but him? If your Renegade Garou attacks Angel (or some other weenie), and then gets blown away by a sawed-off shotgun, does the Garou's Methuselah really have the right to whine and complain, saying "I should have known angel had a sawed off shotgun, and should have had a chance to block her." Really? Why should you have known? Why should you necessarily have had a chance to block her getting it? She may well have been keeping it hidden so you did not know it was there, and as far as blocking it, she could have picked one up from any of a hundred punk victems during the last 50 years or so of her undead existence. The Methuselah still has to pay the cost of the weapon, and that in itself is sufficient to prevent the "unblockable" equip action from being seriously abusive. > If you want to > elimate that risk, go through the trouble of building Obfuscate into > your equipment combat deck... (Anvil with obf Hidden Lurkers, Torn > Signpost, pulls a Sengir Dagger with CW, and Undead Strength > strikes... Now _that's_ impressive...) A difficult (5 card) combo to pull off, and nothing the Nossies cannot do already. The Nossies are regarded as the weakest of the combat clans in spite of their access to a superior form of CW (DW). It helps, but it doesn't help *that* much. But why should the Brujah go to the trouble of getting obfuscate just so they have a few weapons that no-one had a chance to block? They gain blood from the Warzone Hunting Ground without having to take actions, so why shouldn't they gain some weapons in the process from the punks they drain? They have arms dealers and street gangs for allies. Why on earth should the Justicar of the Brujah need some out-of-clan discipline just so he can get some brass knuckles. > >>You'd be foolish to ever consider an action to equip ever again. > > >Well, that's simply not true. I play with Nossies all the time, and we > >certainly do take equip actions. We even occasionally take equip actions > >with weapons. There is not always room in the deck for both the weapons > >I want and the DWs to help bring them out. Or maybe my deck has only one > >or two weapons in it. In that case, even if I do put in one or two DWs to > >complement them, there is an excellent chance that I will not be lucky > >enough to have both in my hand at the same time. I will either have my > >hand jammed with 2 DWs, which I will be forced to discard, or with 2 > >weapons, obliging me to take an action to equip. > > Providing for adequate cardflow is the dilema of every V:TES deck. It > is handled by proper ratios of card content, and a methodology to > cycle excess cards when needed. This is neither more nor less > difficult a task with CW being disciplineless versus disciplined. My > point was that CW being disciplineless eliminates the opportunity to > block most equip actions, No, it merely eliminates the opportunity to block most equip weapon actions. But this is OK, since the game has more weapon hosers than it has equipment hosers. Most of them are rarely if ever used of course, because weapons have not become the part of the game that they were intended to be. > and allows for weapons to be brought out at > a higher rate than if an action were needed to equip. YES!! And this is a GOOD thing! > This advantage > should be limited in its scope of application to V:TES minions, as it > is a significant one. The existing limitation is that you must have > of acquire obfuscate, and it is necessary and sufficient. nononononono....Obfuscate merely allows you to hide bigger weapons. If you're especially good at obfuscate, you can make your weapon appear as something else even as you are striking with it. But, if Van Helsing wants to hide some stuff in his coat so Dracula does not know exactly what Van Helsing has up his sleeve when Dracula attacks, this does not require any mystical ability, nor should it. Now if Van Helsing can hide stuff in his coat, then so can Dracula, and he shouldn't need any mystical discipline either. [ quoted text not captured ] Sorry. I forgot to add Kali's Fang. Of course that requires an Assamite, and they have obfuscate anyway, so it really makes little difference in this case. So the full list now is: - Assault Rifle - Bomb - Combat Shotgun - Flamethrower - Kali's Fang - RPG Launcher - Submachine Gun - Talbot's Chainsaw > So what does that mean > you can us CW with? Everything else... A list that is much too long > for a disciplineless card. There are actually a great many disciplined cards for which the inferior version is no better, or almost no better, than the disciplineless version. Consider: NO BETTER Computer Hacking vs. inferior Social Charm Open Grate vs. inferior Vanish from the Minds Eye/Movement of the Mind. Blood Tears of Kephram vs. inferior Resoration (Blood Tears is actually better) Fake Out vs. inferior Behind You (Fake out might actually be better) BARELY BETTER Lucky Blow vs. inferior Undead Strength Arson vs. Rampage I could make a much longer list, but don't have the energy. Of all the dodge cards, for instance, only celerity has a dodge that is barely better at inferior to the disciplineless version. > I might be swayed in this argument if > there were additional limiting provisions (non-unique weapons, only > and/or lower damage/cost thresholds) I don't think these are necessary. I do have some sympathy with the idea of a non-unique weapon limitation, but only if one were to design a new card for a new set (which is not likely). If we errata CW we should keep the errata short and simple. > >>I take most of these weapons and throw them in the Horrid > >>Reality Deck, or in a dark corner of the den. Mostly, they aren't > >>used in quantity. > > >I put a few Assault Rifles in my Nossie Blood Generator Deck once, and > >whipped them out with DW. A real unpleasant surprise for those guys who > >thought we Weenie Voter Consanguinous Boon Callers were helpless. > > And you probably needed the blood gain aspectof the deck to support > the prohibitive cost... Every drop. Still, my Nossies have an option that others don't. > >>CW doesn't sufficiently limit exactly what weapons > >>it allows minions without Obf to get without risk of a blocked action. > > >I would have preferred that Unique Weapons be excluded, but this because I > >am just a little jealous of my Nossies' privileges, not because I think > >it makes Weapon-based combat too powerful. > > Allowing any minion to pull out an Ivory Bow with impunity doesn't > make weapon based combat too powerful?!? Sure. You seem to pick particularly on Ivory Bow. Now, I understand that, compared to other weapons, Ivory Bow is a rather overpowered or underpriced card. Normally, the fact that it is unique should be enough to compensate for the fact that it is slightly more powerful than other cards of the same price, but Ivory Bow is a little more powerful even than that. Part of the problem is the new Agro Damage rules, which allows an Ivory Bow to do almost equivalent to what a 2R agro damage weapon would have done under the old rules. Even under the old rules, however, Ivory Bow compares rather well to Sengir Dagger, which costs 2 pool and cannot be used at range. I would say that the problem here, however, is not that CW as disciplineless is too powerful, but rather that Ivory Bow is slightly overpowered/underpriced (stricly compared to other weapons), particularly with the revised agro damage rules. But how abusive is Ivory Bow/CW, really? Compare it to that other 2-card combo: Zip Gun/DBR. The latter grants you a maneuver to long range, gives you 2 agg +1 damage, and costs no pool. You can't really build a deck around Ivory Bow/CW, because Ivory Bow is unique. You have the advantage that you can keep it in play as a permanent (unlike Zip Gun/DBR), but are lost if it gets contested, stolen, or burned. Even under the new agro rules, Ivory Bow is not so deadly in a world where anyone can get agro damage for the cost of a protean discipline card, or ranged agro damage with thaumaturgy. Ivory Bow, in addition, can never do more than 1 agg, can be dodged, prevented, IG'd or DOTB's into uselessness, stolen or destroyed with first strike, etc. Without a manuever to long range, anyone with an Ivory Bow stands a good risk of being torporized (with less blood remaining) along with his opponent. I sympathize somewhat with your reservations regarding Ivory Bow. If I were to design a similar card for a future set, if might have included a no-unique-weapons rule. However, no new sets are anticipated, and I think that a disciplineless CW would enhance the game greatly. The benefits far outweight the potential for Ivory Bow abuse, though the recommended fix will certainly result in Ivory Bow being contested with greater frequency. > >>Sorry, but I _like_ the fact that there's at least a shot of blocking > >>someone from equipping with the Ivory Bow, even if its just a wistful > >>thought, as my Nosferatu look on in abject horror ;-) That > >>opportunity to block is gone once CW is disciplineless. > > >To a large extent it is, but why should it not be this way? Are you > >really afraid that weapon-based combat will become TOO powerful? The > >difficulty and time getting weapons into play is one of the major reasons > >(along with their cost) they are not played at all. > > I object to eliminating the rules-provided, tried and true method of > denying a minion equipment... to block. To you also object to the way Hunting Grounds cards prevent you from blocking minions from gaining a blood from their mortal victims? > It's the best way to pre-empt > any action based stategy by any opponent, and it would be summarily > denied by this suggested correction. I don't know what you mean by "summarily". I am not suggesting errata to turn all weapons into combat cards ala Zip Gun. I don't see at all why equip actions should necessarily be blockable. > As for weapons "not being played > at all" that's a function of your meta-game, definitely _not_ so in > mine... From what you've described of your metagame, it sounds like the more expensive weapons are never used, and others rarely. When they are used, they are used by weenies, because for weenies, the cost of an equip action is rather less than for big vampires. Let me ask, though, how often do your combat decks include Fast Hands or Shattering Blow, or Canine Horde? > >> This would also speed up weenie gun decks, as there is no delay for > >>the equip action. Another negative, IMHO. > > >The only thing wrong with Weenie Gun decks, that I can see, is Zip > >Gun/DBR, but that is a separate issue. A disciplineless CW has not a > >chance to be nearly as abusive as that combo. > > Sure it does... it just lets you DBR with any gun within the context > of combat, without needing to equip first. Not at all. Zip Gun/DBR is a 2 card combo that grants me a maneuver, gives me one damage, and inflicts 2 agro +1 damage on my opponent. Compare: CW + Saturday Night Special + DBR is a 3-card combo that grants me a maneuver, costs 1 pool, and inflicts 2 agro +1 damage on my opponent. The need for 3 cards and the 1 pool cost more than make up for the lack of the 1 damage. The only other one I'd consider playing would be: CW + Sawed off Shotgun + DBR. Another 3 card combo that inflicts 2 agro +3 damage for the cost of 2 pool and lacks the manuever. If this was really so great, you's see the Malkavians play it alot. Have you really seen it that often? [snip lots of weapon hosers] > >With judicious use of the above cards, you really should be able to deal > >with weapon-based combat if it becomes a persistant nuisance. > > >Note that allies are immune to the last 2 effects, an important boost for > >them as DOTB is one of the most deadly and reliable of all weapon hosers. > >Allies need the boost that CW will give them. > > >I did not include the expansion cards, which include some handy equipment > >hosers as well. Fractured Armament for one. > > All of these options were available before, but I'm interested in > preserving one more; > > Block the equip action. > All blocking requires a source of intercept (in the case of > equipping), and all the other stuff listed above is just gravy. I'd > like to point out that with CW disciplineless, you'd be forcing > players to include the esoteric suggestions above, instead of just > blocking., like they could before. As I have argued already, I see no reason whatsoever that a vampire who bums rushes some Street Gang should have had the opportunity to block their chance to have some equipment. If you go after a street gang (or anybody) you should take into account the possibility that they might have some weapons that you don't know about. If you are a powerful vampire, and you go out in public without having the means to deal with something as simple and commonplace as a Saturday Night Special or a Pointy Stick, then you deserve to be sent into torpor. And I do not care how much intercept your vampires have. This will not necessarily be enough to prevent all your fellow kindred and their mortal allies from happening across some common handguns or pointy sticks in the course of their day to day existence and putting them in their pockets while you're not looking. You should not necessarily be able to block them from doing so any more than you can block them from gaining blood from a hunting ground, or block Grendel from letting you look at the top card of your crypt. It is quite possible that they had this stuff when they entered the game, and you just didn't know about it until you attacked them. In Jyhad, alot of stuff enters the game without a chance to block it, and there is nothing wrong with this unless it is too powerful. In this case, it is not. > Specialized weapon hosers aren't wallpaper merely because weapons > aren't heavily played, they're just plain limited in scope. Perhaps, but you only need one Peace Treaty in a vote deck. In a combat deck, DOTB and IG are perfectly valuable even if their are no opposing weapons. > Defense > provisions should be more diverse in order to be included in a good > deck strategy. Again, I dispute your claim that weapons are used so > little... That is a result of your meta-game. While not problematic > in mine either, it is balanced mostly because there is an opportunity > to pre-empt the strategy of cheap weapons fast on small minions by > blocking the equip action... Actually, CW is less of an advantage for Weenies than it is for Big Vampires. Because you can afford alot of weenies, the actions come cheeply, and you save less by having CW to take up deck space and potentialy jam your hand. When I play my Lucretia deck, I use weenies to help Lucretia equip -- they gather the stuff, and then Lucretia transfers multiple items to herself in a single action. The DW cards in the deck are for Lucretia to equip with weapons in combat. > >>Moot, really. So does Army of Rats. > > >The point is not conclusive, but it does support the position of the > >card's original intent. > > Rebutted as well by my theory of a last minute change. The cards were > already at the printers, and all that could be done was to add a > discipline, you couldn't even remove it without needing a redo of the > sheet layout... That does not "rebut" the position of the cards original intent. It *concedes* the point. I never claimed to know why the card was changed, or why they chose not to issue errata. I do understand that the cards original intent is not the main or the most important issue. The issue is whether errata to this card would benefit the game. Though I did take time to point out the cards original intent, I have advocated errata only on the basis of the latter issue, and even took issue with Jason for advocating it exclusively on the basis of the former. I think we can agree that the original intent of the card was to be disciplineless; that we do not know if it was changed intentionally or by accident; and that it should not be changed back unless such a change would significantly benefit the game (I believe it would). > I reject most real-world analogies as moot. My point though was that > the Ivory Bow has power that goes beyond the pool/damage limit > provided for by CW. So do several other weapons. Dimensional > arguments about weapon size are just about as silly as the artwork > argument below... I only pointed these out to demonstrate the concept behind the cards original intent, which is clear and obvious enough. THIS WAS NOT I REPEAT NOT INTENDED BY MYSELF AS AN ARGUMENT IN SUPPORT OF ERRATA PER SE. As for the power of Ivory Bow being inadequately compensated for by the fact that it is unique...well that more an Ivory Bow problem than a disciplineless CW problem. It is mainly a new-agro-rules problem. It's not such a big problem either, since Ivory Bow is unique and cannot be seriously abused. Without CW, Ivory Bow is still just a little too good compared to other weapons, meaning that it is played occasionally and the rest rarely or not at all. With CW "fixed" all these weapons will be played more frequently, even Ivory Bow, though this will be limitted to some extent by the fact that it is unique (though I still doubt it will be contested as often as Info Highway). But the imbalance between Ivory Bow and other weapons will remain regardless of what we do to CW. > >My position has always been that its effect would be a good one. If > >weapon-based combat were to even slightly out of hand (and this is > >EXTREMELY unlikely), then the worst that would happen is that the weapon > >hosers might stop being wallpaper for a while. I seriously doubt that > >this will happen. The Malkavians and the Nossies already have a superior > >version of CW, and it has not done much to turn them into powerful combat > >clans. Your alarmist fears are way off the wall. > > You overrate my fears by labeling them alarmist. But this change will > eliminate another opportunity to block an action. So what? Only equip with weapon actions, and it is debatable that you should be always allowed that opportunity. Disciplineless CW adds far more than it takes away. > Think about what > you ordinarily have to go through to make an action unblockable > (fortitude, Concotion of Vitality, etc) and realize that this is the > sort of power that you're providing to all minions on the equip with > weapon action... As far as weapon equipping goes, I approve of this entirely. Equipping with a weapon does not (and should not) HAVE to be a blockable action, and a minion attacking me should not necessarily know that I have an Ivory Bow, any more than you should necessarily know that I have pack of dogs (Canine Horde) around the corner waiting to play "fetch" with your Ivory Bow. I strongly approve of weapons becoming an unpredictable part of combat. Unless you have superior Auspex, or something, why should you know ahead of time that I have a grenade in my coat. > >The major beneficiaries of this card would be the Allies, who are almost > >wallpaper as it is. Now if allies were to get out of hand (don't make me > >laugh) there are plenty of things that could be done about THAT. For > >starters, a single Cryptic Mission will get rid of Loyal Street Gang AND > >his .44 magnum that cost his Methuselah a combined 3 pool, and their is > >certainly more than one way to skin THAT cat. > > That Cryptic Mission makes it foolish to equip the LSG with a costly > weapon in the first place, regardless of CW discipline status. Not necessarily foolish, but risky. I've had some fun with Ally Equip decks, and I don't care who calls me foolish for doing so. I've never won with them, (though I have come close) and I think that CW would make such decks just a little more viable. [ quoted text not captured ]

du...@newton.ruph.cornell.edu (Joshua Duffin) wrote: >Richard D. Zopf (guenh...@mindspring.com) wrote: >: sirt...@aol.com (SirTemple) wrote: >: >I think this is everyone who voted thus far. >: >It is 15-0 for making Concealed Weapon discaplineless. >: >Here are the reasons to support the change that we have advocated. >: "Why not play Devil's Advocate?" I thought, and dive right in. I'll >: put my vote in AGAINST, quite simply because Concealed Weapon as a >: disciplineless card would eliminate most Equip with Weapon actions. >: Effectively, just about every smaller weapon becomes a Combat card >: (like Zip Gun) when used in conjunction with a disciplineless CW. >: You'd be foolish to ever consider an action to equip ever again. I >: always felt that the Powers That Be changed CW over to Obfuscate when >: they realized there would be no real need for DW, and no >: "pseudo-equipping" advantage to the Obfuscate discipline, if CW were >: to be disciplineless. >Hmmm. Well, you make some reasonable points here, but I have to take >issue with at least one of them: You suggest that the designers knowingly >changed CW to Obfuscate, so as to keep it from being disciplineless and >screwing up the game. But that implies stupidity on their part even >beyond what we usually attribute to them. ;-) If DW was already going >to be there for Obfuscate, what possible reason is there to give CW >also to Obfuscate? It is the purest form of wallpaper, because there >is another card, at the same rarity level, which is always and >in every case better than it. I could only conjecture as to why they put it in Obf, other than the similar card there already meant it would at the very least be a zero impact change. If they felt so strongly when Jyhad was printed that weapons wer going to be a strong part of the game, they might have felt that erring on the conservative side was best. >As for the rest of the issue, I feel that making CW disciplineless is >pretty unlikely to unbalance the game (or weapons, or weapon usage) to >as great a degree as the sudden barrage of devil's advocates are suggesting. I'm flattered to be labeled a "...sudden barrage of devil's advocates..." And to clarify, "unbalance" was never a term I used. This isn't a RTI/TB/Mind Rape grade discussion we're having here. Making CW disiplineless wouldn't be "unbalancing". It would, however, mean that the equip action would likely be obsoleted. I'm simply taking issue with the subsequent likely elimination of a simple block action as a method for denying equipment to my opponent, as would be the case with most weapons after this proposed errata to CW. >As someone pointed out already, there are rather a number of weapon >hosers available in several cardsets, which get (as far as I know) >basically zero play right now, because weapons are inherently not all >that effective, part of which is because you do have to take the >equip action unless you have the Obfuscate for Disguised Weapon. Allowing >everyone to get to skip equip actions with CW would make equip actions >(for weapons; other equipment still (naturally) has to be equipped) less >common, certainly, but I don't think that's really such a terrible thing. Weapon hoser cards are reactionary, not pre-emptive. The best defensive strategies fall into the latter category, and not the former. Blocking is a pre-emptive methodology given to (nearly) all minions, and shouldn't be made obsolete in the case of weaponry. If the suggested errata wer to be instated, the number and quality of weapons that the CW cost/damage restriction applies to isn't nearly high enough. >I'm not rabidly in favor of changing CW over to disciplineless, because >there are so many wallpaper cards in Jyhad/VTES that I can't really >condone 'officially' changing them all to make them useful (especially >when we still haven't changed the cards that are over-useful to bring >*them* in line). But I think the arguments against changing CW are >pretty weak. I think the idea that there are other cards to be changed before this is addressed is a good one... There's so much more that deserves attention before this. >Josh >abstaining from the actual vote due to lack of conviction That must be from my Pulling your Strings ;-) Regards, R. David Zopf guenh...@mindspring.com Atom Weaver and V:EKN Prince of Boston

Lupus Australis <jbwh...@dorsai.org> wrote: >On Thu, 19 Mar 1998, Richard D. Zopf wrote: >> jbwh...@dorsai.org (John Whelan) wrote: >> >> >snippage needed... >> It seems that most people who vote for DW being disciplineless look at >You mean CW, of course. Err, ahh, hem... Of course. >> the advantages of the card as disciplineless, whereas the few Against >> are looking at the difficulties it will present in defense... >I see that, though I frankly do not understand the concern. No concern, merely observation. >> As a >> theoretical defender against a person who is planning to use >> equipment, I don't like the idea that my option to block the equip >> action could be summarily eliminated by the changing of one card to >> disciplineless. >Sometimes it seems as though the opponents of this move imagine that >turning CW to disciplineless would turn all weapons into Zip Guns, >such that the option to block is completely removed. I cannot help >wondering if you have ever played a Nossie or Malkavian weapon deck. If >you do, you will discover that 1) 8 weapons + 8 DWs take up alot of deck >space, 2) The weapons better be grenades and wooden stakes mostly, or >you're going to be losing alot of pool, 3) Only one of them is going to be >an Ivory Bow, since you don't want to contest yourself, 4) odds are good >that you are either going to get weapon hand-jam or DW handjam--weapon >handjam can be solved with equip actions, whereas DW handjam forces you to >discard DWs, possibly forcing you to take equip actions later in the game. Bah. Clan based decks for equipment use are definitely _not_ the way to abuse weapons. Yes, the weapon deck above might suffer from hand jam if not constructed properly, and if your only method of removing cards from hand is by the end of phase discard, you're _not_ playing the same V:TES I am. Regardless, the deck suggestion above is an unimaginative use of weaponry in the first place. Equipping effectively is an action intensive undertaking, as such the decks that move weapons fast are typically small, non-clan, and based on a little celerity and non-discipline combat cards. These decks work around with ca. 8 to 10 minions once up to speed (which happens fast), with Haven Uncovered working to have cheap, disposable minions in combat at range. They tend out-combat the best fight and fight defense decks with shear numbers. I'd not like my meta-game without the opportunity to slow this down a bit with some blocking going on. >I cannot help wondering if you have ever actually tried to construct and >play a disguised weapon deck? If you had, I do not think you would regard >it as so scary. I care little for a disguised weapon deck like the one you suggested above. A DW deck would be an artful undertaking that would require thought in construction and in play. A non-Obf. CW deck is just an easy way to solve what amounts to a more complex deck construction dilema. >> What you call "wasted time", I see as a necessary >> risk element that the equipping minion has to take. >Why you see it that way is completely beyond me. Did it ever occur to you >snip real world musings mapped onto a CCG... > You seem to feel you should have had the opportunity to block. Why, for >God's sake? Maybe Muddles just pulled a stick off the tree and sharpened >it while the sun was blazing high above him. How are your vampires gonna >block that? Who said I'd use a vampire to block it? Fine, once again I'll let myself get sucked down the irrelevant path of presuming you can relate game mechanics to a CCG. (foolish counter-babble ensues... Dignified readers may skip the section below...) "I've instructed my dear ally, Ted Kennedy (Political Ally) to keep an eye on the traffic of weaponry to and from the Boston area. A recent surge of smuggling is advertised in the paper (London Evening Star: Tabloid...), alongside an ad from Al's Army Apparatus, showing a bunch of specials for the week. Knowing the Anarch element's prediliction for things that go boom, I instruct my ally to keep an eye out for any gun permit applications that have names of known collaborators to my infernal opposition. With the help of the local rags (tap LES for intercept) my dear senator is able to deny the thugs their toys (block), and avoid retaliation handily (Dodge)." >snip more of the same... >The Methuselah still has to pay the cost of the weapon, and that in itself >is sufficient to prevent the "unblockable" equip action from being >seriously abusive. No it isn't. Keep the weapon costs down, as well as the cost of the minions you put them on, and the return is usually pretty good. >> If you want to >> elimate that risk, go through the trouble of building Obfuscate into >> your equipment combat deck... (Anvil with obf Hidden Lurkers, Torn >> Signpost, pulls a Sengir Dagger with CW, and Undead Strength >> strikes... Now _that's_ impressive...) >A difficult (5 card) combo to pull off, and nothing the Nossies cannot do >already. The Nossies are regarded as the weakest of the combat clans in >spite of their access to a superior form of CW (DW). It helps, but it >doesn't help *that* much. The combo was an example... The challenge is to build a deck that makes equipment work, with all rules as they stand. >But why should the Brujah go to the trouble of getting obfuscate just so >they have a few weapons that no-one had a chance to block? They gain >blood from the Warzone Hunting Ground without having to take actions, so >why shouldn't they gain some weapons in the process from the punks they >drain? They have arms dealers and street gangs for allies. Why on earth >should the Justicar of the Brujah need some out-of-clan discipline just so >he can get some brass knuckles. He doesn't _need_ the discipline... He can equip, just like everyone else... >> >>snippage >> Providing for adequate cardflow is the dilema of every V:TES deck. It >> is handled by proper ratios of card content, and a methodology to >> cycle excess cards when needed. This is neither more nor less >> difficult a task with CW being disciplineless versus disciplined. My >> point was that CW being disciplineless eliminates the opportunity to >> block most equip actions, >No, it merely eliminates the opportunity to block most equip weapon >actions. Picky, picky...assume this whole thread is about equip weaon actions... >But this is OK, since the game has more weapon hosers than it >has equipment hosers. Most of them are rarely if ever used of course, >because weapons have not become the part of the game that they were >intended to be. See pre-emptive vs. reactionary defense, above... >> and allows for weapons to be brought out at >> a higher rate than if an action were needed to equip. >YES!! And this is a GOOD thing! Not if it does so in a way that circumvents the rules-prescibed counter-measure...blocking. >> This advantage >> should be limited in its scope of application to V:TES minions, as it >> is a significant one. The existing limitation is that you must have >> of acquire obfuscate, and it is necessary and sufficient. >snip reply... Again, more real- world analogies... >> >>snippage >> >> >>>Given card text: >> >>>Concealed Weapon: "Equip this minion with a weapon card from your hand at the >> >>>begining of a round. Pay weapon's equip cost from blood poll, as normal. The >> >>>weapon cannot cost more than two pool or do more than 4 damage. >> >> >> >>What weapons _aren't_ covered by the above limitation? >snipped > So the full list now is: >- Assault Rifle >- Bomb >- Combat Shotgun >- Flamethrower >- Kali's Fang >- RPG Launcher >- Submachine Gun >- Talbot's Chainsaw >> So what does that mean >> you can us CW with? Everything else... A list that is much too long >> for a disciplineless card. >There are actually a great many disciplined cards for which the inferior >version is no better, or almost no better, than the disciplineless >version. Consider: >snip Considerations, all of which can be blocked... more snips >> >I put a few Assault Rifles in my Nossie Blood Generator Deck once, and >> >whipped them out with DW. A real unpleasant surprise for those guys who >> >thought we Weenie Voter Consanguinous Boon Callers were helpless. >> >> And you probably needed the blood gain aspectof the deck to support >> the prohibitive cost... >Every drop. Still, my Nossies have an option that others don't. > and shouldn't. Not without a good deck to back it. more snips >snip looonnnngg bit about Ivory Bow cost, etc. >I sympathize somewhat with your reservations regarding Ivory Bow. If I >were to design a similar card for a future set, if might have included a >no-unique-weapons rule. However, no new sets are anticipated, and I think >that a disciplineless CW would enhance the game greatly. The benefits far >outweight the potential for Ivory Bow abuse, though the recommended fix >will certainly result in Ivory Bow being contested with greater frequency. Contestation is aweak counter to undercosting something (cf. ToRIII). Regardless, I used it as an example. If not the Bow, the Dagger, or the Sentinel, or the Sword of Justice, or whatever else comes next. Non-Obf CW allows for no equip acquisition of not only every undercosted weapon made to date, but every future one, as well. This isn't a big focus of my issues, though. Sorry you spent so much typing on the Bow... >> I object to eliminating the rules-provided, tried and true method of >> denying a minion equipment... to block. >To you also object to the way Hunting Grounds cards prevent you from >blocking minions from gaining a blood from their mortal victims? No. Make CW a clan specific unique master soomehow, and I probably wouldn't mind it, either. >> It's the best way to pre-empt >> any action based stategy by any opponent, and it would be summarily >> denied by this suggested correction. >snippage >From what you've described of your metagame, it sounds like the more >expensive weapons are never used, and others rarely. When they are used, >they are used by weenies, because for weenies, the cost of an equip action >is rather less than for big vampires. Let me ask, though, how often do >your combat decks include Fast Hands or Shattering Blow, or Canine Horde? Usually used sparingly, as intercept is stronger. Weaponry is either done as a last action with a good piece after key blockers' resources are depleted, or done en masse with every available minion. The end result is similar, some have guns, some are torpored, and some are still standing. >> >> This would also speed up weenie gun decks, as there is no delay for >> >>the equip action. Another negative, IMHO. >> >> >The only thing wrong with Weenie Gun decks, that I can see, is Zip >> >Gun/DBR, but that is a separate issue. A disciplineless CW has not a >> >chance to be nearly as abusive as that combo. >> >> Sure it does... it just lets you DBR with any gun within the context >> of combat, without needing to equip first. >Not at all. Zip Gun/DBR is a 2 card combo that grants me a maneuver, >gives me one damage, and inflicts 2 agro +1 damage on my opponent. >Compare: CW + Saturday Night Special + DBR is a 3-card combo that grants >me a maneuver, costs 1 pool, and inflicts 2 agro +1 damage on my opponent. >The need for 3 cards and the 1 pool cost more than make up for the lack of >the 1 damage. > >The only other one I'd consider playing would be: CW + Sawed off Shotgun >+ DBR. Another 3 card combo that inflicts 2 agro +3 damage for the cost >of 2 pool and lacks the manuever. >If this was really so great, you's see the Malkavians play it alot. Have >you really seen it that often? I find it interesting that this costing I'm to compare includes the Zip Gun/DBR combo on one side of the equation... You can see that this doesn't help your argument, as you're bringing in what most will agree as being one of the most undercosted combos in the game... Of course _anything_ you put up against it will be more costly! And so it should be... >[snip lots of weapon hosers] >snip more arguments from "The Real World" analogy file... >> Specialized weapon hosers aren't wallpaper merely because weapons >> aren't heavily played, they're just plain limited in scope. >Perhaps, but you only need one Peace Treaty in a vote deck. In a combat >deck, DOTB and IG are perfectly valuable even if their are no opposing >weapons. Ahh. I would definitely call Peace Treaty a generalized weapon hoser, and if you want it when you need it, you'd better have more than one in that vote deck... Your other suggestions necessitate special deck construction provisions, where general intercept provided for adequately before. >> snip more >That does not "rebut" the position of the cards original intent. It >*concedes* the point. I never claimed to know why the card was changed, >or why they chose not to issue errata. >I do understand that the cards original intent is not the main or the most >important issue. The issue is whether errata to this card would benefit >the game. Though I did take time to point out the cards original intent, >I have advocated errata only on the basis of the latter issue, and even >took issue with Jason for advocating it exclusively on the basis of the >former. >I think we can agree that the original intent of the card was to be >disciplineless; that we do not know if it was changed intentionally or by >accident; and that it should not be changed back unless such a change >would significantly benefit the game (I believe it would). >> I reject most real-world analogies as moot. My point though was that >> the Ivory Bow has power that goes beyond the pool/damage limit >> provided for by CW. So do several other weapons. Dimensional >> arguments about weapon size are just about as silly as the artwork >> argument below... >I only pointed these out to demonstrate the concept behind the cards >original intent, which is clear and obvious enough. THIS WAS NOT I REPEAT >NOT INTENDED BY MYSELF AS AN ARGUMENT IN SUPPORT OF ERRATA PER SE. Then I'd reccommend not including it in your ultimate submittal to the rules team/PTB. >snip a bit >> You overrate my fears by labeling them alarmist. But this change will >> eliminate another opportunity to block an action. >So what? Only equip with weapon actions, and it is debatable that you >should be always allowed that opportunity. Disciplineless CW adds far >more than it takes away. All of your debates against equipping requiring an action revolved around real world mapping of the incidents your V:TES minions might encounter in their imaginary V:TES world. This has nothing to do with game mechanics, which are what would be partially circumvented by a non-Obf. CW. Bleeding takes an action, calling a vote takes an action. So does recuiting ally/hire minion, encounter in torpor, and hunting. Provisions that circumvent requiring actions for these effects should be limited in the scope of the game that they apply to, as it currently does for equipping (Obf. only) snipped >> >The major beneficiaries of this card would be the Allies, who are almost >> >wallpaper as it is. Now if allies were to get out of hand (don't make me >> >laugh) there are plenty of things that could be done about THAT. For >> >starters, a single Cryptic Mission will get rid of Loyal Street Gang AND >> >his .44 magnum that cost his Methuselah a combined 3 pool, and their is >> >certainly more than one way to skin THAT cat. >> >> That Cryptic Mission makes it foolish to equip the LSG with a costly >> weapon in the first place, regardless of CW discipline status. >Not necessarily foolish, but risky. I've had some fun with Ally Equip >decks, and I don't care who calls me foolish for doing so. I've never won >with them, (though I have come close) and I think that CW would make such >decks just a little more viable. Risky = Foolish. Regards, R. David Zopf guenh...@mindspring.com Atom Weaver and V:EKN Prince of Boston

R. David Zopf (guenh...@mindspring.com) wrote: : du...@newton.ruph.cornell.edu (Joshua Duffin) wrote: : >Hmmm. Well, you make some reasonable points here, but I have to take : >issue with at least one of them: You suggest that the designers knowingly : >changed CW to Obfuscate, so as to keep it from being disciplineless and : >screwing up the game. But that implies stupidity on their part even : >beyond what we usually attribute to them. ;-) If DW was already going : >to be there for Obfuscate, what possible reason is there to give CW : >also to Obfuscate? It is the purest form of wallpaper, because there : >is another card, at the same rarity level, which is always and : >in every case better than it. : I could only conjecture as to why they put it in Obf, other than the : similar card there already meant it would at the very least be a zero : impact change. If they felt so strongly when Jyhad was printed that : weapons wer going to be a strong part of the game, they might have : felt that erring on the conservative side was best. In other words, they were even stupider than they are usually given credit for. It would have been more useful to have made something else a C2 than to print Concealed Weapon along with Disguised Weapon. Or they could have put Immortal Grapple on the common sheet and switched another R1 to R2... : >As for the rest of the issue, I feel that making CW disciplineless is : >pretty unlikely to unbalance the game (or weapons, or weapon usage) to : >as great a degree as the sudden barrage of devil's advocates are suggesting. : I'm flattered to be labeled a "...sudden barrage of devil's : advocates..." And to clarify, "unbalance" was never a term I used. : This isn't a RTI/TB/Mind Rape grade discussion we're having here. : Making CW disiplineless wouldn't be "unbalancing". It would, however, : mean that the equip action would likely be obsoleted. I'm simply : taking issue with the subsequent likely elimination of a simple block : action as a method for denying equipment to my opponent, as would be : the case with most weapons after this proposed errata to CW. James Coupe actually also supported the anti-CW-change position, so the two of you together were the sudden barrage. (Not that you couldn't be a sudden barrage all by yourself. ;-) I'm glad to hear you don't think it'd actually be an unbalancing change. There's hope for you yet. : Weapon hoser cards are reactionary, not pre-emptive. The best : defensive strategies fall into the latter category, and not the : former. Blocking is a pre-emptive methodology given to (nearly) all : minions, and shouldn't be made obsolete in the case of weaponry. If : the suggested errata wer to be instated, the number and quality of : weapons that the CW cost/damage restriction applies to isn't nearly : high enough. Blocking is only available to decks with intercept. At least around here, intercept decks are generally not too popular, and widely perceived to have greatly reduced chances of winning games as compared to more proactive deck strategies. Also, not all weapon hosers are reactionary. The best ones (ie the ones that don't work only against weapons, eg Immortal Grapple, Drawing Out the Beast) neutralize the weapon after you've bought it, making it a complete waste of pool and time. Last night, I was playing a weenie celerity/brujah/allies guns deck, and I was being torn apart by my Gangrel/Nos predator who had about fifteen DotB in his deck. (He had them to deal damage against S:CE and so on; hosing me was just an added bonus.) : I think the idea that there are other cards to be changed before this : is addressed is a good one... There's so much more that deserves : attention before this. Well, yeah. It's sorta been the opinion of my playgroup that fixing the wallpaper is a slippery slope, and one that would require entire tomes of card changes, as there have been so many bad cards printed in the expansions. We've pretty much stuck to altering what we think is overpowered, rather than trying to make anything useless become useful. : >Josh : >abstaining from the actual vote due to lack of conviction : That must be from my Pulling your Strings ;-) No doubt it is. At least you didn't use your Kindred Coercion to make me agree with you. (Yet.) Josh easily dominated

I feel like I am one of the "Twelve Angry Men", with R.David Zopf as the Henry Fonda (or Jack Lemmon - depending on which version) character. I am starting to fall into his way of thinking that if CW was left as it was, it would make the equip action obsolete. Instead of making only making it disciplineless (which is no doubt easier), what about the following fix (this copied from the WOTC page and then altered): Card Title: Concealed Weapon Blood/Pool: n/a Clan/Discip.: n/a Card Type: Action Modifier +1 stealth. This can only be used by a minion attempting to equip with a weapon. Pay weapon's equip cost from blood pool, as normal. The weapon cannot cost more than 2 pool or do more than 4 damage. Artist: Jeff Menges Rarity: Common 3 Good things about this suggestion: saves the card from wallpaper, gives weapons and allies some more guts in the game. Bad things: It pretty much changes the entire card except the name, and is not really errata - the changes are too sweeping. I haven't changed my vote to a nay yet, but R. David is starting to sway me... Chris [ quoted text not captured ]

Please excuse if the following message is incoherent. I have consumed an excess of alcohol. In article <ELaiaHAU...@obeah.demon.co.uk>, James Coupe wrote: > >I would have to sort of agree here. > >Much as I think weapons do need a helping hand, and equipment in >general, I don't think this is the way to go. I don't want to see >people throwing down Ivory Bows, Sengir Daggers, Bastard Swords, Bang >Nakh etc. left, right and centre. I think you overestimate the potential of CW to achieve this end. The propose fix will not turn all weapons into zip guns, since a 2-card combo is required to achieve the Zip-Gun effect. >I think the ability to get out a weapon is Obfuscate's major saving >grace when it comes to its lack of combat ability. Only a very few >cards are excluded and you can do more than enough damage with the ones >that are left to not make it worth your while bringing out others. The >Brujah and Toreador would have a field day The Brujah are perfectly capable of making combat decks without weapons, due to the combo of potence and protean. Enhancing weapon-based combat gives them other equally viable advantages. They can put weapon-based combat cards in at the expense of leaving other combat cards out. Including weapon-based combat does not make them more powerful, merely more variable and unpredictable. The toreador are not known as a combat clan, and if they were enabled to become one as a result of a CW fix this would IMO be no trajedy. >- their major problem in >weapon decks is the lack of stealth to get them out - you'd have to give >them Obfuscate, or get them out under stealth and Heidelberg them or >smoething - or just hope and prey no-one has intercept, and intercept >locations or fairly common. > >As said, you'd hardly ever equip a weapon again! If you were willing to devote 20% of your deck to weapons and CW cards then the obligation to equip with actions would be minimized (though not necessarily eliminated). I see no problem with this, especially since Zip Gun shows precedent as an weapon card that doubles as a combat card, setting as strong precedent for the concept (as does DW of course). >Malkavians have very little combat defence - Auspex has a dodge or two, >and a little damage prevention. Dominate is very poor (besides the >broken TB). Obfuscate lets them have that surprise value - at a price, >the cost of a weapon. Obfuscate still gives them the advantage of being able to equip when choosing a strike, not at all insignificant. Even the inferior version of CW grants them the abililty to equip with a Bomb, which CW cannot do, and this is a good as a defensive (though not offensive) move. Malkavians are also the premier stealth bleeders, and it is not necessarily a bad thing that they are not the best in combat. >It's not likely to be great because a pure combat >deck likely has damage prevention cards, or flak jackets etc. But it is >there, for security. It's still there for them, and gives them greater options. >Assamites can have fun with it, Obfuscate Celerity being very useful. >They are, to my mind, underpowered though, Primarily because there are so few of them. They might well be quite powerful if they had 23 vampires in the clan, and 20 odd cards in their primary discipline. >so it's not as bad as the >Brujah and Toreador - they can vote, bleed and fight. The Assamites can >only do the last one and, perhaps, bleed a little. So I come in, drop >in my .44 Magnum and blast away like merry hell - a good thing that only >their clan has GOOD access to (City Gangrel also in parts). >Nosferatu are good but need a hand in combat. As has been said before >by very experienced Nosferatu players, their disciplines just don't mesh >too easily. Disguised Weapon lets them drop in a fwe weapons now and >then to mean that you don't have to go for high capacity Nossies with >fortitude or whatever. This is the point I must really take issue with. I do not think the Nossies were ever intended to be the primary weapon-using combat clan, nor do I believe they would suffer in the sort of weapon-rich environment that might be encouraged by a disciplineless CW. A weapon-rich combat environment would BENEFIT the Nossies because they are the premier WEAPON HOSERS extraordinaire. With both Animalism and Potence, they have access to both Immortal Grapple and Drawing out the Beast: the two most important weapon-hosers since they are useful even if your opponent does not use weapons. They can cancel opponent's manuevers, and have access to both Canine Horde and Shattering Blow. Fast Hands is just about the only weapon hoser they cannot use. This more than compensates for any exclusive equiping privileges they would lose if CW became disciplineless. The Nossies are my favoritle clan by far (I play them more than 50% of the time), yet I do not by any means fear that a "fixed" CW would hurt them. >Basically, I don't care about the INTENT of the card. We've already >proven that the card probably was meant to be disciplineless. >Personally, I don't agree that, even though it was planned to be, that >it SHOULD be. I do agree on this point, and I have tried not to argue for its "fixing" on the basis of its intent. The fact that the fix seems to "fit", is only an added bonus, from my point of view. >Personally, I believe that the ability to drop weapons >into a game should be restricted to Obfuscate - handing it out willy >nilly just isn't right. I don't agree here. The ability to "drop weapons into a game" was build into the game. Zip Gun was actually designed as a combat card with this concept in mind. >AND even if the RT do say "Yeah, alright, you can have it as >disciplineless, we were wrong" or something, what does this mean in real >life, as opposed to JOL? Well, any player who is new to the game or who >has difficulty accessing Jyhad cards (I'll say for myself that it's now >quite difficult in Britain simply because of the fact that most stores >can't order them anymore and that places in America are saying "Yeah, >only 5 dollars a box - just order 75 billion of the things.") Anyone >who hasn't been playing the game from the start or who doesn't frequent >the sealed booster tournaments or who is edgy or finds it difficult to >buy cards from places such as the Edgeman is at disadvantage. They >don't have this wonder card which will let them do wonders for weapons - >no, they still have shitty old Disguised Weapon. And you want to do >that? You want to put new players to the game at a serious >DISADVANTAGE? You have a point here, but not much of one. It is a common card from the original set. The new player will have a much easier time getting it than a rare card from any set, especially a new one. People with Protected Resources have an advantage as well. If a new expansion ever comes out, a corrected CW could easily be reprinted. Until then CW, as a common card from an underpriced set, is likely to be more readily available than a great many other valuable cards from the newer sets. >Most of the cards removed from Jyhad were done so because >they were dross so no player is at a disadvantage there if they only own >V:TES. Now you want to say "Yeah, well, being as you're new, we're >playing with some kick ass old cards. Oh, and by the way, they don't >sell them anymore at Local Gaming Store X. <evil laugh>" Just doesn't >seem right to me. Well, they also "fixed" Rotschreck to make it more as a defensive card, and it is now one of the few defenses against TB available. I guess that does not make it right. Still they did not remove the discontinued cards from the game. Movement of the Slow Body is still used to great effect in Gangrel Freaky Bleed Gangrel Decks. That does not necessarily make it right. But why should it bother their conscience? These are the same guys that like to put alot of overpowered cards in newer sets so that the old cards from the old sets become wallpaper, so that they sell alot of new cards and betray those customers taht invested so much in the older set. Why would a move in the opposite direction be immoral? [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <slrn6h9j6o....@amanda.dorsai.org>, John Whelan <jbwh...@dorsai.org> writes >Please excuse if the following message is incoherent. I have consumed an >excess of alcohol. Oh well, it'll liven up the newsgroup at least :) > >In article <ELaiaHAU...@obeah.demon.co.uk>, James Coupe wrote: >> >>I would have to sort of agree here. >> >>Much as I think weapons do need a helping hand, and equipment in >>general, I don't think this is the way to go. I don't want to see >>people throwing down Ivory Bows, Sengir Daggers, Bastard Swords, Bang >>Nakh etc. left, right and centre. > >I think you overestimate the potential of CW to achieve this end. The >propose fix will not turn all weapons into zip guns, since a 2-card combo >is required to achieve the Zip-Gun effect. 2 card combos are not difficult to achieve. Witness Return to Innocence with a Day Operation which I've seen played rather too many times. And the Freaky Gangrel deck you mention at the end of the article requires a LOT of cards to be played properly - freak drives, movements, force of wills, restorations etc. etc. etc. It isn't a real problem for them. > >>I think the ability to get out a weapon is Obfuscate's major saving >>grace when it comes to its lack of combat ability. Only a very few >>cards are excluded and you can do more than enough damage with the ones >>that are left to not make it worth your while bringing out others. The >>Brujah and Toreador would have a field day > >The Brujah are perfectly capable of making combat decks without weapons, What I'm saying, tho, is that the Brujah can then do Celerity-Weapon decks very, very easily. Just drop a good-ish weapon out pretty easily and slice them apart. Normally, every time they do an additional strike, you'll need a Potence card to hit them hard. The Brujah can just get a permanent weapon out and slice through them. There's nothing stopping them just equipping a weapon normally, except the difficult they have in getting stealth. Now they can just throw down a pretty good weapon without regard to stealth - which has always been a problem for the Brujah. They can't choose who they rush necessarily. They can't get their Presence based bleeds past you easily. They have problems calling the votes they could pass with their presence. >due to the combo of potence and protean. Errmm... Potence Protean? Is this the brand new Brujah clan from Imaginary Land? :) >Enhancing weapon-based combat >gives them other equally viable advantages. They can put weapon-based >combat cards in at the expense of leaving other combat cards out. >Including weapon-based combat does not make them more powerful, merely >more variable and unpredictable. Yes, but the permanents it gives them can be used again and again. A Malkavian can equip a weapon under stealth very easily. They just probably can't use it very easily. > The toreador are not known as a combat >clan, and if they were enabled to become one as a result of a CW fix this >would IMO be no trajedy. Well, I've seen the Toreador do pretty well in combat before. Sam with the Toreador Cushion at Praxis Seizure: Cardiff did pretty well with them. He could block anything you did and had weapons to hand as well with additional strikes, ISTR. I've seen people play them as Archons as well. I can remember a time when Francois Villon decided to use my Flamethrower against me, which was quite fun. > >>- their major problem in >>weapon decks is the lack of stealth to get them out - you'd have to give >>them Obfuscate, or get them out under stealth and Heidelberg them or >>smoething - or just hope and prey no-one has intercept, and intercept >>locations or fairly common. >> >>As said, you'd hardly ever equip a weapon again! > >If you were willing to devote 20% of your deck to weapons and CW cards >then the obligation to equip with actions would be minimized (though not >necessarily eliminated). I see no problem with this, especially since Zip >Gun shows precedent as an weapon card that doubles as a combat card, Yeah, but the thing is, Zip Gun, though disciplineless, is very limited. You get the 1R and maneuver, of course, but you also take damage every time you use it. You'll get through a lot of damage prevention that way, or take a fair bit of damage. >setting as strong precedent for the concept (as does DW of course). Yes. Of course. There are plenty of cards in the game where a more limited, less functional version of the card is available disciplineless. The thing is, with Disguised Weapon, we already have the less functional, more limited version of it - Zip Gun. > >>Malkavians have very little combat defence - Auspex has a dodge or two, >>and a little damage prevention. Dominate is very poor (besides the >>broken TB). Obfuscate lets them have that surprise value - at a price, >>the cost of a weapon. > >Obfuscate still gives them the advantage of being able to equip when >choosing a strike, not at all insignificant. Yes but they are not a highly combat oriented clan. They do not have the luxury of being able to say "Hold still while I pound you" (bar TB which I believe to be a wrong card in general) which other clans do. Other clans can stop you S:CEing (Gangrel), dodge and hit you on an additional strike (any clan with celerity) etc. The Malkavians really just have to throw the weapon down and hope. This is what I meant earlier. The Brujah can do incredibly well in combat. If they choose to play weapons, they can do whatever they want with them - beat you to range with Celerity, dodge your strkes, slice you like swiss cheese on additional strikes. They just can't guarantee getting the weapons out. If a Malkavian chooses to get weapons out, it's very difficult to stop him. He can disguised weapon it out or stealth it past you, his choice. He just can't do much with it when he has it. >Even the inferior version of >CW grants them the abililty to equip with a Bomb, which CW cannot do, and >this is a good as a defensive (though not offensive) move. Malkavians are >also the premier stealth bleeders, and it is not necessarily a bad thing >that they are not the best in combat. That's my point exactly. They have very limited ability in combat but Disguised Weapon gives them a little bit of spice. Assamites don't vote too well, but Alamut gives them that little extra ability. Ventrue don't fight too well (well, they can do the ultra-cheese combo of Skin of Steel-Pulled Fangs) so Island of Yiaros gives them some help. Most clans don't do one thing too well but they just have a little something up their sleeve to help them out. I mean, Toreador are very badly off for stealth but Toreador Grand Ball - well, you can do it with that if you have to. Disguised Weapon is a wild card for the Malkavians (or any clan with Obfuscate). You can rush them, but are you sure they're not going to drop an Ivory Bow out? A .44 Magnum? If ANY clan can do that, you lose that little bit of doubt and uncertainty which should be there so that a player can bluff you down. I've done it before to players when I've been lucky enough to get a couple of good cards in my hand. I did a Nosferatu Army of Rats deck. It had two Terror Frenzies in it. As luck would have it, it screwed my predator who was Archon-ing every vampire he could and getting a few weapons out. He hadn't predicted I'd have that but the Nossies have that little bit of combat defence to throw you off balance. > >>It's not likely to be great because a pure combat >>deck likely has damage prevention cards, or flak jackets etc. But it is >>there, for security. > >It's still there for them, and gives them greater options. Yes - this is my point! I think it is a GOOD thing that the Malkavians have a wild card they can throw down and say "Whoops, where'd that Flamethrower come from then, flibble?" whilst frothing at the mouth. I think it is a good thing that the calm and collected Ventrue can really hurt a combat deck by hitting back with 3 or 4 hand damage, forcing them to deal with it. I think it is a GOOD thing that most clans have one or two focussed areas but can throw down a little bit of spice to liven up the game. I mean, where would we be without the Malkavians ability to incite outrage by playing a Madness of the Bard (ermmm.... probably a lot further into JOL60 as it goes, but I digress :) I *LIKE* the fact that you don't know what someone's going to do. I like the fact that the Giovanni can annoy a vote deck with that pesky Mausoleum, Enzo Giovanni and Regina, even though voting isn't there thing (actually, the Mausoleum really managed to foul up a vote deck when I worked with another player on the table one time). I like the fact that the Setites can annoy me with my Short Term Investments and Blood Dolls. Not something that's there in many Setite decks but it's something that could be there in ANY Setite deck. > >>Assamites can have fun with it, Obfuscate Celerity being very useful. >>They are, to my mind, underpowered though, > >Primarily because there are so few of them. They might well be quite >powerful if they had 23 vampires in the clan, and 20 odd cards in their >primary discipline. I agree here. > >>so it's not as bad as the >>Brujah and Toreador - they can vote, bleed and fight. The Assamites can >>only do the last one and, perhaps, bleed a little. So I come in, drop >>in my .44 Magnum and blast away like merry hell - a good thing that only >>their clan has GOOD access to (City Gangrel also in parts). > >>Nosferatu are good but need a hand in combat. As has been said before >>by very experienced Nosferatu players, their disciplines just don't mesh >>too easily. Disguised Weapon lets them drop in a fwe weapons now and >>then to mean that you don't have to go for high capacity Nossies with >>fortitude or whatever. > >This is the point I must really take issue with. I do not think the >Nossies were ever intended to be the primary weapon-using combat clan, No, probably not. The Nossies weren't ever really intended to do anything, in V:TES. There abilities of scouting, rumour-mongering and information selling don't translate well into V:TES. >nor >do I believe they would suffer in the sort of weapon-rich environment that >might be encouraged by a disciplineless CW. A weapon-rich combat >environment would BENEFIT the Nossies because they are the premier WEAPON >HOSERS extraordinaire. Why would the ability to deal with more weapons benefit the Nossies? As far as I can see, they would simply be in a good position to deal with it - they would not really receive any benefit from being able to smash an opponent's Saturday Night Special or Flamethrower. They receive no benefit using Drawing out the Beast - they just simply don't get hit by a weapon. > With both Animalism and Potence, they have access >to both Immortal Grapple and Drawing out the Beast: the two most >important weapon-hosers since they are useful even if your opponent does >not use weapons. They can cancel opponent's manuevers, and have access to >both Canine Horde and Shattering Blow. Fast Hands is just about the only >weapon hoser they cannot use. Peace Treaty, Blessing of Durga Syn, the Thaumaturgy cards which disrupt use of weapons, Machine Blitz. I think that more or less covers the others. The Tremere would do pretty well in a weapon heavy environment too, it would seem. >This more than compensates for any >exclusive equiping privileges they would lose if CW became disciplineless. Well, the Malkavians are the premier stealth and bleed clan. They could cope pretty well if they lost that privilege since they have intercept and bleed reduction available to them. Does that mean we should make Threats disciplineless? No, of course not. My argument is not that the Nossies couldn't cope if they were forced to deal with more weapons but that they loses something which they can do well. As with the Malks, they can get out the weapons fine, they just might have trouble using them effectively. Other clans can EASILY use weapons effectively - they just can't get them out. >The Nossies are my favoritle clan by far (I play them more than 50% of the >time), yet I do not by any means fear that a "fixed" CW would hurt them. > >>Basically, I don't care about the INTENT of the card. We've already >>proven that the card probably was meant to be disciplineless. >>Personally, I don't agree that, even though it was planned to be, that >>it SHOULD be. > >I do agree on this point, and I have tried not to argue for its "fixing" >on the basis of its intent. The fact that the fix seems to "fit", is only >an added bonus, from my point of view. > >>Personally, I believe that the ability to drop weapons >>into a game should be restricted to Obfuscate - handing it out willy >>nilly just isn't right. > >I don't agree here. The ability to "drop weapons into a game" was build >into the game. Zip Gun was actually designed as a combat card with this >concept in mind. The ability to cause pool loss based on what you say was built into the game with Madness of the Bard. Should we have a more limited version of that disciplineless? The ability to stop people performing S:CEs was put in the game (Dog Pack, Immortal Grapple). Should we have more disciplineless versions of them in the game too? If we did, they'd have to be pretty limited. For my money, we already have the limited version of Disguised Weapon - it's called Zip Gun and it's more limited in that it only works for a pretty crappy gun. I personally don't believe that Concealed Weapon is sufficiently limited to be placed in the game. The fact that it can bring out an Ivory Bow or Sengir Dagger scares the hell out of me. > > >>AND even if the RT do say "Yeah, alright, you can have it as >>disciplineless, we were wrong" or something, what does this mean in real >>life, as opposed to JOL? Well, any player who is new to the game or who >>has difficulty accessing Jyhad cards (I'll say for myself that it's now >>quite difficult in Britain simply because of the fact that most stores >>can't order them anymore and that places in America are saying "Yeah, >>only 5 dollars a box - just order 75 billion of the things.") Anyone >>who hasn't been playing the game from the start or who doesn't frequent >>the sealed booster tournaments or who is edgy or finds it difficult to >>buy cards from places such as the Edgeman is at disadvantage. They >>don't have this wonder card which will let them do wonders for weapons - >>no, they still have shitty old Disguised Weapon. And you want to do >>that? You want to put new players to the game at a serious >>DISADVANTAGE? > >You have a point here, but not much of one. It is a common card from the >original set. The new player will have a much easier time getting it than >a rare card from any set, especially a new one. People with Protected >Resources have an advantage as well. Point taken. > >If a new expansion ever comes out, a corrected CW could easily be >reprinted. Until then CW, as a common card from an underpriced set, is >likely to be more readily available than a great many other valuable >cards from the newer sets. > Well, in Britain, I don't know where I'd get them from. Honestly. Possibly Maverix and that's about it, but they are rip-off merchants who'll sell you cards which you can get from Wizards for the cost of a stamp (the promo vamps). >>Most of the cards removed from Jyhad were done so because >>they were dross so no player is at a disadvantage there if they only own >>V:TES. Now you want to say "Yeah, well, being as you're new, we're >>playing with some kick ass old cards. Oh, and by the way, they don't >>sell them anymore at Local Gaming Store X. <evil laugh>" Just doesn't >>seem right to me. > >Well, they also "fixed" Rotschreck to make it more as a defensive card, >and it is now one of the few defenses against TB available. I guess that >does not make it right. Still they did not remove the discontinued cards >from the game. Movement of the Slow Body is still used to great effect in >Gangrel Freaky Bleed Gangrel Decks. Hmmm... point taken again but Concealed Weapon would likely be more widely played than either of these two cards. I can't remember the last time I played Rotschreck or saw anyone play it. Maybe last August? I'm not sure. > >That does not necessarily make it right. But why should it bother their >conscience? These are the same guys that like to put alot of overpowered >cards in newer sets so that the old cards from the old sets become >wallpaper, so that they sell alot of new cards and betray those customers >taht invested so much in the older set. No, this is how business works. For whatever people say about WotC, they know how to run a business. You will always supercede your old lot of anything with a new version or there's no point people buying the new one. The expansions for V:TES have generally superceded the old ones by introducing 1) a few powerful cards and 2) new cards which do different things and which only that expansion has ways of dealing with, rather than just a general escalation of things as has happened in, say, Magic. >Why would a move in the opposite >direction be immoral? I'm not saying it would be. I just disagree with how people propose to achieve it, that's all. -- James Coupe (Prince of England) Change nospam to obeah to reply Vampire: Elder Kindred Network madnessnetwork.hexagon.net

Hmmm...the majority of the arguement seems to revolve around blocking and its relative importance. Some rambling notes: 1. CW does take up a card slot. So I look at my deck and decide which cards come out so that CW goes in. It seems that I would be best off taking my slots out of existing weapon slots; as it is a 90 card deck I would deem 4-6 CW's as being effective. Playing a weapon based deck I probably have 8-12 slots for equipment (15 if I am going nuts). So 2-3 of the cards come out of my weapons and 2-3 out of other cards. After a little review....it seems that the laws of deck construction even this part out pretty good. I have fewer weapons and no guarantee that I will have both CW and a weapon in my hand at the same time, also if I have to equip to avoid hand jams, fewer blocks are required by my opponent to cripple my weapons supply. Also, how much does it hurt detract 2-3 cards from the rest of my deck? - I may need that intercept or stealth quite badly (which is why the zip gun is so popular in intercept decks). Sadly, CW creates as many problems as it solves. Re-evaluating my deck once more I find that 4 CW's is probably the most I can put in without doing serious harm to another facet of my deck design - no matter how robust it is. So, what does it add to the game? A couple of CW's provides a nasty surprise every now and then and keeps your opponents a little more honest....just a little. This hardly detracts from the blocking aspect of the game and provides the bonus of spicing things up a little. 2. Many of the clans that would make best use of this have little or no stealth capabilities (Toreador, Tzimisce, Ravnos, Brujah, and Gangrel to name a few). This makes the equipping action for them ridiculously easy to block - too easy - which is why successful weapon decks are more than a rarity. CW (given the deck construction trade offs mentioned above) merely gives the weapon deck a slightly better shot at success. No sin in my eyes. I still vote yes. Though I may prefer it to be disciplineless and cost 1 pool. (1 blood if you make the card for vampires only)

(Snipped all from various persons) We play Concealed Weapon as a skill-less card for over a year now - and weapons STILL not show up in masses or become predominant or abusive. This is perhaps because most abusive weapons are unique, and nearly all weapons cost pool you normally want to spend elsewhere to support your strategy. Most people don't want to play a weapon based combat deck regulary because discipline driven decks are faster and equally effective, if not even more. There are some weapons which may be used abusively: Zip Gun (may be abusive with various Ammo Cards, especially DBR) Wooden Stake (as the poor man's non-unique Senguir Dagger) But when weapons show up more regulary, a MINOR change in the metagame prevents weapons / equipment to become too powerful. 1st: Drawing out the Beast and Immortal Grapple are staple cards for combat decks anyway and deny your opponent the use of his weapons / equipment 2nd: The combat avoidance strategy with Dodge and S:CE renders weapons nearly useless 3rd: Anti-Equipment cards would show up a little bit more, and since it is so much easier to destroy equipment than to equip with it (especially considering card cost) the mere existence of few anti-equipment cards will deter others to overly use stuff 4th: Equipment decks usually are slow compared to discipline-orientated ones, and they tend to jam your hand often (and this is no fun!). 5th: You only have a limited supply of card slots. When you use them up for weapons or other permanents, you cannot use them for aggressive actions or modifiers or any cards that support your strategy. Using CW doubles the card space you need for your weapons. To finish: We found that weapons may be a valuable supply of your deck - but most vampires could easily deal with this threat with minimum effort. Minions which need weapons the most are allies, because they don't have access to disciplines (with some exceptions). They need the additional punch weapons can offer to them, and since most allies are mortal, they can BUY this equipment during the daylight hours when (nearly) all vampires are asleep. So vampires should (normally) not be able to block such actions themselves from the point of logic. CW is a card which enables vampires / minions to REVEAL the weapons they EQUIPPED with in secret / in the daylight / with the help of mortals they seduced / dominated to do their bidding. The restriction of CW does limit the weapons revealed with it to physically disguisable equipment, perhaps under a trenchcoat (Take a look at Highlander...) When you actually need supernatural powers to disguise equipment because it is so bulky, you need DW anyway. To make CW officially disciplineless would add to the game, and in my experience doesn't change much. Yes. You may perhaps not like that your opponent gets a 44er out of his trench, but that's life. When you think that you need supernatural powers to hide a "Senguir" Dagger, get a knife out of your kitchen, put it inside your jacket and watch yourself in a mirror. You will be surprised that even you, a mere mortal, have this "inferior obfuscate" to use CW in reality... Why not in this card game? Michael Beer

In article <KU9RtGAT...@obeah.demon.co.uk>, James Coupe wrote: >>In article <ELaiaHAU...@obeah.demon.co.uk>, James Coupe wrote: >> >>I think you overestimate the potential of CW to achieve this end. The >>propose fix will not turn all weapons into zip guns, since a 2-card combo >>is required to achieve the Zip-Gun effect. > >2 card combos are not difficult to achieve. [snip remainder] I never said they were. I am merely pointing out that a disciplineless CW does not even come near to turning all guns into Zip Guns. To achieve that effect, you would have to make a house rule stating that all weapons can be played as combat cards, same as Zip Gun. I agree that a CW/Saturday-Night-Special combo is significantly more powerful than Zip Gun by itself. And that is precisely as it should be. After all, the first effect is achieved by playing 2 cards and the second by playing only one. In an game environment where card values are approximately equal, one would expect that playing 2 cards would be approximately twice as effective as playing only one. I don't think, however, that the CW/S-N-S combo even gets close to being twice as effective as the single card effect of Zip Gun -- not after you factor in the many disadvantages. One disadvantage is the pool cost. Another is the the potential for hand jam inherent in the fact that CW is a card that REQUIRES a combo. >>>I think the ability to get out a weapon is Obfuscate's major saving >>>grace when it comes to its lack of combat ability. Only a very few >>>cards are excluded and you can do more than enough damage with the ones >>>that are left to not make it worth your while bringing out others. The >>>Brujah and Toreador would have a field day >> >>The Brujah are perfectly capable of making combat decks without weapons, > >What I'm saying, tho, is that the Brujah can then do Celerity-Weapon >decks very, very easily. Just drop a good-ish weapon out pretty easily >and slice them apart. Normally, every time they do an additional >strike, you'll need a Potence card to hit them hard. The Brujah can >just get a permanent weapon out and slice through them. There's nothing >stopping them just equipping a weapon normally, except the difficult >they have in getting stealth. Now they can just throw down a pretty >good weapon without regard to stealth - which has always been a problem >for the Brujah. They can't choose who they rush necessarily. They >can't get their Presence based bleeds past you easily. They have >problems calling the votes they could pass with their presence. All the above is true, but there are other ways of dealing with Brujah with weapons than blocking their equip actions. S:CE works unusually well since Brujah cannot use IG in combo with weapon strikes. The brujah is also screwed if an opponent uses DOTB or IG. Then there is also the chance that the weapon hosers that are rarely used might see some play. I am not sure why everyone sees it as all important that there be an opportunity to block a weapon equip action. Chances are, when you block someone from equiping with Bang Nakh, you are doing him a favor by saving him 2 pool. T'would be far more devastating to make him pay the pool and then steal, burn, or otherwise render the weapon useless. There are plenty of cards provided in Jyhad to help achieve this goal. >>due to the combo of potence and protean. > >Errmm... Potence Protean? Is this the brand new Brujah clan from >Imaginary Land? :) Not fair. You were supposed to make allowances for inebriation. >>Enhancing weapon-based combat >>gives them other equally viable advantages. They can put weapon-based >>combat cards in at the expense of leaving other combat cards out. >>Including weapon-based combat does not make them more powerful, merely >>more variable and unpredictable. > >Yes, but the permanents it gives them can be used again and again. A >Malkavian can equip a weapon under stealth very easily. They just >probably can't use it very easily. Weapon-based Brujah combat has the potential to be powerful, especially with CW. However, it is not more powerful than other combat cards and combat card strategies that they posess. To use this pool-costly strategy, you must put a weapon/CW mix in your deck consisting of a total of, say, 10 or more cards. That means 10 combat cards that you must leave out of your deck instead -- combat cards that are not hosed by DOTB and others. A brujah weapon/cw deck could be awesome in the right circumstances, but so could other types of brujah combat decks, which have the advantage of not costing you pool when you play combat cards. >> The toreador are not known as a combat >>clan, and if they were enabled to become one as a result of a CW fix this >>would IMO be no trajedy. > >Well, I've seen the Toreador do pretty well in combat before. [snip] No doubt. Even with CW, however, people will not shriek in fear when the Toreador appear. Perhaps we would see the Toreador doing "pretty well in combat" a might more often, but if it came too much of a problem (which I doubt) then a small shift in the metagame to anti-weapon strategies would quickly solve the problem. [snip] >>If you were willing to devote 20% of your deck to weapons and CW cards >>then the obligation to equip with actions would be minimized (though not >>necessarily eliminated). I see no problem with this, especially since Zip >>Gun shows precedent as an weapon card that doubles as a combat card, > >Yeah, but the thing is, Zip Gun, though disciplineless, is very limited. >You get the 1R and maneuver, of course, but you also take damage every >time you use it. You'll get through a lot of damage prevention that >way, or take a fair bit of damage. Zip Gun is not all that limitted when you consider its advantages. Even if Zip Gun was a normal weapon card, and not a combat card, one could still argue that it was balanced compared to Saturday Night Special. Advantage that it costs 1 less pool is arguably balanced by the fact that it does one damage each combat to the bearer. However, when you add in the advantage of playing it as a combat card, with not action requirement and no opportunity to block, then it becomes clear that Zip Gun easily outweighs Saturday Night Special in its advantages. Allowing S-N-S to be used with CW helps even the odds a little. Remember you still cannot equip as easily as you can with a Zip Gun, because a combo is required. >>setting as strong precedent for the concept (as does DW of course). > >Yes. Of course. There are plenty of cards in the game where a more >limited, less functional version of the card is available >disciplineless. The thing is, with Disguised Weapon, we already have >the less functional, more limited version of it - Zip Gun. The above statement is wrong. Zip Gun is definitely NOT more limited than Disguised Weapon. Disguised Weapon is in many ways a very limited (and limiting) card. It cannot even be played without the help of other cards. Zip Gun is definitely superior and far more versatile and effective. Zip Gun by itself is not clearly more effective than many Weapon/CW combos. But why should it be? To be fair, compare 2-card combos to 2-card combos. Compare ZG/ManstopperRnds to DW/Saturday-Night-Special. >>>Malkavians have very little combat defence - Auspex has a dodge or two, >>>and a little damage prevention. Dominate is very poor (besides the >>>broken TB). Obfuscate lets them have that surprise value - at a price, >>>the cost of a weapon. >> >>Obfuscate still gives them the advantage of being able to equip when >>choosing a strike, not at all insignificant. > >Yes but they are not a highly combat oriented clan. They do not have >the luxury of being able to say "Hold still while I pound you" (bar TB >which I believe to be a wrong card in general) which other clans do. >Other clans can stop you S:CEing (Gangrel), dodge and hit you on an >additional strike (any clan with celerity) etc. The Malkavians really >just have to throw the weapon down and hope. >This is what I meant earlier. The Brujah can do incredibly well in >combat. If they choose to play weapons, they can do whatever they want >with them - beat you to range with Celerity, dodge your strkes, slice >you like swiss cheese on additional strikes. They just can't guarantee >getting the weapons out. If a Malkavian chooses to get weapons out, >it's very difficult to stop him. He can disguised weapon it out or >stealth it past you, his choice. He just can't do much with it when he >has it. All the above is true, but convinces me of nothing. If the Brujah can use CW, they will have a powerful combat strategy available to them. When they adopt this stragegy, they must SUBSTITUTE it for, not add it to, their other very powerful combat strategies. CW will not make them more powerful, only more unpredictable as combatants. Malkavians will still be powerful for their own reasons, but will not be good in combat. Making CW disciplineless will not change this substantially. >>Even the inferior version of >>DW grants them the abililty to equip with a Bomb, which CW cannot do, and >>this is a good as a defensive (though not offensive) move. Malkavians are >>also the premier stealth bleeders, and it is not necessarily a bad thing >>that they are not the best in combat. > >That's my point exactly. I think you missed my point. CW cannot get you a bomb. Even with CW disciplineless, obfuscate clans like the Malks would be the only Mad Bombers available due to their access to DW. >They have very limited ability in combat but >Disguised Weapon gives them a little bit of spice. I think the "usable when choosing a strike" effect still gives them that spice. This might be especially true in a weapon-rich combat environment, where your opponent does not know to play combat weapon hosers because he still does not know you have the weapon. >Assamites don't vote >too well, but Alamut gives them that little extra ability. Ventrue >don't fight too well (well, they can do the ultra-cheese combo of Skin >of Steel-Pulled Fangs) so Island of Yiaros gives them some help. Most >clans don't do one thing too well but they just have a little something >up their sleeve to help them out. I mean, Toreador are very badly off >for stealth but Toreador Grand Ball - well, you can do it with that if >you have to. Disguised Weapon is a wild card for the Malkavians (or any >clan with Obfuscate). You can rush them, but are you sure they're not >going to drop an Ivory Bow out? A .44 Magnum? If ANY clan can do that, >you lose that little bit of doubt and uncertainty which should be there >so that a player can bluff you down. I've done it before to players >when I've been lucky enough to get a couple of good cards in my hand. I >did a Nosferatu Army of Rats deck. It had two Terror Frenzies in it. >As luck would have it, it screwed my predator who was Archon-ing every >vampire he could and getting a few weapons out. He hadn't predicted I'd >have that but the Nossies have that little bit of combat defence to >throw you off balance. > >> >>>It's not likely to be great because a pure combat >>>deck likely has damage prevention cards, or flak jackets etc. But it is >>>there, for security. >> >>It's still there for them, and gives them greater options. > >Yes - this is my point! My point was that they still have greater options if CW is disciplineless, since DW gives more options than CW. (Bombs, Flamethrowers, Kali's Fang, Combat Shotgun, usable only when using strike). >I think it is a GOOD thing that the Malkavians >have a wild card they can throw down and say "Whoops, where'd that >Flamethrower come from then, flibble?" whilst frothing at the mouth. The "Flamethrower" option will still be exclusively theirs with DW. CW cannot get you a Flamethrower. [snip] >I *LIKE* the fact that you don't know what someone's going to do. So do I, which is why I think a disciplineless CW would be fun. [snip] >>>Nosferatu are good but need a hand in combat. As has been said before >>>by very experienced Nosferatu players, their disciplines just don't mesh >>>too easily. Disguised Weapon lets them drop in a fwe weapons now and >>>then to mean that you don't have to go for high capacity Nossies with >>>fortitude or whatever. >> >>This is the point I must really take issue with. I do not think the >>Nossies were ever intended to be the primary weapon-using combat clan, > >No, probably not. The Nossies weren't ever really intended to do >anything, in V:TES. There abilities of scouting, rumour-mongering and >information selling don't translate well into V:TES. I have no problem with the Nossies using weapons. I just don't think they should overshadow the Brujah in their ability to construct weapon-based decks. >>nor >>do I believe they would suffer in the sort of weapon-rich environment that >>might be encouraged by a disciplineless CW. A weapon-rich combat >>environment would BENEFIT the Nossies because they are the premier WEAPON >>HOSERS extraordinaire. > >Why would the ability to deal with more weapons benefit the Nossies? If weapons are prominent, weapon-hosers are a benefit. Similarly, if Majesty is common, cards which hose majesty are a benefit. >As >far as I can see, they would simply be in a good position to deal with >it - they would not really receive any benefit from being able to smash >an opponent's Saturday Night Special or Flamethrower. They receive no >benefit using Drawing out the Beast - they just simply don't get hit by >a weapon. In a combat-rich, weapon rich-environent, Nossies can construct combat decks which 1) completely hose any weapon decks, 2) are still effective against non-weapon combat decks, and 3) are still great at foiling S:CE. I'm not sure I understand why you don't see the benefits of this. [snip] >The ability to cause pool loss based on what you say was built into the >game with Madness of the Bard. Should we have a more limited version of >that disciplineless? The ability to stop people performing S:CEs was >put in the game (Dog Pack, Immortal Grapple). Should we have more >disciplineless versions of them in the game too? If we did, they'd have >to be pretty limited. I'm not sure where you are going here, or how you think I should answer these (rhetorical?) questions, or what it has to do with CW. I can imagine a reasonably acceptable disciplineless version of Immortal Grapple, with appropriate limitations (not usable against vampires with potence, requires minion with at least 2 hand damage). >For my money, we already have the limited version >of Disguised Weapon - it's called Zip Gun and it's more limited in that >it only works for a pretty crappy gun. Again. Zip Gun is DEFINITELY not more limitted than Disguised Weapon. It does not work *for* a crappy gun, it *is* the crappy gun. Compared to DW, it is a 2-card combo rolled into one, with a few compensatory limitations. >I personally don't believe that Concealed Weapon is sufficiently limited >to be placed in the game. The fact that it can bring out an Ivory Bow >or Sengir Dagger scares the hell out of me. The problem here is that Ivory Bow and Sengir Dagger are overpowered compared to other weapons, evem when their unique status is taken into account. The main blame here is the new Agro damage rules, which I have always disapproved of. But still, why does it scare you so much. The cards are, after all, unique. And if it scares you so much, is it anything a Shattering Blow cannot solve. Kill his Sengir Dagger with first strike, and he is down 2 pool for nothing. Call a Peace Treaty, and he'll have to pay for it all over again. But Peace Treaty and Shattering Blow are never played. Why? Largely because Ivory Bow and Sengir Dagger, in spite of being overpowered compared to other weapons, are apparently JUST NOT SCARY ENOUGH. And if these 2 stars can be so disregarded, surely the rest of the weapons must need help. [snip] >>>Most of the cards removed from Jyhad were done so because >>>they were dross so no player is at a disadvantage there if they only own >>>V:TES. Now you want to say "Yeah, well, being as you're new, we're >>>playing with some kick ass old cards. Oh, and by the way, they don't >>>sell them anymore at Local Gaming Store X. <evil laugh>" Just doesn't >>>seem right to me. >> >>Well, they also "fixed" Rotschreck to make it more as a defensive card, >>and it is now one of the few defenses against TB available. I guess that >>does not make it right. Still they did not remove the discontinued cards >>from the game. Movement of the Slow Body is still used to great effect in >>Gangrel Freaky Bleed Gangrel Decks. > >Hmmm... point taken again but Concealed Weapon would likely be more >widely played than either of these two cards. I can't remember the last >time I played Rotschreck or saw anyone play it. Maybe last August? I'm >not sure. I do agree that it would have more of an effect on the game environment, though those who have played with it as a house rule report that the effect is not great. I think it would be a good effect. As for its not being available in Britain... well, in that case it can't have much effect at all. Even if only some people have the cards, the rest of you still have all the weapon hosers to deal with them effectively. >>That does not necessarily make it right. But why should it bother their >>conscience? These are the same guys that like to put alot of overpowered >>cards in newer sets so that the old cards from the old sets become >>wallpaper, so that they sell alot of new cards and betray those customers >>taht invested so much in the older set. > >No, this is how business works. For whatever people say about WotC, >they know how to run a business. You will always supercede your old lot >of anything with a new version or there's no point people buying the new >one. The expansions for V:TES have generally superceded the old ones by >introducing 1) a few powerful cards and 2) new cards which do different >things and which only that expansion has ways of dealing with, rather >than just a general escalation of things as has happened in, say, Magic. I'm aware of how business works. I just don't see how morality comes into it. I expect a business to promote its newest stuff, but I cannot see it as immoral to make a move that enhances the value of the old, atypical though such a move may be. -- [ quoted text not captured ]

jbwh...@dorsai.org (John Whelan) wrote: snip Zip Gun lead-in >I agree that a CW/Saturday-Night-Special combo is significantly more >powerful than Zip Gun by itself. And that is precisely as it should be. >After all, the first effect is achieved by playing 2 cards and the second >by playing only one. >In an game environment where card values are approximately equal, one >would expect that playing 2 cards would be approximately twice as >effective as playing only one. I don't think, however, that the CW/S-N-S >combo even gets close to being twice as effective as the single card >effect of Zip Gun -- not after you factor in the many disadvantages. >One disadvantage is the pool cost. Another is the the potential for hand >jam inherent in the fact that CW is a card that REQUIRES a combo. Zip Gun, though, has at least the lasting effect of generating damage to the bearer. In order to deal with that damage, many people provide at least a Flak Jacket, or Fortitude damage prevention, or some other way of circumventing the damage. Comparing that cost in cards to the simple cost of one pool with your no-Obf CW/S-N-S (which benefits any minion) I'd lean more towards the CW/S-N-S having the doubled value (or more). As for hand jam arguments, I once again stand by my belief that hand jam is a result of deck construction errors in card ratios (or simple bad luck if the deck is well built). [ quoted text not captured ] When you block an equip action, you usually choose to do so as a favor to yourself by denying your opponent the use of that weapon against you. [ quoted text not captured ] see above >>>setting as strong precedent for the concept (as does DW of course). >> >>Yes. Of course. There are plenty of cards in the game where a more >>limited, less functional version of the card is available >>disciplineless. The thing is, with Disguised Weapon, we already have >>the less functional, more limited version of it - Zip Gun. >The above statement is wrong. Zip Gun is definitely NOT more limited than >Disguised Weapon. Disguised Weapon is in many ways a very limited (and >limiting) card. It cannot even be played without the help of other cards. >Zip Gun is definitely superior and far more versatile and effective. I believe he was getting at the fact that all minions have the Zip Gun available to them, whereas Obf has all weapons available throughtthe use of DW. Hence, a more limited, discpilineless version... >Zip Gun by itself is not clearly more effective than many Weapon/CW >combos. But why should it be? To be fair, compare 2-card combos to 2-card >combos. Compare ZG/ManstopperRnds to DW/Saturday-Night-Special. snip Malk-Brujah arguments... >All the above is true, but convinces me of nothing. If the Brujah can use >CW, they will have a powerful combat strategy available to them. When >they adopt this stragegy, they must SUBSTITUTE it for, not add it to, >their other very powerful combat strategies. CW will not make them more >powerful, only more unpredictable as combatants. Since when did the Brujah need another powerful combat strategy made available to them? >Malkavians will still be powerful for their own reasons, but will not be >good in combat. Making CW disciplineless will not change this >substantially. To extapolate a bit, making CW disciplineless adds little to clans already short on means within combat, and opens up more avenues to clans that are already combat-savvy? That seems like a good reason _not_ to change it. >>>Even the inferior version of >>>DW grants them the abililty to equip with a Bomb, which CW cannot do, and >>>this is a good as a defensive (though not offensive) move. Malkavians are >>>also the premier stealth bleeders, and it is not necessarily a bad thing >>>that they are not the best in combat. >> >>That's my point exactly. >I think you missed my point. CW cannot get you a bomb. Even with CW >disciplineless, obfuscate clans like the Malks would be the only Mad >Bombers available due to their access to DW. We've been here before... The list of weapons that CW doesn't get you is _very_ short... >>snip more >My point was that they still have greater options if CW is disciplineless, >since DW gives more options than CW. (Bombs, Flamethrowers, Kali's Fang, >Combat Shotgun, usable only when using strike). the four weapons listed above comprise 50% of the weapons you can't get with a CW. >snip >[snip] >>For my money, we already have the limited version >>of Disguised Weapon - it's called Zip Gun and it's more limited in that >>it only works for a pretty crappy gun. >Again. Zip Gun is DEFINITELY not more limitted than Disguised Weapon. It >does not work *for* a crappy gun, it *is* the crappy gun. Compared to DW, >it is a 2-card combo rolled into one, with a few compensatory limitations. Again, a two card combo and the cost of 1-2 pool for the weapon acquired can offset the Zip Gun, which does damge every use. >>I personally don't believe that Concealed Weapon is sufficiently limited >>to be placed in the game. The fact that it can bring out an Ivory Bow >>or Sengir Dagger scares the hell out of me. >The problem here is that Ivory Bow and Sengir Dagger are overpowered >compared to other weapons, evem when their unique status is taken into >account. The main blame here is the new Agro damage rules, which I have >always disapproved of. We agree here... The new agro rules change the face of weapons like the two above. While simpler, it does make several card even more effective that they were intended (Pulled Fangs, Ivory Bow, etc.) Regards, R. David Zopf guenh...@mindspring.com Atom Weaver & V:EKN Prince of Boston, MA

Richard D. Zopf wrote: > > jbwh...@dorsai.org (John Whelan) wrote: > > snip Zip Gun lead-in > > >I agree that a CW/Saturday-Night-Special combo is significantly more > >powerful than Zip Gun by itself. And that is precisely as it should be. > >After all, the first effect is achieved by playing 2 cards and the second > >by playing only one. > > >In an game environment where card values are approximately equal, one > >would expect that playing 2 cards would be approximately twice as > >effective as playing only one. I don't think, however, that the CW/S-N-S > >combo even gets close to being twice as effective as the single card > >effect of Zip Gun -- not after you factor in the many disadvantages. > >One disadvantage is the pool cost. Another is the the potential for hand > >jam inherent in the fact that CW is a card that REQUIRES a combo. > > Zip Gun, though, has at least the lasting effect of generating damage > to the bearer. In order to deal with that damage, many people provide > at least a Flak Jacket, or Fortitude damage prevention, or some other > way of circumventing the damage. Comparing that cost in cards to the > simple cost of one pool with your no-Obf CW/S-N-S (which benefits any > minion) I'd lean more towards the CW/S-N-S having the doubled value > (or more). Yes, but CW/SNS *requires* the combo (that is, you cannot play CW without the weapon), whereas ZG/FJ does not (you can play either without having its companion). Besides, the combo "many people" use with Zip Gun is Dragon's Breath Rounds, not Flak Jacket. In this case, CW+SNS+DBR compares to ZG+DBR by replacing the point of damage done to the bearer by an expenditure of pool by the controller, and requires an extra card. [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <351A517A...@leila.ping.de>, Michael Beer wrote: >(Snipped all from various persons) > >We play Concealed Weapon as a skill-less card for over a year now - and >weapons STILL not show up in masses or become predominant or abusive. > [snip long analysis] I found this analysis interesting. I have heard that CW-as-disciplineless is a popular house rule. Does anyone else have experience with it?

In article <6gg4ms$872$1...@camel21.mindspring.com>, Richard D. Zopf wrote: >jbwh...@dorsai.org (John Whelan) wrote: > >snip Zip Gun lead-in > >>I agree that a CW/Saturday-Night-Special combo is significantly more >>powerful than Zip Gun by itself. And that is precisely as it should be. >>After all, the first effect is achieved by playing 2 cards and the second >>by playing only one. > >>In an game environment where card values are approximately equal, one >>would expect that playing 2 cards would be approximately twice as >>effective as playing only one. I don't think, however, that the CW/S-N-S >>combo even gets close to being twice as effective as the single card >>effect of Zip Gun -- not after you factor in the many disadvantages. >>One disadvantage is the pool cost. Another is the the potential for hand >>jam inherent in the fact that CW is a card that REQUIRES a combo. > >Zip Gun, though, has at least the lasting effect of generating damage >to the bearer. In order to deal with that damage, many people provide >at least a Flak Jacket, or Fortitude damage prevention, or some other >way of circumventing the damage. Comparing that cost in cards to the >simple cost of one pool with your no-Obf CW/S-N-S (which benefits any >minion) I'd lean more towards the CW/S-N-S having the doubled value >(or more). As for hand jam arguments, I once again stand by my belief >that hand jam is a result of deck construction errors in card ratios >(or simple bad luck if the deck is well built). Here's a way of looking at it. Flak Jacket costs 1 pool and one minion action, and saves one damage per combat. Zip Gun, when compared to Saturday Night Special, saves one pool and one minion action, and costs 1 damage per combat. Thus if we use Flak Jacket as a measure of appropriate cost vs. benefit, Zip Gun appears balanced compared to Saturday Night Special. On second thought, however, the balance begins to fade with the following consideration: After you play Zip Gun, you only take the damage when you choose to use the gun, so the damage is only applied when you feel the cost is appropriate. You can play the Zip Gun without fear, knowing that if you do not want to take the damage, you do not have to use the gun. With Saturday Night Special (or Flak Jacket), you have no such guarantee that your costs will be compensated for. And a third thought: Flak Jackets are not extremely useful or valuable. Most players feel, on average, that the disadvantages tend to slightly outweigh the advantages. If so, it follows that for Zip Gun, the advantages may outweigh the disadvantages. On balance, then, Zip Gun is a more valuable card than Saturday Night Special. Comparing Zip Gun to a *successful* CW/S-N-S Combo, the combo comes out slightly on top. Zip one saves one pool, but costs 1 damage per combat (but only when you decide it is wise to use the Zip Gun). The combo is arguably a little better, but is in no way *twice* as good. Combine Zip Gun with almost any other card and the advantage is again on Zip Gun's side. Perhaps it is unfair to mention the broken ZipGun/DBR, but how about ZipGun/ManstopperRds, ZipGun/FlakJacket, ZipGun/TasteofVitae, ZipGun/AdditionalStrike, or ZipGun/DamagePrevention? None of these combos require you to have both cards in one's hand simultaneously, making them much more usable than CW/SNS [snip] >>I am not sure why everyone sees it as all important that there be an >>opportunity to block a weapon equip action. Chances are, when you block >>someone from equiping with Bang Nakh, you are doing him a favor by saving >>him 2 pool. T'would be far more devastating to make him pay the pool and >>then steal, burn, or otherwise render the weapon useless. There are >>plenty of cards provided in Jyhad to help achieve this goal. > >When you block an equip action, you usually choose to do so as a favor >to yourself by denying your opponent the use of that weapon against >you. I would block my predator (since I want to keep him in the game without enabling him to hurt me). In most cases, I would not block my prey, as he is likely helping me kill him. On the whole, I think my weapons are far more scary to minions than they are to Methuselahs. [snip] >>The above statement is wrong. Zip Gun is definitely NOT more limited than >>Disguised Weapon. Disguised Weapon is in many ways a very limited (and >>limiting) card. It cannot even be played without the help of other cards. >>Zip Gun is definitely superior and far more versatile and effective. > >I believe he was getting at the fact that all minions have the Zip Gun >available to them, whereas Obf has all weapons available throughtthe >use of DW. Hence, a more limited, discpilineless version... I see the train of thought, but the characterization is still not accurate. Zip Gun is a combat card that can be played any time, and then turns into a free weapon. DW requires that one of the other six cards in your hand be a weapon card, otherwise it is unplayable. The cards have different limitations, but those on DW are, IMO, far more severe, with compensatory potential benefits that are far from guaranteed. >snip Malk-Brujah arguments... > >>All the above is true, but convinces me of nothing. If the Brujah can use >>CW, they will have a powerful combat strategy available to them. When >>they adopt this stragegy, they must SUBSTITUTE it for, not add it to, >>their other very powerful combat strategies. CW will not make them more >>powerful, only more unpredictable as combatants. > >Since when did the Brujah need another powerful combat strategy made >available to them? What did I say that you misinterpretted? Are you arguing with me or with a figment of your imagination? What in the above paragraph did you interpret as meaning "The Brujah need CW because it would make them more powerful"? There is certainly nothing wrong with the Brujah having alternative combat strategies as long as these strategies are not broken. Otherwise, why should there be only a limited variety of viable (powerful) combat decks possible to a given clan? Is not variety a good thing? What exactly is your objection here? My point was that CW will add variety to the Brujah *without* making them more powerful. They will not be significantly enhanced as a combat clan. However, many minions that could well use some combat enhancement (Toreador, Allies, Ventrue) will be somewhat enhanced. >>Malkavians will still be powerful for their own reasons, but will not be >>good in combat. Making CW disciplineless will not change this >>substantially. > >To extapolate a bit, making CW disciplineless adds little to clans >already short on means within combat, It adds alot to Allies, Ventrue, Toreador. > and opens up more avenues to >clans that are already combat-savvy? That seems like a good reason >_not_ to change it. No, because the additional avenues are not more powerful than the avenues already available. Look at it this way. Imagine two warriors must enter an arena. Each may bring 5 weapons with him. Warrior #1 has 10 weapons to choose from before he enters. Warrior #2 has 2 weapons to choose from, and neither are much good. If you give to each warrior an additional weapon to choose from, who benefits most, Warrior 1 or Warrior 2? Warrior 2 obviously. Warrior 1 is still limitted to 5 weapons (out of 11 to choose from), but Warrior 1's weapons are increased to 3, evening the odds. Obviously, if make an additional combat options available to ALL clans, it is those with the fewest options that will benefit most. >>>>Even the inferior version of >>>>DW grants them the abililty to equip with a Bomb, which CW cannot do, and >>>>this is a good as a defensive (though not offensive) move. Malkavians are >>>>also the premier stealth bleeders, and it is not necessarily a bad thing >>>>that they are not the best in combat. >>> >>>That's my point exactly. > >>I think you missed my point. CW cannot get you a bomb. Even with CW >>disciplineless, obfuscate clans like the Malks would be the only Mad >>Bombers available due to their access to DW. > >We've been here before... The list of weapons that CW doesn't get you >is _very_ short... The issue is not the length of the list, but whether the weapons on the list are valuable. >>My point was that they still have greater options if CW is disciplineless, >>since DW gives more options than CW. (Bombs, Flamethrowers, Kali's Fang, >>Combat Shotgun, usable when using strike). > >the four weapons listed above comprise 50% of the weapons you can't >get with a CW. You are so right! >>>For my money, we already have the limited version >>>of Disguised Weapon - it's called Zip Gun and it's more limited in that >>>it only works for a pretty crappy gun. > >>Again. Zip Gun is DEFINITELY not more limitted than Disguised Weapon. It >>does not work *for* a crappy gun, it *is* the crappy gun. Compared to DW, >>it is a 2-card combo rolled into one, with a few compensatory limitations. > >Again, a two card combo and the cost of 1-2 pool for the weapon >acquired can offset the Zip Gun, which does damge every use. It "can" indeed, under the right circumstances, but no matter how many times someone says it, Zip Gun will still not be a "more limited version of Disguised Weapon." [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <slrn6iokk4....@amanda.dorsai.org>, John Whelan <jbwh...@dorsai.org> writes >It "can" indeed, under the right circumstances, but no matter how many >times someone says it, Zip Gun will still not be a "more limited version >of Disguised Weapon." Well, being as it kind of seems I started this little wrangle, I'll try and explain what *I* meant. Feel free to disagree of course :) Basically, the idea I was getting at was this. Imagine that you are playing a Brujah combat deck, right? You decide to rush me with Volker. Example 1: You rush Rudolpho Giovanni (3/3) NEC. Looking at the deck, you've decided that he probably can't defend himself very well. I, though, when I was making the deck knew that and decided to put a little bit of combat defence in. I wanted a way to get weapons out in combat without having to waste an action on it. I didn't have much Obfuscate in the deck at all (maybe only one or two vampires) so I decided to put a Zip Gun in the deck. Okay, I'll end up taking a bit of damage with it but I get a pretty nice gun all the same and don't have to equip it. It's probably not going to be enough to kill you but at least I'll be able to put up some semblance of a fight. Example 2: You rush Murat (7/7) OBF POT ser. Well, the main point of the deck was a bit of Obfuscate Serpentis for corrupting people with things like Temptation and Form of Corruption, things like that. Murat was in there for a bit of voting skill if needed. Having seen the deck, you think it should be fairly easy to make it roll over and die. Obviously, when constructing the deck, I took that into account and decided to put a few weapons in that I didn't have to get with an action. Well, I decided that I should use Disguised Weapon instead of Zip Gun. It takes a few more cards and requires two cards in my hand, but this way I can get some more powerful cards out. Instead of simply having to pop at you with a poxy one damage, I can get aggravated hand damage, lots of hand damage (weapon damage), aggravated ranged damage, guns, even the ability to prevent damage (Talbot's). Now you, not being stupid, in both cases thought "Well, there is a possibility that he can get a weapon out and hit me back." In the first case, the only weapon possible was Zip Gun. You didn't really care about that because it couldn't do enough damage to stop you. If it was DBR-ed then at least you'd feel vindicated by falling prey to ultra- cheese. When rushing Murat, you realised he has far more options available to him. He could get a weapon out when he chooses his strike - which will be after you've declared yours. What do you do? Go to range and see if he has guns? Stay at close to pound him good and proper and hope he doesn't have a Sengir Dagger? Run screaming from the might of a Flamethrower? Whatever. And that was what *I* meant by Zip Gun being a more limited, disciplineless version of Disguised Weapon. In both cases, you have the opportunity to bring out a weapon to defend yourself when you previously didn't have one. Zip Gun brings you out a little gun, fairly crappy and you have no choice about that. Disguised Weapon can bring you out any weapon. Yes, you have to have the two card combo but that isn't that hard. It's just that Disguised Weapon is more flexible in that sense. I could decide to use lots of little weapons, pretty cheap ones - things like Brass Knuckles, Saturday Night Specials, maybe an Ivory Bow. Or I could go for the big stuff. A few well placed Flamethrowers, Sub Machine Guns and the like will soon put the mockers on a deck if you're lucky. Or do I want to take the melee weapon angle? A few Bastard Swords here or there, a Sengir Dagger and maybe even a Bang Nakh should suitably annoy enough people. And a Melee Weapon is generally cheaper than it's equivalent ranged weapon so what do you want to choose? If we go back to Zip Gun, I simply don't have the flexibility to decide if I want any different weapons. That was what *I* meant by Zip gun being more limited. I'm not saying it isn't a good, usable card. I've seen it used to exactly the opposite effect. I was ousted because of a Zip Gun at Crusade: Cardiff last year (this is true - the damage sentthe vampire to torpor, activating the fame and ousting me). The only thing I'm saying is that since both Disguised Weapon and Zip Gun allow you to bring out weapons in combat, it makes sense to have some comparison running between the two and for my money, the added flexibility of Disguised Weapon meant that it, IMHO, was generally more powerful than a Zip Gun. -- James Coupe (Prince of Mercia) Change nospam to obeah to reply [ quoted text not captured ]

When I lived in Edmonton, we had CW disciplineless for several months before I ended up going to Yellowknife. We made it generic for all of the reasons you've mentioned and a few more. After a few decks were made, played, tuned, played again, tuned some more, played again, retired. We decided that it really made no huge differences in the game and was thus worth keeping as a house rule. It was really most useful to the intercept decks (specifically Toreador and Tor-anti) which is interesting as many posts in this thread have noted that a disciplinless CW hurts the blocking aspect of the game. It has always seemed sad to me that the blocking clans, clans with auspex as a primary disc., (Tor, Tor-anti, Ven-anti, Tzi, Tre, and Malk) all have trouble with combat. The Malks can use DW, so a CW discussion doesn't apply to them. The other clans though can be considered though, with Toreador serving as the poster boy. Though celerity is also a major part of the clan, celerity in and of itself (most importantly, by itself)is inadequate as a combat discipline. To deal with the opponents S:CE you need a good supply of Psyche's, to deal with the combat clans IG's you need a lot of maneuvers....either way you are using a lot of card slots up and you aren't doing anyone any damage yet. Throw in the intercept you need, and all of a sudden....not many cards left to build up that second combat discipline you need so badly (pot, pro, etc.). That leaves weapons, which is why the cheesy Intercept/Zip-gun/ DBR decks live. Why zip-guns?, I ask the rhetorical question - because Toreador have no stealth to speak of. Any little +1 intercept allows your opponent to deny your minions the weapons they need so badly, the weapons that they are much less effective without (neutered almost). So zip-guns rule. I could go on and on here, but my soapbox is wearing out. We found that CW as a generic combat card allowed one to build more (marginally) competitive intercept/weapon decks. None of these decks ever won a game, and only twice did it come close. This holds true for all of the weapon decks that were built to take advantage of our CW house rule. Thanks, Jaysen [ quoted text not captured ]

Jaysen Knight <jay...@internorth.com> wrote: >When I lived in Edmonton, we had CW disciplineless for several months >before I ended up going to Yellowknife. We made it generic for all of >the reasons you've mentioned and a few more. Yellowknife, hey? Gaadzooks! Say 'hi' to the caribou for me... Big change from Edmonton? >After a few decks were made, played, tuned, played again, tuned some >more, played again, retired. We decided that it really made no huge >differences in the game and was thus worth keeping as a house rule. ?!? This is another place where the two factions of this argument seem to disagree, as well. No huge difference on the game for me is a big incentive _not_ to keep a house rule. (dead weight principle) >It was really most useful to the intercept decks (specifically Toreador >and Tor-anti) which is interesting as many posts in this thread have >noted that a disciplinless CW hurts the blocking aspect of the game. That it would be useful when incorporated into a blocking deck's own defensive strategy isn't really part of the CW hurting blocking argument. The point of that argument was that circumventing the block action when equipping with a weapon should be limited in some way to the number of minions who can do so, either by discipline, clan, or some other means (cost would also work, but it would need a lower threshold than what CW currently has) >It has always seemed sad to me that the blocking clans, clans with >auspex as a primary disc., (Tor, Tor-anti, Ven-anti, Tzi, Tre, and >Malk) all have trouble with combat. The Malks can use DW, so a CW >discussion doesn't apply to them. The other clans though can be >considered though, with Toreador serving as the poster boy. >Though celerity is also a major part of the clan, celerity in and >of itself (most importantly, by itself)is inadequate as a combat >discipline. _Very_ debateable statement... >To deal with the opponents S:CE you need a good supply >of Psyche's, to deal with the combat clans IG's you need a lot >of maneuvers....either way you are using a lot of card slots up >and you aren't doing anyone any damage yet. Throw in the intercept >you need, and all of a sudden....not many cards left to build up >that second combat discipline you need so badly (pot, pro, etc.). None of these problems with S:CE would be solved by a disciplineless CW, although I do see that you might want a strategy that takes relatively few card slots in a celerity deck. Typically, they result in hand jam otherwise. Weapons of any type would seem to be an unwise strategy, though, as the presence of your CW would be necessary in order to cycle the weapons out of the hand. An imprudent prospect in a straight celerity deck... >That leaves weapons, which is why the cheesy Intercept/Zip-gun/ >DBR decks live. Why zip-guns?, I ask the rhetorical question - >because Toreador have no stealth to speak of. Any little +1 >intercept allows your opponent to deny your minions the weapons >they need so badly, the weapons that they are much less effective >without (neutered almost). So zip-guns rule. and they have the same problems mentioned above in re: S:CE... >I could go on and on here, but my soapbox is wearing out. We found >that CW as a generic combat card allowed one to build more (marginally) >competitive intercept/weapon decks. None of these decks ever won a >game, and only twice did it come close. This holds true for all of >the weapon decks that were built to take advantage of our CW >house rule. I take issue myself more with the principle of interfering with the equip action across the boards with all minions, than I do with any arguments about the effectiveness of such decks... I see it as bypassing the means by which resources are acquired in the game... [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <6glgij$5u0$1...@camel21.mindspring.com>, Richard D. Zopf wrote: >Jaysen Knight <jay...@internorth.com> wrote: >>After a few decks were made, played, tuned, played again, tuned some >>more, played again, retired. We decided that it really made no huge >>differences in the game and was thus worth keeping as a house rule. > >?!? This is another place where the two factions of this argument >seem to disagree, as well. No huge difference on the game for me is a >big incentive _not_ to keep a house rule. (dead weight principle) ???!!! This really sounds like you are being deliberately dense. He did not say it made no difference, he merely said it made no HUGE difference. This is in the context of recent arguments that CW would make weapon-based combat TOO powerful. From Jaysen's post, it sounds like the card clearly has a balancing effect, without ever coming close to overbalancing. It gives allies and weapons a needed boost, but they remain an underpowered and underused aspect of the game, and might still be able to use a little more help (perhaps from other cards in unlikely future expansions). CW remains a step in the right direction for them. [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <6glgij$5u0$1...@camel21.mindspring.com>, Richard D. Zopf wrote: >Jaysen Knight <jay...@internorth.com> wrote: > >>I could go on and on here, but my soapbox is wearing out. We found >>that CW as a generic combat card allowed one to build more (marginally) >>competitive intercept/weapon decks. None of these decks ever won a >>game, and only twice did it come close. This holds true for all of >>the weapon decks that were built to take advantage of our CW >>house rule. > >I take issue myself more with the principle of interfering with the >equip action across the boards with all minions, than I do with any >arguments about the effectiveness of such decks... I see it as >bypassing the means by which resources are acquired in the game... Well, I'm glad you don't see it as a game balance issue, since that position is hardly defensible. Your "principle" is still confusing to me. What rule states that one must have an opportunity to block when permanent resources are brought into play? The rule is that this opportunity exists only if the resources enter play *as an action*. Contrast unique locations that are played as equipment with unique locations that are played as master cards. Both are permanent resources for a methuselah's minions. In some cases you can block, whereas in some cases you cannot. The cases where you cannot in no violate any rule about permanent resources being blockable. Does "Amaranth" contradict any "principle" that there should be an opportunity to block diablerie? Does Heidelberg Castle contradict any principle that there should be an opportunity to block the transfer of equipment? Do Hunting Grounds Cards contradict any principle that there should be an opportunity to block the gaining of blood from human prey? Vampires are another permanent resource that come into play with no opportunity to block. For a cost of 4 pool a Methuselah can bring Agrippina into play, and no-one can block this. For the cost of 6 pool and a DW/BangNakh combo, a Methuselah gains Agrippina with +2 hand damage, with no opportunity to block. In neither case is any principle of Jyhad violated. Your principle is already violated with Zip Gun, as well as by the superior card Disguised Weapon. And please don't repeat that Zip Gun is a more limited version of Disguised Weapon. Of the two cards, only Zip Gun has had the more unbalancing effect on the game. Disguised Weapon has never had this effect, despite that there are plenty of obfuscate weenies available to play it. A disciplineless CW is inappropriate only if the effect is unbalanced. But it is not unbalanced. -- [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <6glgij$5u0$1...@camel21.mindspring.com>, Richard D. Zopf <guenh...@mindspring.com> wrote: >Jaysen Knight <jay...@internorth.com> wrote: > >I take issue myself more with the principle of interfering with the >equip action across the boards with all minions, than I do with any >arguments about the effectiveness of such decks... I see it as >bypassing the means by which resources are acquired in the game... What it comes down to IMHO is that weapons suck horribly, and need some help. The extreme difficulty of bringing out weapons has always been one of their major drawbacks (aside from their cost and hand jamming tendancies), since you need the slow and blockable action. IMHO also it in no way made sense that something as simple as a pistol was so hard to get (or that it cost so much, for that matter). A disciplineless CW isn't going to remove weapon equip actions from the game as far as I can tell, since you need a dedicated deck to make effective use of CW (a little just hand jams), and no one really equips weapons anyway, since such decks simply suck so bad -- Any reasonable combat deck will beat the shit out of them, cost less pool, be faster, and suffer from less hand jam. Hell this is true even with lots of CW, IMHO. I can't see many reasons to ever use a weapon other than Zip/DBR, except in a ravnos deck. It's to the point where I'm going to suggest that all weapons except the Ivory Bow cost one less pool to my group. I'm not even sure that will make weapons worthwhile. [ quoted text not captured ]

The caribou smell just as bad as ever and send their regards:) As far as a change from Edmonton....no vampire players, no Edmonton Oilers, and a lot more -40C days (for you fahrenheit people - think really, really, really cold....and then make it a little colder than that). Richard D. Zopf wrote: '?!? This is another place where the two factions of this argument seem to disagree, as well. No huge difference on the game for me is a big incentive _not_ to keep a house rule. (dead weight principle)' All I meant was - no huge difference - the game remained balanced. A couple of areas got a helping hand (mainly any deck that uses weapons as a real part of the deck strategy), but no other area was hurt unjustly by the rule change. This was a positive for keeping the rule change. Richard D. Zopf wrote: 'The point of that argument was that circumventing the block action when equipping with a weapon should be limited in some way to the number of minions who can do so, either by discipline, clan, or some other means (cost would also work, but it would need a lower threshold than what CW currently has)' True. My concept of this card goes like this: Given the current state of the game, no more expansions, etc. the need is to keep errata to a minimum yet still add to the game. Weighing the options, a generic CW adds to the game however lots of errata would hurt the game, So... the errata I could support would be: CW is disciplineless and cannot be used with unique equipment. Note that as I have posted before I believe the game is in need of 'the Big Fix', which would allow for this card's concept to be re-examined and put back into the game in a more proper fashion. Thanks, Jaysen

jbwh...@dorsai.org (John Whelan) wrote: snip >Well, I'm glad you don't see it as a game balance issue, since that >position is hardly defensible. >Your "principle" is still confusing to me. What rule states that one must >have an opportunity to block when permanent resources are brought into >play? The rule is that this opportunity exists only if the resources >enter play *as an action*. >Contrast unique locations that are played as equipment with unique >locations that are played as master cards. Both are permanent resources >for a methuselah's minions. In some cases you can block, whereas in some >cases you cannot. The cases where you cannot in no violate any rule about >permanent resources being blockable. In the cases where you cannot block (master cards), there is a limitation to when and how many you can play, and there is a non-blocking option of immediate retaliation/response eg. Sudden Reversal. Master cards are resources that require the expenditure of a master phase action, rather than a minion phase action. My contention hasn't been that CW bypassing equip actions violate some "principle" of blockability, but rather that if you are going to provide that sort of effect, it should be limited in scope as to which minions it is applicable to (and/or reduced in the number and strength of the weapons it provides..) >Does "Amaranth" contradict any "principle" that there should be an >opportunity to block diablerie? >Does Heidelberg Castle contradict any principle that there should be an >opportunity to block the transfer of equipment? >Do Hunting Grounds Cards contradict any principle that there should be an >opportunity to block the gaining of blood from human prey? All of these examples are much more limited in scope of what and when they apply to the interferance of the standard action based equivalent. Amaranth requires a vampire going to torpor, HC exchanges once between two minions, and HG's are clan specific. All limited in scope of applicability to a greater or lesser extent. >Vampires are another permanent resource that come into play with no >opportunity to block. For a cost of 4 pool a Methuselah can bring >Agrippina into play, and no-one can block this. For the cost of 6 pool >and a DW/BangNakh combo, a Methuselah gains Agrippina with +2 hand damage, >with no opportunity to block. In neither case is any principle of Jyhad >violated. This is limited as an example to minions which cost four that have obfuscate. Again, limited scope... >Your principle is already violated with Zip Gun, as well as by the >superior card Disguised Weapon. And please don't repeat that Zip Gun is a >more limited version of Disguised Weapon. Of the two cards, only Zip Gun >has had the more unbalancing effect on the game. Disguised Weapon has >never had this effect, despite that there are plenty of obfuscate weenies >available to play it. Zip Gun is unbalanced. It seems that it would be less of a problem, though, if only some fraction of the minions within the game could make use of it. Again, DW isn't bad because it limits the scope (by discipline) of who can take advantage. See my post; CW Proposal 2.0 for a means of getting what you're after without eliminating the action part from the whole equation. Unblockability is of the realm of Fortitude (and it's debatable whether it should be there) and Obfuscate. Keep it that way. [ quoted text not captured ]

Jaysen Knight <jay...@internorth.com> wrote: >The caribou smell just as bad as ever and send their regards:) As >far as a change from Edmonton....no vampire players, no Edmonton >Oilers, and a lot more -40C days (for you fahrenheit people - think >really, really, really cold....and then make it a little colder than >that). At least there's a healthy amount of fiber optic cabling to keep you abreast of all the inane conversations occurring south of you... >Richard D. Zopf wrote: >'?!? This is another place where the two factions of this argument >seem to disagree, as well. No huge difference on the game for me is a >big incentive _not_ to keep a house rule. (dead weight principle)' >All I meant was - no huge difference - the game remained balanced. A >couple of areas got a helping hand (mainly any deck that uses weapons >as a real part of the deck strategy), but no other area was hurt >unjustly by the rule change. This was a positive for keeping the rule >change. Ahh. Your meaning is clarified, although I think it doesn't do enough good, and sets a poor precedence for errata/changes. >Richard D. Zopf wrote: >'The point of that argument was that circumventing the block >action when equipping with a weapon should be limited in some way to >the number of minions who can do so, either by discipline, clan, or >some other means (cost would also work, but it would need a lower >threshold than what CW currently has)' >True. My concept of this card goes like this: >Given the current state of the game, no more expansions, etc. >the need is to keep errata to a minimum yet still add to the >game. Weighing the options, a generic CW adds to the game >however lots of errata would hurt the game, So... the errata >I could support would be: > CW is disciplineless and cannot be used with unique equipment. I like the non-unique clause... it's a step towards focusing it's scope enough to make it applicable to all minions... Reduce the cost and damage levels provided by it, and I'd probably stop arguing this... But not quite. I feel we've provided some level of entertainment for those cold nights... Let's not devalue that. [ quoted text not captured ]

Richard D. Zopf wrote: > >Your principle is already violated with Zip Gun, as well as by the > >superior card Disguised Weapon. And please don't repeat that Zip Gun is a > >more limited version of Disguised Weapon. Of the two cards, only Zip Gun > >has had the more unbalancing effect on the game. Disguised Weapon has > >never had this effect, despite that there are plenty of obfuscate weenies > >available to play it. > > Zip Gun is unbalanced. It seems that it would be less of a problem, > though, if only some fraction of the minions within the game could > make use of it. Again, DW isn't bad because it limits the scope (by > discipline) of who can take advantage. See my post; CW Proposal 2.0 > for a means of getting what you're after without eliminating the > action part from the whole equation. I feel a clarification should be made. Zip Gun has it's own internal limit on who can play it. Most allies cannot reasonably play Zip Guns, it will kill almost all allies after a couple uses. The only way for your average ally to play with zip gun is to equip with flak jacket, which ultimately becomes a two-card combo that is the equivelent of a Saturday Night Special. I'm iffy about the David's proposed action card, I think it would be more interesting to have a card, that when played can make a latter equip action unblockable (maybe non-unique equipment) or something like that. Otherwise there would be no reason to not use the weapon you wanted vs. the stalled weapon equip action, except to have nobody block because of total disinterest.

Greetings RDZ The problem I with your responses below, is that you seem to be substituting the concept of "game balance" (which most of us can understand to some degree) to an even more nebulous concept of "appropriate limitations", which seem to have nothing to do with the concept of game balance. Naturally, I agree that cards must have "appropriate limitations", but only to the extent that considerations of "game balance" determine which limitations are appropriate. You seem to have already conceded (or at least, failed to contest) the argument that DW and CW are not overpowered. To me, this means that such limitations as they already posess are perfectly adequate, but here we seem to split. You seem to be using alternate criteria for determining whether the limitations on a disciplineless CW are appropriate, but what those criteria are remain a complete mystery to me. On Thu, 16 Apr 1998, Richard D. Zopf wrote: > jbwh...@dorsai.org (John Whelan) wrote: > >Well, I'm glad you don't see it as a game balance issue, since that > >position is hardly defensible. > >Your "principle" is still confusing to me. What rule states that one must > >have an opportunity to block when permanent resources are brought into > >play? The rule is that this opportunity exists only if the resources > >enter play *as an action*. > >Contrast unique locations that are played as equipment with unique > >locations that are played as master cards. Both are permanent resources > >for a methuselah's minions. In some cases you can block, whereas in some > >cases you cannot. The cases where you cannot in no violate any rule about > >permanent resources being blockable. > > In the cases where you cannot block (master cards), there is a > limitation to when and how many you can play, Yes, and such limitations are generally compensated for by the power of the card. Master cards are generally more powerful than minion cards. > and there is a > non-blocking option of immediate retaliation/response eg. Sudden > Reversal. CW and DW also have numerous "non-blocking" options. Direct Intervention immediately comes to mind as the minion-card counterpart to Sudden Reversal (and is particularly apt since you can effectively burn 2 cards for the price of one by using it against the weapon card), but one's non-blocking options are hardly limitted to this. Weapons can be stolen with celerity, destroyed with First Strike with potence or animalism, burned with votes or Arcanum Investigators. They can almost always be beaten with dodge of S:CE. Minions with weapons can be burned in combat, and the weapons are burned with them or stolen by diablerie. The latter "non-blocking" options are potentially quite devastating since they are applied *after* the pool cost of the weapon is payed for. Incidentally, an increase in the number of weapons in play would increase the incentive for diablerie -- another under-played aspect of the game. Besides the small boost this card would give to weapons and allies, it would also give a boost to diablerie and anti-diablerie cards such as Amaranth and so many others. When is the last time you saw Amaranth in a combat deck? > Master cards are resources that require the expenditure of > a master phase action, rather than a minion phase action. Yes. This is why minion phase actions are generally less powerful than master phase actions. It's called "game balance", and that is the concept on which basis I think CW should be judged. Similarly, unique cards are generally more powerful than non-unique ones -- the idea being that a limitation of uniqueness compensates for additional advantages. To judge whether a disciplineless CW is unbalanced, the appropriate comparison is to other combat cards. Analysis on this basis quickly shows that it is not overpowered. > My > contention hasn't been that CW bypassing equip actions violate some > "principle" of blockability, but rather that if you are going to > provide that sort of effect, it should be limited in scope as to which > minions it is applicable to (and/or reduced in the number and strength > of the weapons it provides..) If the card is not overpowered (which it is not) then why does it need to be further limited in scope? Name *one* card or strategy that would be edged toward wallpaper status as a result of being supplanted by CW. I doubt you can come up with one. CW, if disciplineless, would give a mild boost to a number of marginal cards, but would not create ANY overpowered situations. > >Does "Amaranth" contradict any "principle" that there should be an > >opportunity to block diablerie? > > >Does Heidelberg Castle contradict any principle that there should be an > >opportunity to block the transfer of equipment? > > >Do Hunting Grounds Cards contradict any principle that there should be an > >opportunity to block the gaining of blood from human prey? > > All of these examples are much more limited in scope of what and when > they apply to the interferance of the standard action based > equivalent. Amaranth requires a vampire going to torpor, HC exchanges > once between two minions, and HG's are clan specific. All limited in > scope of applicability to a greater or lesser extent. Indeed they are, (to a greater or lesser extent -- as is CW). Heidelberg Castle is indeed "limited in scope", but these "limitations" were so inadequate that the card was seriously overpowered, and had to be fixed by further limitations. Even with errata, it is one of the most contested locations in the game. If "game balance" is taken as our guide to appropritate limitations, then the limitations on a fixed CW are clearly more appropriate than those on HC. CW has alot of it's own limitations compared to HC: - Only usable on weapons (an underplayed and underpowered aspect of the game) rather than on ANY equipment. Even some weapons are excluded. - Not usable with retainers - Cannot be used to transfer blood - Requires alot of deck space to use effectively - with high hand-jam potential > >Vampires are another permanent resource that come into play with no > >opportunity to block. For a cost of 4 pool a Methuselah can bring > >Agrippina into play, and no-one can block this. For the cost of 6 pool > >and a DW/BangNakh combo, a Methuselah gains Agrippina with +2 hand damage, > >with no opportunity to block. In neither case is any principle of Jyhad > >violated. > > This is limited as an example to minions which cost four that have > obfuscate. Again, limited scope... Huh? Basil has 1 capacity. Dimple and Normal have 2 capacity. Vampires with obfuscate come in all sizes, and this trick may be used with them all. Constantly repeating "limited scope" is nothing more than reciting a mantra in lieu of real discussion. All cards are limited in scope. There is no card called "Unlimited Scope" which says has "do anthing you want" as it's card text. Even overpowered, broken cards like TOR3 and RTI are limited in scope. > >Your principle is already violated with Zip Gun, as well as by the > >superior card Disguised Weapon. And please don't repeat that Zip Gun is a > >more limited version of Disguised Weapon. Of the two cards, only Zip Gun > >has had the more unbalancing effect on the game. Disguised Weapon has > >never had this effect, despite that there are plenty of obfuscate weenies > >available to play it. > > Zip Gun is unbalanced. Only because of the DBR combo, which I agree needs to be fixed somehow. Otherwise, it is only one of the few weapon cards which are not wallpaper or almost wallpaper. > It seems that it would be less of a problem, > though, if only some fraction of the minions within the game could > make use of it. It would be less of a problem if the DBR combo were fixed in one of 2 ways: Either forbid ammo, or have the ammo also increase the self-inflicted damage. > Again, DW isn't bad because it limits the scope (by > discipline) of who can take advantage. [snip] DW isn't bad, period. If it had been disciplineless from the start, the game would still be balanced. Still, there is no danger that a disciplineless CW will turn DW into wallpaper. Minions with Obfuscate will always prefer DW. > Unblockability is of the realm of Fortitude (and it's debatable > whether it should be there) and Obfuscate. Keep it that way. Wrongo. "Unblockability" is the realm of hundreds of combat cards and combat strateties, most of which are arguably much more powerful and effective than CW. CW is a combat card -- one that is easily countered. Please compare it's effects to those of other combat cards - ones not so easily countered, and which don't cost pool. Maneuvers cannot be "blocked", but they can be countered. Presses cannot be "blocked", but they can be countered. Strikes cannot be "blocked", but they can be countered. The same is true of CW and DW. Weapon-based combat strategies are expensive and easily hosed, a hosing that is all the more devastating *after* you have payed all that pool for your weapons. [ quoted text not captured ]

On Thu, 16 Apr 1998, Richard D. Zopf wrote: > >Given the current state of the game, no more expansions, etc. > >the need is to keep errata to a minimum yet still add to the > >game. Weighing the options, a generic CW adds to the game > >however lots of errata would hurt the game, So... the errata > >I could support would be: > > > CW is disciplineless and cannot be used with unique equipment. > > I like the non-unique clause... it's a step towards focusing it's > scope enough to make it applicable to all minions... I personally like the non-unique clause myself. It would have been a more appropriate limitation than the limitations the card already has. As I said in another post, I might have designed the card differently had I designed it myself. However, since I did not have that privelege, I am happy to recommend the minimum errata: just make it disciplineless. > Reduce the cost > and damage levels provided by it, and I'd probably stop arguing > this... But not quite. I feel we've provided some level of > entertainment for those cold nights... Let's not devalue that. Why do you want further limitations? The only weapons you can use CW on, once a non-unique clause is added are: If you don't mind using 2 pool: .44 Magnum Bang Nakh Deer Rifle Sawed-Off Shotgun If you don't mind losing 1 pool: Gas-Powered Chainsaw Saturday Night Special White Phosphorus Grenade Or for no pool loss: Grenade Stake/Wooden Stake White Phosphorus Grenade Brass Knuckles Why on earth would you want to further limit *any* of these underused options? Indeed, once the "unique-weapons clause" is added, why are the cost/damage limitations needed at all? Are not RPG Launchers, Flamethrowers, and Assault Rifles even more underused than their cheaper counterparts? Don't their prohibitive pool costs more than make up for their increased benefits? Flamethrower does twice the ag damage of an Ivory Bow for 4 times the pool cost. When is the last time somone successfully used an RPG Launcher [ quoted text not captured ]

Jaysen Knight wrote: > The caribou smell just as bad as ever and send their regards:) As > far as a change from Edmonton....no vampire players, no Edmonton > Oilers, What are you talking about - the Oilers are playoff bound! Chris -- Chris Shorb & Tammy Martin ino...@ix.netcom.com "If we do discover a complete theory, it should in time be understandable in broad principle by everyone, not just a few scientists." Hawking