Danish ECQ - And the winner is .....

There were 13 methuselahs gathered on the 30th of august to fight for the qualification to EC2008. The final standing was: 1 Nikolaj Wendt 1 4 4 150 2 Martin Randers 2 8 1 168 3 Jens Thorup 3 9 0 180 4 Sven Strandbygaard 1 5 0 108 5 August Hansen 1 4 0 120 6 Stephan Garmark 1 3 132 7 Mikkel Petersen 0 2 108 8 Morten Toft 0 1 90 9 Kasper Skovgaard Kristensen 0 1 84 10 Mikkel DJ 0 1 78 11 Jesper Wøldiche 0 1 72 12 Harry Broe 0 0 60 13 Matias Grynderup 0 0 54 With 2-5 ending on a 2ed place, according to the new tournament rules. That also means, that: Nikolaj Wendt Martin Randers Jens Thorup Sven Strandbygaard August Hansen and Jesper Bøje (as organizer and judge) qualifies for the EC2008. The winning deck, played by Nikolaj Wendt: Deck Name: Princes, Parities, Potence and then some Created By: Nikolaj Wendt Description: Crypt: (12 cards, Min: 27, Max: 39, Avg: 8,33) ---------------------------------------------- 2 Donal O`Connor CEL DOM POT 8 Brujah 1 Jaroslav Pascek for obf CEL POT PRE10 Brujah 1 Nikolaus Vermeulen ani for obf POT 7 Nosferatu 1 Casino Reeds cel dem ANI OBF POT9 Nosferatu 1 Murat ser OBF POT 7 Nosferatu 2 Spiridonas pot pre DOM THA 9 Tremere 2 Cock Robin aus for ANI OBF POT10 Nosferatu 1 Calebros obf pot ANI 5 Nosferatu 1 Constanza Vinti CEL DOM POT 8 Brujah Library: (90 cards) ------------------- Master (12 cards) 3 Minion Tap 3 Blood Doll 1 Giant`s Blood 2 Information Highway 1 Direct Intervention 2 Dreams of the Sphinx Action (9 cards) 9 Fourth Tradition: The Accounting, The Action Modifier (4 cards) 4 Conditioning Political Action (7 cards) 7 Parity Shift Reaction (17 cards) 4 Deflection 13 Second Tradition: Domain, The Combat (40 cards) 4 Canine Horde 8 Immortal Grapple 7 Taste of Vitae 8 Torn Signpost 5 Thrown Gate 6 Disarm 2 Decapitate Equipment (1 cards) 1 Heart of Nizchetus See you all in a week /Jesper

[ quoted text not captured ] You Danes _gotta_ stop letting that guy win... ;-) DZ AW

On Thu, 11 Sep 2008 03:47:35 -0700 (PDT), r...@asb.dk wrote: >There were 13 methuselahs gathered on the 30th of august to fight for >the qualification to EC2008. The final standing was: Congratulations to Nikolaj ! Unfortunately, this deck cannot be entered into the Tournament Winning Deck archive because essential information was missing from the post. Where was this played? The event calendar is strangely reticient and indicates no city. Are there no cities in Denmark? http://www.white-wolf.com/events/eventdisplay.php?id=4824 ASB Fuglesangs Allé 4, Room H214 N/A Denmark 8210 20351237 Why haven't the results been entered?

[ quoted text not captured ] A surprisingly standard deck for Xzealot wannabe... best - chris -- Super Fun Cards www.superfuncards.com *NEW Website!* auct...@superfuncards.com

Congratulations Nikolaj and hope you guys had a blast! I'd love to know more about the tournament, what decks people played and stuff like that :) > Where was this played? Århus. Aarhus for you guys without the supreme letters. > Are there no cities in Denmark? Haha denmark having cities, that'd be the day :P

On Sep 11, 12:47 pm, r...@asb.dk wrote: > There were 13 methuselahs gathered on the 30th of august to fight for > the qualification to EC2008. The final standing was: > > 1 Nikolaj Wendt 1 4 4 150 > 2 Martin Randers 2 8 1 168 > 3 Jens Thorup 3 9 0 180 > 4 Sven Strandbygaard 1 5 0 108 > 5 August Hansen 1 4 0 120 > ... What did the other four finalists play? Especially the guy with the 3 GW 9 VPs. Regards, Ralf ================== http://extrala.blogspot.com

On 12 Sep., 00:50, The Lasombra <TheLasom...@hotmail.com> wrote: > On Thu, 11 Sep 2008 03:47:35 -0700 (PDT), r...@asb.dk wrote: > >There were 13 methuselahs gathered on the 30th of august to fight for > >the qualification to EC2008. The final standing was: > > Congratulations to Nikolaj ! > > Unfortunately, this deck cannot be entered into the Tournament Winning > Deck archive because essential information was missing from the post. > > Where was this played? Århus (Aarhus) > > The event calendar is strangely reticient and indicates no city. > > Are there no cities in Denmark? We are pretty down to earth around here. We choose to call it "tiny gatherings of houses". > > http://www.white-wolf.com/events/eventdisplay.php?id=4824 > > ASB > Fuglesangs Allé 4, Room H214 > N/A Denmark > 8210 > 20351237 > > Why haven't the results been entered? I think this is for a German event (?), but I guess Jesper has to enter it somehow.

[ quoted text not captured ] Hahaha, yeah, I know. I started out being my Mono Potence Princes deck that I won with in France - which I guess is semi original? - but I had to add counters to guns and some more ousting power. > best - > > chris > > -- > Super Fun Cardswww.superfuncards.com*NEW Website!* > aucti...@superfuncards.com- Skjul tekst i anførselstegn - > > - Vis tekst i anførselstegn -

On 12 Sep., 09:12, extrala <ralf.lamm...@gmx.de> wrote: > On Sep 11, 12:47 pm, r...@asb.dk wrote:> There were 13 methuselahs gathered on the 30th of august to fight for > > the qualification to EC2008. The final standing was: > > > 1 Nikolaj Wendt 1 4 4 150 > > 2 Martin Randers 2 8 1 168 > > 3 Jens Thorup 3 9 0 180 > > 4 Sven Strandbygaard 1 5 0 108 > > 5 August Hansen 1 4 0 120 > > ... > > What did the other four finalists play? Especially the guy with the 3 > GW 9 VPs. He played a crazy Garou deck that totally detroyed every table he sat down at. He played with a lot of disc less combat cards to support them, Aim: Vitals, weighted walking sticks, glancing blow dodges etc, and none of the combat decks in the tournament could handle them (at one point he dodged the first strike, then used a stick and Aim on his additional strike for 5...). 90% of my combat coolness is played prerange, and I have very few ranged strikes and no maneuvers, so the damn doggies kept running away! :) He pacified my deck totally in the two first rounds, and in the final chose to sit as my pred. He didnt know that his predator was playing an all out anti brujah bleed deck with Blood Brother Ambush. He had his first two garous DI'd in the same turn (me as his prey, and his predator played one too) and only managed to get one in. After that I had two princes and second traditions enough and he never got another one in play. I kept him alive against the anti brujah, which enabled me to go forward full throttle, with very little pressure from him. If his deck has just a little time to build up, its very very hard to stop. > > Regards, Ralf > ==================http://extrala.blogspot.com

On 12 Sep., 09:12, extrala <ralf.lamm...@gmx.de> wrote: [ quoted text not captured ] Ahh, didnt see the extra question. Seating was me (potence princes) - malk anti bleed - tremere carna - anti brujah bleed with Blood Brother Ambush and lots of potence - Garous with lots of combat.

niko...@hotmail.com wrote: > extrala <ralf.lamm...@gmx.de> wrote: >> What did the other four finalists play? Especially the guy >> with the 3 GW 9 VPs. > > He played a crazy Garou deck that totally detroyed every table he sat > down at. He played with a lot of disc less combat cards to support > them, Aim: Vitals, weighted walking sticks, glancing blow dodges etc, > and none of the combat decks in the tournament could handle them (at > one point he dodged the first strike, then used a stick and Aim on his > additional strike for 5...). 90% of my combat coolness is played > prerange, and I have very few ranged strikes and no maneuvers, so the > damn doggies kept running away! :) > > He pacified my deck totally in the two first rounds, and in the final > chose to sit as my pred. He didnt know that his predator was playing > an all out anti brujah bleed deck with Blood Brother Ambush. He had > his first two garous DI'd in the same turn (me as his prey, and his > predator played one too) and only managed to get one in. After that I > had two princes and second traditions enough and he never got another > one in play. I kept him alive against the anti brujah, which enabled > me to go forward full throttle, with very little pressure from him. > If his deck has just a little time to build up, its very very hard to > stop. If this isn't enough to cause Direct Intervention to be placed AT THE VERY TOP of the watch list for 2009 -- and hopefully banned in 2010 -- then nothing ever will. This guy gets 3GW/9VP with a well-made/metagamed deck, and loses... to a stupid Direct Intervention. Wow, nice reward. What Direct Intervention does is bad and wrong, as it stops people from being able to play the game. (Yes, Sudden/Wash has a similar ability, but you know damn well that the game is made to be played with library cards being used by your minions, so please don't try to throw up straw men to avoid the DI discussion.) Thoughts Betrayed was changed because it used to say "You are unable to play the game." Protect Thine Own was banned because it says "You are unable to play the game, in the most un-fun way the designers of this card game could think of." Direct Intervention is a silver bullet, and we all know it. Why is it still part of this game?? Kevin M., Prince of Las Vegas "Know your enemy, and know yourself; in one-thousand battles you shall never be in peril." -- Sun Tzu, *The Art of War* "Contentment... Complacency... Catastrophe!" -- Joseph Chevalier Please visit VTESville daily! http://vtesville.myminicity.com/

On Sep 12, 9:51 pm, "Kevin M." <youw...@imaspammer.org> wrote: > Direct Intervention is a silver bullet, and we all know it. Why is it > still part of this game?? Because it gives people an excuse to 'defend' against cards like PTO... uhh, wait. Well, how else am I gonna stop a No Secrets Goddamnit?!!

> Because it gives people an excuse to 'defend' against cards like > PTO... uhh, wait. Well, how else am I gonna stop a No Secrets > Goddamnit?!! My favorite card that goes in every single deck it can, Elder Intervention. But yes I agree totally with the rationale to ban Direct Intervention. Any card that can be included in any deck since it requires a cost of simply a pool and a MPA, can wreck another players game, and can be played multiple times in a game. Not a fan of banning or errata, but adding a “only one per game can be played” clause would be a welcome change to a significant issue.

"Kevin M." <you...@imaspammer.org> wrote in message news:XFHyk.24$wr...@newsfe02.iad... [ quoted text not captured ] It isn't enough. If you don't want to fall victim to DI, don't base your whole deck on the play of a couple cards. Actually, though, if you step back and look, this is a story of how minion- building decks utterly die to intercept unless they have a good source of stealth. We already knew that. The two DIs are only a fairly small part of it. > This guy gets 3GW/9VP with a well-made/metagamed deck, Well-made perhaps. But the metagame matchup was actually quite poor. And he did NOT "lose to a stupid Direct Intervention". He lost to Second Traditions. Fred

"Obtenebration" <obtene...@obtenebration.org> wrote in message news:6626250e-4e5b-4a65...@z11g2000prl.googlegroups.com... > But yes I agree totally with the rationale to ban Direct Intervention. > Any card that can be included in any deck since it requires a cost of > simply a pool and a MPA, 1) A pool and an MPA is not an insignificant cost, especially when weighed against the costless minion card that has to be tossed in the discard pile and can even be replayed if the methuselah involved has another in hand. It only looks powerful because people only discuss spectacular plays. 2) No one ever mentions the unseen cost - the hand space it takes up from draw to play. If no worthwhile card pops up that warrants it, you can effectively play with a 6-card hand for several turns waiting. 3) It has the usual cancel-card disadvantage in a multiplayer game. Guy playing it pays an MPA and pool; guy it's played on loses a chance to play an (ideally) key minion card. Three other methuselahs are the real winners. 4) The comparison of PTO to Direct Intervention as unfun buzz-kill cards is such utter bullshit as to not warrant response. Give me a break people can't have fun with DI in the game! This card's been around since The Sabbat and I have never figured out why some people get so bugged by it. I swear, it's just weird! Fred

On 13 sep, 09:08, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > "Obtenebration" <obtenebrat...@obtenebration.org> wrote in message [ quoted text not captured ] In my inexperienced opinion, I always thought thematically it'd be cooler if every mehtuselah could only play one per game. You know, sortof like that one really really bad thing that makes 'the don' get out of his high chair to take care of, personally. Making it a harder choice and giving it a higher cost (the risk of copies being dead cards for the rest of the game) at the same time. Btw, hi everyone, I'm back. It's been a while. -Teeka

[ quoted text not captured ] Popcorn where? Must has popcorn!!!!!11!!11!!!!one! ;)

In article <XFHyk.24$wr...@newsfe02.iad>, "Kevin M." <you...@imaspammer.org> wrote: > If this isn't enough to cause Direct Intervention to be placed AT THE VERY > TOP of the watch list for 2009 -- and hopefully banned in 2010 -- then > nothing ever will. I got nothing good to add here, but it makes me happy to see Kevin filled with fury at something. Go Kevin! Peter D Bakija pd...@lightlink.com http://www.lightlink.com/pdb6/vtes.html "It's too bad she won't live! But then again, who does?" -Gaff

<zora...@gmail.com> wrote in message news:6dc56ef5-cb41-49d1...@73g2000hsx.googlegroups.com... > In my inexperienced opinion, I always thought thematically it'd be > cooler if every mehtuselah could only play one per game. If you made that limit two per game, I don't think you'd effect any game in which I've played for the last 10 years. If I'm wrong, it's only because my memory sucks. At a limit of one, I think a few people would have wanted to adjust their decks slightly. (I have maybe two or three decks of my 30+ that could stand a one-card change.) No big points to make here other than to demonstrate how big a tempest- in-a-teapot this issue looks like from the perspective of some playgroups in my area. Fred

In article <LERyk.8989$QF5....@newsfe08.iad>, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > If you made that limit two per game, I don't think you'd effect any game > in which I've played for the last 10 years. If I'm wrong, it's only > because my memory sucks. At a limit of one, I think a few people > would have wanted to adjust their decks slightly. (I have maybe two > or three decks of my 30+ that could stand a one-card change.) > > No big points to make here other than to demonstrate how big a tempest- > in-a-teapot this issue looks like from the perspective of some playgroups > in my area. Locally, I agree with you--no one around here plays DI all that much. Once and a while, one will show up, and the end result is rarely anything other than "I DI your Govern!" "Ok, I play another one..." But on a competitive level, where folks regularly play 3 or 4 DIs per deck, all the time, it is a complete nightmare. I have had many games arbitrarily demolished by someone cross table DIing whatever I was about to oust my prey with just 'cause they had one in hand and couldn't bear to see me oust a prey (as it would "unbalance the table" or some crap like that). In ways that most other cards simply could not effect. That, and the incredibly endless "DI Phase" ("Huh. That's not good. Should I DI that? Let me discuss it with everyone else at the table for 5 minutes...") of every action in competition is just completely unnecessary. I hate DI. I have always hated DI. I would love to see it vaporize instantly. [ quoted text not captured ]

On Sep 13, 1:08 am, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > 1) A pool and an MPA is not an insignificant cost, especially when weighed > against the costless minion card that has to be tossed in the discard pile > and can even be replayed if the methuselah involved has another in hand. > It only looks powerful because people only discuss spectacular plays. At it's simplest level, for my 1 pool and 1 MPA: I DI a Conditioning.....I lose 2 less pool than I would have. I DI a Wake/bounce....I lose 0-7 less pool, my predator loses 0-7 more. I DI a KRC/ConAgg/RecklessAgit. I lose 2-5 less pool and stuff my predator's hand with unplayable action modifiers. I DI a voter cap, leaving a minion nearly to completely empty and costing someone (my prey?) 2 pool. I DI a stealth, allowing a block, saving 1-8 pool and allowing me to possibly kick the crap out of your minion. I DI your crux minion card in action "x", preventing an oust which gains you 6 pool, and allows me to kill you (and then your former prey) I DI your agg damage weapon, neutering your defenses, hopefully long enough for me to kill you. I DI your grapple, allowing my minion to escape combat and act in my turn. AND THE ADDITIONAL OPTION OF...any of the above, applied for some other methesulah of my choosing, with no additional/incremental cost. All of these things look like reasonable bargains to me. Of course, it doesn't mean things always work as I have outlined them above.....just that this card has the POTENTIAL to do all of them. Seems like a lot of function, rolled into 1 card. Fred said people discuss the spectacular DI plays.....which happens with relatively high frequency because the card is disproportionately powerful and flexible. Kevin called it a "silver bullet." - which might be more a propos for a Werewolf game, but I'll accept the terminology :) It is cancellation, intercept, denial of other's deck function and facilitation of my deck function, all available in the same card. Isn't a card being highly flexible and measure of it's power (Govern = speed + pool + offense = good card). IMO, just as in Kevin's, DI just does too much all in one card slot and in a way that CAN deny a player the ability to play the game (which I believe is generally unhealthy). > 2) No one ever mentions the unseen cost - the hand space it takes up from > draw to play. If no worthwhile card pops up that warrants it, you can > effectively play with a 6-card hand for several turns waiting. The same "unseen cost" as any card you hold but cannot immediately use. This "cost" has little to do with the relative power of the card, which is the point of contention. But, as a comparison, then let us also apply the same hidden cost to stealth if there are no blocks, intercept if there's no stealth directed at you, delaying tactics if there are no votes, S:CE if there are no combats and combat cards if there are no combats. If we were talking about a long chain of sequentially played cards, I might be willing to concede some merit in tendency to self-handcuff (e.g., Voter Cap is hard to play - you need a vote, maybe stealth, maybe vote push and then the cap - likely running with quite a bit of additional setup to make it happen - so I believe it should be impactful when played). But DI is an isolated card that you can pop out of your hand pretty much at need - the price of such ease of play should be lower impact, higher cost, and/or limited (once per game) usefulness. In fact, if DI only cancelled ACTION cards, we wouldn't see nearly as much use, nor as much discussion, as we do in the existing function. I might also mention, if these travel in 2-4 instance-per-deck numbers, you could simply toss the first 1-2 you find, until the game starts to teeter and their use becomes more impactful - then the hidden cost is "one DPA" > 3) It has the usual cancel-card disadvantage in a multiplayer game. Guy > playing it pays an MPA and pool; guy it's played on loses a chance to play > an (ideally) key minion card. Three other methuselahs are the real > winners. No, I don't agree with that. If my DI stops someone from doing something crucial at an important time and it significantly benefits my table position (sometimes to the point of I get 1-2 more VPs, or even simply stay alive for additional turns), I am the winner. At that point, the other three methuselahs simply wish that their MPAs were half as productive as mine was. > 4) The comparison of PTO to Direct Intervention as unfun buzz-kill cards is > such utter bullshit as to not warrant response. Give me a break people > can't have fun with DI in the game! This card's been around since The > Sabbat and I have never figured out why some people get so bugged by it. > I swear, it's just weird! The fact that the card has been around for a while is not relevant. PTO, seat switching and Succubus Club had been in the game a long time too. Maybe you were bugged by these, maybe not....but that didn't change the fact that they were considered bad for the game by the current rules team/designers. Just as clarification, Kevin did not say DI makes the game un-fun (he applied that to PTO, which is gone). He said DI was "bad, and wrong." I agree with him.....when it comes to action/play denial, Masters should stop Masters (Sudden/Wash), minions should stop minions (block). > Fred Darby

"Darby Keeney" <darby....@gmail.com> wrote in message news:6d91d495-99fa-4eda...@r66g2000hsg.googlegroups.com... [ quoted text not captured ] And yet I don't observe that you play with that many D.I.s, Darby? Why is that? It may help to consider that it's the MPA that I think a lot of people undervalue, not really the one pool whose value is well understood. The 'wait factor' and the point that these scenarios you throw up in reality turn out to be far less common than one would think from such an argument as you just made above. CCG arguments often go back and forth between people throwing conjecture at each other - which is far easier to construct than it is to prove (or to disprove, to be fair). > Of course, it doesn't mean things always work as I have outlined them > above.....just that this card has the POTENTIAL to do all of them. > Seems like a lot of function, rolled into 1 card. Fred said people > discuss the spectacular DI plays.....which happens with relatively > high frequency because the card is disproportionately powerful and > flexible. See, that's where I disagree with you - and frequently others who hate D.I. And it's also the thing that makes me insanely curious why there's such disagreement about it. Those who hate D.I. seem to see games as this series of dramatic plays with lots and lots of momentous turning points, any of which would be reversed with D.I.s thus proving what a terribly overpowered card it is. I just don't see this in games. I see lots of play that goes back and forth and occasionally some plays that are very important but I just don't see that many of them which I'd find worthwhile to hold a D.I. and pay the pool and the MPA for. I actually see very few. I value the master cards I know will help me far more consistently more highly than I value D.I.s in most cases, so I find it hard to appreciate your point of view. > > 4) The comparison of PTO to Direct Intervention as unfun buzz-kill cards is > > such utter bullshit as to not warrant response. Give me a break people > > can't have fun with DI in the game! This card's been around since The > > Sabbat and I have never figured out why some people get so bugged by it. > > I swear, it's just weird! > > The fact that the card has been around for a while is not relevant. It's relevent in the sense of showing how long this argument has gone on - since D.I. was originally printed - and how long I've felt that way about people who complain about D.I. > PTO, seat switching and Succubus Club had been in the game a long time > too. Maybe you were bugged by these, maybe not....but that didn't > change the fact that they were considered bad for the game by the > current rules team/designers. The argument that PTO was a buzz-kill and thus not a good card to have in the game because it lessens the fun of the game is one I've always been sympathetic to, if not in outright agreement with. I never thought PTO was unbalanced but I agree that power balance is not the only reason that a card should be considered for banishment. Succubus Club required tech development before its problems were uncovered. No one - to my knowledge - is suggesting anyone has suddenly developed new tech for D.I. requiring reconsideration of its status. These are just the same ol', same ol' arguments getting dragged out again. > Just as clarification, Kevin did not say DI makes the game un-fun (he > applied that to PTO, which is gone). He actually did. To deny this would be to suggest that he made his statements about PTO and Thoughts Betrayed as some sort of meaningless rhetorical fog. That is, there had to be SOME point about comparing D.I. to PTO and Thoughts Betrayed with the inference that we should make an association and deem D.I. bad. You can't have it both ways. So don't ask. Fred

[ quoted text not captured ] Ahh, THIS is where the thread went. I dont get the whole thing about changing the title. :) First let me say that I agree with banning DI. Mostly because I am usually at the receiving end of them in the whole "whoops, that ruined your game" aspect. Soul gem decks getting set back a couple of turns while looking for another Gem, freak drive decks stopped cold (for one turn at least), etc. etc. Then let me add that I have to agree with Fred (I think?) in that DI will often play a very decisive factor in a game, but I cant remember a lot of games where it has been the single determining factor to losing/winning a game (in the way that PTO, Dramatic Upheaval, succubus club did). Same for this final. The fact that he had 2 garous DI'ed on the same turn (was also my predators single DI in the deck) definitely slowed him down so much that it enabled me to build a position from which I could win. But lots of things could have changed later on in the game (he didnt get any help from his allies for instance) that could have meant that he would have won instead. Later on, it wasnt the lack of Garous that killed him, but my potential second traditions, immortal grapple, disarm, that kept him at one Garou. And that seems pretty symptomatic for the way I see DI's being played. As a card that strengthens your position or weakens others', but very rarely something that determines a game in and by itself. But, I do vote for a ban. Solely because the card is very "anti-me" and the decks I play. :)

[ quoted text not captured ] > and the decks I play. :)- Skjul tekst i anførselstegn - > > - Vis tekst i anførselstegn - Changed title back to reflect the current discussion. Dont know why it changed automatically.

> Locally, I agree with you--no one around here plays DI all that much. ... > But on a competitive level, where folks regularly play 3 or 4 DIs per > deck, all the time, it is a complete nightmare. I have had many games > arbitrarily demolished by someone cross table DIing whatever I was about > to oust my prey with just 'cause they had one in hand and couldn't bear > to see me oust a prey (as it would "unbalance the table" or some crap > like that). In ways that most other cards simply could not effect. > > That, and the incredibly endless "DI Phase" ("Huh. That's not good. > Should I DI that? Let me discuss it with everyone else at the table for > 5 minutes...") of every action in competition is just completely > unnecessary. I hate DI. I have always hated DI. I would love to see it > vaporize instantly. Amen. Preach it! :) Exactly the same comments and sentiments here. I would love to see that card go, or at least become severely limited (once per game, or some such). In the current form it's a bad card for the game, for a multitude of reasons. //Petri

On Sep 13, 6:51 am, "Kevin M." <youw...@imaspammer.org> wrote: > nikol...@hotmail.com wrote: > > extrala <ralf.lamm...@gmx.de> wrote: > What Direct Intervention does is bad and wrong, as it stops people from > being able to play the game. (Yes, Sudden/Wash has a similar ability, but > you know damn well that the game is made to be played with library cards > being used by your minions, so please don't try to throw up straw men to > avoid the DI discussion.) Sudden/Wash can very well stop people from playing the game imo. Just pretend that the Garou-deck had been a Brujah Debate deck that got its two first Debates cancelled, or an Alamut deck getting its two first Alamuts cancelled, or a Watchtower: The Wolves Feed deck getting its two first Wolves Feeds cancelled or a Bay and Howl deck... and so on. I'm not trying to throw straw men on you and avoid the DI discussion, because a discussion about it might be needed. But trying to avoid getting Sudden/Wash comparisions into that discussion is a bad thing as well. And starting a discussion by stating that "the game is made to be played" in a certain fashion feels kinda weird as well. Master heavy/ master dependant decks do exist, even if they're fewer than the "normal" decks with minion cards being played by minions. > Direct Intervention is a silver bullet, and we all know it. Why is it > still part of this game?? I agree it could use some minor tuning, but I very much hope it won't be banned in any close future. Some once per game/player or similar could be a good change (even a limit to once per player would've saved the Garous in this case though, and that's a quite hefty limit imo).

Seriously, this card is way too high on the irritation factor. Wrote a long and heated comment about it. Read it, deleted and decided all I wanna say is ban it. Or once per game. Either or.

In article <cn3zk.4645$Dj1....@newsfe01.iad>, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > See, that's where I disagree with you - and frequently others who hate > D.I. And it's also the thing that makes me insanely curious why there's > such disagreement about it. Those who hate D.I. seem to see games as > this series of dramatic plays with lots and lots of momentous turning > points, any of which would be reversed with D.I.s thus proving what a > terribly overpowered card it is. I just don't see this in games. I > see lots of play that goes back and forth and occasionally some plays > that are very important but I just don't see that many of them which > I'd find worthwhile to hold a D.I. and pay the pool and the MPA for. I > actually see very few. I value the master cards I know will help me > far more consistently more highly than I value D.I.s in most cases, so > I find it hard to appreciate your point of view. Well, there is always a lot of conjecture and stories to make points, but when it comes down to simple "here is what the card does", here is what I primarily object to about the card: A) It allows for completely unrestricted meddling, ignoring the predator/prey relationship. The guy cross table can DI my action modifier to foil my action. Which when combined with the incredible versatility of the card makes it way too powerful. If it were only useable on your predator or prey? It would be much less egregious. B) It has no limitations at all, when similar cards have significant limitations. DI was designed by the same crack wacky design team that made Protect Thine Own and Return to Innocence (well, presumably). In another example of "Here is clearly what the current design team thinks is balanced, and here is how this other old card is way over that threshold" (see: PTO vs Auto da Fe), we have Direct Intervention, which costs 1 pool and 1 MPA as an OOT Master, and cancels any minion card. Then we have Vox Domini, which costs 1 pool and 1 MPA as an OOT Master, and makes a poltical action fail. And is only playable once per game by each player. So for the exact same cost (1 pool, 1 MPA, OOT), Vox Domini has a similar effect but is *vastly* more restricted *and* only playable once per game. Yes, there is a difference between "cancel a card" and "make a vote fail" which is not insignificant (vote fails means action is wasted, etc.). So it is arguably reasonable that the limited effect (cancel only vote, not any card) is more powerful (vote fails, not card cancelled). But then it *also* is saddled with only being playable once per game. Which, for a card that is already very limited, is just a kick in the teeth. The end result is, given the similarities between the cards, why would anyone *ever* play Vox Domini instead of Direct Intervention (this is not an invitation to dig up every possible corner case where you would want a Vox Domini, but every single time I have considered a Vox Domini in a deck? I put in DI instead)? The DI costs exactly the same, has a similar (and often identical--if you DI the vital vote push action card? The end result is identical to Vox Domini) yet much more flexible effect. And can be used multiple times per game. Vox Domini seems like it should be a strong card (it has a very strong effect). But DI makes it virtually pointless. And Vox Domini is apparently what the current (or currenter) design team feels is a balanced effect for a 1 pool OOT Master that cancels something. Indicating the Direct Intervention is over the curve of what the current design team thinks is acceptable. If Direct Intervention was, say, 1 pool OOT Master, cancel a minion card played by your predator or prey, only playable once per game per methuselah, it would still be a pain in the ass, but would at least be *much* less "arbitrary king makery" and would fit into the current power level scheme reasonably. [ quoted text not captured ]

In message <0e403909-18ce-4185...@c58g2000hsc.googlegroup s.com>, niko...@hotmail.com writes: >Changed title back to reflect the current discussion. Dont know why it >changed automatically. You responded to the original post. The reply takes the title of the post you're replying to (unless you change it). This is just one reason why - if you want to talk about the topic of a replying post - you should reply to *that* post, with relevant quoted material from that post. It makes it easier to follow. -- James Coupe PGP Key: 0x5D623D5D YOU ARE IN ERROR. EBD690ECD7A1FB457CA2 NO-ONE IS SCREAMING. 13D7E668C3695D623D5D THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION.

[ quoted text not captured ] > Popcorn where? Must has popcorn!!!!!11!!11!!!!one! ;)- Tekst uit oorspronkelijk bericht niet weergeven - > > - Tekst uit oorspronkelijk bericht weergeven - LOL. Waddup, Blooded Sand! I hope you're just heating up the ol' corn popper cause I'm back, and not because of those 2 cents I just put into the discussion, right?

[ quoted text not captured ] Me? Heat popcorn for no reason??? Perish the thought old boy! Now where did I put the butter and flamethrower, I mean, gas stove? LOL, nah, just a friendly hiya buddy!

On Sep 14, 1:50 am, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > And yet I don't observe that you play with that many D.I.s, Darby? Why > is that? If you looked through my recent tournament-finals decks, you would see that a significant majority use DI, typical in multiples. I'll not give you the exact percentages or number of instance per deck, as I don't wish to spoil all my surprises. But rest assured that this card finds its way into a lot of decks I build. Leaving DI out of last month's [ANI] block/combat deck was a terrible oversight on my part - which I will certainly remedy if I play the deck again. You're fooling yourself if you think I don't stoop to playing this cheeseball card. Does that mean I need it in every deck to be successful....no. But it is powerful and flexible enough that if I can slot the thing and preserve deck function (in COMPETITIVE DECKS), I'll seriously consider it. > Those who hate D.I. seem to see games as > this series of dramatic plays with lots and lots of momentous turning > points. I never said that. What I believe is, in fact, the complete opposite. This highlights just how far way my thought processes are from yours. In the setting you seem to describe, DI loses it value. DI is best suited in situations where there are relative FEW dramatic plays and the prevention of 1-2 of them is consequently more important, then the shift of power becomes long-lasting. > ....I just don't see this in games. Fortunately for me, it is not YOU that I am trying to influence here.....it is the folks you could be ultimately responsible for the banning of the card. I prefer it that you think that DI is a card unworthy of inclusion in your decks. That's one less player I need to worry about shutting down the action I need with I have a trumpy play planned. Now, having mounted the soapbox for a brief time, I'll step off and return to my deckbuilding (including DI in liberal quantities). Regards. Darby

On Sep 13, 3:08 am, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > This card's been around since The > Sabbat and I have never figured out why some people get so bugged by it. > I swear, it's just weird! It may just be a function of your metagame. If only one player at the table shoves one in his deck, you may not notice it much. If three or more players sit down with three in their deck, I believe you would see the effect. I certainly have. -- David Cherryholmes

Frederick Scott wrote: > 3) It has the usual cancel-card disadvantage in a multiplayer game. Guy > playing it pays an MPA and pool; guy it's played on loses a chance to play > an (ideally) key minion card. Three other methuselahs are the real > winners. According to this tournament report, that wasn't the case here. One of the people who played DI won the tournament, not one of the other three players. John Eno

In message <pdb6-77870D.1...@nntp.aioe.org>, Peter D Bakija <pd...@lightlink.com> writes: >That, and the incredibly endless "DI Phase" ("Huh. That's not good. >Should I DI that? Let me discuss it with everyone else at the table for >5 minutes...") of every action in competition is just completely >unnecessary. I hate DI. I have always hated DI. I would love to see it >vaporize instantly. I'd caution at this point that the obvious fix of "one per game" or "one per Methuselah per game" may exacerbate this window. Okay, once you've played it, the game speeds up as you're not continually thinking "Oh god, do I play it?" However, before you play it, this might well end up with people thinking "Is this good enough? Am I getting enough benefit?" and spending their time fretting about that as well. So, you might or might not end up taking more time overall, but individual situations where you might want to play it could be even more lengthy and fraught. [ quoted text not captured ]

On Sep 14, 1:41 pm, James Coupe <ja...@zephyr.org.uk> wrote: > I'd caution at this point that the obvious fix of "one per game" or "one > per Methuselah per game" may exacerbate this window. This is true. Although if it were only one per game or one per player per game, the advantage to using multiples of them would be greatly diminished, meaning fewer of them would be in decks, and so fewer would be in hand most of the time. That, and if the "only once per game" of some type were stuck on *along* with the "only on your predator or prey" restriction I'd like to see, there would be 2 fewer people who could play their one DI at any given moment. -Peter

On Sep 14, 9:19 pm, Peter D Bakija <p...@lightlink.com> wrote: > On Sep 14, 1:41 pm, James Coupe <ja...@zephyr.org.uk> wrote: > > This is true. Although if it were only one per game or one per player > per game, the advantage to using multiples of them would be greatly > diminished, meaning fewer of them would be in decks, and so fewer > would be in hand most of the time. And, most importantly imo, it would make the Anthelios tech useless (in regards to DI, other cards would still be twisted of course).

> . I hate DI. I have always hated DI. I would love to see it > vaporize instantly. > Amen to that. I refuse to play it out of principle. Chris.

On 14 Sep., 14:09, Petri Wessman <or...@orava.org> wrote: > once per game, or That would be good and would severly limit the annoyance of an Anthelion multiple MPA Deck to yank out a DI every turn.

On 13 Sep, 05:51, "Kevin M." <youw...@imaspammer.org> wrote: > If this isn't enough to cause Direct Intervention to be placed AT THE VERY > TOP of the watch list for 2009 -- and hopefully banned in 2010 -- then > nothing ever will. How disappointing to 'tune' back into the NG and see this still going.. years on. > This guy gets 3GW/9VP with a well-made/metagamed deck, and loses... to a > stupid Direct Intervention. Wow, nice reward. Or perhaps a well timed DI ....... perhaps? A DI that had been held onto skillfully for a number of turns for that very reason? And played at evidently *exactly* the right time. A real skill if you ask me. > What Direct Intervention does is bad and wrong, as it stops people from > being able to play the game. (Yes, Sudden/Wash has a similar ability, but > you know damn well that the game is made to be played with library cards > being used by your minions, so please don't try to throw up straw men to > avoid the DI discussion.) > > Thoughts Betrayed was changed because it used to say "You are unable to > play the game." > > Protect Thine Own was banned because it says "You are unable to play the > game, in the most un-fun way the designers of this card game could think > of." > > Direct Intervention is a silver bullet, and we all know it. Why is it > still part of this game?? Simply put because it doesn't need to go. It's an integral part of the game in my opinion and taking it away further reduces the dwindling pool of cards that can influence things cross table and takes the game further small percentages down the route of a non-multiplayer game. If your deck can't handle even a few of these flying at it from cross table (although you might assume/hope that play to win may step in at some point here?) then surely it's pretty fragile in the first place? Personally it often doesn't make the final cut in most of my decks as I find myself sitting with it and second, third guessing myself when or when not to use it as Peter alludes to. Better to have a relatively certain card in a lot of cases than a DI with the text 'temporarily reduce your handsize to 6' I think it's fine with the new-ish play to win rules if implemented correctly. Especially in finals where some of the controversy seems to come from?

On Sep 15, 8:04 am, rptreas...@aol.com wrote: > On 13 Sep, 05:51, "Kevin M." <youw...@imaspammer.org> wrote: > > > Direct Intervention is a silver bullet, and we all know it. Why is it > > still part of this game?? > > Simply put because it doesn't need to go. It's an integral part of the > game in my opinion and taking it away further reduces the dwindling > pool of cards that can influence things cross table and takes the game > further small percentages down the route of a non-multiplayer game. If > your deck can't handle even a few of these flying at it from cross > table (although you might assume/hope that play to win may step in at > some point here?) then surely it's pretty fragile in the first place? > In this particular tournament, the 'hosed' deck in question had 3GW, 9VP and first seed going in to the finals... so the answer is clearly No, its not "pretty fragile in the first place". You are right, in that a deck should be able to overcome the occasional DI without a problem, most can, but the impact of multiple DIs per turn is pretty big. Big enough to cause a clearly excellent, well-played deck to tank. Maybe correction text that should be considered is "a methuselah may only be the target of DI once during their turn." That'd keep a single player from being the center of a shit-storm of DI's, as happens when they become prevalent in the meta game (see Dave C's collected works), and as happened in this specific case, here. DaveZ AW

[ quoted text not captured ] That would be a much better fix if one was needed, yes. Obviously I don't think it is though. See what you are saying re: that game but conversely it took a DI from prey and pred to stop the deck doing it's thing for a few turns. I don't see this as an issue myself and as far as I remember (not sure if the 'DI game' has changed in my absence?) a pretty rare occurance aside from a few specific metagames? Again, personally I see Sudden Reversal and stuff like Bleeding the Vine as more of an issue (if you assume an issue, which I really don't) in that master cards are *generally* a lot more powerful than minion cards, no? I would say in the majority of games, a few well placed Suddens from around the table ruin a given deck's strategy a lot more regularly and with more alarming results like no pool gain, than DI.

[ quoted text not captured ] > than DI.- Hide quoted text - > > - Show quoted text - I think that in most cases I'd rather do what I do well than devote parts of my master section to stopping individual minion cards played by other meths. Or at least use minion cards to react to and deal with minion cards.. That stupid Synesios deck from Barcelona aside - I dont recall ever using DI really, for the reasons above. Ant

On 15 syys, 15:04, rptreas...@aol.com wrote: > On 13 Sep, 05:51, "Kevin M." <youw...@imaspammer.org> wrote: > > This guy gets 3GW/9VP with a well-made/metagamed deck, and loses... to a > > stupid Direct Intervention. Wow, nice reward. > > Or perhaps a well timed DI ....... perhaps? A DI that had been held > onto skillfully for a number of turns for that very reason? And played > at evidently *exactly* the right time. A real skill if you ask me. Eh, I don't mean to belittle anyone's skills but when a Garou deck dominates a tournament every player in the final table will know about it. It's pretty easy to figure out whether to DI the lynch pin or not once you know what it is. Another fun fact about DI: the decks least affected by it are the decks with the least amount of diversity in card choices.

On 15 Sep, 15:07, suoliruse...@gmail.com wrote: > On 15 syys, 15:04, rptreas...@aol.com wrote: > > > On 13 Sep, 05:51, "Kevin M." <youw...@imaspammer.org> wrote: > > > This guy gets 3GW/9VP with a well-made/metagamed deck, and loses... to a > > > stupid Direct Intervention. Wow, nice reward. > > > Or perhaps a well timed DI ....... perhaps? A DI that had been held > > onto skillfully for a number of turns for that very reason? And played > > at evidently *exactly* the right time. A real skill if you ask me. > > Eh, I don't mean to belittle anyone's skills but when a Garou deck > dominates a tournament every player in the final table will know about > it. It's pretty easy to figure out whether to DI the lynch pin or not > once you know what it is. Totally yes, I'm talking more about the 9/10 times I see/saw it played to counter an immediate emergent threat rather than to scupper a known one. I think it's unfortunate in this example that both came from Pred and Prey, if it were cross table then it would add a bit of weight to Kevin and other's argument, were they decks using lots of DI though? or just decks using 1 or 2 to defend a bit against the Rock Paper Scissors nature of the game? I genuinely don't know, just interested. Added to this I for one welcome anything at all that helps smooth that horrible but unavoidable Rock Paper Scissors aspect of the game, however small.

On Sep 15, 4:23 am, xcver <bernd.schw...@firstdata.de> wrote: > That would be good and would severly limit the annoyance of an > Anthelion multiple MPA Deck to yank out a DI every turn. Yep. I don't think it's *required* to factor recursing the card into the argument in order to make a successful one. However (to the skeptics) if one can get a toehold admission that DI is in fact at least weakly problematic, then the actual fact of recursing it ought to be able to amplify that crack in the door up to a full admission of brokenness. Like I said, I think guys with three on either side of you are sufficient to demonstrate the case, but Anthelios + most people having one or two creates a similar effect and, for the guy who built the Anthelios deck, it's a sick lock. -- David Cherryholmes P.S. I took a Garou deck to DragonCon last month, so this whole thread is extra fascinating to me.

I am surprised that nobody considers Direct intervention more broken than Sudden reversal. The basics to make a deck is "how to survive" because you can make a wonderful killing deck, there are very few exceptions to the sentence - > if you don't get pool, you lose (turbos, weenies). Then, with sudden reversal, you don't play another mast card. With DI, for very few exceptions you can play another card (your conditionning becomes foreshadowing destruction, i.e). I feel far more pressured by a player playing anthelios/parthenon and X sudden reversals in his deck + bleeding the vine and cancelling me my master phase every turn, preventing me from pooling in normal ways, than by somebody eventually cancelling one action from me. If I see one people playing DI recurrently, I just wait to get 2x of the action in my hand... If it's once in a while, by luck, as in the final we're talking about... that is life, but that does not happen very often that both your prey and predator have 1 DI in their starting hand, right?

of course the first sentence that should be read the opposite way, sorry for the mistake

On Sep 15, 8:04 am, rptreas...@aol.com wrote: > Personally it often doesn't make the final cut in most of my decks as > I find myself sitting with it and second, third guessing myself when > or when not to use it as Peter alludes to. Better to have a relatively > certain card in a lot of cases than a DI with the text 'temporarily > reduce your handsize to 6' This argument is pretty weak. You have to have something in your hand - how is having a D.I., arguably the most flexible and powerful card in the game, a burden to you? Comparing it to a hand size of six is inaccurate; Dragonbound reduces your hand size to 6, as in you only have 6 cards in your hand. D.I., arguably the most powerful card in the game, is one of your 7 cards. It is in no way a dead card. The opportunity cost to play it approaches zero. -Dave Clooney

On Sep 15, 12:38 pm, coincoinmas...@hotmail.com wrote: > > if you don't get pool, you lose (turbos, weenies). I see where you are going here, but I am probably not the best audience for your argument. I think I have pretty unorthodox views on the value of pool gain. Unless you are set up to run *KABOOM* cap/ taps repeatedly, the couple of blood dolls you'll see in your top 20 cards is not going to have much impact on the bleedzooka behind you. For the slow trickle of pool over the long game.... meh, I'd rather just gain six and put my resources into that. > Then, with sudden reversal, you don't play another mast card. With DI, > for very few exceptions you can play another card (your conditionning > becomes foreshadowing destruction, i.e). Yeah, if you've got them, as you clearly do in your little thought experiment there. I guess I can't persuade you with this, but IME it works out to be quite a bit tougher. OTOH, I admittedly do not play many highly focused, one trick pony decks. And while we are at it, add "encouraging that" to the things I don't like about DI, but I would not call that a balance argument.... just a "fun" argument which is subjective. -- David Cherryholmes

<sg3kmb6...@gmail.com> wrote in message news:e8284ed4-7f68-4f8b...@z72g2000hsb.googlegroups.com... On Sep 14, 9:19 pm, Peter D Bakija <p...@lightlink.com> wrote: > > This is true. Although if it were only one per game or one per player > > per game, the advantage to using multiples of them would be greatly > > diminished, meaning fewer of them would be in decks, and so fewer > > would be in hand most of the time. Huh? What are the "advantages of using multiples of them", in your opinion? Do you mean you think D.I. is good and two D.I.s are twice as good? Or do you somehow see a greater-than-double advantage to using two D.I.s (or more; I'm trying to figure out if you see some kind of multiple-copy advantage in the card). As far as I can see, there's no multi-copy synergy or advantage. If anything, one would expect diminishing returns from multiple copies but maybe there's an aspect to this I'm not seeing. > And, most importantly imo, it would make the Anthelios tech useless > (in regards to DI, other cards would still be twisted of course). I don't there's really much Anthelios tech here. I'm REALLY not going to buy the concept that D.I. is worth TWO master phase actions and a pool! (But again, if you have some angle on the card I'm not seeing, by all means trot it out.) Fred

[ quoted text not captured ] I'm not saying its accurate or inaccurate just that in MY experience it can also be a burden as you agonise over when to play it and then ultimately wish you had waited. Also having a card that sits in your hand is often not good, see things like Life Boon for example here. Personally I think one of the many strengths you can employ in the game is a fludly moving deck, this aspect of DI doesn't help that. No idea how you class it as the most powerful card in the game either. Bizarre. Also cards that sit in your hand is often not good, see things I suppose I was trying to illustrate that it's one of those cards that often lead to indecision and doubt as to how to play it, not a good thing if you ask me. Then comparing that to a card that is part of a focussed machine of a deck where that slot becomes a no-brainer card instead. I'd like to be able to see all the fuss but I don't... I've been on the business end of several players packing a few DI and targetting me in quite a few games and yes it's no fun but no less amusing than having every master card stopped or FAR less fun than having your deck trumped utterly by the Imbued :o)

suolir...@gmail.com wrote: > Another fun fact about DI: the decks least affected by it are the > decks with the least amount of diversity in card choices. Does "fun fact" mean "fiction"? Diversity is one of the counters to DI. DI my Lost in Crowds? OK. I can't play another, but fortunately, my deck has diversity in my choices, so I'll play this Spying Mission. DI my Daring the Dawn? OK. Here's a Dawn Operation. Or I guess you could be using "diversity" to mean "dependence on many things at once" instead of the normal meaning. If so, then, yeah, contrived long strict-ordering chains are more affected by DI than simple short order-insensitve chains, sure.

"Darby Keeney" <darby....@gmail.com> wrote in message news:127ba68f-639d-4155...@2g2000hsn.googlegroups.com... On Sep 14, 1:50 am, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > > And yet I don't observe that you play with that many D.I.s, Darby? Why > > is that? > > If you looked through my recent tournament-finals decks, you would see > that a significant majority use DI, typical in multiples. I'll not > give you the exact percentages or number of instance per deck, as I > don't wish to spoil all my surprises. But rest assured that this card > finds its way into a lot of decks I build. Well, OK. I'm just saying I don't see you play this card like it was as broken as you talk about in the newsgroup. If it's all that broken due to it's power I would expect to see you constantly playing it and leaning on it as crutch. That's what *I* would do if I thought a card was as broken as you make D.I. out to be. > > Those who hate D.I. seem to see games as > > this series of dramatic plays with lots and lots of momentous turning > > points. > > I never said that. What I believe is, in fact, the complete > opposite. This highlights just how far way my thought processes are > from yours. No. This highlights how little sense I'm making out of your statements about it. What I described above is logical conclusion to the complaints you make about D.I. If that's *NOT* what you meant to imply, then I can't fathom why you would think D.I. is so powerful and flexible that it requires banishment. > In the setting you seem to describe, DI loses it value. DI is best > suited in situations where there are relative FEW dramatic plays and > the prevention of 1-2 of them is consequently more important, then the > shift of power becomes long-lasting. But that makes zero sense. If there are very few dramatic, important plays, then you have a card that - on the whole - sits in your hand like a doorstop taking up handspace for a long period of time. You can't put many of them in your deck or they'll keep coming up when you don't want them. And if they're only played a relative few times in the game, I find it to be specious to argue that they have that much effect on the game - like Kevin's incorrect suggestion that Direct Invterventions beat that guy's Werewolf deck. Actually, it was the Second Traditions which beat the Werewolf deck. > ....I just don't see this in games. > > Fortunately for me, it is not YOU that I am trying to influence > here.....it is the folks you could be ultimately responsible for the > banning of the card. I prefer it that you think that DI is a card > unworthy of inclusion in your decks. You have little to worry about on that score. Fred

On Sep 15, 7:16 pm, rptreas...@aol.com wrote: > On 15 Sep, 17:47, dcloo...@gmail.com wrote: > > > > > On Sep 15, 8:04 am, rptreas...@aol.com wrote: > > > > Personally it often doesn't make the final cut in most of my decks as > > > I find myself sitting with it and second, third guessing myself when > > > or when not to use it as Peter alludes to. Better to have a relatively > > > certain card in a lot of cases than a DI with the text 'temporarily > > > reduce your handsize to 6' > > > This argument is pretty weak. You have to have something in your hand > > - how is having a D.I., arguably the most flexible and powerful card > > in the game, a burden to you? Comparing it to a hand size of six is > > inaccurate; Dragonbound reduces your hand size to 6, as in you only > > have 6 cards in your hand. > > > D.I., arguably the most powerful card in the game, is one of your 7 > > cards. It is in no way a dead card. The opportunity cost to play it > > approaches zero. > > > -Dave Clooney > > I'm not saying its accurate or inaccurate just that in MY experience > it can also be a burden as you agonise over when to play it and then > ultimately wish you had waited. Point being that in an Anthelios deck, which makes utmost use of DI, it is not a matter of agonising. /it is merely a matter of every single turn to decide which is the most problematic card to nuke. And if you miss, well next turn try again. > Also having a card that sits in your > hand is often not good, see things like Life Boon for example here. > Personally I think one of the many strengths you can employ in the > game is a fluidly moving deck, this aspect of DI doesn't help that. AAA. Loves having this card sitting in hand. And it is a deck archetype that does kinda work. > I'd like to be able to see all the fuss but I don't... I've been on > the business end of several players packing a few DI and targetting me > in quite a few games and yes it's no fun but no less amusing than > having every master card stopped or This next bit needs more salt and butter buddy! [ quoted text not captured ]

"Kushiel" <invisibl...@gmail.com> wrote in message news:58d86ac9-e86b-4b48...@f36g2000hsa.googlegroups.com... [ quoted text not captured ] Sure. It's a rather philosophical argument and I agree that a lot of individual examples can and do occur where D.I. specifically helped the guy who played it far more than anyone else. But I also see a lot of times where someone else benefits as much or more, just as with Sudden Reversal. Fred

"Atom Weaver" <atomw...@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message news:d77b0726-d5e3-4045...@t54g2000hsg.googlegroups.com... > On Sep 15, 8:04 am, rptreas...@aol.com wrote: > > On 13 Sep, 05:51, "Kevin M." <youw...@imaspammer.org> wrote: > > > Direct Intervention is a silver bullet, and we all know it. Why is it > > > still part of this game?? > > > > Simply put because it doesn't need to go. It's an integral part of the > > game in my opinion and taking it away further reduces the dwindling > > pool of cards that can influence things cross table and takes the game > > further small percentages down the route of a non-multiplayer game. If > > your deck can't handle even a few of these flying at it from cross > > table (although you might assume/hope that play to win may step in at > > some point here?) then surely it's pretty fragile in the first place? > > In this particular tournament, the 'hosed' deck in question had 3GW, > 9VP and first seed going in to the finals... so the answer is clearly > No, its not "pretty fragile in the first place". I disagree. If you can't get Werewolves on the board because someone is playing Second Traditions, then don't tell me that deck didn't have a serious Achilles' Heel. The fact that it hadn't run into its foil deck(s) before is a fairly classic example of how capricious metagaming luck can be in tournaments. Fred

<dclo...@gmail.com> wrote in message news:e8081f9f-74d1-461f...@m45g2000hsb.googlegroups.com... > D.I., arguably the most powerful card in the game, is one of your 7 > cards. It is in no way a dead card. The opportunity cost to play it > approaches zero. I don't know. I see lots of stretches in games where I wouldn't find a suitable situation to play one for several turns at a time. If so, it certain _is_ a dead card during those periods and there certain is an opportunity cost. Fred

[ quoted text not captured ] I think he means: minion cards are played nearly all the time, so the opportunity cost is near zero. Contrast to your idea that the opportunity to play it usefully (i.e., so that it is worth its cost in pool, MPAs, and inability to play other MOOT (and advertising such)) is quite different than a zero cost.

On Sep 15, 1:24 pm, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > like Kevin's incorrect suggestion that Direct Invterventions beat > that guy's Werewolf deck. Actually, it was the Second Traditions which > beat the Werewolf deck. The DI's beat it. Except for the DIs he would have gotten out two Garou and smashed the vampires playing the 2nds into the dirt, after which he would have brought out more Garou, and quite possible won. Regardless of your assessment of DI in general, in that final it is quite clearly the DIs which beat him. -- David Cherryholmes

On Sep 15, 1:34 pm, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > I disagree. If you can't get Werewolves on the board because someone is > playing Second Traditions, then don't tell me that deck didn't have a > serious Achilles' Heel. The fact that it hadn't run into its foil deck(s) > before is a fairly classic example of how capricious metagaming luck can > be in tournaments. Well, I just scraped into the finals with mine, not curbstomped my way to first seed like this guy. But I would say the way you do it is by getting garou during the day, and then the gangrel sit there in torpor and Regenerate simply as Minion Tap fuel, and if somebody tries to eat them you play Crimson Fury. The rest of the deck goes towards Garou kicking ass. That kind of deck wouldn't care about 2nd trads. -- David Cherryholmes

[ quoted text not captured ] Wait, you mean like seat switchers? Oh right, they have been banned... best - chris -- Super Fun Cards www.superfuncards.com *NEW Website!* auct...@superfuncards.com

[ quoted text not captured ] Further off topic - It would be cool to see a seat switcher that couldn't be used to poach someone's prey: Switch seats with another player. Can't be played if any Methuselah has less than 10 pool. Or some such. [ quoted text not captured ]

"LSJ" <vte...@white-wolf.com> wrote in message news:fbxzk.316$W06...@flpi148.ffdc.sbc.com... [ quoted text not captured ] I'm confused, then. I don't think it makes a valid counter-argument to the opportunity cost problem to say D.I. can be dumped at a loss at any moment. (I mean, we already know you can almost always discard it so it's not like it's stuck in your hand either way. A DPA is also a cost but there you go.) So I think that still makes a significant opportunity cost, by my understanding of the definition of the term "opportunity cost". Fred

"bluedevil" <david.che...@gmail.com> wrote in message news:66aa21af-4d89-453e...@k13g2000hse.googlegroups.com... On Sep 15, 1:24 pm, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > > like Kevin's incorrect suggestion that Direct Invterventions beat > > that guy's Werewolf deck. Actually, it was the Second Traditions which > > beat the Werewolf deck. > > The DI's beat it. Except for the DIs he would have gotten out two > Garou and smashed the vampires playing the 2nds into the dirt, after > which he would have brought out more Garou, and quite possible won. In truth, both factors beat it - but it appears to me that the Second Traditions were the mainstay. It's possibly true that without the Direct Interventions, his opponents wouldn't have had time to setup any princes which wouldn't have gotten beaten into torpor regularly. So there may have been an aspect of a "spectacular play" contribution by D.I.s which is what the anti-D.I. folk hate about the card. But I suspect that's probably a vast oversimplication of that particular game. I also think it misses the point. I think (for instance) Mike Curtois's weenie auspex would have had that thing for lunch, for instance. The point is, don't tell me it was just the spectacular play that killed the Garou deck and - therefore - D.I. is overpowered. This game just doesn't show that. Fred

On 15 Sep, 19:53, librarian <aucti...@superfuncards.com> wrote: [ quoted text not captured ] What's your point man? Why beat around the bush?

Fred, I think it is funny that you say you don't play the card and you arguing to keep it. Matt

In article <xJwzk.4969$Il....@newsfe09.iad>, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > Huh? What are the "advantages of using multiples of them", in your > opinion? Getting to play them multiple times. I was pointing out that if you could only play one per game, drawing a second or third after you played the first would be drawing a dead card. So while currently, there is plenty of advantage to playing 3 or 4 in your deck (as you draw them early and often and get to play them 3 or 4 times), if you could only play 1 per game (even one per player per game), putting 3 or 4 in your deck would be counter productive. Peter D Bakija pd...@lightlink.com http://www.lightlink.com/pdb6/vtes.html "It's too bad she won't live! But then again, who does?" -Gaff

On Sep 15, 7:14 pm, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > <sg3kmb613sdf...@gmail.com> wrote in messagenews:e8284ed4-7f68-4f8b...@z72g2000hsb.googlegroups.com... > > > And, most importantly imo, it would make the Anthelios tech useless > > (in regards to DI, other cards would still be twisted of course). > > I don't there's really much Anthelios tech here. I'm REALLY not going > to buy the concept that D.I. is worth TWO master phase actions and a > pool! (But again, if you have some angle on the card I'm not seeing, > by all means trot it out.) I'm not sure where "here" is for you, but it show's up quite some in Sweden at least. And well.. If you're not going to buy it I guess there's no reason to even try arguing. Anson, Anthelios and a DI does (more or less) mean that at least one of your cards will be cancelled each turn. And in the duel that's a lot, and way too powerful imo.

On Sep 15, 1:16 pm, rptreas...@aol.com wrote: > No idea how you class it as the most powerful card in the game either. > Bizarre. What other single card is there that can prevent the play of any minion card (ie, the majority of cards in the game) with as few restrictions as DI? John Eno

On Sep 15, 2:49 pm, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > In truth, both factors beat it - but it appears to me that the Second > Traditions were the mainstay. It's possibly true that without the > Direct Interventions, his opponents wouldn't have had time to setup any > princes which wouldn't have gotten beaten into torpor regularly. So > there may have been an aspect of a "spectacular play" contribution by > D.I.s which is what the anti-D.I. folk hate about the card. But I suspect > that's probably a vast oversimplication of that particular game. No, that's just how that particular game played out. He had Garous before they had playable Seconds. The DI's stopped him until the 2nds could be brought into play. In that particular game, had there not been DIs, the 2nds would not have been that useful, since you need a minion to play them and everything we've heard says that his combat would take them apart. > I also > think it misses the point. I think (for instance) Mike Curtois's weenie > auspex would have had that thing for lunch, for instance. Maybe. Weenie Auspex stops lots of things cold. I don't know what his deck list was like, but Protean does have access to some good stealth, and Daring the Dawn sails right by it. But if he couldn't get past a second trad, then he probably wouldn't have gotten past weenie auspex. I'm not really sure what relevance that has to the discussion at hand, though. > The point is, don't tell me it was just the spectacular play that killed > the Garou deck and - therefore - D.I. is overpowered. This game just > doesn't show that. No, the game just shows that a spectacular play of DIs on either side of him killed him in that particular game. It's just one data point, though, and I prefer not to build arguments on anecdotes. Unfortunately, none of the logical arguments persuade you, so anecdotes are all we're left with. -- David Cherryholmes

On Sep 15, 1:34 pm, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > "Atom Weaver" <atomwea...@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message [ quoted text not captured ] Nickolaj wrote: "***He pacified my deck totally in the two first rounds***, and in the final chose to sit as my pred. He didnt know that his predator was playing an all out anti brujah bleed deck with Blood Brother Ambush. He had his first two garous DI'd in the same turn (me as his prey, and his predator played one too) and only managed to get one in. After that I had two princes and second traditions enough and he never got another one in play. " So, in two previous rounds, the Garou deck _had_ seen Nickolaj's 13 Second Trads, and dealt with them handily. Nickolaj was schooled by the Garou, even with his Second Trads, which is why the Garou player chose the seating he did... It was the combination of the DIs from predator and prey in a single round, not the presence of Second Trads, that was key to the Garou deck's demise. Prior performance in two preliminary rounds indicates that Second Trads were not a particular problem for the deck. DZ AW

[ quoted text not captured ] Obviously if you put your conditions on it like that, it goes toward your side of the argument. I don't see the restrictions as trivial as you do I guess, that and I don't think it's as 'broken' as people are saying... all feels very much like the sky is falling type of hype to me. As usual. I could counter-argue with something like - Look at Sudden Reversal and to a lesser extent Wash and Bleeding the Vine, what other card allows you to stop the play of any master card in the game (ie. in a lot of cases the most powerful cards in the game) with as few restictions, but I won't. This said, the other argument has a lot more weight I think. Mass play of said card from several sources *is* going to be a problem for most decks but for gods sake! shouldn't it be? Are we not talking about table control or lack thereof to a lesser extent there?

<sg3kmb6...@gmail.com> wrote in message news:2a5ae878-2ef8-4f59...@k30g2000hse.googlegroups.com... On Sep 15, 7:14 pm, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > <sg3kmb613sdf...@gmail.com> wrote in > messagenews:e8284ed4-7f68-4f8b...@z72g2000hsb.googlegroups.com... > > > And, most importantly imo, it would make the Anthelios tech useless > > > (in regards to DI, other cards would still be twisted of course). > > > > I don't think there's really much Anthelios tech here. I'm REALLY not going > > to buy the concept that D.I. is worth TWO master phase actions and a > > pool! (But again, if you have some angle on the card I'm not seeing, > > by all means trot it out.) > > I'm not sure where "here" is for you, but it show's up quite some in > Sweden at least. I meant "here" meaning "in this context". That is, Anthelios with its extra MPA penalty doesn't strike as being very effective given that I think paying one MPA and pool for D.I. is perfectly fair. I think the MPA is the larger cost. So if people want to pay a DPA and dedicate one or more card slots in order to have the ability to pay two MPAs and a pool to cancel a single opponent's single minion card, then go to town. >And well.. If you're not going to buy it I guess there's no reason to >even try arguing. Sure. > Anson, Anthelios and a DI does (more or less) mean that at least one > of your cards will be cancelled each turn. One of _my_ cards? Assuming I'm one of your opponents that's not necessarily true until we're the last two players in the game. You might want to cancel another one of your opponents' cards. > And in the duel that's a lot, and way too powerful imo. I disagree. But, as you say, there's not much we can do to convince one another. People in my area don't play with lots of them by and large and I've never seen anything to make me feel that someone who packed a lot of them would do much better than average. (In fact, when I was attending the NAC I didn't notice that any players at all going any heavier on D.I. than what I'm used to. But I wasn't a qualifier so I'm not necessarily the best person to testify about that.) Fred

On Sep 15, 5:01 pm, rptreas...@aol.com wrote: > This said, the other argument has a lot more weight I think. Mass play > of said card from several sources *is* going to be a problem for most > decks but for gods sake! shouldn't it be? Are we not talking about > table control or lack thereof to a lesser extent there? Yeah, I've never felt much objection to having the occasional power play sniped by a single DI. I know this is just me, and maybe it's just visceral, but back when I was playing with people who mostly played with 3 or 4 (and there was one guy who played with 8, I swear) I got the distinct impression that the whole damn game was broken. Nice to see you around again, btw. Recently resurfaced myself. -- David Cherryholmes

[ quoted text not captured ] You too man, you still go on iRC? Catch you on there if so. 8.... 8 in a deck is a lot! Yuk, that becomes a mini arms race then. I can see why you might have been a little peed off with it :o)

"bluedevil" <david.che...@gmail.com> wrote in message news:ff136067-b8b0-425f...@x35g2000hsb.googlegroups.com... On Sep 15, 2:49 pm, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > > In truth, both factors beat it - but it appears to me that the Second > > Traditions were the mainstay. It's possibly true that without the > > Direct Interventions, his opponents wouldn't have had time to setup any > > princes which wouldn't have gotten beaten into torpor regularly. So > > there may have been an aspect of a "spectacular play" contribution by > > D.I.s which is what the anti-D.I. folk hate about the card. But I suspect > > that's probably a vast oversimplication of that particular game. > > No, that's just how that particular game played out. He had Garous > before they had playable Seconds. The DI's stopped him until the 2nds > could be brought into play. In that particular game, had there not > been DIs, the 2nds would not have been that useful, Right. And if there hadn't been 2nds, the DIs wouldn't have been useful. I'm totally missing your point. For that matter, from the description of the game rendered, it isn't THAT clear to me that the D.I.s were essential. They were just the first line of defense. Could be someone could have intercepted the Garous but we can't tell. (Maybe the guy who played the game could tell but I don't think we could from what we have.) On the other hand, it appears that the Seconds were certainly essential in keeping subsequent Garous off the board - otherwise, the Garou player is just slowed down a bit, not stopped in his tracks. > > I also > > think it misses the point. I think (for instance) Mike Curtois's weenie > > auspex would have had that thing for lunch, for instance. > > Maybe. Weenie Auspex stops lots of things cold. I don't know what > his deck list was like, but Protean does have access to some good > stealth, and Daring the Dawn sails right by it. Then Daring the Dawn would have sailed right by the Second Traditions. > But if he couldn't > get past a second trad, then he probably wouldn't have gotten past > weenie auspex. I'm not really sure what relevance that has to the > discussion at hand, though. It shows that this is a metagame issue, pure and simple. Whether weenie intercept or a couple supremely fortitous D.I.s combined with Prince intercept, it's just what happened in one game. It is by no means an indication of a power problem associated with D.I.s. > > The point is, don't tell me it was just the spectacular play that killed > > the Garou deck and - therefore - D.I. is overpowered. This game just > > doesn't show that. > > No, the game just shows that a spectacular play of DIs on either side > of him killed him in that particular game. It's just one data point, > though, and I prefer not to build arguments on anecdotes. That was also my point. > Unfortunately, none of the logical arguments persuade you, so > anecdotes are all we're left with. If you _have_ logical arguments, then concentrate on those. I fail to see the point of leaning on what we both agree is a weak line of reasoning if you can't gain any traction with the one(s) you believe is (are) strong. "We-have-logical-arguments-but-they-don't-work-so-we're- trying-this" is a lame response. Fred

On Sep 15, 11:12 pm, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > > Anson, Anthelios and a DI does (more or less) mean that at least one > > of your cards will be cancelled each turn. > > One of _my_ cards? Assuming I'm one of your opponents that's not > necessarily true until we're the last two players in the game. You > might want to cancel another one of your opponents' cards. Sure, but I was just making a point. Theorethically it could be one of your cards that gets cancelled. Every turn. It does cost 2 mpa, 1 master card and 1 pool which might seem a bit high, but considering the effects I'd say it's worth it most times. It kinda means you'd need 1 more of every minion card you want to play on your turn. As you say though someone could be cancelling one of my predator's cards each turn just to make me happy, but I'd say that assuming that you are the one being targeted by the effect makes it easier to see how good/bad it is. > > And in the duel that's a lot, and way too powerful imo. > > I disagree. But, as you say, there's not much we can do to convince > one another. People in my area don't play with lots of them by and > large and I've never seen anything to make me feel that someone who > packed a lot of them would do much better than average. > > (In fact, when I was attending the NAC I didn't notice that any players > at all going any heavier on D.I. than what I'm used to. But I wasn't a > qualifier so I'm not necessarily the best person to testify about that.) I'd recommend a trip to France or Switzerland ;p Then again, I don't see how that has anything to do with the discussion tbh. I mean, if the card/combo being discussed is broken and needs tuning isn't dependant on the numbers of players abusing it but rather of what it does with the game (especially the late endgame with 2-3 players left). I don't recall Madness of the Bard being overused before it was banned either, but I'm sure glad it's not allowed on tournaments...

"Atom Weaver" <atomw...@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message news:77b7beaa-0f64-4149...@m36g2000hse.googlegroups.com... > On Sep 15, 1:34 pm, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > > "Atom Weaver" <atomwea...@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message > > news:d77b0726-d5e3-4045...@t54g2000hsg.googlegroups.com... > > > In this particular tournament, the 'hosed' deck in question had 3GW, > > > 9VP and first seed going in to the finals... so the answer is clearly > > > No, its not "pretty fragile in the first place". > > > > I disagree. If you can't get Werewolves on the board because someone is > > playing Second Traditions, then don't tell me that deck didn't have a > > serious Achilles' Heel. The fact that it hadn't run into its foil deck(s) > > before is a fairly classic example of how capricious metagaming luck can > > be in tournaments. > > > Nickolaj wrote: > "***He pacified my deck totally in the two first rounds***, and in the > final chose to sit as my pred. He didnt know that his predator was playing > an all out anti brujah bleed deck with Blood Brother Ambush. He had > his first two garous DI'd in the same turn (me as his prey, and his > predator played one too) and only managed to get one in. After that I > had two princes and second traditions enough and he never got another > one in play. " > > So, in two previous rounds, the Garou deck _had_ seen Nickolaj's 13 > Second Trads, and dealt with them handily. Nickolaj was schooled by > the Garou, even with his Second Trads, which is why the Garou player > chose the seating he did... It was the combination of the DIs from > predator and prey in a single round, not the presence of Second Trads, > that was key to the Garou deck's demise. That's right it was the combination of both - not just the D.I.s. This does not make it an overpowered card; just the right draw at the right moment. > Prior performance in two > preliminary rounds indicates that Second Trads were not a particular > problem for the deck. Prior performance has nothing to do with the issue. As I pointed out to David, other kinds of intercept decks wouldn't have required the presence of a D.I. - they would have just shut that deck down pretty much all the time they sat next to it. (For that matter, the Mike Curtois weenie auspex thing deliberately contains a lot a Eagle's Sights just to be able to control things like Garous he would likely conclude need to never hit the table.) The point that it just happened to be a deck which required help from an early D.I. to win the war makes for a poor example of D.I.'s power. Other fortuitous early cards, like an Info Highway or a Zillah's Valley might have changed the same equation. Or even a Far Mastery or other ally killer or stealer (assuming he'd had a minion to play one or a third party had gotten involved) could likewise have changed that equation. Assuming it's fair to characterize the metagame matchup as being about one deck getting a Garou on the table which would often happen before its neighbor got its intercept functioning and normally being able to do so, then it's just a question of a fortunate toolbox card (or two cards, in this case) popping up at the right time. That happens all the time in this game. D.I.s are admittedly an extremely flexible toolbox card in that sense, but as long as they're balanced overall it's a moot point. One of the problems I find with the argument against D.I. is that those who complain about it never quite lodge a coherent complaint. They're mad because it can be a critical factor in a lot of different varied situations but don't want to see that this by itself doesn't make D.I. an overpowered card. If it were, packing lots of them would always be an easier path to victory. Yet year after year, many areas and many players don't have a problem with it. That's why I think the problem isn't really power. The problem is that some people just get very irritated by the use of cancel cards to make a critical play. (Or a critical counter-play to a critical play - which is the same thing.) Fred

<mat...@gmail.com> wrote in message news:54b6be71-ca2b-4af4...@w24g2000prd.googlegroups.com... > I think it is funny that you say you don't play the card and you > arguing to keep it. That's not a funny thing. That's a demonstration that I really believe it's not an overpowered card. As Robert Goudie likes to point out, it's not up to people who think a card is balanced to prove that it's balanced. It's up to people who think a card is broken to prove that it's broken. Is that not one of the prime reason Dennis plays with his Una deck? He's trying to prove Una is broken. He isn't bitching and moaning about it all over Usenet. Say I'm right or I'm wrong but give me this: I do believe my own bullshit, at least. Fred

On 15 Sep, 22:54, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@ > That's right it was the combination of both - not just the D.I.s. This > does not make it an overpowered card; just the right draw at the right > moment. To add weight to this part of the argument that I believe to be true : The winning deck, played by Nikolaj Wendt: Library: (90 cards) ------------------- Master (12 cards) 3 Minion Tap 3 Blood Doll 1 Giant`s Blood 2 Information Highway 1 Direct Intervention 2 Dreams of the Sphinx 1 DI, that's all. No idea how many were in the other deck.

<sg3kmb6...@gmail.com> wrote in message news:ef04ff8d-1c5d-4728...@f63g2000hsf.googlegroups.com... [ quoted text not captured ] Players everywhere want to win, don't you think? So if really good successful players in a large part of the world are ignoring some sort of tech, that's a good indication that it isn't broken tech. It a thing is truly broken, it should begin to take on a "universal" nature and you should eventually start to see it everywhere. If you don't, that's an indication you're looking at differences in popular styles of play from one area to another. I admit this line of reasoning is sometimes suspect. Clearly, it sometimes takes time for broken tech to migrate from one area of the world to others. I believe that was fair to say about Succubus Club. And, in theory, it might be true of D.I. too. But this exact argument - complete with the divergence between European and North American players - has been going on for a VERY long time and I haven't seen anything that looks like a change in tech over all these years. > I don't recall Madness of the Bard being overused before it was banned > either, but I'm sure glad it's not allowed on tournaments... Sure - but irrelevant. Madness of the Bard was banned for completely difference reasons than anyone is talking about banning Direct Intervention. Fred

On Sep 16, 12:08 am, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > Players everywhere want to win, don't you think? So if really good > successful players in a large part of the world are ignoring some sort > of tech, that's a good indication that it isn't broken tech. It a thing > is truly broken, it should begin to take on a "universal" nature and you > should eventually start to see it everywhere. If you don't, that's an > indication you're looking at differences in popular styles of play from > one area to another. I can't answer for most other players, but I'd reckon most play to win. What I do know is that the good players I have around me more or less always include at least 1 Direct Intervention in tournament decks and usually tries to squeeze some Anthelios twist tech in as well. That's speaking generally of course, it's not really doable in every deck and some decks makes more use of DI than others. Then again, if it was up to me I'd perhaps (not sure tbh) change DI to once per player/game and think that was more than ok. The big issue I see is really the Anthelios tech (and I'd say a spinning Pentex Subversion is much worse than a DI) but that's a different discussion.

[ quoted text not captured ] Actually, Nickolaj's results in the two prelims without DI vs. finals with DI (and an assisting DI from another player) is afair argument for why N-'s deck would do well to have 4-5 DI, instead of just one. Look at the impact a lucky draw of it early had on his ability to deal with a predator that otherwise schooled him in the prelims ... *shrug* This gets me back to what I was saying; a limit of one DI 'victimization' per turn. The effect of a single DI per turn is something any reasonable deck should be able to overcome (the Garou deck could have limped along OK with one puppy instead of two). Two- plus DI per turn is where the effect gets amplified to unhealthiness... AW

On Sep 15, 5:54 pm, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > One of the problems I find with the argument against D.I. is that those > who complain about it never quite lodge a coherent complaint. They're > mad because it can be a critical factor in a lot of different varied > situations but don't want to see that this by itself doesn't make D.I. > an overpowered card. If it were, packing lots of them would always be > an easier path to victory. Yet year after year, many areas and many > players don't have a problem with it. That's why I think the problem > isn't really power. The problem is that some people just get very > irritated by the use of cancel cards to make a critical play. (Or a > critical counter-play to a critical play - which is the same thing.) > Meh. I've played in Dave C's DI-heavy meta game. It sucks, big time, worse so if you didn't bring your own 'battery' of DI. Once you get there, its like nuclear proliferation, there is no way back out, only detente. And I'd agree that a solo "kill" of a critical card is something that a player ought to be able to overcome through deck construction. If your problem with arguments against DI is the above, I'd suggest that my problem with _your_ perspective is that you seem to only consider the cost of the card in isolation, and not within the context of the environment where it is actually being criticized (multiple players with multiple DIs)... AW

"Atom Weaver" <atomw...@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message news:7c56518f-d3be-4b71...@34g2000hsh.googlegroups.com... On Sep 15, 5:54 pm, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > > One of the problems I find with the argument against D.I. is that those > > who complain about it never quite lodge a coherent complaint. They're > > mad because it can be a critical factor in a lot of different varied > > situations but don't want to see that this by itself doesn't make D.I. > > an overpowered card. If it were, packing lots of them would always be > > an easier path to victory. Yet year after year, many areas and many > > players don't have a problem with it. That's why I think the problem > > isn't really power. The problem is that some people just get very > > irritated by the use of cancel cards to make a critical play. (Or a > > critical counter-play to a critical play - which is the same thing.) > > Meh. I've played in Dave C's DI-heavy meta game. It sucks, big time, > worse so if you didn't bring your own 'battery' of DI. If that's the situation, why don't you?!? Why are you _not_ playing with DI-heavy decks where you live so you can clean up on the inherent power of DIs??? Then, your DI-heavy decks at least wouldn't be at a disadvange in DI-heavy areas, too. Wherever you play, DIheavy or not, you'd be better off and that's good, right? It's been observed by various people about combat-heavy games that you're at a disadvantage without your own combat. But in non-combat-heavy games, you're at a disadvantage if you _do_ have lots of combat (because you might destroy your predator and/or prey but you don't have enough destruction in your own deck to stop the whole table so you'll get bled out, or whatever). I've never done a study but it sounds reasonable enough on the surface. Anyway, I'm wondering if there might be some element of this with D.I. If most people use their MPAs for their own positive benefit, on the whole they might be more immune to DIs. If they use lots of master slots for DIs, then they have to rely on mainly minion cards for ousting power and defense, apart from what they spend their DIs on. So maybe the explaination is that DIs are important in a DI-heavy area but a drawback where most people don't bother? It's a hack theory but it might explain somewhat why people have such differing views in different parts of the world. > If your problem with arguments against DI is the above, > I'd suggest that my problem with _your_ perspective is that you seem > to only consider the cost of the card in isolation, and not within the > context of the environment where it is actually being criticized > (multiple players with multiple DIs)... If a card is truly broken, the environment shouldn't matter, I think. It should be broken everywhere. I might bend on that if the problem if a single card is balanced overall but precluding lots of bushy lines of deck archetypes which would be fun to play if you just got rid of that one card. Do you think that applies in this context? Fred

[ quoted text not captured ] My problems w/ DI 1 I don't own enough of them (it is now out of print) 2 It is incredibly flexible/potential powerful (see Darby Keeneys' post) 3 its power is directly related to the players understanding of the game i.e. table dynamics what each deck is likely capable of, how they will interact, and the outcome. Players ask to look at an ash heap to ascertain a decks potential (ratio and likely cards to go with what is there) New players are at a distinct disadvantage if the above points are true. Even if they are able to get their hands on DI, its' usefulness to them is reduced. I would gladly have a 6 card hand if I could cancel one minion card a round for a pool.

4 It creates a phase at which very single minion card played must be put to the question. any DI's? Since that is not plausible there will arise the problem that someone will not have the opportunity too play it or will get to much information (action mods votes etc..) and claim that they didn't. though this is not as big of a problem w/ actions if the proper sequince is followed. whatever that is. I think play> declare> replace> tap. Hell I can't even remember at what time in this sequence DIs' window closes. I think after declare but before replace. Am I the only one who can't remember?

<mat...@gmail.com> wrote in message news:ad8ce14e-20ef-4ca7...@c22g2000prc.googlegroups.com... > My problems w/ DI > > 1 I don't own enough of them (it is now out of print) Most of the comments you made are fair enough except agreeing with Darby's too-powerful/flexible argument, which has been beaten near to death by now. But your parenthetical comment in #1 is wrong. Direct Intervention is an uncommon in Third Edition - which is supposed to be the "base set" now. Even if that were not true, it would be easy enough to correct. Just reprint the hell out of them in precons. Make it a staple. Let everyone be as corrupt as they want. (We will now pause to listen to David Cherryholmes scream. :-) ) Fred

On Sep 15, 6:13 pm, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > <matt...@gmail.com> wrote in message [ quoted text not captured ] You mean in Brujah! starter? It is a good starter. I didn't know they were going to keep printing it.

On Sep 16, 11:15 am, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > It's been observed by various people about combat-heavy games that you're > at a disadvantage without your own combat. But in non-combat-heavy > games, you're at a disadvantage if you _do_ have lots of combat (because > you might destroy your predator and/or prey but you don't have enough > destruction in your own deck to stop the whole table so you'll get bled > out, or whatever). I've never done a study but it sounds reasonable > enough on the surface. Anyway, I'm wondering if there might be some > element of this with D.I. If most people use their MPAs for their own > positive benefit, on the whole they might be more immune to DIs. If > they use lots of master slots for DIs, then they have to rely on mainly > minion cards for ousting power and defense, apart from what they spend > their DIs on. So maybe the explaination is that DIs are important in a > DI-heavy area but a drawback where most people don't bother? There is definitely an element of this here. Every deck should be able to handle the occasional cancelling of a card as that's just as if a player had whatever card would normally counter it in hand. It's when everyone is packing a couple of DIs on the table where you can have three and four played on you in a single game that gets frustrating. Playing in the EC a couple of years ago there was DI everywhere and some games were pretty slow and a painful as a result. I think the Great Beast was DI'd a couple of times in each game which was a little annoying, by the third game I realised I had to wait until I had two in hand before trying. Contrast that with the Australian Championships last year and I think there was one played on me in two days which is obviously a lot easier to take. So fefinitely some similarities with being the only one not on the table playing combat or vice versa. I hate the card personally but I usually pop a couple in a blind tournament deck on the basis that everyone else will have them so may as well be prepared. Simon

rptreas...@aol.com wrote: > Obviously if you put your conditions on it like that, it goes toward > your side of the argument. I don't see the restrictions as trivial as > you do I guess, that and I don't think it's as 'broken' as people are > saying... all feels very much like the sky is falling type of hype to > me. As usual. I don't actually have much of anything invested in this argument. I'd like to see DI restricted to once per game to get it in line with the power level of other cards, but I don't think it ruins V:TES as it currently stands. Mainly I was just explaining to you Mr. Clooney's reasoning for why DI could be argued to be the most powerful card in the game - as a single-card play, it's the answer to any single other minion card in the game. Nothing else can even come close to that in terms of versatility. > I could counter-argue with something like - Look at Sudden Reversal > and to a lesser extent Wash and Bleeding the Vine, what other card > allows you to stop the play of any master card in the game (ie. in a > lot of cases the most powerful cards in the game) with as few > restictions, but I won't. For me, the difference is that every minion card in the game has multiple direct answers in the form of other minion cards, so even if DI had never been printed, no play of a minion card would ever be a guaranteed success. Conversely, many master cards have NO other direct answer than Sudden/Wash, and without those, there could be guaranteed plays of master cards. I like that unpredictability, and think it strengthens the game. John Eno

In message <d1Bzk.9322$rV4....@newsfe03.iad>, Frederick Scott <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> writes: >Players everywhere want to win, don't you think? So if really good >successful players in a large part of the world are ignoring some sort >of tech, that's a good indication that it isn't broken tech. It a thing >is truly broken, it should begin to take on a "universal" nature and you >should eventually start to see it everywhere. If you don't, that's an >indication you're looking at differences in popular styles of play from >one area to another. Everywhere, no. Each metagame is different. Direct Intervention hits some deck styles hard, but others less so. For example, if a successful player plays a master-heavy deck, other players playing Direct Intervention won't affect it much. e.g. if the key tech in a given deck is Toreador Grand Ball, Direct Intervention won't help. There are a variety of decks where non-minion cards play a very strong enabling role, with minion cards being the icing on the cake. Additionally, even very good players will disagree about the merits of particular cards. If you're looking for a particular strategy to turn up everywhere before looking at it as a potential problem, you'll never get it. Look through the cards that have been errata-ed or banned over the years because they were causing significant issues, and there are pretty much none of them that have had problems appearing everywhere. Where problems have occurred, however, they've been looked at and addressed if LSJ and the Design Team (or whoever else) thinks it appropriate. This isn't an argument in favour of altering DI, nor an argument against it. But looking for universal appearance of a problem before you can address it means that the game would have taken a very different path - look at the 7/7 rulings, and see how many people shouted "These cards aren't a problem." Rightly or wrongly, the cards weren't appearing everywhere and being a problem everywhere. -- James Coupe PGP Key: 0x5D623D5D YOU ARE IN ERROR. EBD690ECD7A1FB457CA2 NO-ONE IS SCREAMING. 13D7E668C3695D623D5D THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION.

So, in summary. Are _most_ people ok with it going off every now and again and stopping certain critical plays? If so (and I think I am reading the thread right there, aside from maybe Kevin who started off the whole 'BAN DI !!!!111one' thing) then the discussion focusses around Anthelios and the few decks that use that or multiple uses from around the table to bugger up one player. My take on the above (and the reason I am in favour of keeping DI as is), is that Anthelios is a particular strategy that as others have said, takes quite a few cards, often 2 master phases and 1 or 2 pool a turn; no small cost. I realise this may shift the debate to Anthelios but I'm not advocating that, just pointing out the synergy and trying to clarify the 'problem'. The issue of multiple plays from around the table as in Dave and others examples is frustrating and annoying but surely that's a metagame pattern to be played around or a table management issue? I think, as I said, that if you are playing a deck that drums up so much table hate that all of the other players are scuppering you with multiple DI's, then you probably asked for it. I also think that in many instances that or even watered down versions of it could and should be called into question under correctly managed play to win rules, especially in finals. I very much like the argument that if it is so all encompassing and powerful, why then don't we see it in high ranking players/tourney winning decks more?

In message <XRwzk.313$W06...@flpi148.ffdc.sbc.com>, LSJ <vtesrep@white- wolf.com> writes: >Diversity is one of the counters to DI. > >DI my Lost in Crowds? OK. I can't play another, but fortunately, my >deck has diversity in my choices, so I'll play this Spying Mission. > >DI my Daring the Dawn? OK. Here's a Dawn Operation. > >Or I guess you could be using "diversity" to mean "dependence on many >things at once" instead of the normal meaning. If so, then, yeah, >contrived long strict-ordering chains are more affected by DI than >simple short order-insensitve chains, sure. Although your point is well-made, it's not *just* about long-chain combos / setup needing the right order. In a toolboxy deck, you might (for example) hold a bleed modifier in hand for a couple of turns, to play it at the right point. That point comes, and you slap it down. It gets DI-ed. As in your example, a diverse, relatively focused deck stands a fair chance of having another bleed modifier to hand soon (maybe even already), and quite possibly a different one - so your Foreshadowing Destruction gets DI-ed but, no problem, here's a Threats. In the toolboxy deck, I probably don't have that option coming along reliably, and so it's harder to plan your turn knowing that your key card might get DI-ed. I'm not sure I'd want to classify all toolbox decks as being contrived long strict-ordering chains. (Nor would I really want to classify toolbox decks as being bad, or a poor choice to play.) I don't know if there's a good way of enlarging the description to include toolboxes appropriately in the simple short-chain vs contrived long-chain situation. [ quoted text not captured ]

In message <d77b0726-d5e3-4045...@t54g2000hsg.googlegroup s.com>, Atom Weaver <atomw...@sbcglobal.net> writes: >Maybe correction text that should be considered is "a methuselah may >only be the target of DI once during their turn." I'm not convinced either way about the merits of changing DI, but I like this fix if one is needed. [ quoted text not captured ]

On 15 Sep, 21:41, Kushiel <invisibleking...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Sep 15, 1:16 pm, rptreas...@aol.com wrote: > > > No idea how you class it as the most powerful card in the game either. > > Bizarre. > > What other single card is there that can prevent the play of any > minion card (ie, the majority of cards in the game) with as few > restrictions as DI? > > John Eno Ignoring the fact that minion cards are generally not as strong as masters and wash/sudden exist I think this highlighs something for me. I do not consider stopping other people playing minion cards with a catch all cancel effect to be as strong as advancing my own strategy - and imo there are cards which have a MUCH bigger effect on your game and your relative strength on the table than cancelling a minion card played by one dude. You should be able to hopefully interact with other decks and win the game using a strong deck build & better play and for me a strong deck build rarely includes many if any DI and decks with have them are WORSE than decks which dont which is all good as far as im concerned. What has a bigger swing in a game? a DI or a well played well timed Temptation of Greater Power? I'd go with the latter personally... I do rate the flexibility of cards but you cant get around the huge power swing of certain cards, advancing your own ends to a high degree. I know its flexible but that doesnt equate to its effect being strong enough to think of it as the most powerfull card in the game let alone choose it over other master options Ant

[ quoted text not captured ] In the two initial rounds where I met him he was seated as my cross table ally. In both of the cases, once he ended up sitting next to me he had 3 Garous on the table already, rendering the 2nds useless. [ quoted text not captured ] > Fred- Skjul tekst i anførselstegn - > > - Vis tekst i anførselstegn -

On Sep 15, 5:23 pm, rptreas...@aol.com wrote: > 8.... 8 in a deck is a lot! Yuk, that becomes a mini arms race then. I > can see why you might have been a little peed off with it :o) It was a Kindred Spirits deck. That covers a lot of bases and frees up Master slots for doing something silly, like playing with 8 DIs. And by "silly" I mean badass. -- David Cherryholmes

On Sep 15, 7:15 pm, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > "Atom Weaver" <atomwea...@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message > > news:7c56518f-d3be-4b71...@34g2000hsh.googlegroups.com... > On Sep 15, 5:54 pm, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > > > > One of the problems I find with the argument against D.I. is that those > > > who complain about it never quite lodge a coherent complaint. They're > > > mad because it can be a critical factor in a lot of different varied > > > situations but don't want to see that this by itself doesn't make D.I. > > > an overpowered card. If it were, packing lots of them would always be > > > an easier path to victory. Yet year after year, many areas and many > > > players don't have a problem with it. That's why I think the problem > > > isn't really power. The problem is that some people just get very > > > irritated by the use of cancel cards to make a critical play. (Or a > > > critical counter-play to a critical play - which is the same thing.) > > > Meh. I've played in Dave C's DI-heavy meta game. It sucks, big time, > > worse so if you didn't bring your own 'battery' of DI. > > If that's the situation, why don't you?!? Because quite simply, Fred, the version of VTES that has everyone playing 3-5 DI per deck is not a game that is interesting or enjoyable to play. > Why are you _not_ playing > with DI-heavy decks where you live so you can clean up on the inherent > power of DIs??? Fred, I think you're arguing against someone else's problem with DI, here, not mine (could be my poor explaining). I don't have a problem with the power level of a one-off DI. Its when you have multiple players using it to single out and shut down an opponent that it becomes problematic... also with multiple players packing 3-5, you get the added effect of the "ad nauseam negotiation phase", which once fallen into warps the game into un-funness, which is usually only escape-able with an out-of-game agreement between players. > Then, your DI-heavy decks at least wouldn't be at a > disadvantage in DI-heavy areas, too. Wherever you play, DI heavy or not, > you'd be better off and that's good, right? > Sure, except for that whole "VTES has now ceased to be an enjoyable past time, and I helped make it that way" thing. Seriously, give it a try. Set up your local game, and proxy 5 DIs to each seated player's deck, leverage them as much as you can, and see what happens to your favorite game... > It's been observed by various people about combat-heavy games that you're > at a disadvantage without your own combat. But in non-combat-heavy > games, you're at a disadvantage if you _do_ have lots of combat (because > you might destroy your predator and/or prey but you don't have enough > destruction in your own deck to stop the whole table so you'll get bled > out, or whatever). I've never done a study but it sounds reasonable > enough on the surface. Anyway, I'm wondering if there might be some > element of this with D.I. Yeah. That's the 'arms race' people keep mentioning... This point is a good one, I don't know if anyone ever tried to "Master Phase" their way out of a DI-intensive metagame. That might actually work. Dave C? Anyone by you ever try it? > If most people use their MPAs for their own > positive benefit, on the whole they might be more immune to DIs. If > they use lots of master slots for DIs, then they have to rely on mainly > minion cards for ousting power and defense, apart from what they spend > their DIs on. So maybe the explaination is that DIs are important in a > DI-heavy area but a drawback where most people don't bother? > > It's a hack theory but it might explain somewhat why people have such > differing views in different parts of the world. > > > If your problem with arguments against DI is the above, > > I'd suggest that my problem with _your_ perspective is that you seem > > to only consider the cost of the card in isolation, and not within the > > context of the environment where it is actually being criticized > > (multiple players with multiple DIs)... > > If a card is truly broken, the environment shouldn't matter, I think. > It should be broken everywhere. > I never had any sort of problem with Succubus Club in years of playing all up and down the East Coast of the US, and yet I still supported the ban, based on what was going on in Europe at the time... *Shrug* There are easily arrived-at circumstances where an abundance of DI's shift the game into something "other than VTES". I won't call it "broken", because I don't think that the power of the thing isn't the real root problem... Like Succubus Club (but not as bad), multiple DI's amplify the ability of two players to shut down a third's game entirely, if that player's strategy relies at all upon minion cards (most do). That's why I don't advocate a ban. Text like "a player may be targeted once during that player's turn" would fix things just fine IMO. AW

On 15 syys, 20:22, LSJ <vtes...@white-wolf.com> wrote: > suoliruse...@gmail.com wrote: > > Another fun fact about DI: the decks least affected by it are the > > decks with the least amount of diversity in card choices. > > Does "fun fact" mean "fiction"? > > Diversity is one of the counters to DI. > > DI my Lost in Crowds? OK. I can't play another, but fortunately, my deck has > diversity in my choices, so I'll play this Spying Mission. In this case I see Spying Mission as more of the same instead of an alternative approach. I guess "card choices" should have been "possible strategies". > Or I guess you could be using "diversity" to mean "dependence on many things at > once" instead of the normal meaning. If so, then, yeah, contrived long > strict-ordering chains are more affected by DI than simple short > order-insensitve chains, sure.

On 16 syys, 13:59, Anthony Coleman <Buntina...@gmail.com> wrote: > On 15 Sep, 21:41, Kushiel <invisibleking...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > On Sep 15, 1:16 pm, rptreas...@aol.com wrote: > > > > No idea how you class it as the most powerful card in the game either. > > > Bizarre. > > > What other single card is there that can prevent the play of any > > minion card (ie, the majority of cards in the game) with as few > > restrictions as DI? > > > John Eno > > Ignoring the fact that minion cards are generally not as strong as > masters and wash/sudden exist I think this highlighs something for me. Most individual master cards are stronger than individual minion cards but 2-4 master cards are much weaker than 2-4 minion cards. The downside for minion cards is that they have to be used in chains to get the most out of them. Removing one critical card from that chain can fizzle the whole effect. This is as true for Govern+Lost in Crowds +Conditioning as it is for stupid trick decks.

[ quoted text not captured ] Its possible you can fizzle a 4 card combo yes, its also possible all you achieve is cycling someones hand for them as they pull another action/combat card out of their hand or a different action modifier. With the exeption of freak drive and immortal grapple there are not many situations where you can be certain you will screw a combo. In that situation, where they do just play a replacement you have spent a master slot and a pool on nothing - not great and not very unlikely IMO. If I focus however on my own deck and the designed ways it has for dealing with other players, enabling those to work and enhancing my position overall I feel I'm more likely to see success. Ant

On 16 syys, 18:15, Anthony Coleman <Buntina...@gmail.com> wrote: > Its possible you can fizzle a 4 card combo yes, its also possible all > you achieve is cycling someones hand for them as they pull another > action/combat card out of their hand or a different action modifier. > With the exeption of freak drive and immortal grapple there are not > many situations where you can be certain you will screw a combo. In > that situation, where they do just play a replacement you have spent a > master slot and a pool on nothing - not great and not very unlikely > IMO. > > If I focus however on my own deck and the designed ways it has for > dealing with other players, enabling those to work and enhancing my > position overall I feel I'm more likely to see success. > > Ant But you do recognize the difference between canceling a master card and a minion card, right? Canceling a master card will usually have an effect ranging from sort of useful to good. Canceling a minion card will usually have an effect ranging from useless to huge, sometimes depending on luck and sometimes depending on skill.

On Sep 16, 10:18 am, Atom Weaver <atomwea...@sbcglobal.net> wrote: > Yeah. That's the 'arms race' people keep mentioning... This point > is a good one, I don't know if anyone ever tried to "Master Phase" > their way out of a DI-intensive metagame. That might actually work. > Dave C? Anyone by you ever try it? For the record, that would be a "yup." I made a deck that was nothing but Contract Masters, Fames, Tension, Dragonbound, and 70 red cards. It wasn't a particularly great deck considering this is the same group that thought weenie dominate for the umpteenth time was a great choice for our weekly games, but at least I didn't have to care about being chopped up in the DI blender for a while. -- David Cherryholmes

> > But you do recognize the difference between canceling a master card > and a minion card, right? Canceling a master card will usually have an > effect ranging from sort of useful to good. Canceling a minion card > will usually have an effect ranging from useless to huge, sometimes > depending on luck and sometimes depending on skill. This is a strongly subjective sentence. I think the opposite. Cards a sudden reversal will cancel: - the pentex subversion you had played to kill your prey => equal/ better than directing a single conditionning or a stealth card. - the week of nightmares of your predator => priceless It has no effect on the freak drive, indubitably. also sudden reversal is free so getting it back with Anthelios is free in terms of pool.

[ quoted text not captured ] Cancelling a minion card will sometimes have NO effect yes I agree on that. They pull another from their hand (with the exeption of freak drive and IG) and are quite possibly totally uneffected, and you have not scuppered the 4 card combo as hoped. Also as in the freak drive situation it will sometimes stop a cascade. I still think its a bad choice of card for a deck and I certainly dont think it needs to be banned. Cancelling a master card will really destablise a fair few decks, esp if done en masse. A Large % of decks draw all their bloat from master cards for example, removing that from a player is normally quite terminal for them. It will never have zero effect (unless intentionally). Anyhow my argument is not really that Sudden is better than DI (although I would suggest it probably is). It is that DI is not only is not worthy of banning but for me very often is not worthly of inclusion in a deck for reasons set out in this and previous posts today. Ant

On 16 syys, 18:55, coincoinmas...@hotmail.com wrote: > > But you do recognize the difference between canceling a master card > > and a minion card, right? Canceling a master card will usually have an > > effect ranging from sort of useful to good. Canceling a minion card > > will usually have an effect ranging from useless to huge, sometimes > > depending on luck and sometimes depending on skill. > > This is a strongly subjective sentence. There is no point to conversations on power levels if subjective sentences are not allowed. The only way to cope with this is to have faith in the intellectual honesty of the person you are having the conversation with. >Cards a sudden reversal will cancel: >- the pentex subversion you had played to kill your prey => equal/ >better than directing a single conditionning or a stealth card. >- the week of nightmares of your predator => priceless I predicted that someone would point out Pentex etc. so I said 'usually'. Looks like it didn't stop you ;) If there was a way to objectively quantify the average effect of a moderately skilled player canceling A) a master card and B) a minion card which do you believe would have the better average? Based on personal experience my guess is B.

[ quoted text not captured ] Yes, I have already agreed that DI can have no effect at all even if it's technically played on the correct card. We can throw around worst and best possible scenarios all day without going anywhere. > Anyhow my argument is not really that Sudden is better than DI > (although I would suggest it probably is). It is that DI is not only > is not worthy of banning but for me very often is not worthly of > inclusion in a deck for reasons set out in this and previous posts > today. > > Ant I guess we've just had different experiences then.

On 16 Sep, 17:16, suoliruse...@gmail.com wrote: > I predicted that someone would point out Pentex etc. so I said > 'usually'. Looks like it didn't stop you ;) > > If there was a way to objectively quantify the average effect of a > moderately skilled player canceling > A) a master card and > B) a minion card > which do you believe would have the better average? Based on personal > experience my guess is B. I think that, given the large # of times people can replace the DI'd minion card (has to be considered when looking at average results) and the fact master cards are generally stronger than single minion cards (and even chained minion cards in some cases) and cannot be just replayed and are generally pivotal cards in peoples decks that you will _usually_ and on _average_ get better effects from canceling master cards. I also believe you should generally be doing more productive things anyhow (why reduce one meths strength when compared to the other 4 meths when you can increase _your_ relative strength to the other 4 meths), but for the sake of discussion, thats my opinion :o)

"James Coupe" <ja...@zephyr.org.uk> wrote in message news:twrfU3u6...@gratiano.zephyr.org.uk... > In message <d1Bzk.9322$rV4....@newsfe03.iad>, Frederick Scott > <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> writes: >>It a thing >>is truly broken, it should begin to take on a "universal" nature and you >>should eventually start to see it everywhere. ... > If you're looking for a particular strategy to turn up everywhere before > looking at it as a potential problem, you'll never get it. Look through > the cards that have been errata-ed or banned over the years because they > were causing significant issues, and there are pretty much none of them > that have had problems appearing everywhere. The problem is, we've been so far past banning cards or changing cards purely for power reasons that examples from the last 6 or 8 years don't really qualify. Maybe Succubus Club may be the one example of what you mean but it's hard for me to tell since that seemed to be a European thing. (You are clearly right that this wasn't universal; I'm just hedging about whether it could be described as an overpowered card.) All or almost all cards banned since 2000 have had some elements of other kinds of problems they caused the game and were not exactly banned because they were too powerful in the sense of making it to easy to use these cards to win games (and PTO certainly wasn't at all). > Where problems have > occurred, however, they've been looked at and addressed if LSJ and the > Design Team (or whoever else) thinks it appropriate. Sure. > This isn't an argument in favour of altering DI, nor an argument against > it. But looking for universal appearance of a problem before you can > address it means that the game would have taken a very different path - > look at the 7/7 rulings, and see how many people shouted "These cards > aren't a problem." Rightly or wrongly, the cards weren't appearing > everywhere and being a problem everywhere. I definitely take your meaning about the 7/7 Rulings and other things like it (the Anarch Revolt reprint changes is another good example). But understand that I'm responding to charges that D.I. is broken because you can't go to certain places in the world without encountering people having 4+ of them in every deck combined with the statement that D.I. is clearly broken because of what you can use it to accomplish when you conjecture the perfect situation and get the perfect result (e.g. Darby's list). It's been a long time since we've had something as broken as Tomb of Ramses III or Return to Innocence but I think these would demonstrate universal power problems in the game. My concern about accepting the idea that certain "Direct Intervention trouble spots" indicate the card is a problem is that I suspect there are probably play styles in the game which might tend to be very successful in heavy D.I. environments if the card is so ubiquitous as people claim. On the other hand, perhaps there is some dynamic at work in those places which I'm unqualified to judge without going there. I don't know. What I *do* know is that at least three people who frequently play in tournaments where I play (Los Angeles) have complained about D.I. I've seen enough play in Los Angeles to feel pretty confident in saying that Direct Intervention has never been demonstrated to be an overpowered crutch card there. This makes me suspect that said players have a problem with the character of the card and not its power, as they claim. This, in turn, makes me a bit skeptical about whether D.I.'s popularity elsewhere is a matter of utility or simply play style. The obvious implication is that it's play style - and consequently is creating a lot of frustration in terms of game speed but isn't really overpowered there either. If so, there may be *some* kind of a problem - but not a power problem. Fred

On 16 Sep, 17:16, suoliruse...@gmail.com wrote: > > If there was a way to objectively quantify the average effect of a > moderately skilled player canceling > A) a master card and > B) a minion card > which do you believe would have the better average? Based on personal > experience my guess is B. 100% A in almost every occasion I have seen and at no pool cost. What you may be confusing or not seeing is the longer term issues that having that key master cancelled as opposed to cancelling a key gambit from a player. Yes that key gambit cancelled can be bad and yes a really well placed DI can foil the best laid plans but a well cancelled key master card can be legions worse - stuff like the key discipline card, the (once per game) ToGP as Ant stated, the key intercept location that lets the POT deck stop at least 1 Govern/ Bonding bleeder PER TURN. The master card cancelled by the skilled player would just have the bigger all-game ramifications than the minion card in opinion and in my experience.

On Sep 16, 6:16 pm, suoliruse...@gmail.com wrote: > > If there was a way to objectively quantify the average effect of a > moderately skilled player canceling > A) a master card and > B) a minion card > which do you believe would have the better average? Based on personal > experience my guess is B. I think I'd go with A. For a DI to have a good effect you need to know some stuff about the deck/player you use it against imo. In casual games where I know exactly what card to cancel and when, the effect is huge. I know it would be pointless to cancel a Govern against my friend since it's more than likely he's got 2+ more on his hand, so instead I cancel the Conditioning safely knowing that there's no more than 2 Foreshadowing Destruction in the deck... Against a deck I've never seen before it's much harder to do the right thing if you're thinking about whether to cancel the Govern or not. There might not even be any more modifiers in the deck at all. A master card is usually much easier to tell. A Minion Tap for 8 is quite clear. That's 8 pool to your prey unless you cancel it. Blood Dolls/Vessels as well. And as it has been pointed out earlier in the thread, master cards are usually the biggest source of pool gain in a deck. So for a moderatly skilled player I'd say that picking the right master card to cancel is much easier than cancelling the right minion card.

On 16 syys, 19:32, rptreas...@aol.com wrote: > On 16 Sep, 17:16, suoliruse...@gmail.com wrote: > > > > > If there was a way to objectively quantify the average effect of a > > moderately skilled player canceling > > A) a master card and > > B) a minion card > > which do you believe would have the better average? Based on personal > > experience my guess is B. > > 100% A in almost every occasion I have seen and at no pool cost. > > What you may be confusing or not seeing is the longer term issues that > having that key master cancelled as opposed to cancelling a key gambit > from a player. Yes that key gambit cancelled can be bad and yes a > really well placed DI can foil the best laid plans but a well > cancelled key master card can be legions worse - stuff like the key > discipline card, the (once per game) ToGP as Ant stated, the key > intercept location that lets the POT deck stop at least 1 Govern/ > Bonding bleeder PER TURN. And holding the DI in front of my heart might save my life from a stray lethal ultra-light poison dart +5. These statements have no value in this conversation. >The master card cancelled by the skilled > player would just have the bigger all-game ramifications than the > minion card in opinion and in my experience. Maybe it's a metagame-thing but when I see a DI played it leads to saving or ousting a player.

"Atom Weaver" <atomw...@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message news:b39571e5-e1af-4e10...@f36g2000hsa.googlegroups.com... > On Sep 15, 7:15 pm, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > > "Atom Weaver" <atomwea...@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message > > news:7c56518f-d3be-4b71...@34g2000hsh.googlegroups.com... > > > On Sep 15, 5:54 pm, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > > > > One of the problems I find with the argument against D.I. is that those > > > > who complain about it never quite lodge a coherent complaint. They're > > > > mad because it can be a critical factor in a lot of different varied > > > > situations but don't want to see that this by itself doesn't make D.I. > > > > an overpowered card. If it were, packing lots of them would always be > > > > an easier path to victory. Yet year after year, many areas and many > > > > players don't have a problem with it. That's why I think the problem > > > > isn't really power. The problem is that some people just get very > > > > irritated by the use of cancel cards to make a critical play. (Or a > > > > critical counter-play to a critical play - which is the same thing.) > > > > > Meh. I've played in Dave C's DI-heavy meta game. It sucks, big time, > > > worse so if you didn't bring your own 'battery' of DI. > > > > If that's the situation, why don't you?!? > > Because quite simply, Fred, the version of VTES that has everyone > playing 3-5 DI per deck is not a game that is interesting or enjoyable > to play. That's a lame cop out. I don't like playing against heavy intercept-combat decks myself but I don't ignore what I have to do to counter them and whine to Usenet that intercept should be banned. The issue I'm trying to get you to address is the question of why the fact other people play 3-5 DI per deck would require you do it as well. The 3-5 DI are good for your decks or they're not - unless you're trying to describe some metagame dynamic. I got the impression you were one of the ones trying to claim DI is too powerful, in which case the metagame dynamic shouldn't apply and you should always want to play with 3-5 DI. > > Why are you _not_ playing > > with DI-heavy decks where you live so you can clean up on the inherent > > power of DIs??? > > Fred, I think you're arguing against someone else's problem with DI, > here, not mine (could be my poor explaining). I don't have a problem > with the power level of a one-off DI. Its when you have multiple > players using it to single out and shut down an opponent that it > becomes problematic... I'm sorry, I have a real problem imagining this. I don't see how a single player could shut down an opponent with just DIs. I can see how in certain games, multiple players could pick on one guy and completely nerf his game but other players on the table would surely benefit from this and have there own MPAs to use for their own benefits to boot. It all makes me wonder why people would play this way. It doesn't look that powerful to me. I would also wonder why you'd get sucked into it when you traveled to those places. > also with multiple players packing 3-5, you get > the added effect of the "ad nauseam negotiation phase", which once > fallen into warps the game into un-funness, which is usually only > escape-able with an out-of-game agreement between players. Sure. But I've seen the same thing happen in too many tournament finals where there be no DIs anywhere to be found. That doesn't sound like a particular problem with DI other than just the potential for cross-table play; that sounds like a problem with the players' play and negotiating sytles. Play.the.game - as Peter would say - with periods and all. It shouldn't take a ton of time or any negotiation whatsoever to decide whether you're DIing or not DIing a card. But there are players who will sit around negotiating every little thing. I'll admit it's hard to say without having seen it. > > Then, your DI-heavy decks at least wouldn't be at a > > disadvantage in DI-heavy areas, too. Wherever you play, DI heavy or not, > > you'd be better off and that's good, right? > > > Sure, except for that whole "VTES has now ceased to be an enjoyable > past time, and I helped make it that way" thing. Seriously, give it a > try. Set up your local game, and proxy 5 DIs to each seated player's > deck, leverage them as much as you can, and see what happens to your > favorite game... I very much doubt it would be the same thing. My decks, particularly, tend to get built to use the precious master card slots for something else so throwing 5 more masters in would throw their balance off. I also think you can drag a player to the Direct Interventions but you can't make him use them - at least, not to cause all that trouble with negotiations. I'd just play the damn things when I thought I'd like to cancel someone's minion card (or to get it out of my hand) and not bother negotiating it. Maybe that's why I'm a bad player, who knows? But I don't think you can replicate these problems in a lab. ... > > If a card is truly broken, the environment shouldn't matter, I think. > > It should be broken everywhere. > > I never had any sort of problem with Succubus Club in years of playing > all up and down the East Coast of the US, and yet I still supported > the ban, based on what was going on in Europe at the time... *Shrug* > There are easily arrived-at circumstances where an abundance of DI's > shift the game into something "other than VTES". I won't call it > "broken", because I don't think that the power of the thing isn't the > real root problem... Like Succubus Club (but not as bad), multiple > DI's amplify the ability of two players to shut down a third's game > entirely, if that player's strategy relies at all upon minion cards > (most do). I have to admit, other people on Usenet described the problem with Succubus Club (the first time around, when the result was to reprint it with changed text) months before I actually saw it in action. I'm told the card was still a problem in Europe and never saw it all. I suppose the same thing could be going on here. It's just bothering me that in some of these areas where they claim DI play is so predictably heavy in that maybe players are failing to use this knowledge to construct DI-proof decks as they should. > That's why I don't advocate a ban. Text like "a player > may be targeted once during that player's turn" would fix things just > fine IMO. Perhaps. And such a clause would be extremely innocuous where DI is not a problem. I usually don't like super-minor adjustments on cards but if it would get people to SHUT UP about DIs, I sure wouldn't object to this one. Fred

Master cards are more powerful then minion cards. They are designed to be. I have my doubts that DI is the most powerful. But, I have no doubts that it is the most flexible. Does no-one think its timing is a problem? Can anyone tell me its proper timing of DI on an action?

On 16 Sep, 17:49, suoliruse...@gmail.com wrote: > And holding the DI in front of my heart might save my life from a > stray lethal ultra-light poison dart +5. These statements have no > value in this conversation. That's a bit silly. I'm trying to illustrate my point with examples i've seen, I fail to see how real life examples of the subject matter at hand can have no value *shrug* > >The master card cancelled by the skilled > > player would just have the bigger all-game ramifications than the > > minion card in opinion and in my experience. > > Maybe it's a metagame-thing but when I see a DI played it leads to > saving or ousting a player Really? Wow. What every time? I honestly haven't seen much of that go on. Simply for one of the reasons stated, you would have to hold on to one for a fair while to save/oust a player. Odd play that imo. But as I said *shrug*

mat...@gmail.com wrote: > Can anyone tell me its proper timing of DI on > an action? Proper timing for DI on any card play: as the card is played. For an action card, canceling it means that the action is not taken (and the acting minion therefore does not tap to take the action).

On Sep 16, 10:19 am, LSJ <vtes...@white-wolf.com> wrote: [ quoted text not captured ] So after you replace but before you tap. correct?

[ quoted text not captured ] Before you replace (and before you tap). Cards are not replaced until after they're played. DI is played as the card to be canceled is played, so before it is replaced.

In message <30b9fbdd-2732-43c0...@26g2000hsk.googlegroups .com>, suolir...@gmail.com writes: >On 16 syys, 19:32, rptreas...@aol.com wrote: >> On 16 Sep, 17:16, suoliruse...@gmail.com wrote: >> 100% A in almost every occasion I have seen and at no pool cost. >> >> What you may be confusing or not seeing is the longer term issues that >> having that key master cancelled as opposed to cancelling a key gambit >> from a player. Yes that key gambit cancelled can be bad and yes a >> really well placed DI can foil the best laid plans but a well >> cancelled key master card can be legions worse - stuff like the key >> discipline card, the (once per game) ToGP as Ant stated, the key >> intercept location that lets the POT deck stop at least 1 Govern/ >> Bonding bleeder PER TURN. > >And holding the DI in front of my heart might save my life from a >stray lethal ultra-light poison dart +5. These statements have no >value in this conversation. How so? Are you not having faith in the intellectual honesty of Rob? How come you get to reject some fairly objective statements when, apparently, other people aren't even allowed to tell you your points are highly subjective? Rob's seem like perfectly legitimate points - you can pull the legs out from a strategy of many decks by taking out a master card, because there are so many fewer opportunities to play master cards, and consequently fewer of them in a deck. Taking out the intercept location doesn't just benefit you now (in the way that DI-ing a Govern does); it benefits you every time an action goes unblocked that would have been blocked with the KRCG's intercept. Many master cards have significant long term effects - Blood Doll being, perhaps, the most ubiquitous and most obvious. Not having to bleed through another 12 pool over the course of a game? Yeah, I'll go with that. The effects may be more subtle (although DI-ing a Minion Tap or ToGP often isn't), but they can be much more long-lasting and, potentially, much more powerful over time. -- James Coupe PGP Key: 0x5D623D5D YOU ARE IN ERROR. EBD690ECD7A1FB457CA2 NO-ONE IS SCREAMING. 13D7E668C3695D623D5D THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION.

On 16 syys, 20:42, James Coupe <ja...@zephyr.org.uk> wrote: > In message <30b9fbdd-2732-43c0-aad4-5d55d813e...@26g2000hsk.googlegroups > > > > .com>, suoliruse...@gmail.com writes: > >On 16 syys, 19:32, rptreas...@aol.com wrote: > >> On 16 Sep, 17:16, suoliruse...@gmail.com wrote: > >> 100% A in almost every occasion I have seen and at no pool cost. > > >> What you may be confusing or not seeing is the longer term issues that > >> having that key master cancelled as opposed to cancelling a key gambit > >> from a player. Yes that key gambit cancelled can be bad and yes a > >> really well placed DI can foil the best laid plans but a well > >> cancelled key master card can be legions worse - stuff like the key > >> discipline card, the (once per game) ToGP as Ant stated, the key > >> intercept location that lets the POT deck stop at least 1 Govern/ > >> Bonding bleeder PER TURN. > > >And holding the DI in front of my heart might save my life from a > >stray lethal ultra-light poison dart +5. These statements have no > >value in this conversation. > > How so? Are you not having faith in the intellectual honesty of Rob? > How come you get to reject some fairly objective statements when, > apparently, other people aren't even allowed to tell you your points are > highly subjective? > > Rob's seem like perfectly legitimate points - you can pull the legs out > from a strategy of many decks by taking out a master card, because there > are so many fewer opportunities to play master cards, and consequently > fewer of them in a deck. It's a lot more meaningful to consider the whole spectrum of possible scenarios and guesstimate their probability distribution than it is to pick out extreme examples. It has already been established that DI and Sudden (or any other card) both have the potential to decide the outcome of the game in optimal circumstances.

On Sep 16, 5:55 am, bluedevil <david.cherryhol...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Sep 15, 5:23 pm, rptreas...@aol.com wrote: > > > 8.... 8 in a deck is a lot! Yuk, that becomes a mini arms race then. I > > can see why you might have been a little peed off with it :o) > > It was a Kindred Spirits deck. That covers a lot of bases and frees > up Master slots for doing something silly, like playing with 8 DIs. > And by "silly" I mean badass. > > -- > > David Cherryholmes There is the reality that the decks with the most room for counterspells are the decks with the most efficient game plan. Is the awesomeness rating of a tight stealth bleed deck with a suite of counterspells due to the stealth bleed or the counterspells or the combination? The only time I tested the idea of doing something like 75 card deck (! Malk SB back in the day when Malks didn't have Dementation yet), x4 Sudden, x4 DI, I won some meaningless 9 player tournament. Got bored and moved on to Gargoyles with Presence and other life-affirming sweetness. Though, I'd actually be more inclined to play more masterkillers than DIs these days, that is if my decks weren't way too busy using up master slots to do something ineffectual. Admittedly, I play in a modest DI meta where the DI deck would have to pull extra weight, nevermind that it's hard enough for anyone to get ousted without counterspells flying that it's kind of gratuitous to bog games down even more. BTW, the next obvious ban is Anthelios. DI arguably serves some purpose in the game - enabling players to stop things without having to find a way to block them*. Anthelios's [interesting] master filtering value is grossly overshadowed by the recursion engine abuse. * What happens if you ban DI? Do decks go heavy to extremes of noninteractivity and superinteractivity, losing the middle ground, because it becomes sufficiently easy to have sick actions occur that stopping them requires overloading on intercept or accepting that they can't be stopped leading to more weenie decks, et al? Would make bounce more reliable in the post "what do you mean I have to decline to block to bounce?" world, which may or may not be considered progress. Counterspells are just a bad concept both in terms of being antifun and in terms of enabling a game to get away with other bad concepts. Once introduced into CCGs, the CCGs build around them - it's not possible to remove the Suddens/Washes from the world at this point (if ever). It may not be possible to remove DI. But, then, quite a few aren't calling for its removal, they are calling for its downgrade. Very, very hard to see what happens with errata to such a popular card. As suggested, the cure may be worse than the disease.

On 16 Sep, 19:16, sule...@aol.com wrote: > > BTW, the next obvious ban is Anthelios. DI arguably serves some > purpose in the game - enabling players to stop things without having > to find a way to block them*. Anthelios's [interesting] master > filtering value is grossly overshadowed by the recursion engine abuse. *weeps*

In message <453ac837-a3e6-40eb...@m45g2000hsb.googlegroup s.com>, suolir...@gmail.com writes: >It's a lot more meaningful to consider the whole spectrum of possible >scenarios and guesstimate their probability distribution than it is to >pick out extreme examples. It has already been established that DI and >Sudden (or any other card) both have the potential to decide the >outcome of the game in optimal circumstances. Master cards are generally much fewer in a deck, and as a result players tend to pick the more obviously powerful ones. There are, of course, exceptions, but IME most plays of master cards are further towards the "very good" end of the spectrum. Individual minion card plays may or may not be good at a given moment, but many of the master cards that are played give the potential for long term gains - continuous pool gain, continuous defence. Pentex Subversion - already mentioned - is another very strong card. With only 10-20 master cards in a deck, each of them may contain significant power. Against good players, your cancellations will almost always hit good master cards because they're not playing master cards that aren't very strong - there are so many strong master cards competing for space. They may not be so obviously good right at the time - hey look, I play Govern and get 3 pool, vs I play Blood Doll and get 1 pool. But that Blood Doll may have a much larger swing over the course of the game. Add the fact that you can cancel them with an OOT:Trifle (which has downsides, but is hardly unplayable) and you can interfere quite significantly. [ quoted text not captured ]

On 16 syys, 21:56, James Coupe <ja...@zephyr.org.uk> wrote: > In message <453ac837-a3e6-40eb-bc59-b6fb25d61...@m45g2000hsb.googlegroup > > s.com>, suoliruse...@gmail.com writes: > >It's a lot more meaningful to consider the whole spectrum of possible > >scenarios and guesstimate their probability distribution than it is to > >pick out extreme examples. It has already been established that DI and > >Sudden (or any other card) both have the potential to decide the > >outcome of the game in optimal circumstances. > > Master cards are generally much fewer in a deck, and as a result players > tend to pick the more obviously powerful ones. > > There are, of course, exceptions, but IME most plays of master cards are > further towards the "very good" end of the spectrum. Individual minion > card plays may or may not be good at a given moment, but many of the > master cards that are played give the potential for long term gains - > continuous pool gain, continuous defence. Pentex Subversion - already > mentioned - is another very strong card. With only 10-20 master cards > in a deck, each of them may contain significant power. Against good > players, your cancellations will almost always hit good master cards > because they're not playing master cards that aren't very strong - there > are so many strong master cards competing for space. True. Canceling a master card usually is a good effect and rarely a very weak or a game winning effect. The distribution of the effects of canceling a minion card, on the other hand, are not as bunched up in the middle. Therefore I argue that there are more chances for DI to have a game winning effect than for Sudden Reversal. DI also has more chances to be very weak but that's not important unless you choose the card to cancel randomly. [ quoted text not captured ]

suoliruse...@gmail.com wrote: > > DI also has more > chances to be very weak but that's not important unless you choose the > card to cancel randomly. Not true by your own admission - cards DI'd, no matter how sensibly or correctly can sometimes by luck have no effect. Either the action is played again or a similar modifier. So my argument follows - on average, wit these odccurances taken into account - occurances that cannot be obviated by good play (I'm assuming the right card is being DI'd) its not as good as sudden for that reason. Ant

In article <8a78c0ac-51d5-47d8...@f36g2000hsa.googlegroups.com>, Kushiel <invisibl...@gmail.com> wrote: > I don't actually have much of anything invested in this argument. I'd > like to see DI restricted to once per game to get it in line with the > power level of other cards, but I don't think it ruins V:TES as it > currently stands. Just to fall back to my initial point, why is it that Direct Intervention (OOT Master, 1 pool), which is incredibly versatile and always useful *not* limited to once per game per player while Vox Domini (OOT Master, 1 pool), which has a very similar effect, is incredibly narrow and not always useful *is* limited to once per game per player? One could argue "Cause Vox Domini sucks". Or one could look at Vox Domini (designed long after Direct Intervention, but a sane design team) and say "Huh. DI should probably work like Vox Domini, as that is clearly what the current design team thinks is reasonable for a 1 pool OOT Master that cancels something..." Peter D Bakija pd...@lightlink.com http://www.lightlink.com/pdb6/vtes.html "It's too bad she won't live! But then again, who does?" -Gaff

In article <1eeadd78-42ce-487d...@f36g2000hsa.googlegroups.com>, rptre...@aol.com wrote: > So, in summary. Are _most_ people ok with it going off every now and > again and stopping certain critical plays? I'd prefer it did not. I'd be ok if it became "1 per player per game". I'd be much happier if it were also "only on a card played by your predator or prey". The effect is too wide and too strong for the cost, compared to other cards. > I very much like the argument that if it is so all encompassing and > powerful, why then don't we see it in high ranking players/tourney > winning decks more? I dunno man--I just looked at the TWDA and found a total of 11xDI in the first 10 decks in the TWDA. I didn't search them all or anything, but as a quick survey? 11xDI in the first 10 decks? (something like 1-2 in each of 7 of them)? Seems like it shows up reasonably often in winning decks. [ quoted text not captured ]

On Sep 16, 4:53 pm, Peter D Bakija <p...@lightlink.com> wrote: > I dunno man--I just looked at the TWDA and found a total of 11xDI in the > first 10 decks in the TWDA. I didn't search them all or anything, but as > a quick survey? 11xDI in the first 10 decks? (something like 1-2 in each > of 7 of them)? Seems like it shows up reasonably often in winning decks. And 50x DI in the top 74 TWDA decks. Not an average of one per deck, but still very common. -Peter

[ quoted text not captured ] Ah fair enough then, basing my mojo on old results/old studies i've done myself there I must admit. Perhaps more common these days then, interesting in and of itself then, aside from this thread... hmm.

On Sep 17, 3:15 am, Anthony Coleman <Buntina...@gmail.com> wrote: > If I focus however on my own deck and the designed ways it has for > dealing with other players, enabling those to work and enhancing my > position overall I feel I'm more likely to see success. Totally agree with what you're saying here. However in saying that, your decks tend (as much as you can generalise mind) not to be decks that wait patiently for an ousting oppurtunity, or look to lunge if you prefer. Decks that lunge are more vunerable to a couple of DI's as you're much less likely to have a second bleed mod in hand say as per James' toolbox example. Similarily decks that aren't bothering about reactions are likely improved by adding a couple of DIs as silver bullets rather than a bit of combat, vote, and bleed defense.

In article <0ed52d9f-e8ec-4843...@l43g2000hsh.googlegroups.com>, rptre...@aol.com wrote: > Ah fair enough then, basing my mojo on old results/old studies i've > done myself there I must admit. Perhaps more common these days then, > interesting in and of itself then, aside from this thread... hmm. I mean, I wouldn't base a huge part of any argument on how often something shows up in the TWDA (PTO didn't show up that much, say, 'cause it only went in a small number of deck startegies), but DI certainly shows up a lot. Usually 1 at a time (making the idea of making them only playable once per game per player have a very minior impact on how players tend to use them), but occasionally 2 per deck, and regularly at 3 per deck (although I didn't find any with more than 3 in the 74 I looked at. I looked at 74 simply because I went through the list from top down, counting DIs until I arbitrarily got to 50, and then went back up and counted how many decks I looked at). I'd expect to see them a lot in the TWDA, and I do, as they can go in any deck and any deck can use them. But in terms of why they don't show up even more often, possible reasons include: -They used to be really hard to get. Now they are easier to get, but people still don't have tons of them. -Some folks just don't use them out of principal or something, and likely that carries over to their tournament decks out of habit--I don't like DI, and don't use a lot of DIs when playing casually, not 'cause they aren't strong, but 'cause I just don't like them. So when I take decks to tournaments, they are generally just the decks I do well with in casual play, and I don't then add DI to them just for competition. Maybe if I did, I'd win more :-) [ quoted text not captured ]

"Peter D Bakija" <pd...@lightlink.com> wrote in message news:pdb6-173E84.1...@nntp.aioe.org... > In article > <1eeadd78-42ce-487d...@f36g2000hsa.googlegroups.com>, > rptre...@aol.com wrote: > I dunno man--I just looked at the TWDA and found a total of 11xDI in the > first 10 decks in the TWDA. I didn't search them all or anything, but as > a quick survey? 11xDI in the first 10 decks? (something like 1-2 in each > of 7 of them)? Seems like it shows up reasonably often in winning decks. A general purpose master shows up in lots of decks? Sounds right to me. I mean, Blood Doll probably does too. (But maybe we don't want to go there - as in, to the "staple card\ vs. overpowered card" debate.) 11 DIs in 10 decks is more than I would have expected but it doesn't bother me. I would absolutely _expect_ to see a number of Sudden Reversals come up in the TWDA and I put DIs in the same class as SRs in my own personal classification system. Sudden Reversals annoy me more than DIs usually; that's not surprising because I think masters are more important to decks on average than minion cards. I also dislike being the target of any cancel because...well...it's obviously bad to be the chosen victim of a cancel card that could have been tossed at any of four opponents. But, as others have pointed out, if you don't want DI or SR love thrown at you, don't make yourself an obvious target. Fred

"Peter D Bakija" <pd...@lightlink.com> wrote in message news:pdb6-69B65B.1...@nntp.aioe.org... > Just to fall back to my initial point, why is it that Direct > Intervention (OOT Master, 1 pool), which is incredibly versatile and > always useful *not* limited to once per game per player while Vox Domini > (OOT Master, 1 pool), which has a very similar effect, is incredibly > narrow and not always useful *is* limited to once per game per player? Vox Domini always does what you wanted. They called the political action, they tapped, we're now voting, boom! If there was a cost to playing the vote (e.g. Reckless Agitation), it is not recovered. They might have spent action modifiers getting votes or other advantages like bribes to pass the referendum. (If they spent a huge amount on an Awe, it's fantastic!) It fails and their minion stays tapped. It's Delaying Tactics without it's achilles heal: the recovery of the political action card. Direct Intervention allows an acting minion to stay untapped. It allows replay of most minion cards, aside from action modifiers and reactions. (Most common usage of action modifiers is stealth and reactions either wake or intercept. Often you can substitute another stealth or intercept and get the same effect; wake far less so but it's still possible.) It's more flexible but does decidely less against political actions than VD. Admittedly, I had a phase where I used Vox Domini in various decks as a prayer card defense against political actions (especially seat switchers, still legal at the time). Then I decided to swap them out for DIs for exactly this reason - flexibility. None the less, I still don't agree that DI is overpowered. > One could argue "Cause Vox Domini sucks". I don't say Vox Domini sucks exactly. It's actually quite a powerful card when it's playable. It just doesn't make my decks because it's a defense against something (political actions) which doesn't come up enough in the game. You can translate that into "Vox Domini sucks" for these purposes, I guess. > Or one could look at Vox > Domini (designed long after Direct Intervention, but a sane design team) > and say "Huh. DI should probably work like Vox Domini, as that is > clearly what the current design team thinks is reasonable for a 1 pool > OOT Master that cancels something..." I hope not - or 1 pool OOT masters are not likely to get much use on the whole. But the game has lots of cards in which just weren't given enough upside in view of their downsides. Even after the design team got replaced with sane people. Fred

"Peter D Bakija" <pd...@lightlink.com> wrote in message news:pdb6-841FD6.1...@nntp.aioe.org... > I'd expect to see them a lot in the TWDA, and I do, as they can go in > any deck and any deck can use them. But in terms of why they don't show > up even more often, possible reasons include: ... > -Some folks just don't use them out of principal or something, and > likely that carries over to their tournament decks out of habit--I don't > like DI, and don't use a lot of DIs when playing casually, not 'cause > they aren't strong, but 'cause I just don't like them. Oh, please!!! For crying out loud, the reason we use TWDA in the first place to check a card for overpower is just exactly that we expect people to use their best decks. If people aren't doing that, we have nothing. Your suggestion that a powerful card might *NOT* show up in TWDA because folks are embarrassed to be seen using it because (in turn) it's too powerful fails the test of Occam's Razor. Let's please dispose of it on that basis! Fred

In article <%cYzk.13011$Dj1....@newsfe01.iad>, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > Vox Domini always does what you wanted. Not if no one is calling votes. Which happens considerably more often than someone not playing minion cards. > They called the political action, > they tapped, we're now voting, boom! If there was a cost to playing the > vote (e.g. Reckless Agitation), it is not recovered. They might have spent > action modifiers getting votes or other advantages like bribes to pass the > referendum. (If they spent a huge amount on an Awe, it's fantastic!) > It fails and their minion stays tapped. It's Delaying Tactics without > it's achilles heal: the recovery of the political action card. Sure. As I mentioned earlier, it makes sense that the effect (making the referendum fail) is stronger than just canceling the vote card, as the cost is higher (i.e. someone needs to be calling votes, which doesn't happen all the time). So that is a wash, for my money, with Direct Intervention; DI has less effect (just cancels the card) for less cost (any minion card at all). Vox Domini has more effect (makes the vote fail, which is better than canceling the vote) but a higher cost (someone needs to call a vote which, again, is far less likely than someone playing a minion card). Higher cost for more effect. But then there is "only once per game per player" tacked on. Seems excessive compared to DI. I don't think this means that Vox Domini is bad. I think it means that DI is too strong. > Direct Intervention allows an acting minion to stay untapped. It allows > replay of most minion cards, aside from action modifiers and reactions. Correct. Smaller effect for smaller cost ("someone play a minion card you want to cancel" is a much smaller cost than "someone play a vote that you want to make fail"). > Admittedly, I had a phase where I used Vox Domini in various decks as a > prayer card defense against political actions (especially seat switchers, > still legal at the time). Then I decided to swap them out for DIs for > exactly this reason - flexibility. None the less, I still don't agree > that DI is overpowered. Well, clearly you don't think it is overpowered, as that was your standpoint when you entered the discussion. I think DI is overpowered, and I think Vox Domini is a concrete example of how it is overpowered. > I don't say Vox Domini sucks exactly. I don't think it sucks at all. I think it is a completely reasonable and useful card that has a comparable effect for its cost. That is made virtually wallpaper by Direct Intervention. > It's actually quite a powerful > card when it's playable. It just doesn't make my decks because it's > a defense against something (political actions) which doesn't come up > enough in the game. And yet it is a OOT Master that costs 1 pool, just like DI. That has a comparable effect to DI (with a greater effect that is matched by the higher cost). And is still saddled with "only once per game". > You can translate that into "Vox Domini sucks" > for these purposes, I guess. As noted, I don't think it sucks. I think it is a perfect measuring stick for how DI is overpowered. > I hope not - or 1 pool OOT masters are not likely to get much use > on the whole. But the game has lots of cards in which just weren't given > enough upside in view of their downsides. Even after the design team got > replaced with sane people. Really? You think if DI had the same "only once per player per game" clause as Vox Domini, it wouldn't get much use? I think it would still show up all the time. Just not multiple times per deck. [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <dlYzk.13013$Dj1....@newsfe01.iad>, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > Oh, please!!! For crying out loud, the reason we use TWDA in the first > place to check a card for overpower is just exactly that we expect people > to use their best decks. And yet people don't use powerful cards in their best decks all the time. I'm pretty sure I have never used DI in any deck I have ever played in a tournament. Which is completely irrational of me. I think DI is overpowered. And I should use multiples in all my tournament decks. But I don't. 'Cause occasionally I do things that are irrational. I suspect other people do as well. > If people aren't doing that, we have nothing. And yet here we are. I also thought that PTO was wildly overpowered. And never used that in a tournament deck either. Also irrational. > Your suggestion that a powerful card might *NOT* show up in TWDA because > folks are embarrassed to be seen using it because (in turn) it's too powerful > fails the test of Occam's Razor. Let's please dispose of it on that basis! It has nothing to do with embarrassment. It has to do with habit and irrationality. I don't like DI (I don't like playing it, I don't like when other people use it. I think it is overpowered). Thus, I tend not to use it when building decks (which is irrational). When I take decks to tournaments, I don't build special new decks. I just take the decks that I have been playing at home and doing well with. As those decks don't have DI in them, the decks I play in tournaments tend not to have DI in them. It is irrational. Completely. And yet it affects how I build decks. I can't possibly be alone in something like this. I'm not saying this has any impact at all on whether or not DI is overpowered. Just that it might affect how many show up in TWDs, among any number of other reasons. [ quoted text not captured ]

On Sep 16, 7:44 pm, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > A general purpose master shows up in lots of decks? Sounds right to me. Sure--you'll note that I specifically said that I'm not using the number of DIs that show up in the TWDA as evidence for anything other than "it shows up in decks a lot", right? Rob said "If it is so good, why doesn't it show up in winning decks more often?", and I was simply pointing out that it does. I don't think this means anything, one way or the other, in regards to it being over powered. It is clearly very strong. Very strong cards show up in decks a lot. But cards can be overpowered and still not show up in decks a lot. And just 'cause a card shows up in decks a lot, it doesn't mean it is overpowered. -Peter

On Sep 16, 4:42 pm, Peter D Bakija <p...@lightlink.com> wrote: > In article > <0ed52d9f-e8ec-4843-b99e-3c6fa4e7a...@l43g2000hsh.googlegroups.com>, > > rptreas...@aol.com wrote: > > Ah fair enough then, basing my mojo on old results/old studies i've > > done myself there I must admit. Perhaps more common these days then, > > interesting in and of itself then, aside from this thread... hmm. > > I mean, I wouldn't base a huge part of any argument on how often > something shows up in the TWDA (PTO didn't show up that much, say, > 'cause it only went in a small number of deck startegies), but DI > certainly shows up a lot. Usually 1 at a time (making the idea of making > them only playable once per game per player have a very minior impact on > how players tend to use them), but occasionally 2 per deck, and > regularly at 3 per deck (although I didn't find any with more than 3 in > the 74 I looked at. I looked at 74 simply because I went through the > list from top down, counting DIs until I arbitrarily got to 50, and then > went back up and counted how many decks I looked at). The TWDA certainly is a flawed dataset, but then again, it's all there is. On a side note, I wouldn't use PTO as an example as cards can be broken in ways besides how much they cause people to win. Lacking the energy to look at all tournaments of 20+ participants in the last two years, I decided to just look at 50+. In the two 100+, both from 2007, there are three copies of DI each, both Imbued decks. In the thirteen 50+ decks, eight of them have zero copies of DI. Assuming one's concern was a card at the most significant events in the world, there doesn't seem to be a lot to be concerned about. > I'd expect to see them a lot in the TWDA, and I do, as they can go in > any deck and any deck can use them. But in terms of why they don't show > up even more often, possible reasons include: > > -They used to be really hard to get. Now they are easier to get, but > people still don't have tons of them. At the most competitive level of the game, say, oh, I don't know, tournaments with 50+ participants, I wouldn't expect people having any difficulty getting the cards they cared about. > -Some folks just don't use them out of principal or something, and > likely that carries over to their tournament decks out of habit--I don't > like DI, and don't use a lot of DIs when playing casually, not 'cause > they aren't strong, but 'cause I just don't like them. So when I take > decks to tournaments, they are generally just the decks I do well with > in casual play, and I don't then add DI to them just for competition. > Maybe if I did, I'd win more :-) Some of the biases I see in the TWDA that affect trying to analyze it: a. There are only limited results to where certain groups of players have an unusually high amount of influence. b. Within those groups, there tends to be players who win a disproportionate percentage of the groups' tournaments to where a small number of individuals around the world have an unusually high amount of influence. c. As a believer that decks don't win tournaments, players do, the TWDA doesn't reflect deck optimization but what a small number of players in the world have the most success with. So, I can see this as a possibility. Yet, if the only data we have on the game doesn't reflect the power of something, especially given that it's hardly surprising what cards do see the most play in the TWDA helping to justify that there is something valid in the statistics, it's hard to come up with any sort of statistical basis for criticizing a card on a power level. I think it's justifiable to kill cards based on how obnoxious they are rather than just purely in terms of how powerful they are, and I can see where DI would annoy people. But, I don't know how anyone is justifying an excessive power level for the card. Why not restrict Conditioning to once per game?

"Peter D Bakija" <pd...@lightlink.com> wrote in message news:pdb6-AF12D5.2...@nntp.aioe.org... > In article <dlYzk.13013$Dj1....@newsfe01.iad>, > "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: >> Oh, please!!! For crying out loud, the reason we use TWDA in the first >> place to check a card for overpower is just exactly that we expect people >> to use their best decks. > > And yet people don't use powerful cards in their best decks all the > time. I'm pretty sure I have never used DI in any deck I have ever > played in a tournament. Which is completely irrational of me. Sure. You're missing the point, however. The effect you describe may in fact occur and you claim you engage in it and I believe you. Other motivations may indeed affect peoples' choices for cards in their tournament decks but how would you ever prove Direct Intervention is more prone to people irrationally hesitating to use it more than any other card? Who knows? Who could possibly know? Since there's no way to gauge hidden motivations as factors when people _aren't_ using a given card when they have the best incentive to use that card, they have to be ignored along with all the other freakish possibilities. Occam's Razor states that one should assume the simplest possible explanation for a given observation, in this case that the reason DI isn't used in higher numbers is generally because it's utility doesn't merit more usage. Occam's Razor is not a logical proof of anything as much as a simple discipline of thought; failing such a discipline, the number of possible theories for Direct Intervention non-usage are boundless ("secret agents of the Korvian Empire are placing transmitters in the heads of the best VtES players"). In order to learn something useful, you have to accept the simplest explanation - that the tendency to refuse to use a card for some irrational subjective reason of some sort is pretty much proportional to its popularity as a strong card. And it all cancels out. Might not be right. But what's the point in engaging in speculation? I mean, besides just a general desire to cast doubt on what little evidence we have about how strong Direct Intervention is - or is not. > It has nothing to do with embarrassment. ... > It is irrational. Completely. And yet it affects how I build decks. I > can't possibly be alone in something like this. I'm not saying this has > any impact at all on whether or not DI is overpowered. Just that it > might affect how many show up in TWDs, among any number of other reasons. Embarrassment, irrationality, tendency towards bad hair days. It doesn't matter what the effect is. If you can't measure it, it's all speculation. We use the TWDA because we assume people _want_ to win tournaments and this motivation is ultimately the strongest, averaged over the entire population. It's understood that such an assumption could be fraught with hidden anomalies and you have to take it for what it's worth. It just seems lame to start talking about them only when you're uncomfortable with what the TWDA actually shows. Fred

"Before you replace (and before you tap). Cards are not replaced until after they're played. DI is played as the card to be canceled is played, so before it is replaced. " So to play by the rules, every time a player declares an action with a card, they need to show the card, not replace or tap, and pause to give a reasonable amount of time for someone to play a DI. Any time an action modifier or reaction is played they also need to pause before replacing to allow the window to play a DI to occur. The card causes improper play likely every time it is played since no one in their right mind is going to wait like that since it would probably cause every game to time out.(except ours that never seem to last more than 40 minutes...) That timing issue and the slowdown of the game it SHOULD be causing is the issue. Saying it doesn't really matter is not an answer either. It's no different than playing any other cards improperly to try and gain a benefit.

"Peter D Bakija" <pd...@lightlink.com> wrote in message news:pdb6-1F2423.2...@nntp.aioe.org... > In article <%cYzk.13011$Dj1....@newsfe01.iad>, > "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: >> I don't say Vox Domini sucks exactly. > > I don't think it sucks at all. In that case we disagree. A card that isn't used because what it does well isn't good enough for how rarely the situation for which it was created occurs actually does suck in the final analysis. It doesn't suck as much as a lot of other stuff in the game, I'll give you that. It's close enough to useful card that I wouldn't think ill of a player for using it. I just don't choose to use them myself at the moment. So it...sort of sucks. To get to the point, though, its poor comparison with DI is beside the point. If DI were banned, it's unlikely I'd start using Vox Domini. If political action stoppers because necessary (due to an elevated need to stop political actions), I might very well start using VD ever were DI still around. I find the comparison between the two tempting but ultimately inapt. And ever were it totally apt, such comparisons don't prove or disprove a card is overpowered. Both cards may be overpowered or both may alternatively be in the reasonable range. In the latter case, you may have an obsolescence problem, but this wouldn't demand banishment of the more powerful card. It may just mean the weaker card will never get used. > I think it is a completely reasonable and > useful card that has a comparable effect for its cost. That is made > virtually wallpaper by Direct Intervention. OK. That's an obsolescence problem not a power problem. (Peter deleted his intervening text here - I am reinserting it for clarity:) >> > Or one could look at Vox >> > Domini (designed long after Direct Intervention, but a sane design team) >> > and say "Huh. DI should probably work like Vox Domini, as that is >> > clearly what the current design team thinks is reasonable for a 1 pool >> > OOT Master that cancels something..." >> >> I hope not - or 1 pool OOT masters are not likely to get much use >> on the whole. But the game has lots of cards in which just weren't given >> enough upside in view of their downsides. Even after the design team got >> replaced with sane people. > > Really? You think if DI had the same "only once per player per game" > clause as Vox Domini, it wouldn't get much use? Your text above doesn't make that clear that you simply meant the "only once per player per turn" clause. I thought you meant, the design team might think that a card which has as little overall utility as Vox Domini has (due to the fact that what Vox Domini cancels isn't common enough) was the fair standard to make people pay 1 MPA and 1 pool. I hope that is not true or I won't be playing any 1 pool OOT masters. Direct Intervention playable once per game per player would still be significantly more useful than Vox Domini. I think your proposed limitation would unnecessarily limit DI, to the detriment of the game, but it wouldn't totally nerf it. Fred

"Obtenebration" <obtene...@obtenebration.org> wrote in message news:fb64a253-6108-46bc...@a18g2000pra.googlegroups.com... > So to play by the rules, every time a player declares an action with a > card, they need to show the card, not replace or tap, and pause to > give a reasonable amount of time for someone to play a DI. Any time an > action modifier or reaction is played they also need to pause before > replacing to allow the window to play a DI to occur. The card causes > improper play likely every time it is played since no one in their > right mind is going to wait like that since it would probably cause > every game to time out.(except ours that never seem to last more than > 40 minutes...) > > That timing issue and the slowdown of the game it SHOULD be causing is > the issue. Saying it doesn't really matter is not an answer either. > It's no different than playing any other cards improperly to try and > gain a benefit. It does matter, I suppose. It just doesn't matter whether you ban DI for those purposes. I believe there are a number of other cards which can cancel cards as play. Power of All, for instance. Fred

In message <dlYzk.13013$Dj1....@newsfe01.iad>, Frederick Scott <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> writes: >"Peter D Bakija" <pd...@lightlink.com> wrote in message >news:pdb6-841FD6.1...@nntp.aioe.org... >> -Some folks just don't use them out of principal or something, and >> likely that carries over to their tournament decks out of habit--I don't >> like DI, and don't use a lot of DIs when playing casually, not 'cause >> they aren't strong, but 'cause I just don't like them. > >Oh, please!!! For crying out loud, the reason we use TWDA in the first >place to check a card for overpower is just exactly that we expect people >to use their best decks. But we know that they don't always - people don't have enough of the right cards, or they don't want to disassemble another deck, or they borrow someone else's deck, or they decide to try something a bit odd. Legbiter set out to make a TWD with only commons some years back, for example, so potentially cut off some better choices. Being honest enough to acknowledge that the TWDA is flawed (for this purpose) doesn't mean you have to shit a brick, Fred. [ quoted text not captured ]

In message <0e30e44f-a6c7-419e...@m45g2000hsb.googlegroup s.com>, suolir...@gmail.com writes: >True. Canceling a master card usually is a good effect and rarely a >very weak or a game winning effect. The distribution of the effects of >canceling a minion card, on the other hand, are not as bunched up in >the middle. Therefore I argue that there are more chances for DI to >have a game winning effect than for Sudden Reversal. The DI may look more obviously like a game-winning effect - Yay! I stopped the bleed for 3! or Yay! I stopped it being bounced to me! - but stopping the master tech can be just as game winning. - You don't have that 5 pool from a blood gain master (Doll or Vessel over several turns, Tap or Tribute right now etc.) so I don't have to deal with the Assault Rifle you choose not to bring out now. - Over several turns, I call two Con Boons and gain 8 pool, which would have been stopped by your KRCG (or the intercept location of your choice). - Taking out the Fame or Tension can save me a hunk of pool. - Taking out an early Power Structure can really slow down a Lasombra breed-boon deck. - Taking out a Parthenon may well cause jam issues for a master heavy deck, until it can draw another. All of those can radically alter the course of a game, and cause huge problems for a deck. None of the cards just mentioned is unlikely, unusual or rarely seen, and there are a variety of similarly strong cards that other decks will use. The point is, taking out master cards can be just as game-winning as taking out minion cards. However, you have to look at long-term gains as well as short-term gains. Taking out useful master tech can mean that you don't need the short-term gain later, because the deck isn't in a position to do what it would have. [ quoted text not captured ]

On Sep 16, 10:03 pm, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > > That timing issue and the slowdown of the game it SHOULD be causing is > > the issue. Saying it doesn't really matter is not an answer either. > > It's no different than playing any other cards improperly to try and > > gain a benefit. > > It does matter, I suppose. It just doesn't matter whether you ban DI > for those purposes. I believe there are a number of other cards which > can cancel cards as play. Power of All, for instance. The few that can do such a thing are very limited, but if I see you with 2 ready untapped anarchs I'll start asking for Power of Alls as well as D.I.s. Then I can slow down the game even more.

On Sep 17, 2:39 am, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > "Peter D Bakija" <p...@lightlink.com> wrote in messagenews:pdb6-841FD6.1...@nntp.aioe.org... [ quoted text not captured ] No, actually, it does not. I refuse to use the card. I know at least 5 others, some of whom have TWDA decks, who refuse to use it.

Obtenebration wrote: > "Before you replace (and before you tap). > > Cards are not replaced until after they're played. > > DI is played as the card to be canceled is played, so before it is > replaced. " > > > So to play by the rules, every time a player declares an action with a > card, they need to show the card, not replace or tap, and pause to > give a reasonable amount of time for someone to play a DI. Any time an > action modifier or reaction is played they also need to pause before > replacing to allow the window to play a DI to occur. Yes. Similarly with the myriad of steps in combat, and pausing for everyone else to discard a burn-option card during your untap phase, or pausing after every event in combat with a Nosferatu to see if someone wants to play Nosferatu Putrescence, and so on. Fortunately, the actual play is geared to reasonable players, who can say "any cancel?" and point clockwise around the table, and/or say "wait a sec" and/or rewind trivial activity as needed. > The card causes > improper play likely every time it is played since no one in their > right mind is going to wait like that since it would probably cause > every game to time out.(except ours that never seem to last more than > 40 minutes...) No, it's not that card, but the order of play itself. > That timing issue and the slowdown of the game it SHOULD be causing is > the issue. Ban DI and that timing issue still exists. So it isn't the issue.

On 17 Sep., 10:39, James Coupe <ja...@zephyr.org.uk> wrote: > In message <0e30e44f-a6c7-419e-a4dc-cf7e547bd...@m45g2000hsb.googlegroup > > s.com>, suoliruse...@gmail.com writes: > >True. Canceling a master card usually is a good effect and rarely a > >very weak or a game winning effect. The distribution of the effects of > >canceling a minion card, on the other hand, are not as bunched up in > >the middle. Therefore I argue that there are more chances for DI to > >have a game winning effect than for Sudden Reversal. > > The DI may look more obviously like a game-winning effect - Yay! I > stopped the bleed for 3! or Yay! I stopped it being bounced to me! - > but stopping the master tech can be just as game winning. > Second that. More often than not SR/Wash will hit some structure type card (Blood Gain, Hand Control, Enabler etc.) at a phase where it doesn't have an immediate impact. Of course sometimes suddening a Pentex Subversion, Golconda or Direct Intervention :):) can have an Instant game changing effect as well, but normally it's impact is not felt immediately. I'd propose that DI is used 70% of the time at a point where it either prevents an oust or will cause some to go to torpor (or prevent someone from going). Which is felt like the bigger impact because it affects an immediate action and most often not some long-term game plan.

On Sep 17, 12:19 am, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > Sure. You're missing the point, however. I don't know that I am. > The effect you describe > may in fact occur and you claim you engage in it and I believe you. > Other motivations may indeed affect peoples' choices for cards in their > tournament decks but how would you ever prove Direct Intervention is > more prone to people irrationally hesitating to use it more than any > other card? Who knows? Who could possibly know? I don't think it is more prone to people irrationally hesitating to use it. I was just pointing out that the TWDA is a flawed source of data. 'Cause it is. In either direction. > Might not be right. But what's the point in engaging in speculation? > I mean, besides just a general desire to cast doubt on what little > evidence we have about how strong Direct Intervention is - or is not. As noted, I was not attempting to use (the rather large number of Direct Interventions found in the TWDA) as evidence of anything at all. Again, Rob said "if the card is so good, why doesn't it show up in tournament winning decks?" and I pointed out that it does. A lot. My discussing the flawed nature of the TWDA as a data set was simply a sideline of the discussion, conjecturing that DI should probably show up even more than it does. But not 'cause that has any impact on the point I was making one way or the other. > Embarrassment, irrationality, tendency towards bad hair days. It doesn't > matter what the effect is. If you can't measure it, it's all speculation. Yes. It was speculation. > We use the TWDA because we assume people _want_ to win tournaments and > this motivation is ultimately the strongest, averaged over the entire > population. Use the TWDA for what? I'm not using it for anything other than indicating that the card sees use in decks. 'Cause it does. > It's understood that such an assumption could be fraught with > hidden anomalies and you have to take it for what it's worth. It just > seems lame to start talking about them only when you're uncomfortable with > what the TWDA actually shows. At what point did I indicate that I was uncomfortable with that the TWDA shows? It shows (based on my quick, highly unscientific calculations) that DI shows up 50 times in 74 decks. Which is, for my money, "showing up in tournament winning decks a lot". And supports my statement (and the only statement I mean it to support) of "DI shows up in tournament winning decks a lot". 'Cause it does. That is all. -Peter

On 17 syys, 11:39, James Coupe <ja...@zephyr.org.uk> wrote: > The point is, taking out master cards can be just as game-winning as > taking out minion cards. Of course it can, I have already agreed on that. More than once, in fact. I'm just saying that there are more opportunities for canceling a minion card to be game-winning than for canceling a master card. I have already taken into account the possible long term effects of master cards and haven't changed my opinion, partly because they don't actually have a great advantage over permanent minion cards in that area.

On Sep 17, 12:59 am, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > In that case we disagree. A card that isn't used because what it > does well isn't good enough for how rarely the situation for which > it was created occurs actually does suck in the final analysis. And yet it was designed by the current (?) design team and is an example of what they think is balanced for a 1 pool OOT master card that cancels something. Much like how Auto Da Fe and The Eldest Command Undeath are examples of what the current design team felt were balanced for Political Actions that burn minions. That Vox Domini seems weak says a lot more about Direct Intervention than it does about Vox Domini, I'd say. > It doesn't suck as much as a lot of other stuff in the game, I'll > give you that. It's close enough to useful card that I wouldn't > think ill of a player for using it. I just don't choose to use > them myself at the moment. So it...sort of sucks. I don't either. 'Cause Direct Intervention has virtually the same effect most of the time, but is *far* more flexible and will *always* be playable. And yet Vox Domini has a considerably higher cost. > And ever were it > totally apt, such comparisons don't prove or disprove a card is > overpowered. I don't think it proves anything. It is just, for my money, a viable comparison about how DI is overpowered compared to a card that has a similar cost and a similar effect (see: PTO vs Auto da Fe). > Both cards may be overpowered or both may alternatively > be in the reasonable range. In the latter case, you may have an > obsolescence problem, but this wouldn't demand banishment of the > more powerful card. It may just mean the weaker card will never > get used. Sure. But the weaker card was designed long after the stronger card. So it was a planned, post obsolescence. > OK. That's an obsolescence problem not a power problem. An intentional, post obsolescence problem. Vox Domini was made in the context of Direct Intervention, not the other way around. The designers *knew* what DI did, and very well could have looked to DI as a precedent. But they specifically chose not to. In fact, they specifically chose to make Vox Domini, an already highly limited card compared to DI, only useable once per player per game over and above the built in limitations. While also making it an OOT Master that cost 1 pool and cancelled something. It is pure conjecture, but I suspect that if Direct Intervention were made today? It too probably would have been saddled with "only once per game per player". > Your text above doesn't make that clear that you simply meant the "only > once per player per turn" clause. No, I meant "once per player per game". I have never mentioned "once per player per turn". That was someone else. I have been consistently advocating for "once per player per game". Just like Vox Domini. -Peter

"Peter D Bakija" <pd...@lightlink.com> wrote in message news:c8e07805-ef39-47ae...@k37g2000hsf.googlegroups.com... On Sep 17, 12:19 am, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > > The effect you describe > > may in fact occur and you claim you engage in it and I believe you. > > Other motivations may indeed affect peoples' choices for cards in their > > tournament decks but how would you ever prove Direct Intervention is > > more prone to people irrationally hesitating to use it more than any > > other card? Who knows? Who could possibly know? > > I don't think it is more prone to people irrationally hesitating to > use it. I was just pointing out that the TWDA is a flawed source of > data. 'Cause it is. In either direction. Well, OK. But I really think we already knew that. > > It's understood that such an assumption could be fraught with > > hidden anomalies and you have to take it for what it's worth. It just > > seems lame to start talking about them only when you're uncomfortable with > > what the TWDA actually shows. > > At what point did I indicate that I was uncomfortable with that the > TWDA shows? It just seemed a little weird. You could throw this caveat into any discussion we've ever had about card usage data derived from the TWDA since its inception and it would be equally valid. Why suddenly start to talk about it now? It should just be assumed. One would expect questions about the validity of TWDA data in the context of a specific card only when someone was asserting the effect is somehow different than normal for the card in question. I assumed you must have been making such an assertion because it doesn't make any sense to suddenly raise the issue, otherwise (AFAICS). Fred

"James Coupe" <ja...@zephyr.org.uk> wrote in message news:GzVl0AQd...@gratiano.zephyr.org.uk... > Being honest enough to acknowledge that the TWDA is flawed (for this > purpose) doesn't mean you have to shit a brick, Fred. Of course the TWDA is flawed. But why bring that up in this context unless you have a specific assertion to make about how the TWDA is differently flawed for DI than other cards? If we have to mention the TWDA is flawed and every other little thing every time we have a discussion about it, the actual points of discussion are going to start getting buried underneath the boilerplate disclaimers. Fred

"Peter D Bakija" <pd...@lightlink.com> wrote in message news:ccd56451-035a-4dbd...@m45g2000hsb.googlegroups.com... > On Sep 17, 12:59 am, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: >> Both cards may be overpowered or both may alternatively >> be in the reasonable range. In the latter case, you may have an >> obsolescence problem, but this wouldn't demand banishment of the >> more powerful card. It may just mean the weaker card will never >> get used. > > Sure. But the weaker card was designed long after the stronger card. > So it was a planned, post obsolescence. > >> OK. That's an obsolescence problem not a power problem. > > An intentional, post obsolescence problem. Vox Domini was made in the > context of Direct Intervention, not the other way around. The > designers *knew* what DI did, and very well could have looked to DI as > a precedent. But they specifically chose not to. In fact, they > specifically chose to make Vox Domini, an already highly limited card > compared to DI, only useable once per player per game over and above > the built in limitations. While also making it an OOT Master that cost > 1 pool and cancelled something. Well, OK, here's a thought for you: the Design Team....made...a..... MISTAKE! With Vox Domini, I mean. I know how much we love 'em, bless their souls. They've certainly shown how they actually understand play balance as opposed to the previous crowd who seemed to have little concept of it and nearly destroyed the game it. It doesn't mean the current team always gets every card right. I can think of much worse examples of underpowered cards than Vox Domini. But I suppose you'd have to agree with me that Vox Domini isn't quite useful in any context right now or, at best, is an extremely specialized card. If we can't agree on that, we're not going to agree on what to take away from the comparison between it and D.I. >> Your text above doesn't make that clear that you simply meant the "only >> once per player per turn" clause. > > No, I meant "once per player per game". Sorry, I knew that. I just mistyped. Fred

On Sep 16, 10:19 pm, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > Occam's Razor states that one should assume the simplest possible > explanation for a given observation, in this case that the reason > DI isn't used in higher numbers is generally because it's utility > doesn't merit more usage. \ Fred, I can't resist. Occam's Razor is now double bladed. The simplest explanation for the fact that DI is the single most used non-poolgain Master in the 2008 TWDA is that the card is GOOD and a fair number of people have realized that. You may have a different opinion, which I try hard to respect. But when you talk about "higher numbers" - what do you mean? - Higher than 60% of the winners? Seems pretty high to me, personally, but perhaps you have a different yardstick. - Higher numbers among people who don't win tournaments? Well, they're not winning......maybe failure to defend themselves is one factor? - DI in every deck we assemble? Many of us hate the card in casual play, so screw that.

On Sep 17, 11:32 am, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > Well, OK. But I really think we already knew that. Some of us certainly did. I don't like to assume that everyone does. > It just seemed a little weird. I assure you. I had no alterior motives. Just pointing out that the TWDA is not a highly valid source of data one way or the other for determining whether or not a card is too powerful. That DI shows up a lot indicates that it shows up a lot. > You could throw this caveat into any > discussion we've ever had about card usage data derived from the TWDA > since its inception and it would be equally valid. And I often do. > Why suddenly start to talk about it now? To make you suscpicious of my motives? > I assumed you must have been making such an assertion because > it doesn't make any sense to suddenly raise the issue, otherwise (AFAICS). > And yet I was making said statement in the same place where I pointed out that DI showed up a lot in the TWDA. As I clearly already thought that it showed up a lot, trying to convince someone that the data was flawed, and actually it should show up a lot doesn't seem like something that makes much sense (as it already showed up a lot, and I already said I thought it showed up a lot). -Peter

On Sep 17, 11:37 am, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > Of course the TWDA is flawed. But why bring that up in this context > unless you have a specific assertion to make about how the TWDA is > differently flawed for DI than other cards? Clearly to make you insane. > If we have to mention > the TWDA is flawed and every other little thing every time we have > a discussion about it, the actual points of discussion are going to > start getting buried underneath the boilerplate disclaimers. I spend a reasonable amount of time discussing the validity of the TWDA as data to support arguments whenever it comes up. 'Cause it is important to realize. And I don't know that everyone realizes it. And again, all I was pointing out by going to the TWDA was that DI shows up a lot. 'Cause someone mentioned that he didn't think it did. -Peter

On Sep 17, 11:46 am, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > Well, OK, here's a thought for you: the Design Team....made...a..... > MISTAKE! With Vox Domini, I mean. It is certainly possible. It is just as possible that they did exactly what they thought was appropriate. It is also possible that they made a mistake with Auto Da Fe and Eldest Command Undeath, as they were also post-obscelesced by PTO. And yet... > It doesn't mean the current team always gets every card right. I can think > of much worse examples of underpowered cards than Vox Domini. But I > suppose you'd have to agree with me that Vox Domini isn't quite useful in > any context right now or, at best, is an extremely specialized card. I think it is only "not quite useful" due to the existence of DI. 'Cause DI can do the exact same thing (make a vote fail) and is still wildly more effective. I'd think that if DI were only "once per player per game", Vox Domini would show up more. I could be wrong. -Peter

"Darby Keeney" <darby....@gmail.com> wrote in message news:53b5a394-8265-4389...@l43g2000hsh.googlegroups.com... On Sep 16, 10:19 pm, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > > Occam's Razor states that one should assume the simplest possible > > explanation for a given observation, in this case that the reason > > DI isn't used in higher numbers is generally because it's utility > > doesn't merit more usage. \ > > Fred, I can't resist. Occam's Razor is now double bladed. > > The simplest explanation for the fact that DI is the single most used > non-poolgain Master in the 2008 TWDA is that the card is GOOD and a > fair number of people have realized that. Sure. A lot of people think it's good. So what? Good != overpowered and needs to be banned. I'm not one to dwell upon the slippery slope argument against ever banning cards but it is a point that would need to be made if anyone was trying to argue that a card should be banned merely because it was popular. > You may have a different opinion, which I try hard to respect. But > when you talk about "higher numbers" - what do you mean? I'll confess I have no particular number in mind. If DI is so popular most people begin to automatically throw multiples of them into their decks despite any thematic considerations in order to increase their deck's power and compete with other decks which have multiples of DI, then we _may_ have a problem. If we accepted David Cherryholmes's group as the norm and that was happening everywhere, then we could have a problem. The fact that it doesn't happen everywhere and the TWDA doesn't indicate that lots of winners use multiple copies of it indicates to me that we don't have a problem. > - Higher than 60% of the winners? Seems pretty high to me, > personally, but perhaps you have a different yardstick. Where are you getting 60% of the winners? I didn't see such a number posted anywhere. Peter got 50 in 74 decks, which is .675 per deck, a completely different statistic. No, it doesn't bother me that a card shows up at a rate of about 2/3 card per deck. Obviously, there's lots of known staple cards which are more popular. I tend to throw a Giants Blood into about every deck I own that features large minions; that strikes me as being more problematic to deck building than Direct Intervention. > - DI in every deck we assemble? Many of us hate the card in casual > play, so screw that. This is really the most interesting comment you made in your whole post. What IS it that you "hate the card in casual play"? What is there to hate, exactly? I'd much prefer to yank on thread a bit because it's the key to why you hate the card so much and I don't. Fred

"Peter D Bakija" <pd...@lightlink.com> wrote in message news:8058f6bf-4a47-4292...@e39g2000hsf.googlegroups.com... On Sep 17, 11:37 am, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > > Of course the TWDA is flawed. But why bring that up in this context > > unless you have a specific assertion to make about how the TWDA is > > differently flawed for DI than other cards? > > Clearly to make you insane. I'm already insane. So...HA! > > If we have to mention > > the TWDA is flawed and every other little thing every time we have > > a discussion about it, the actual points of discussion are going to > > start getting buried underneath the boilerplate disclaimers. > > I spend a reasonable amount of time discussing the validity of the > TWDA as data to support arguments whenever it comes up. 'Cause it is > important to realize. And I don't know that everyone realizes it. I guess there's the problem. In my world, it's obvious, it should be taken as read, and it should only be mentioned when someone has a belief that the numbers are particularly bad for a given card or when someone has shown an undue faith in the precision of the TWDA numbers. I guess I thought most old-timers would just automatically agree with that. Fred

On Sep 16, 11:59 pm, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > "Peter D Bakija" <p...@lightlink.com> wrote in messagenews:pdb6-1F2423.2...@nntp.aioe.org... > > > In article <%cYzk.13011$Dj1.12...@newsfe01.iad>, [ quoted text not captured ] What I don't get is why you guys are in such agreement on Vox Domini. I include it all the time in decks that have an answer to bleed but no answer for votes. Frex, a Settite "wall" deck with Shemti and Crocodile Temple and Ecstasy and lot of Temptations - a vote deck behind me and my whole strategy crumbles. I've waffled back and forth between Delaying Tactics, Poison Pill, and Touch of Pain for vote defense (actually considered Dread Gaze for a minute), but I always keep a Vox Domini in, and it's useful a lot of the time - more useful than any of the minion cards for stopping votes. It does have a much higher opportunity cost than DI, but it also fails the vote, leaving the vampire tapped, instead of just making them play a second copy of it - and for the few votes with a cost, even better... not to mention if they've played an Awe for 12 votes too, planning to Voter Cap. If you're worried about a vote predator, Vox Domini (I can't bring myself to abbreviate it as VD... that's reserved for Vampiric Disease =)) could be a lot worse. It's not a 1 in every deck card, like DI could be, but it's not terrible. As far as DI - yeah, it's a dramatic play a lot of the time, and it sucks when your lynch-pin card gets cancelled, but whatever. If you don't have another playable substitute for the card that was cancelled, you live with it. More than a 3 pool swing is highly unlikely. I don't see how you can even compare it to PTO cancelling an entire vampire. In my mind, it's just a substitute for meta- gaming... not sure what you're going to see, well, a DI can at least deal with *one* card, even if a cost of 1 pool and a MooT is kind of high. The only deck I regularly play with DI is No Secrets From Casewayo, because he simply has no answer for Call of the Hungry Dead and Elder Intervention. There are some other decks like that too, but I see DI more often cancelling bounce (was not quite as strong until it was ruled that you can't bounce until after you decline to block) or like a Foreshadowing Destruction... strong, but so often you just have to wait with it in your hand until you see that moment where it will be very useful. You can say that it's "always" playable, but when you use it to cancel a maneuver and the guy just plays another, or some garbage like that, it's simply not worth the cost.

In message <Yu9Ak.9284$wr1....@newsfe02.iad>, Frederick Scott <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> writes: >Of course the TWDA is flawed. But why bring that up in this context >unless you have a specific assertion to make about how the TWDA is >differently flawed for DI than other cards? Presumably to help you evacuate the blockage in your bowels. [ quoted text not captured ]

Comparing Sudden Reversal to Direct Intervention is like comparing a traffic light to a cruise missile. When you come to the lights (your master phase), it´s either green (I play my Palle Grande and go for the oust this turn) or red (bummer, Palle Grande was suddened). The DI on the other hand can strike during your entire turn, unexpected and unwelcome. The outcome will most likley become a disaster and sometimes there will be random causalties (table messed up, undeserved vp:s handed out and so on).

In message <25cc376f-5399-4894...@l42g2000hsc.googlegroup s.com>, Peter D Bakija <pd...@lightlink.com> writes: >It is also possible that they made a mistake with Auto Da Fe and >Eldest Command Undeath, as they were also post-obscelesced by PTO. And >yet... Neither of these were obsolesced by PTO, in the way you're claiming for Vox Domini and Direct Intervention. ECU and AdF belong in radically different decks to PTO - different sects, titles etc. They could be icing on the cake for such a deck, if you've already made the necessary choices to play a deck where they could be used. This is unlike VD and DI, where if a deck is capable of playing one, it's capable of playing the other - at which point, you decide which one's best. If you decided to base a whole deck around PTO or the other two cards, you might decide PTO offered more bang for buck, and so playing the mono-ECU deck would suck compared to the mono-PTO deck. But you didn't have to make whole decks based around PTO - 2 or 3 were plenty to cause issues, even if you could make a playable deck with 8 - and you didn't have to make a deck solely devoted to ECU. [ quoted text not captured ]

On Sep 17, 11:08 am, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > This is really the most interesting comment you made in your whole post. > What IS it that you "hate the card in casual play"? What is there to > hate, exactly? I'd much prefer to yank on thread a bit because it's the > key to why you hate the card so much and I don't. Fair enough. This is clearly a reasonable way to better understand both positions. 1) Power curve. My casual decks don't employ tournament mechanics to attempts to win (e.g. weenie pre/dom bleed, dem/obf bleed). Casual decks are just that - intended to be competitive, but quirky and quite frankly, more fun/interesting to play. Likewise, when others are playing similar decks, me playing (what I continue to believe is) an "I trump you, you fail" card burdens my conscience. Clearly, we disagree on the relative power of DI. My gut tells me two things. - You value MPAs far more than I do. I know I run fewer Masters as a baseline than most people - if I'm at 18, I feel bloated. Therefore, DI becomes relatively less cumbersome to me. - From playing with you, my impression is that your decks tend to be highly repetitive and therefore less subject to incurring penalty from DI than decks I often build (especially in casual settings). Both deck styles have merit. The repetitive style is easier to drive - but gets screwed more often by table seating. No longer being able to control that aspect of the game, I have found it advantageous to diversify a bit - and DI definately impacts that part of more toolboxy construction. 2) Basic game (thematic) design. Masters represent direct influence from a methesulah. Other master cards should be what cancels those functions (unless a card is "put in play" as a result, then a minion action on that card makes sense because is it some type of lingering manifestation). Minions exist to act, and to stop other minions from acting. Methesulahs' direct influence in this game mechanic should be limited, otherwise why not simply do away with the need for minions and influence and just act directly? Print a master card that says "burn 10 pool to burn 10 of your prey's pool" and be done with it (yes, I know, that's way over the top, but it conveys the sentiment). 3) Seeing cool things. I like to see my decks work, and other peoples' decks work. Blocks are one thing, but when I can just STOP a linchpin function so easily (and yes, I maintain that an experienced user of DI does this better than the average player) - then I don't get to see the other fella's deck do what he spent hours designing. Certainly, this makes DI good for competitive play - and I remain competitive even in casual games - but not as much FUN. Those are the reasons I don't play DI in my 30-some (or more???) casual decks.

In article <ZXaAk.12393$rV4....@newsfe03.iad>, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > I'm already insane. So...HA! Damn. My clever plan is foiled! > I guess there's the problem. In my world, it's obvious, it should be > taken as read, and it should only be mentioned when someone has a > belief that the numbers are particularly bad for a given card or when > someone has shown an undue faith in the precision of the TWDA numbers. > I guess I thought most old-timers would just automatically agree with > that. Maybe. I was just throwing it out there as it seems like a good idea to throw it out there once and a while. That, and it was an excuse to use my personal experience to indicate (regardless of the TWDA) that I suspect that many people don't use DI as much as they probably should due to irrational reasons. As noted, if I were purely invested in winning? I'd have 3x DIs in every deck I ever built. All the time. But then if I started doing that, I suspect that everyone else in my play group would do the same. At which point I have helped create an environment where everyone is playing 3x DIs in every deck. Which is not an environment I want to play in. So I don't put 3x DI in every deck (even though in a absolute sense, I probably should) as a purely sanity saving measure. Which is, I think, a reasonable thing to examine, as I have seen multiple people in this discussion indicate, more or less, the exact same thing (i.e. that they don't use DI specifically 'cause they don't like it and don't like what it does to the game, even though they think it is incredibly strong). Which, divorced from the stats in the TWDA, is an interesting concept in and of itself. Peter D Bakija pd...@lightlink.com http://www.lightlink.com/pdb6/vtes.html "It's too bad she won't live! But then again, who does?" -Gaff

In article <O+d332f8...@gratiano.zephyr.org.uk>, James Coupe <ja...@zephyr.org.uk> wrote: > Neither of these were obsolesced by PTO, in the way you're claiming for > Vox Domini and Direct Intervention. They certainly were not directly post-obsolesced by PTO, no. As they were for different sects and were used in different decks. But in terms of the cost (call and pass a vote) and effect (burn a vampire)? PTO was *way* better than either of them. By a million miles. [ quoted text not captured ]

Howdy, [ quoted text not captured ] I don't use it either, though I haven't tainted the TWDA to date. There are two reasons I don't use it: 1) It has that 'Sol Ring' or 'Timewalk' feel - power card that could go in every deck/trumpy card that only the priviledged few own. The latter is no longer true, as it's much easier to come by them these days, but it certainly used to be hard to get them. 2) It makes me play even more slowly and with less confidence than usual. When it's in my hand, I have to think about almost every play of every Methuselah, and I inevitably end up dumping it to lame effect moments before it would have been really useful. I end up with a sense that I'd use it more if I was a better player. I find Sudden/Wash much easier to use, but I don't use them much either. Anyway, Yet Another subjective data point/smudge. Alex

In message <pdb6-66F3F5.1...@nntp.aioe.org>, Peter D Bakija <pd...@lightlink.com> writes: >They certainly were not directly post-obsolesced by PTO, no. As they >were for different sects and were used in different decks. But in terms >of the cost (call and pass a vote) and effect (burn a vampire)? PTO was >*way* better than either of them. By a million miles. On this, I agree - PTO was better (much better). It's just the obsolescence point I was disagreeing on. [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <rHKuJzwj9W0IFw$6...@gratiano.zephyr.org.uk>, James Coupe <ja...@zephyr.org.uk> wrote: > On this, I agree - PTO was better (much better). It's just the > obsolescence point I was disagreeing on. I guess it is a matter of perspective; compared to PTO, ADF was complete garbage, and comparing them, the initial response is likely "How in the world is ADF remotely balanced vs PTO, that does the same thing for more or less the same cost?" But yeah, in terms of direct obsolescence, you are correct--they work in different sects and different titles and whatever. So not a direct comparison like, say, Chainsaw and Gas Powered Chainsaw or anything. But I the the parallel with DI:VD stands. [ quoted text not captured ]

"agzocgud" <per_m...@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:88178513-ef67-4a99...@26g2000hsk.googlegroups.com... > Comparing Sudden Reversal to Direct Intervention is like comparing a > traffic light to a cruise missile. > > When you come to the lights (your master phase), it愀 either green (I > play my Palle Grande and go for the oust this turn) or red (bummer, > Palle Grande was suddened). > > The DI on the other hand can strike during your entire turn, > unexpected and unwelcome. The outcome will most likley become a > disaster and sometimes there will be random causalties (table messed > up, undeserved vp:s handed out and so on). Truth-by-blatant-assertion. You _say_ "the outcome will most likely become a disaster...(yadda, yadda)" but you don't give any real evidence that getting DIed is any worse than getting SRed. Sure, the minion phase has more things in it, so what? That can also mean you have time to set up your key play to make it difficult to DI to any meaningful result or that you have time to recover from it, thus mitigating rather than aggravating the result. Even assuming it tends to aggravate rather than mitigate (perhaps because the person playing the DI can do so at a time of his own choosing), here's a counterargument why getting my key master SRed is worse: masters, by necessity, need to be played in far fewer numbers than minion cards. You can usually afford to have a lot of copies of a key minion card because most of them will be played over and over. How many Palla Grandes should be placed in an anti-Toreador bleed deck though? It may be quite a few turns before I draw another one. We can argue this way until we're blue in the face. If DI is so over- powered, build the DI super-deck and win too many tournaments with it and show us. Fred

"James Coupe" <ja...@zephyr.org.uk> wrote in message news:ReiwP1eC...@gratiano.zephyr.org.uk... > In message <Yu9Ak.9284$wr1....@newsfe02.iad>, Frederick Scott > <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> writes: >>Of course the TWDA is flawed. But why bring that up in this context >>unless you have a specific assertion to make about how the TWDA is >>differently flawed for DI than other cards? > > Presumably to help you evacuate the blockage in your bowels. Well, gee, James, THAT really contributed to a high-minded intellectual discussion. I guess I'll remember that the next you whine about things getting a bit personal. At least I don't take shots to avoid answering a good question Fred

"Chris Berger" <ark...@ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote in message news:ecb3205b-91a8-4a0d...@8g2000hse.googlegroups.com... > What I don't get is why you guys are in such agreement on Vox Domini. > I include it all the time in decks that have an answer to bleed but no > answer for votes. Frex, a Settite "wall" deck with Shemti and > Crocodile Temple and Ecstasy and lot of Temptations - a vote deck > behind me and my whole strategy crumbles. I've waffled back and forth > between Delaying Tactics, Poison Pill, and Touch of Pain for vote > defense (actually considered Dread Gaze for a minute), but I always > keep a Vox Domini in, and it's useful a lot of the time - more useful > than any of the minion cards for stopping votes. Well, there's the short answer - and I did say it earlier, perhaps you missed it. The way metagames in my area have gone, I just abandoned the notion of needing vote defense entirely. It's just not important enough. I do occasionally lose a game on that basis (or if I don't, I live off someone esle's vote defense) but often enough whatever my deck _does_ do is often part of the answer anyway. Bleed it out, attack it, intercept it, or whatever. If you believe you specifically need vote defense, then sure. Vox Domini may very well be a worthwhile card. > As far as DI - yeah, it's a dramatic play a lot of the time, and it > sucks when your lynch-pin card gets cancelled, but whatever. If you > don't have another playable substitute for the card that was > cancelled, you live with it. More than a 3 pool swing is highly > unlikely. I don't see how you can even compare it to PTO cancelling > an entire vampire. In my mind, it's just a substitute for meta- > gaming... not sure what you're going to see, well, a DI can at least > deal with *one* card, even if a cost of 1 pool and a MooT is kind of > high. The only deck I regularly play with DI is No Secrets From > Casewayo, because he simply has no answer for Call of the Hungry Dead > and Elder Intervention. There are some other decks like that too, but > I see DI more often cancelling bounce (was not quite as strong until > it was ruled that you can't bounce until after you decline to block) > or like a Foreshadowing Destruction... strong, but so often you just > have to wait with it in your hand until you see that moment where it > will be very useful. You can say that it's "always" playable, but > when you use it to cancel a maneuver and the guy just plays another, > or some garbage like that, it's simply not worth the cost. Yep. Fred

On Sep 17, 3:05 pm, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > We can argue this way until we're blue in the face. If DI is so over- > powered, build the DI super-deck and win too many tournaments with it > and show us. Much like we have previously established that the TWDA is not a completely valid source of data, I think we have previously established that a card can be broken/overpowered/whatever and not cause a lot of tournaments to be won with them. For example: -Anarch Revolt: Its problem was that it was too good at making *other* people win other than the person playing the Anarch Revolt. -Succubus Club: Much like Anarch Revolt, it is broken in that it was really good at making *other* people win (spite "I'm about to get ousted. I'll give someone across the table all my stuff 'cause I'm at 1 pool and dying anyway..."). Granted, DI is *far* more likely to make you win than either of the above highly problematic cards, but still, "winning a lot of tournaments" with something isn't likely to help the argument a lot of the time. -Peter

"Darby Keeney" <darby....@gmail.com> wrote in message news:cc15f9c9-9191-4c35...@f36g2000hsa.googlegroups.com... On Sep 17, 11:08 am, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > > This is really the most interesting comment you made in your whole post. > > What IS it that you "hate the card in casual play"? What is there to > > hate, exactly? I'd much prefer to yank on thread a bit because it's the > > key to why you hate the card so much and I don't. > > Fair enough. This is clearly a reasonable way to better understand > both positions. > > 1) Power curve. My casual decks don't employ tournament mechanics to > attempts to win (e.g. weenie pre/dom bleed, dem/obf bleed). Casual > decks are just that - intended to be competitive, but quirky and quite > frankly, more fun/interesting to play. I have something like the same concept - decks I will play in casual play but wouldn't trust in a tournament. I don't avoid using particular cards or tactics as being too powerful for casual play because I don't think playing at lower power level is the point. At least not for me. For me, the main difference is that a quirky deck is likely to have larger holes in terms of what its vulnerable to in the metagame or else I'm just experimenting with something or both. I don't want to get stuck with such a deck for multiple rounds in a tournament. Since I don't want to play them in tournaments, casual play is the only other outlet. > Likewise, when others are playing similar decks, me playing (what I > continue to believe is) an "I trump you, you fail" card burdens my > conscience. I'm not sure why. It sounds to me like you're dancing to ghost music, trying to guess what's impolite to play in casual company. I have an anecdote about what I mean. The one time I can ever remember someone reacting with annoyance to one of my decks in casual play, it actually turned out to be what I'd consider a quirky casual-play-only deck I'd never take into tournament. It's a deck that Mind Rapes minions and puts out Temptations and uses Heidelburg Castle to steal their resources and hence control opposing players. I played it in a casual game after a Continental Qualifier a couple years ago and it worked unusually well against the girlfriend of one of the princes. She was a pretty good player but apparently got frustrated with a "clamp-down" tactic and didn't really want to see how vulnerable my deck was to a million other things that weren't helping her at that moment. (I'd never play that deck in a tournament. It's actually quite bad.) I'm not sure what you can do. Maybe I should have saved the deck for players I know better but in Phoenix, there isn't too much opportunity for that. The point is, I would never refrain from playing a deck in casual play out of a fear that it was too good in some way. The above ancedote shows that you have no idea what's going to bother someone so why try censoring yourself? This game is supposed to be balanced and I feel it's up to my opponents to make sure they have a chance in a game, not me. Besides, if you refuse to play at the highest level, how is someone _else_ going to gather useful information when they're experimenting? It's like you're depriving your opponents of knowing if their decks will work in tournaments where they _will_ run into DIs. > Clearly, we disagree on the relative power of DI. My gut tells me two > things. > > - You value MPAs far more than I do. I know I run fewer Masters as a > baseline than most people - if I'm at 18, I feel bloated. Therefore, > DI becomes relatively less cumbersome to me. I agree. > - From playing with you, my impression is that your decks tend to be > highly repetitive and therefore less subject to incurring penalty from > DI than decks I often build (especially in casual settings). Both > deck styles have merit. The repetitive style is easier to drive - but > gets screwed more often by table seating. No longer being able to > control that aspect of the game, I have found it advantageous to > diversify a bit - and DI definately impacts that part of more toolboxy > construction. I agree with that, too. Also, I have trouble thinking on my feet a lot - that is, seeing an unusual play or an unusual opportunity or the flip side, an unusual danger. This point tends to get aggravated by the fact that I can't bring myself to play the same deck very often. (I get bored with the same deck over an over.) I compensate for that somewhat by using decks with strong, repetitive tactics where I don't have to think through new situations as much. > 2) Basic game (thematic) design. Masters represent direct influence > from a methesulah. Other master cards should be what cancels those > functions (unless a card is "put in play" as a result, then a minion > action on that card makes sense because is it some type of lingering > manifestation). OK. Not much to say about aethestics. You like what you like. > 3) Seeing cool things. I like to see my decks work, and other > peoples' decks work. Blocks are one thing, but when I can just STOP a > linchpin function so easily (and yes, I maintain that an experienced > user of DI does this better than the average player) - then I don't > get to see the other fella's deck do what he spent hours designing. That's a fair enough reaction. I feel the same way about intercept decks - the type where someone just sits there and builds up and refuses to let you do anything unless you can trump his combat (and he has a lot of combat). I just don't think of it as something where I can go to the newsgroup and ask to change the game. I mean it is what it is. I suppose DI is different in that you probably see it as the one card that, if it were banned, you wouldn't have to worry about the effect any more. And making the plea on that basis doesn't bother me as long as it isn't represented as "this-card-is-too-powerful". It isn't. The card is balanced given its true costs (opportunity and the reactive nature of the card which may or may not contribute to your position in any particular game), it's just that it's a defense that can be used in so many different ways that its use against the most convenient weak spot of a carefully planned deck offends you. > Certainly, this makes DI good for competitive play - and I remain > competitive even in casual games - but not as much FUN. I actually see it as a fun. It doesn't offend me to see something terribly clever DIed because I figured that, however clever the original play was, I also find it clever that a person arranged to be holding a DI at that particular moment. I enjoy such turns. Fred

"Peter D Bakija" <pd...@lightlink.com> wrote in message news:pdb6-DCAD1B.1...@nntp.aioe.org... > As noted, if I were purely invested in winning? I'd have 3x DIs in every > deck I ever built. All the time. Please see my reaction to Darby posting something like the same idea. Well, not exactly the same but he's also expressing the notion that Direct Intervention in casual play is more or less impolite. > But then if I started doing that, I > suspect that everyone else in my play group would do the same. At which > point I have helped create an environment where everyone is playing 3x > DIs in every deck. To reiterate something I said to Darby, you don't really know what would happen if you started playing 3 DIs in every deck. Could be that the biggest thing that would happen is that your opponents would learn something they needed to know to play tournaments well. You might also discover that they have a much more imaginative response to it than you're assuming they'll have and, just maybe, that Direct Intervention isn't as powerful as you feared. Or maybe you're right. I honestly can't say. Of course, if you're right, then you're also depriving the game of something "it" needs to know (conceptualizing the massed community of VtES players as an entity) - that the complaint about DI is totally valid and that, once established in a place, DI will take over like a weed. Maybe the only reason places like Los Angeles exist is that too many players are trying to be "nice" and not play it except a little in tournament play. Who knows? If you try to deprive others of information by not playing your best game, it could happen. Competition makes people better - one way or another. Fred

"Peter D Bakija" <pd...@lightlink.com> wrote in message news:a741f061-910c-4a83...@c65g2000hsa.googlegroups.com... On Sep 17, 3:05 pm, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > > We can argue this way until we're blue in the face. If DI is so over- > > powered, build the DI super-deck and win too many tournaments with it > > and show us. > > Much like we have previously established that the TWDA is not a > completely valid source of data, I think we have previously > established that a card can be broken/overpowered/whatever and not > cause a lot of tournaments to be won with them. For example: > > -Anarch Revolt: Its problem was that it was too good at making *other* > people win other than the person playing the Anarch Revolt. Right. That's not a power problem, so wouldn't be covered by the build-a-super-deck-and-show-us solution. That kind of thing you just have to make your case and hope people agree. > -Succubus Club: Much like Anarch Revolt, it is broken in that it was > really good at making *other* people win (spite "I'm about to get > ousted. I'll give someone across the table all my stuff 'cause I'm at > 1 pool and dying anyway..."). Also not a power problem. > Granted, DI is *far* more likely to make you win than either of the > above highly problematic cards, but still, "winning a lot of > tournaments" with something isn't likely to help the argument a lot of > the time. I disagree - depending on what the complaint against DI actually is. If indeed it _is_ "far more likely to make you win", then that is a power problem and you should be able to build a super deck. If it's a fun problem (like I suspect is ultimately Darby's real problem with the card and quite possibly a lot of other peoples' problem as well), then let's dispose of the "too-powerful/too-flexible" arguments and get to the point. Fred

In message <AEuAk.7378$PS3....@newsfe06.iad>, Frederick Scott <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> writes: >"James Coupe" <ja...@zephyr.org.uk> wrote in message news:ReiwP1eCmU0IF >w...@gratiano.zephyr.org.uk... >> In message <Yu9Ak.9284$wr1....@newsfe02.iad>, Frederick Scott >> <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> writes: >>>Of course the TWDA is flawed. But why bring that up in this context >>>unless you have a specific assertion to make about how the TWDA is >>>differently flawed for DI than other cards? >> >> Presumably to help you evacuate the blockage in your bowels. > >Well, gee, James, THAT really contributed to a high-minded intellectual >discussion. As opposed to you crapping yourself because Peter pointed out the TWDA isn't perfect? That really added so much. >At least I don't take shots to avoid answering a good question Because the answer is blatantly obvious: making sure that the limitations of the TWDA are understood in a conversation is helpful. Making sure that people don't think you're trying to use the TWDA as absolute proof of the best deck building practice in the world is helpful. i.e. Peter's comments were intended to be helpful, which they were. Throwing up "Puh-lease!" in response to someone being helpful is just stupid. Yeah, that really adds to high-minded intellectual debate. If you want intellectual debate, try it out yourself. Claiming things which are absurdly, patently false (such as something must turn up everywhere, even when that's never happened in the history of V:TES) - not intellectual debate, just blatantly stupid. Criticising someone for making sure the limits of the TWDA are understood - not intellectual debate, just blatantly stupid. [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <2UvAk.9054$PS3....@newsfe06.iad>, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > Please see my reaction to Darby posting something like the same idea. > Well, not exactly the same but he's also expressing the notion that > Direct Intervention in casual play is more or less impolite. Haven't gotten there yet, but I'm sure I will soon. But in any case, as noted, it isn't so much the impoliteness (although that is certainly some sort of issue) but really, not wanting to end up in an environment where everyone plays 3xDI in every deck. 'Cause it would make for a very unpleasant game, I'd imagine (as games I've played where multiple people even play even 1xDI, it blows). > To reiterate something I said to Darby, you don't really know what would > happen if you started playing 3 DIs in every deck. Could be that the > biggest thing that would happen is that your opponents would learn something > they needed to know to play tournaments well. Certainly possible. Or, it is just as possible that games will suck as much as they do in tournament play when multiple people have DIs in hand all the time. Which is a huge pain in the ass. > You might also discover that > they have a much more imaginative response to it than you're assuming they'll > have and, just maybe, that Direct Intervention isn't as powerful as you > feared. > > Or maybe you're right. I honestly can't say. Well, as I understand my local play environment much more than you do, I'd likely assume that I'm closer to right than not. > Of course, if you're right, then you're also depriving the game of something > "it" needs to know (conceptualizing the massed community of VtES players as > an entity) - that the complaint about DI is totally valid and that, once > established in a place, DI will take over like a weed. That it would take over like a weed in my environment isn't the result of the card--it would be the result of people saying "Huh. So we are playing Canadian rules, huh?", and everyone would start playing really mean. Which is less entertaining than not. > Maybe the only reason > places like Los Angeles exist is that too many players are trying to be "nice" > and not play it except a little in tournament play. Who knows? If you try to > deprive others of information by not playing your best game, it could happen. > > Competition makes people better - one way or another. Yes, yes it does. But as not everyone likes playing against weenie tap and bleed presence speed decks every game, sometimes pure competition takes a back seat to compromise. [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <GZvAk.9059$PS3....@newsfe06.iad>, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > I disagree - depending on what the complaint against DI actually is. If > indeed it _is_ "far more likely to make you win" No, no, the sentence was "DI is *far* more likely to make you win than either of the above highly problematic cards" which is not that same sentence as "far more likely to make you win". > problem and you should be able to build a super deck. If it's a fun > problem (like I suspect is ultimately Darby's real problem with the card > and quite possibly a lot of other peoples' problem as well), then let's > dispose of the "too-powerful/too-flexible" arguments and get to the point. I don't think the too powerful/too-flexible is something to be disposed of. The card is too powerful and too flexible for what it costs. It is also a huge pain in the ass to play around (as every minion card you play is subject to the "Direct Intervention" phase). It is also kind of a dick card. All of these add up to "it would be nice if something were done about it". [ quoted text not captured ]

On Sep 18, 12:29 pm, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > I have an anecdote about what I mean. The one time I can ever remember > someone reacting with annoyance to one of my decks in casual play, it > actually turned out to be what I'd consider a quirky casual-play-only > deck I'd never take into tournament. It's a deck that Mind Rapes minions > and puts out Temptations and uses Heidelburg Castle to steal their > resources and hence control opposing players. I played it in a casual > game after a Continental Qualifier a couple years ago and it worked > unusually well against the girlfriend of one of the princes. She was > a pretty good player but apparently got frustrated with a "clamp-down" > tactic and didn't really want to see how vulnerable my deck was to a > million other things that weren't helping her at that moment. (I'd > never play that deck in a tournament. It's actually quite bad.) I'm not > sure what you can do. Maybe I should have saved the deck for players > I know better but in Phoenix, there isn't too much opportunity for that. > > The point is, I would never refrain from playing a deck in casual play > out of a fear that it was too good in some way. I'm going to try to say this in the most non-inflammatory way I can think of. Please forgive me if that fails. Have you considered the possibility that maybe "there isn't too much opportunity for that" (VTES in Phoenix) and "I would never refrain from playing a deck in casual play out of a fear that it was too good" might be related phenomena..?

On Sep 17, 2:12 pm, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > "Chris Berger" <ark...@ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote in message > > news:ecb3205b-91a8-4a0d...@8g2000hse.googlegroups.com... > > > What I don't get is why you guys are in such agreement on Vox Domini. > > I include it all the time in decks that have an answer to bleed but no > > answer for votes. Frex, a Settite "wall" deck with Shemti and > > Crocodile Temple and Ecstasy and lot of Temptations - a vote deck > > behind me and my whole strategy crumbles. I've waffled back and forth > > between Delaying Tactics, Poison Pill, and Touch of Pain for vote > > defense (actually considered Dread Gaze for a minute), but I always > > keep a Vox Domini in, and it's useful a lot of the time - more useful > > than any of the minion cards for stopping votes. > > Well, there's the short answer - and I did say it earlier, perhaps > you missed it. The way metagames in my area have gone, I just > abandoned the notion of needing vote defense entirely. It's just not > important enough. I do occasionally lose a game on that basis (or if > I don't, I live off someone esle's vote defense) but often enough > whatever my deck _does_ do is often part of the answer anyway. Bleed > it out, attack it, intercept it, or whatever. > I did miss it - sorry Fred. I went back over the thread after I posted and realized I missed about 5 posts, including the one that you said almost the exact same thing as I did. I do like Vox Domini, although if I were to play the deck in a tournament, I would have to think hard about whether or not to replace it with DI or Vox Senis. Incidentally, I forgot that I had decided a while back to use Confusion of the Eye for vote defense in that deck - Vox Domini is still better, but CotE has that versatility - not sure why I forgot to put it in.

"Atom Weaver" <atomw...@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message news:2ec66199-7f50-499c...@k37g2000hsf.googlegroups.com... > I'm going to try to say this in the most non-inflammatory way I can > think of. Please forgive me if that fails. Have you considered the > possibility that maybe "there isn't too much opportunity for > that" (VTES in Phoenix) and "I would never refrain from playing a deck > in casual play out of a fear that it was too good" might be related > phenomena..? Yep. I certainly have had that thought. I have no particular evidence that it's true (no one has ever said, "This is frustrating, I'm going home") but, you know, they might feel that way and not say. What would you do, though? I try not to trash beginners with all sorts of fancy plays and fancy cards they've never seen. But eventually, they gotta grow up and face the big peoples' game. And it's not really clear I'm the best player in Phoenix. One of the other guys builds better decks and makes better tactical decisions and lately, he's been winning more games. I'm not prepared to nerf the group's play on an ongoing basis to grow participation - if it would even have that effect. I wouldn't know how to do that and it would turn the activity into something *I* wouldn't want to bother with. It's a fair comment, though. I agree there should be some kind of balance, there. Whether I do a reasonable job with it isn't clear. Fred

"James Coupe" <ja...@zephyr.org.uk> wrote in message news:6ASaI1QA...@gratiano.zephyr.org.uk... > If you want intellectual debate, try it out yourself. Claiming things > which are absurdly, patently false (such as something must turn up > everywhere, even when that's never happened in the history of V:TES) - > not intellectual debate, just blatantly stupid. It's funny how you can scream at someone for not getting your point at the same time as you ignore their's. Fine then - it's just blatantly stupid to suggest that if a card like DI were just more powerful than all the other cards, it would have had a million years to become a problem everywhere else. You're right - it must be absurdly, patently false to suggest that maybe the reason DI is a problem in David Cherryholmes playgroup or in places in Europe BUT NOT at last year's NAC is could be something other the fact that it's too easy to win with. I suppose all those North American qualifiers could be blatantly stupid or maybe I'm just blatantly stupid for thinking a winning tactic would get used more often at continental championship. Who knows? I wish more people posting here were as blatantly stupid as I am so there'd be somebody who'd get the point. > Criticising someone for > making sure the limits of the TWDA are understood - not intellectual > debate, just blatantly stupid. It's like the context of my response has been completely forgotten in the course of Peter's explanations about it. Precisely, Peter was spouting reasons why - despite the apparent lukewarm evidence of a problem in the TWDA - there might be a problem anyway. Sorry I don't feel blatantly stupid that I didn't know he was issuing boilerplate legal disclaimers; it looked like he was making excuses. So fuck me for not being telepathic. Fred

In article <EJCAk.11923$PK....@newsfe04.iad>, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > Sorry I don't > feel blatantly stupid that I didn't know he was issuing boilerplate > legal disclaimers; it looked like he was making excuses. So fuck me > for not being telepathic. Excuses? What was I making excuses for? For the TWDA completely supporting the idea that Direct Intervention shows up a lot in the TWDA? Someone said "why doesn't DI show up in winning decks then?". I pointed out that, in fact, it did. A lot. What was I making excuses for? That it showed up a lot? [ quoted text not captured ]

"Peter D Bakija" <pd...@lightlink.com> wrote in message news:pdb6-EE13C0.2...@nntp.aioe.org... > In article <EJCAk.11923$PK....@newsfe04.iad>, > "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: >> Sorry I don't >> feel blatantly stupid that I didn't know he was issuing boilerplate >> legal disclaimers; it looked like he was making excuses. So fuck me >> for not being telepathic. > > Excuses? What was I making excuses for? For the TWDA completely > supporting the idea that Direct Intervention shows up a lot in the TWDA? Well, I disagree that's what it showed but it's beside the point here. Your words were, "I'd expect to see them a lot in the TWDA, and I do, as they can go in any deck and any deck can use them. But in terms of why they don't show up even more often, possible reasons include..." So you tell me. I'm getting tired of getting slammed for not seeing that your subsequent words were boilerplate disclaimers about the TWDA, as opposed to what they sounded like at time - excuses. I don't disbelieve your sincerity, but when you word it the way you worded it, it sounds like you're making excuses. Fred

In article <9bDAk.11998$PK....@newsfe04.iad>, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > Well, I disagree that's what it showed but it's beside the point here. > Your words were, "I'd expect to see them a lot in the TWDA, and I do, as > they can go in any deck and any deck can use them. But in terms of why > they don't show up even more often, possible reasons include..." That seems pretty straight forward to me. They show up a lot. They might show up more, but for various reasons, all of which are flaws in using the TWDA as a data source for anything. > So you tell me. I'm getting tired of getting slammed for not seeing that > your subsequent words were boilerplate disclaimers about the TWDA, as > opposed to what they sounded like at time - excuses. Again, excuses for what? The TWDA shows that DI shows up a lot. I was pointing out that DI shows up in the TWDA a lot. And lo and behold, it does. If the I went to the TWDA to see if it showed up a lot, and it didn't, and then I was all like "but really, it should have more of them because of XY and Z", I could see someone reading that as an excuse for the failure of the TWDA to support the point I wanted it to. But it was *already* supporting the point I wanted it to (that the TWDA shows that DI shows up a lot. Which it does.) Why would I be making excuses for something? [ quoted text not captured ]

On Sep 18, 11:12 am, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > If it's a fun > problem (like I suspect is ultimately Darby's real problem with the card > and quite possibly a lot of other peoples' problem as well), then let's > dispose of the "too-powerful/too-flexible" arguments and get to the point. Fred, please do not take comments that I make in response to 1 question (Why no DI in casual games) and extrapolate it to support your contentions about the generalized power of the card. IMO, DI is not fun, not thematically appropriate, and overpowered - all at the same time. You mentioned something about "thinking on your (ones') feet" in a previous thread. The better you can do this, and think out of the box, the more important DI becomes. For instance, do you think that Ben Peal would have survived in the NAC 2007 if he had not cross-table DIed one of Ira Fay's 2nd Trads on Matt Wedge's Una. Ben's play was masterful - it maintained a rush predator on HIS predator (Kevin Mergen's !Malk) - eventually clearing that entire playspace and removing almost all pool pressure for....wait for it....THE REMAINDER OF THE GAME.....with ONE card. Yes, I remember and rehash a spectacular play....which I acknowledge is a tendency. We remember big events. But in the end, DI makes possible things like a cross-table-reach-and-cancel that the Daughters of Cough-cough-and-sneeze never would achieve in ANY other way. THAT'S why I continue to believe it is both overpowered and inappropriate.

"Peter D Bakija" <pd...@lightlink.com> wrote in message news:pdb6-129ED7.2...@nntp.aioe.org... > In article <9bDAk.11998$PK....@newsfe04.iad>, > "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: >> So you tell me. I'm getting tired of getting slammed for not seeing that >> your subsequent words were boilerplate disclaimers about the TWDA, as >> opposed to what they sounded like at time - excuses. > > Again, excuses for what? I don't know, Peter. They were YOUR words. I'm just saying when you word something like that ("But in terms of why they don't show up even more often..."), it doesn't sound like a neutralish caution against taking too much from the TWDA. It sounds like you're trying to you're trying to pad your case. I normally don't like to argue about what someone meant vs. what they sounded like 18 posts ago. But here, I guess I have to so James can go find someone who gives a shit. Fred

"Darby Keeney" <darby....@gmail.com> wrote in message news:05b3e4e7-9c4e-4a03...@59g2000hsb.googlegroups.com... On Sep 18, 11:12 am, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > > If it's a fun > > problem (like I suspect is ultimately Darby's real problem with the card > > and quite possibly a lot of other peoples' problem as well), then let's > > dispose of the "too-powerful/too-flexible" arguments and get to the point. > > Fred, please do not take comments that I make in response to 1 > question (Why no DI in casual games) and extrapolate it to support > your contentions about the generalized power of the card. I didn't use it to support anything. I just that's my suspicion. I can't have my own view of what's really going on here. I acknowledge the dispute we have about power. > IMO, DI is not fun, not thematically appropriate, and overpowered - > all at the same time. You mentioned something about "thinking on your > (ones') feet" in a previous thread. The better you can do this, and > think out of the box, the more important DI becomes. Fair enough. > For instance, do you think that Ben Peal would have survived in the > NAC 2007 if he had not cross-table DIed one of Ira Fay's 2nd Trads on > Matt Wedge's Una. Ben's play was masterful - it maintained a rush > predator on HIS predator (Kevin Mergen's !Malk) - eventually clearing > that entire playspace and removing almost all pool pressure > for....wait for it....THE REMAINDER OF THE GAME.....with ONE card. Honestly, I wasn't able to see the whole game because I left soon after he made that play. I do think you may be reading too much into the one play. A lot of other factors were at work at that moment and looked like they could affect the game from there. (But you have me at a disadvantage.) > Yes, I remember and rehash a spectacular play....which I acknowledge > is a tendency. We remember big events. But in the end, DI makes > possible things like a cross-table-reach-and-cancel that the Daughters > of Cough-cough-and-sneeze never would achieve in ANY other way. > THAT'S why I continue to believe it is both overpowered and > inappropriate. That's just it. The fact that such a thing should not be possible isn't proved from the evidence you just gave. The fact that you believe it does tells me something about you - which is where I get those suspicions. Doesn't make me right about DI; I'm just explaining why I would say what you quoted at top. Fred

> I think it is only "not quite useful" due to the existence of DI. > 'Cause DI can do the exact same thing (make a vote fail) and is still > wildly more effective. I'd think that if DI were only "once per player > per game", Vox Domini would show up more. I could be wrong. I don't know if once per game is a fair thing to do to such a useful card. Ideally, the card is used in clutch situations that can really turn the tide of the game. Such situations shouldn't occur all the time. So what if there was an system of diminishing returns, something like "cost = 1 +x where x is the number of Direct Interventions in every Methuselah's ashheap." The first one is free, but if you are sitting at a table with a bunch of Methuselah's who thing that the best way to master the Jyhad is to do their own dirty work then it gets really painful, really quick. Commments Welcome, Norman S. Brown, Jr XZealot Archon of the Swamp

On Sep 18, 7:58 pm, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > That's just it. The fact that such a thing should not be possible isn't > proved from the evidence you just gave. The fact that you believe it > does tells me something about you - which is where I get those suspicions. > Doesn't make me right about DI; I'm just explaining why I would say what > you quoted at top. "Prove not just the the non-existance of a thing, not also that it SHOULD not exist and until then I'll agree" Right. At this point, we may as well talk religion.

> For instance, do you think that Ben Peal would have survived in the > NAC 2007 if he had not cross-table DIed one of Ira Fay's 2nd Trads on > Matt Wedge's Una. Ben's play was masterful - it maintained a rush > predator on HIS predator (Kevin Mergen's !Malk) - eventually clearing > that entire playspace and removing almost all pool pressure > for....wait for it....THE REMAINDER OF THE GAME.....with ONE card. Ah the NAC, it's all so clear to me now. I could ramble on and on.

"Darby Keeney" <darby....@gmail.com> wrote in message news:046b1c8c-ffc7-4cd6...@25g2000hsx.googlegroups.com... [ quoted text not captured ] Look, I don't know how you got that gibberish from what I wrote. I was just saying that nothing you've written or touched on justifies the conclusion that DI should not make possible a cross-table-reach- and-cancel (as you called it) or that such a play was inappropriate or overpowered in any way. And if your method of proof continues to be anecdotal, we already ARE talking religion. Fred

In message <jsDAk.12045$PK....@newsfe04.iad>, Frederick Scott <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> writes: >"Peter D Bakija" <pd...@lightlink.com> wrote in message news:pdb6-129ED7.2...@nntp.aioe.org... >> In article <9bDAk.11998$PK....@newsfe04.iad>, >> "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: >>> So you tell me. I'm getting tired of getting slammed for not seeing that >>> your subsequent words were boilerplate disclaimers about the TWDA, as >>> opposed to what they sounded like at time - excuses. >> >> Again, excuses for what? > >I don't know, Peter. They were YOUR words. I'm just saying when you >word something like that ("But in terms of why they don't show up even >more often..."), it doesn't sound like a neutralish caution against >taking too much from the TWDA. He's not making excuses. He's pointing out that the TWDA is flawed, and if you were looking at an objective source of the most powerful decks EVER, things might be different. The TWDA is not such a source (which is mostly impossible to get hold of). Those aren't excuses. They're explanations of the limits of the TWDA. I'm not sure which part of this you can't get. TWDA not perfect. Peter: He say TWDA not perfect. Peter: He think: "What might happen if Ceiling Cat make perfect world?" Peter: He might be wrong because he is thinking not just looking, but he not making excuse. A variety of people clearly don't play DI for a variety of reasons: - it hasn't been reprinted recently (so it's harder for newbies to have) - it isn't a card some people like at all because they really feel ick about playing it (so they don't put it in their decks) - it's often not used in casual play by some of those players (which can have knock-on effects to deck-building for competitive play) - some players make a strategic decision against it (e.g. they'd rather have a Temptation of Greater Power and a Minion Tap, not 2 DI). On top of that, you'll have people who are playing DI regularly in playgroups and who don't see it as a problem. This is *EXACTLY* like pretty much every other significant card in V:TES ever. Tomb of Rameses III, Return to Innocence, Thoughts Betrayed... all of these had some people choosing to play them, and some people choosing not to play them because they just thought they were wildly inappropriate, and some people playing them and not seeing any problem at all. Monocle of Clarity was used in plenty of places without people trying to enforce a circular question about a question. During every PTO discussion ever, there were howls of people saying you shouldn't change it, and other people just choosing not to play it because they don't like it. These cards wouldn't, therefore, necessarily turn up in Tournament Winning Decks in line strictly with their power/utility/cost ratio, because some players intentionally don't use them - sometimes *because* they think they're wildly inappropriately broken, and they think using them in a deck would make them an overly competitive dick when they want everyone in a playgroup or tournament to have fun. This might happen especially if the tournament isn't anything too important (like a big qualifier) - perhaps just the bimonthly meet at a local store with a dozen people. One of the situations that occurs reasonably often is a card (or a small combination of cards) is decried as too powerful. It's usually pointed out that a seriously useful way to demonstrate this is to take it to a reasonably sized tournament and do significant damage with it - repeatedly if possible. Now, clearly, sometimes people won't be able to do this because the card or combo they're decrying isn't wildly powerful, inappropriate, or table destroying. But sometimes they don't want to do it because it involves them trying to cause significant shit for people at a tournament, and they don't really want to ruin it for everyone else. So they don't play it. So there's no chance of them winning with it. So it doesn't turn up in the TWDA. So the TWDA isn't perfect. So if they'd chosen to play the deck they thought was outright strongest for them, it might well have been that deck. So the TWDA might then get a copy of it. Hence, the TWDA is not a perfect data source for this kind of discussion. Peter is *not making excuses*. You're imagining that, for no obvious reason. He is *speculating* about whether DI could or could not turn up in the TWDA even more often, and whether people might not be playing it for some reason or other. [ quoted text not captured ]

"James Coupe" <ja...@zephyr.org.uk> wrote in message news:xut4zOe$I00IFw$M...@gratiano.zephyr.org.uk... > In message <jsDAk.12045$PK....@newsfe04.iad>, Frederick Scott > <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> writes: >>"Peter D Bakija" <pd...@lightlink.com> wrote in message news:pdb6-129ED7.2...@nntp.aioe.org... >>> In article <9bDAk.11998$PK....@newsfe04.iad>, >>> "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: >>>> So you tell me. I'm getting tired of getting slammed for not seeing that >>>> your subsequent words were boilerplate disclaimers about the TWDA, as >>>> opposed to what they sounded like at time - excuses. >>> >>> Again, excuses for what? >> >>I don't know, Peter. They were YOUR words. I'm just saying when you >>word something like that ("But in terms of why they don't show up even >>more often..."), it doesn't sound like a neutralish caution against >>taking too much from the TWDA. > > He's not making excuses. He's pointing out that the TWDA is flawed, and > if you were looking at an objective source of the most powerful decks > EVER, things might be different. The TWDA is not such a source (which > is mostly impossible to get hold of). > > Those aren't excuses. They're explanations of the limits of the TWDA. > > I'm not sure which part of this you can't get.\ > > TWDA not perfect. Peter: He say TWDA not perfect. I can't get the part where you can't read English. ONE MORE TIME I WILL REPEAT - he preferenced his remarks with "But in terms of why they don't show up even more often...". THEN proceeded to talk specifically about specific reasons why people might specifically not play DIs in tournaments. If you will look at the post that inspired this, you will see he did *NOT* talk about, "Oh, the TWDA is always flawed so everybody should be careful...yadda, yadda, yadda." He was making a case why the TWDA would specifically underrepresent Direct Interventions. I will repeat, normally I don't like to argue about what happened in a prior post and how we got here. Normally, if a guy wants to change his story about why he was writing what he was writing after the fact, I don't give him a bunch of shit about it and - to be precise - I don't want flame him for it now. But YOU'RE being a big total jerk about it AND you're completely wrong about it and the intersection of the two effects is a tad too much to take so you can go take a flying leap. I'm sorry I sounded a bit undiplomatic when I responed with "Oh, Please!!!" and all, but if you go look, the gist of the response - if not the tone - was a fair thing at the time. > This is *EXACTLY* like pretty much every other significant card in V:TES > ever. Tomb of Rameses III, Return to Innocence, Thoughts Betrayed... > all of these had some people choosing to play them, and some people > choosing not to play them because they just thought they were wildly > inappropriate, and some people playing them and not seeing any problem > at all. In this sense, I'm sure you're right. But I've never disputed why there might be reasons players won't choose to play overpowered cards in tournaments. You don't have to keep repeating it. > These cards wouldn't, therefore, necessarily turn up in Tournament > Winning Decks in line strictly with their power/utility/cost ratio, > because some players intentionally don't use them - sometimes *because* > they think they're wildly inappropriately broken, and they think using > them in a deck would make them an overly competitive dick when they want > everyone in a playgroup or tournament to have fun. Now, I think you're taking the point too far. If you're trying to say the TWDA might not give us the full measure of just how broken the good players in the game think a broken card is, that's fine. If you're trying to say the TWDA might not give us any indication at all that a card is over-powered, I can't agree - that's tantamount to saying players are so politically correct they're not really trying to win at all for fear of being considered a dick and thus we have no systematic way of ever telling if a card should ever be considered broken. Fuck me for thinking that if the card is really as bad as Kevin is screaming about or as Darby insists it is or some of those other guys, there'd an objective way to tell from actual observed player behavior. But I guess that's one of those concepts you consider blatantly stupid, too. Fred

On Sep 18, 9:42 pm, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > I don't know, Peter. They were YOUR words. I'm just saying when you > word something like that ("But in terms of why they don't show up even > more often..."), it doesn't sound like a neutralish caution against > taking too much from the TWDA. The TWDA was already supporting my point. I didn't need it to support my point more by convincing folks that it wasn't showing up enough. 'Cause it was already showing up plenty. The comment I made had two functions, both of which I have discussed in this thread: A) The TWDA is a faulty source of data. B) Direct Intervention is a card that people don't use on a regular basis due to irrational reasons (i.e. it is a dick card). More so than most other cards--i.e. I would not expect that many people specifically don't use, say, Deflection or Kine Resources Contested or Blood Doll out of principal much. Direct Intervention? A lot of folks (apparently, based on the discussion here) shy away from the card not 'cause it isn't good (which is why, say, Gird Minions doesn't see much play), but 'cause of social engineering or irrational dislike or not wanting to piss off your friends (which are reasons that multiple people have indicated not using DI on a regular basis). This specific point about Direct Intervention says a lot about Direct intervention, not the TWDA. > It sounds like you're trying to you're trying to pad your case. I realize that is how you were reading it. But if you think about it for a second, again, why would I possibly be trying to pad my case, when my case was already made? -Peter

"Peter D Bakija" <pd...@lightlink.com> wrote in messagenews:b385f0e5-950d-419b...@34g2000hsh.googlegroups.com... > > It sounds like you're trying to you're trying to pad your case. > > I realize that is how you were reading it. But if you think about it > for a second, again, why would I possibly be trying to pad my case, > when my case was already made? Again, I don't know. That is not the point, for about the 80th time. I don't see any reason to continue disputing that because even though I don't agree with you, we can't get anywhere in such a dispute. I was just making the case for the benefit of whoever might be confused about it, that when you word things to sound like you're trying to pad your case, people will believe that's what you are trying to do. And respond accordingly. And that such a response is not unreasonable. If you're trying to say that the wording you used at the time shouldn't have suggested to me that you were making an argument about DI, then you're not going to get any traction there either as your post speaks for itself. Fred

On Sep 19, 11:43 am, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > Again, I don't know. That is not the point, for about the 80th time. And yet you keep trying to point out that I was trying to pad my case. Which makes no sense. As there was no case to pad. > I don't see any reason to continue disputing that because even though > I don't agree with you, we can't get anywhere in such a dispute. And yet here we are. > I was just making the case for the benefit of whoever might be confused > about it, that when you word things to sound like you're trying to pad > your case, people will believe that's what you are trying to do. If there was a case to pad, ok. But my case was "DI shows up in the TWDA a lot". And the TWDA indicated that DI shows up a lot. There is no reason for me to try and prop up a case when the case stands on its own. I was certainly making a point about DI in and of itself (that being that unlike many other cards, many folks specifically don't use DI on principal, or something). And pointing out that the TWDA isn't a great source of data. But I don't know that any of that could be called "propping up my case". > If you're trying to say that the wording you used at the time shouldn't > have suggested to me that you were making an argument about DI, There was certainly an argument being made about DI (people don't use it all the time on principal or something). But that is a comment about DI, not a comment about it's appearance in the TWDA. -Peter

On Sep 16, 8:39 pm, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > Oh, please!!! For crying out loud, the reason we use TWDA in the first > place to check a card for overpower is just exactly that we expect people > to use their best decks. If people aren't doing that, we have nothing. > Your suggestion that a powerful card might *NOT* show up in TWDA because > folks are embarrassed to be seen using it because (in turn) it's too powerful > fails the test of Occam's Razor. Let's please dispose of it on that basis! Um..... Fred? I don't use DI's in tournament decks, because I hate it. I won't extrapolate beyond that, but in at least one case it's a fact. -- David Cherryholmes

On Sep 17, 1:08 pm, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > If we accepted David Cherryholmes's group as the > norm and that was happening everywhere, then we could have a problem. *Former* group. Those guys moved on to playing Hold'em so they could use their cutthroat skills to gank dollars from frat boys. My group these days is much more casual and "fun" oriented. -- David Cherryholmes

On Sep 17, 1:45 pm, Chris Berger <ark...@ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote: > As far as DI - yeah, it's a dramatic play a lot of the time, and it > sucks when your lynch-pin card gets cancelled, but whatever. If you > don't have another playable substitute for the card that was > cancelled, you live with it. More than a 3 pool swing is highly > unlikely. That's the wrong way to think about it. It's likely to make a 1 *turn* swing, possibly more. Turns are huge. -- David Cherryholmes

[ quoted text not captured ] Losing one card is likely to negate my entire turn? How? That seems highly unlikely. Maybe if I had a Psychic Veil that I really needed to get through in order to do anything else? But a deck whose entire *turns* depend on the play of a single card seems to be either very poorly built, or very unlucky at that particular moment to have not drawn a second copy of the same card.

[ quoted text not captured ] I won a tournament or, really more accurately, my prey lost a tournament because my predator DIed a Bonding crosstable to prevent a second oust. Stop an oust, change a game.

[ quoted text not captured ] I am the same way. I don't use DI's because I don't like the card. Comments Welcome, [ quoted text not captured ]

On Sep 12, 8:51 pm, "Kevin M." <youw...@imaspammer.org> wrote: > > What Direct Intervention does is bad and wrong, as it stops people from > being able to play the game. > > > Direct Intervention is a silver bullet, and we all know it. Why is it > still part of this game?? > It is far far worse than any silver bullet, as its designed to stop any one thing, rather than just one thing as most silver bullets are. Im glad to finally see this discussion. I have always *hated* DI,and to a certain degree SR/Wash. They are all horrible blanket-denial cards that are good for the game, DI just happens to be the worst of them (there is no way stop some master cards for instance). Yes, ban DI. And reduce opp cost for SR/Wash to once per game or once per player. T

On Sep 22, 9:11 am, Chris Berger <ark...@ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote: > Losing one card is likely to negate my entire turn? How? That seems > highly unlikely. Maybe if I had a Psychic Veil that I really needed > to get through in order to do anything else? I imagine that's a reference to preparing to lunge for an oust and having one component stopped as opposed to negating per se. Failed lunges usually end badly so the turn that went to lunge gets stopped by a DI (how many times do players manage exactly someones last X pool) is negated and possibly subsequent turns if your prey gets cross table help, turtles up etc... etc...

"XZealot" <xze...@cox.net> wrote in message news:5237b723-17b8-442d...@m45g2000hsb.googlegroups.com... [ quoted text not captured ] I hear that. Memories get blurred about details but there have been plenty of times in my CCG-playing when I wouldn't choose a standard card, tactic, strategy, or deck archetype essentially because I saw it all too often or it bored the hell out of me for other reasons. I wasn't trying to tell Peter it didn't happen; David cut too much quoted text. But at this point it's better I should just say, "Fine - I agree", and just leave it at that. Fred

<sul...@aol.com> wrote in message news:92d7dabb-e10a-4c52...@c22g2000prc.googlegroups.com... > I won a tournament or, really more accurately, my prey lost a > tournament because my predator DIed a Bonding crosstable to prevent a > second oust. > > Stop an oust, change a game. Well, sure. And the cards which one might DI in the first place can also be the critical single cards causing or denying an oust. The extra stealth, intercept, bleed card, and even bleed reducing card, like Telepathic Counter. If single cards can cause or prevent ousts, obviously single-card-canceling cards can do so as well. (No one can doubt this; you can save your keystrokes.) And they can also prove a pointless waste of a pool and an MPA- the DIed Bonding replaced by the Conditioning, etc. This can go on and on. How pointless is arguing about this by means of anecdote? Or worse, conjectured anecdote. Fred

On Sep 22, 3:32 am, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > If single cards can cause or prevent ousts, obviously > single-card-canceling cards can do so as well. (No one can doubt this; you > can save your keystrokes.) And they can also prove a pointless waste of a > pool and an MPA- the DIed Bonding replaced by the Conditioning, etc. But not by another Bonding. And if they were playing bonding in the first place it means they probably needed the stealth. Which they now don't have, and so can't oust, and so perhaps die. This is the point. > This can go on and on. How pointless is arguing about this by means of > anecdote? Or worse, conjectured anecdote. It's just how the card actually plays out most of the time, and the reason people put them in their decks. If you happen to see it on turn 3.... great. You can probably do something useful with it anyway. On turns 9+, it's a game-changer. I guess you've heard all this before and weren't persuaded. IMO what you need is simply more exposure. If you saw the card more you'd understand, instead of seeing it as an opportunity for semantic gymnastics. -- David Cherryholmes

On Sep 21, 5:11 pm, Chris Berger <ark...@ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote: > Losing one card is likely to negate my entire turn? How? Because it's wrong to assume the target has some immediate replacement for whatever it is you just nuked. That guy getting his Garous fizzled lost *time*, not pool, not some special prayer resource in his deck. It just took him a little while longer to get to the next Garous and by then more defenses were in place than otherwise would be. Nuking the Bonding (and, no, it is wrong outside of anything but an idealized thought experiment to just blithely assume they'll have something as good to play in its place) costs you an *oust*. How many times have you gone for it, gotten the six pool, and that is the only way you survived your predator, and often went on to take the table based on that momentum? It happens. All. The. Time. Frankly I'm amazed that anybody who's actually seen the card in play at tournaments disputes this. I'm not jumping on you, but on DI-deniers generally. -- David Cherryholmes

On Sep 22, 8:53 am, bluedevil <david.cherryhol...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Sep 21, 5:11 pm, Chris Berger <ark...@ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote: > > > Losing one card is likely to negate my entire turn? How? > > Because it's wrong to assume the target has some immediate replacement > for whatever it is you just nuked. That guy getting his Garous > fizzled lost *time*, not pool, not some special prayer resource in his > deck. > And having it blocked wouldn't have lost him the same amount of time? First, as far as I can tell, it took 2 DI's to make him lose a "turn", which is actually not even true if he had anything else to do... like a cheap bleed if you're so sure that he couldn't possibly have been blocked without a DI. If a single DI makes you lose an entire *turn*, then you must want to ban Legwork too because that 2 cap with no animalism or auspex that you were sure couldn't get any intercept can pay just 1 blood to make you lose your entire turn! Oh, and I bet you really, really hate Special Report. DI makes you lose a card. That swing could be a few pool this way or that, or an action that you didn't think would be blocked otherwise. But it doesn't make you lose a turn except in exceedingly rare and contrived situations. > Nuking the Bonding (and, no, it is wrong outside of anything but > an idealized thought experiment to just blithely assume they'll have > something as good to play in its place) costs you an *oust*. > And it's wrong to assume that they *won't* have anything good to play instead. You remember and get pissed off when you don't have a backup plan, but for every time you get DI'd and don't have another +bleed in hand, there's another time when your Bonding doesn't get DI'd even though you have a Threats to back it up with. If DI'ing a Bonding costs an oust in a particular situation, then so too would a Telepathic Counter, a Wake and some intercept, a bounce, a cross-table Folderol or the chimerstry card (Ignis Fatuus? I forget...) that reduces a bleed against any methuselah by 1. So would a Life Boon, a Major Boon, an Eagle's Sight.... etc... These cards all have considerably lower costs than a DI and in most cases would have been *better* as they negate the possibility of just playing another card for +bleed. I won't even mention the minion cards that cancel card plays. > How many > times have you gone for it, gotten the six pool, and that is the only > way you survived your predator, and often went on to take the table > based on that momentum? It happens. All. The. Time. Frankly I'm > amazed that anybody who's actually seen the card in play at > tournaments disputes this. I'm not jumping on you, but on DI-deniers > generally. > And how many times have I gone for it, got blocked or bounced when I thought he was out of wakes, or a Telepathic Counter just barely saves him, or a cross-table Boon or Eagle's Sight, etc., etc., etc... When you lunge, you risk the possibility that you might not make it. If you don't oust your prey on a lunge, you pretty much lose. This has nothing to do with DI. It happens. All. The. Time. With DI or without it. The only differences between DI and the other means of countering what you're trying to do are a) the cost - DI costs way more than pretty much any other means of defense, a pool is one thing, but playing a MooT is a pretty high cost on its own; and b) the versatility. I admit it's a lot easier to cancel a bleed card, some stealth, a block- fails, a voter cap, an action occasionally... with one card than to try and include the counters for each one separately. But that's why you have to pay more for it. Personally, considering the strength of master cards compared to minion cards and the fact that I only get 1 MPA by default, I'm way more upset when I get Sudden Reversaled than when I get a card DI'd. And SR doesn't even cost a pool.

On Sep 22, 11:09 am, Chris Berger <ark...@ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote: > And having it blocked wouldn't have lost him the same amount of time? In that case, to stick with that case from start to finish, they wouldn't have been blocked because his deck was faster. Weenie Auspex probably would have just blocked it anyway, agreed, but that wasn't the case in that game. > First, as far as I can tell, it took 2 DI's to make him lose a "turn", > which is actually not even true if he had anything else to do... like > a cheap bleed if you're so sure that he couldn't possibly have been > blocked without a DI. It was a Garou, designed to get Garou out and take people apart. Going from "I've got 2 Garou" to "I hope I draw a Garou soon" is a pretty big difference, and a plink bleed for one is not going to make up for it. > If a single DI makes you lose an entire *turn*, Sometimes it does. Often it does, when played well. > then you must want to ban Legwork too because that 2 cap with no > animalism or auspex that you were sure couldn't get any intercept can > pay just 1 blood to make you lose your entire turn! Oh, and I bet you > really, really hate Special Report. DI makes you lose a card. That > swing could be a few pool this way or that, or an action that you > didn't think would be blocked otherwise. But it doesn't make you lose > a turn except in exceedingly rare and contrived situations. Those cards are not DI, they do not have the properties of DI. I'm not suggesting that Temporis or the new Anarch Thingy or that vampire with the burn five blood thing get removed, because they are all balanced in their own way. DI was designed by crackheads, and it makes for a crackheady game, IMO. > And it's wrong to assume that they *won't* have anything good to play > instead. You remember and get pissed off when you don't have a backup > plan, but for every time you get DI'd and don't have another +bleed in > hand, there's another time when your Bonding doesn't get DI'd even > though you have a Threats to back it up with. Well, if we're talking about my personal burns, I don't get bleed cards DI'd. I get Freak Drives burned. By guys playing weenie Dominate. And in that case clearly it is a turn, often many minion actions. But I wasn't really trying to make it about me. Look, I can't recount every tournament round I've ever seen and every play of DI I've seen. Sure, the spectacular ones stand out, but part of my premise is that it is *usually* spectacular, rather than "ho hum, I'll play this instead." I'm really arguing from experience here, not theory. YMMV. -- David Cherryholmes

"bluedevil" <david.che...@gmail.com> wrote in message news:498277bd-5e9f-46c0...@d45g2000hsc.googlegroups.com... On Sep 22, 3:32 am, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > > This can go on and on. How pointless is arguing about this by means of > > anecdote? Or worse, conjectured anecdote. > > It's just how the card actually plays out most of the time, and the > reason people put them in their decks. How do you know that? Have you done a quantified study? Or is it just that you particularly remember the incidents where it plays out that way? Would you even know how long people wait with the card in hand to make a play like this? Would you notice when players discard DIs because they drew multiples or they just don't want the card in hand at that moment for whatever reason? (These last two sentences highlight why the cost of playing a DI may well justify even the sensationally good results, when they're obtained.) This is the trouble I have with anecdotal arguments like this. Especially when I don't personally experience the same thing. (Or even if I had, that would still prove nothing because many others may not have.) > I guess you've heard all this before and weren't persuaded. True, but beside the point. Where you quoted me above, I wasn't talking about disagreeing with the original premise as much as how the original premise might be proved or disproved. People will tend to be persuaded about whatever they've experienced but, also for some people, what they want to believe about the card. Some people, I believe, are more annoyed by how the card works than whether it's balanced or not. I can't prove that, either, but the point is that there needs to be some form of objective observations about the card's popularity and strength of its benefits or else you're down to fun-ness argument. Make no mistake, a fun-ness argument might be sufficient if it bothers enough people to outweigh the value of having it in the game and the PITA caused by removing it from the game. But if that's the argument, then call it a fun-ness argument and let's go from there. I'm sick and tired of people just blatantly asserting that it's overpowered without offering any kind of objective proof. > IMO what you need is simply more > exposure. If you saw the card more you'd understand, instead of > seeing it as an opportunity for semantic gymnastics. Semantic gymnastics would suggest I'm playing with word definitions to avoid the truth. You're certainly welcome to clear up whatever semantic issues you have in order to reduce our issues to well-understood ones. But I don't think I've engaged in any such thing. The lack of objective proof is essence of my problem. Is that clear enough for you? Fred

On Sep 22, 2:25 pm, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > > Make no mistake, a fun-ness argument might be sufficient if it bothers > enough people to outweigh the value of having it in the game and the PITA > caused by removing it from the game. But if that's the argument, then > call it a fun-ness argument and let's go from there. I'm sick and tired > of people just blatantly asserting that it's overpowered without offering > any kind of objective proof. > Well, no offense Fred, since I pretty much agree with you (though I wouldn't care much if DI were made 1 per game per methuselah - I just don't think it's ban material, nor is it likely to go 1 per game either, IMHO), but proof isn't really possible. Aside from something like the canonical broken master card "oust your prey", it's not really possible to prove anything is broken a priori. Even something like "10 pool - Your prey loses 10 pool", though we could agree that it would be broken, couldn't really be proven as broken, outside of anecdotal evidence in play if it were ever printed. You can't even really argue a proof based on being better than another card. Something like a master card that said "Gain 1 pool. You may, if you wish, choose one of your predator's or prey's vampires to gain 1 blood" would be strictly better than Ascendance, but the added effect is so unlikely to be useful that there's no way it could be considered broken. There's no proof to be had. Direct Intervention *could be* broken and there wouldn't be concrete proof, because what would you really consider proof? Showing up in a lot of tournament winning decks? I can say that DI probably shows up in a lot more tournament decks than PTO ever did, and probably as many as Return to Innocence (though I'm not sure any good records were kept of a time when RtI was tournament legal), but that's not really proof either.

On 22 syys, 22:25, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: >The lack of objective proof >is essence of my problem. Would you say that banning a card requires objective evidence of it's brokennes as a justification? Sounds impractical.

On Sep 22, 3:25 pm, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > How do you know that? Have you done a quantified study? Or is it just > that you particularly remember the incidents where it plays out that way? Look, I consider myself a bit of a logic nut, too, so I understand what you are trying to say. But I have not done a quantified study, I doubt a quantified study is possible, and I'd say quantified studies are not the only way something can be known, even if it is the best way. What I do have is a big pile of years playing this game, as do you. I happen to have spent some of that time in a pocket universe with DI Nuts, which you have not. I guess we've both been to plenty of tournaments so maybe it's a wash, but some of my opinion is based on that, too. You can call me subjectively biased and I guess I can't refute it, but I stand firmly behind my belief that the card causes enormous swings in the game state. My other belief is that plenty of players know this, which is why you saw it show up in something like 75% of the decks Peter surveyed. > Would you even know how long people wait with the card in hand to make a > play like this? You seem to be implying that if you can't play all seven cards in your hand at will, whenever you like, that you are at a disadvantage. I'd say that is not proven, either. Maybe I'm a bad player, but in just about any of my decks in just about every game, I'm holding cards that I can't play yet, but that I plan to play to good effect later. There is a middle ground between "jammed" and "spooge at will." I call this middle ground "a usual game of V:TES." So the fact that you might hold a DI for a bit, waiting to skull crush somebody's game, perhaps across table, is to me no great thing. > Would you notice when players discard DIs because they > drew multiples or they just don't want the card in hand at that moment for > whatever reason? Well, by the same premise that you will selectively remember the spectacular plays and forget the mediocre ones, I'd say that I'm very likely to remember the times I see somebody discard a DI. It almost never happens. When it does happen it's usually because somebody knows with almost certainty that they've got the game won anyway and they don't care what anybody else might play. > Some people, I believe, are more annoyed > by how the card works than whether it's balanced or not. I can't prove > that, either, but the point is that there needs to be some form of > objective observations about the card's popularity and strength of its > benefits or else you're down to fun-ness argument. You're never persuaded that a card is overpowered, as far as I can recall. I think Chris addressed this adequately, so I'll let it go. I'll just say that it's both un-fun and too powerful. Years ago I had a tight little list of 5 cards that needed to be banned: the seat switchers, PTO, Memories of Mortality, and DI. At the time I acknowledged that, as long as the other cards were in the game, there was an argument for leaving DI in there, since it was in many cases the only feasible defense. Well, looky looky.... they're all gone. I think it's time for DI to go, too. -- David Cherryholmes

On Sep 22, 3:20 pm, bluedevil <david.cherryhol...@gmail.com> wrote: > > You seem to be implying that if you can't play all seven cards in your > hand at will, whenever you like, that you are at a disadvantage. > See, that's the point I am trying to make. Your implication seems to be that if you can't play all seven cards in your hand at will to full effect, your entire turn is ruined. In certain outlying instances this is true. In most cases, DI causes a swing not unlike any other reasonably powerful card. DI can cause a swing of 3 pool and determine or prevent an oust, well so can Conditioning and Deflection. DI just costs more. Putting DI in a deck, to me, is like putting in a card that could be any one of a number of reaction or prevention cards, but instead of playing with one of those cards, you go for flexibility at a much increased cost. When I build a deck, DI only goes in if there is a specific reason I need it (like DI'ing Elder Intervention in a No Secrets deck, or DI'ing bleed mods or bounce in a deck that has no real bleed defense and doesn't think that Archon Investigation is defensive enough) - I would use it for other things in those decks, the flexibility is nice, but just flexibility isn't worth it to me without a specific goal. To me, it sounds like your other group played DI's like crazy not because they made their decks win, but because they didn't have a firm grasp on what they wanted to cancel and so just went for the shotgun blast. It may not be overpowered in that it makes people win all the time, but it does sound like not a lot of fun. Unfortunately, there are a lot of cards in the game that won't make you win but will make life hell for your opponents. They can't all be banned. Granted, I wouldn't be upset with DI getting a reprint to "once per game per methuselah", but I doubt it will happen.

"Chris Berger" <ark...@ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote in message news:c0cd3dbb-d2e0-4622...@c58g2000hsc.googlegroups.com... > Well, no offense Fred, since I pretty much agree with you (though I > wouldn't care much if DI were made 1 per game per methuselah - I just > don't think it's ban material, nor is it likely to go 1 per game > either, IMHO), but proof isn't really possible. Complete and total proof isn't, no. But I mean, "proof" as in something other than just, "I think this card is too flexible" or "a bunch of people I play with pack several of them in every deck". Something that indicates the card actually _is_ too powerful. > There's no proof to be had. Sure there is. The TWDA gives an indication of which cards are effective by showing which cards tournament winners do and do not use and in what numbers and possibly reveals patterns about their use. Anecdotal evidence _might_ reveal something interesting if the anecdotes were remarkable, especially if taken from remarkable situations like Continental Championships or as demonstrations of card power in particularly challenging situations - just that no one has offered anything that is all that remarkable in this case. I think proof could be found if DI were as broken as people claim. I think the problem is that DI just isn't broken. No card in the game is at that moment. That's why standards of objective evidence appear to be so high as to look impossible. Fred

"bluedevil" <david.che...@gmail.com> wrote in message news:aec72078-3532-4584...@l43g2000hsh.googlegroups.com... On Sep 22, 3:25 pm, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > > How do you know that? Have you done a quantified study? Or is it just > > that you particularly remember the incidents where it plays out that way? > > Look, I consider myself a bit of a logic nut, too, so I understand > what you are trying to say. But I have not done a quantified study, I > doubt a quantified study is possible, and I'd say quantified studies > are not the only way something can be known, even if it is the best > way. > > What I do have is a big pile of years playing this game, as do you. I > happen to have spent some of that time in a pocket universe with DI > Nuts, which you have not. I guess we've both been to plenty of > tournaments so maybe it's a wash, but some of my opinion is based on > that, too. You can call me subjectively biased and I guess I can't > refute it, but I stand firmly behind my belief that the card causes > enormous swings in the game state. My other belief is that plenty of > players know this, which is why you saw it show up in something like > 75% of the decks Peter surveyed. Actually, you may very well have more experience than me and be a much better player to boot. But neither of these actually answers the critical question that comes up where subjectivity is the issue. That question is whether your personal standards for what consistitutes an overpowered card are correct or not. There are at least two guys on this board who I _know_ are better players than I am who are swearing DI is overpowered, yet they play in the same Los Angeles tournaments I in which I play and I haven't the faintest idea what they're talking about. It might be that I haven't seen some other element of play in which they engage but I think it's a lot more likely that they see the same games I do and just draw different conclusions. > > Some people, I believe, are more annoyed > > by how the card works than whether it's balanced or not. I can't prove > > that, either, but the point is that there needs to be some form of > > objective observations about the card's popularity and strength of its > > benefits or else you're down to fun-ness argument. > > You're never persuaded that a card is overpowered, as far as I can > recall. That's because very few of them actually are. In fact, of all the cards which have been banned over the years or reduced in power by reprinting/ errata, almost all of them have some other type of problem associated with them besides just power. PTO was definitely a fun-ness problem. Memories of Mortality and Edge Explosion just encouraged too many defensive Hunter decks; neither of these cards are actually overpowered in and of themselves as much as they contributed to a deck archetype which itself isn't exactly overpowered either but is just too difficult for too many vampire decks to oust. While I am assured that reprinted Succubus Club was proved over- powered, I never saw it in action and there was a side problem that it caused too much discussion during game. Seat switchers interfered with the predator-prey relationships in the game. (Not bothering to talk about Madness of the Bard or ante cards...) Of all of the banned cards, only Return to Innocence really qualifies as a flat-out, "This card is too good!" You can add Tomb of Ramses III and Anarch Revolt as cards that were "banned" by being altered enough to effectively ban their old forms. ToR3 was another one, like Return to Innocence, that was just flat out too good. Anarch Revolt is like most of the cards on the banned list; not really overpowered but just causing a particular fun-ness or other kind of problem. You're right that I don't think many of these cards can be considered bannable on pure power arguments. Some of them are definitely suspicious - more suspicious by a long shot than DI - but none of them struck me as over the top when they got banned. Maybe, by way of comparison, if someone could make some argument that DI creates some sort of other problem besides just pure power then I could be persuaded. The potential for cross-table use doesn't do it, though. Lots of cards have pretty potent cross-table effects. The argument that gets my attention are the gaming groups where its use is so ubitiqous that people report massive frustration playing games gets my attention. But I can't get people to talk about or think about why the card is so popular in those groups vs. other places. Saying everyone in the group is corrupted by the card's power isn't going to explain it. Fred

"Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote in message news:Qp9Ck.9421$tp1....@newsfe06.iad... > gets my attention are the gaming groups where its use is so ubitiqous that #&@^! Outlook Express news software! Why does posting software _sometimes_ run a spellchecker and not at other times?!?

On Sep 21, 8:28 pm, talonz <talon...@yahoo.ca> wrote: > They are all horrible blanket-denial > cards that are good for the game, DI just happens to be the worst of > them (there is no way stop some master cards for instance). > Whoops. that should be "*bad* for the game". T

On Sep 23, 11:24 am, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > > I think proof could be found if DI were as broken as people claim. I > think the problem is that DI just isn't broken. No card in the game is at > that moment. > ...except Voter Cap... ;)

On Sep 23, 1:10 pm, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > The argument that > gets my attention are the gaming groups where its use is so ubitiqous that > people report massive frustration playing games gets my attention. But I > can't get people to talk about or think about why the card is so popular > in those groups vs. other places. I don't know why it was more popular around here than in other place, when I was playing with that group. They were all awesome card players, though. Most of them played tournament Magic, and tournament Star Wars, and tournament LotR, and one of them is now playing tournament WoW:CCG. Their idea of fun was "let's break this puppy." I had a very different idea of what fun is, and so often brought a knife to a gun fight. > Saying everyone in the group is corrupted > by the card's power isn't going to explain it. I think they just had a good nose for what was very likely to win, and very few distracting goals. Not sure what else you want to talk about regarding this, but maybe if you asked a more specific question I could answer it. -- David Cherryholmes

On Sep 23, 2:41 pm, bluedevil <david.cherryhol...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Sep 23, 1:10 pm, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > > > The argument that > > gets my attention are the gaming groups where its use is so ubitiqous that > > people report massive frustration playing games gets my attention. But I > > can't get people to talk about or think about why the card is so popular > > in those groups vs. other places. > > I don't know why it was more popular around here than in other place, > when I was playing with that group. They were all awesome card > players, though. Most of them played tournament Magic, and tournament > Star Wars, and tournament LotR, and one of them is now playing > tournament WoW:CCG. Their idea of fun was "let's break this puppy." > I had a very different idea of what fun is, and so often brought a > knife to a gun fight. So, how many tournaments did they win? Any majors? Multiplayer CCGs really aren't suited to people who are into breaking games - too many results created by things out of their control. So, I can see them moving on, one wonders why they ever took the game up in the first place if they were just going to play it like a two- player CCG, but that's irrelevant. But, if you are really into breaking a CCG, then it needs to be done on some sort of stage, the bigger the better. Even someone who dominates local play, I think, has something to prove on a larger stage to justify either superior decktech or superior skill or both. It's suggestive that DI shows up in such a high percentage of TWDs to where it may approach staple level. But, even if you took it as a (one-of) staple card, what of the numerous other staples? Why not call for the weakening of Deflection and Govern, Blood Doll and Minion Tap, WWEF and On the Qui Vive, Majesty, Freak Drive, KRC, et al? What about cards like Heart of Nizchetus, a much, much harder card (therefore, a card better argued as being only limitedly available) that shows up in an impressive percentage of decks (per extrala's blog's stats)? My observation with niche CCGs is that tech doesn't proliferate as much as it should, that there tend to be many and occasionally strong regional biases. So, it's not impossible that someone has found break points in a game that should be obvious to everyone. But, the game's managers are going to care about what is having a widespread impact on the interest in the game. Errata and bannings always tick off somebody and are bad PR, so there has to be enough clear gain to cause someone to take action. My suggestion to anyone who wants to get DI messed with is to play, or find someone to play, in a lot of tournaments LSJ is at with decks full of DIs and see if they can either win disproportionately or screw games up disproportionately.

"bluedevil" <david.che...@gmail.com> wrote in message news:53d94a8b-7f9a-4360...@26g2000hsk.googlegroups.com... On Sep 23, 1:10 pm, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > > The argument that > > gets my attention are the gaming groups where its use is so ubiquitous that > > people report massive frustration playing games gets my attention. But I > > can't get people to talk about or think about why the card is so popular > > in those groups vs. other places. > > I don't know why it was more popular around here than in other place, > when I was playing with that group. They were all awesome card > players, though. Most of them played tournament Magic, and tournament > Star Wars, and tournament LotR, and one of them is now playing > tournament WoW:CCG. Their idea of fun was "let's break this puppy." > I had a very different idea of what fun is, and so often brought a > knife to a gun fight. So that gives me the picture of players who were very talented in many ways - more so than just, "Let's use DI." Is it possible that DI was just part of the picture? Did you suddenly start winning your share when you started packing 3+ DIs per deck? I'm always hard pressed to explain just what it is about the guys in LA that make them better players. All the intercept annoyed the hell out of me and it's taken me a long time to start getting my mind around what it actually meant and how to counter it. (It hasn't helped that they get a lot of play time with other great players - each other - while I go home and get relatively little time with less talented and particularly less experienced players between the various tournament weekends.) Over the years I've often believed this game is too much intercept in part because of my experiences there. But there's a bunch of balance points that it's taken me a lot of time to discover existed, let alone how to choose a good balance. > Not sure what else you want to talk about regarding this, but maybe if > you asked a more specific question I could answer it. Well, I guess it just gets back to what it is you found frustrating about playing against DIs. Some of the points Chris Berger is touching on are kind of my bone of contention as well. Your idea (and Darby's and certainly other people) that VtES comes down to certain key plays that make or break a game or at least generate huge swings in power is probably not unreasonable. It can be an opponent getting a problematic permanent on the board (e.g. No Secrets or Aranthebes), rushing someone, or a big bleed, or the stealth/intercept contests over these, or the bouncing of the bleed or a lot of things. The issue, interpreted in my own words, is the flexibility of DI which makes it that one extra relevant card in the contest which can thereby decide the matter. In the matter of the Garou permanents which started this thread, a player was apparently holding two Garou near the beginning of the game before an opponent could set up his problematic Prince/intercept defense, yet two early DIs canceled them both and thus proved decisive in the game. That a master can be flexible enough to counter any single minion in the game (as long as it isn't the player's turn and as long as the player hasn't already played an OOT since his last turn) seems to be the complaint. (Some people also complain about the availability for cross-table involvement allowed by the card but I believe this is much easier to dismiss given how many cards have an element of that.) I think that different people are estimating the contribution of the DI card differently. It depends on whether you focus on the fact that DI changed the result - when it changes the result - or the fact that it's often just one of many factors, all equally involved in changing the result. Had that guy opened the game with _three_ Garou in hand, it's unlikely we would be having this debate. More likely, had one of his two opponent _not_ been holding a DI card at the time, the Garou player would have gotten his first one out and things would have been much different. So it's not just DIs, it's the Garou cards that mattered. In other examples, an extra stealth or intercept (admittedly having to be a different card than the DIed card) or a different kind of bounce in hand will change a result. DIs allow results to get changed but only under specific circumstances. Yet their costs (like blood spend for a stealth card) always apply whether they change a result or not. So if I've analyzed this right, the question boils down to which is more important, the flexibility of DI or the cost? And how often DI actually makes a difference bears heavily on the perception as well. I think this is where people vary greatly in their perception of the card. As to why it's so frustrating in some environments, I can't say since I haven't had the experience. My speculation is that people remember better what they get frustrated from trying and failing than what they stop others from doing. Or it might be the same frustration I feel trying to play draft tournaments where making plays that advance the game along is much more difficult than in constructed play. Or both. Or something else. I don't know. Fred

On Sep 23, 9:38 pm, sule...@aol.com wrote: > So, how many tournaments did they win? Any majors? I think so, but I never got into any of those games and didn't follow it much. Two of the players are Matt Guinn and Nate Foure, who won just about every V:TES tournament I dragged them to. > Multiplayer CCGs really aren't suited to people who are into breaking > games - too many results created by things out of their control. So, > I can see them moving on, one wonders why they ever took the game up > in the first place if they were just going to play it like a two- > player CCG, but that's irrelevant. I wouldn't say they played it like a two player game. In fact, all these guys were very enthusiastic about deal making, and helped form some of the scorn I feel for the types of players who go on turn 3 "well, *clearly* ho-ha-dodge-parry-thrust will happen, and on turn 11 this player will win," and then start cutting deals based around that. Most of them also started playing in the Jyhad days and stuck with it for years and years, but eventually moved on to other things (Hold em, for money, which I can't really blame them for). > But, if you are really into > breaking a CCG, then it needs to be done on some sort of stage, the > bigger the better. Even someone who dominates local play, I think, > has something to prove on a larger stage to justify either superior > decktech or superior skill or both. Agreed. > My suggestion to anyone who wants to get DI > messed with is to play, or find someone to play, in a lot of > tournaments LSJ is at with decks full of DIs and see if they can > either win disproportionately or screw games up disproportionately. I'm not talking to Stu, am I? That's the "Stu gets Wake changed" strategy. Unfortunately I can't wander the world like Cane going from tourney to tourney just in the effort to prove a point. -- David Cherryholmes

On Sep 23, 11:41 pm, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > So that gives me the picture of players who were very talented in many > ways - more so than just, "Let's use DI." Is it possible that DI was > just part of the picture? Did you suddenly start winning your share > when you started packing 3+ DIs per deck? Snipped the rest because it seems we're just going in circles at this point. But I never started playing 3+ DI's in every deck. I did not start playing weenie decks in order to keep up with the weenies. I did not start cutting dubious VP deals early in the game in order to combat getting ganged up on. I lost a lot of games. I knew at the time exactly what I needed to do in order to win more games, but none of those avenues seemed worth it to me. Instead I focused on trying to find ways to combat the beast without becoming the beast, which probably made me a better player in other ways. But I still lost a ton of games. -- David Cherryholmes

"bluedevil" <david.che...@gmail.com> wrote in message news:2ae86209-3372-45f6...@c58g2000hsc.googlegroups.com... On Sep 23, 11:41 pm, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > > So that gives me the picture of players who were very talented in many > > ways - more so than just, "Let's use DI." Is it possible that DI was > > just part of the picture? Did you suddenly start winning your share > > when you started packing 3+ DIs per deck? > > Snipped the rest because it seems we're just going in circles at this > point. Well, actually I thought the part you snipped had some interesting ideas about why some people look at DI and think it's so powerful and others look at it and think it's fairly normal. And hence you get these long threads because the two sides look at different aspects of the card and come to different conclusions about it. > But I never started playing 3+ DI's in every deck. I did not > start playing weenie decks in order to keep up with the weenies. I > did not start cutting dubious VP deals early in the game in order to > combat getting ganged up on. I lost a lot of games. I knew at the > time exactly what I needed to do in order to win more games, but none > of those avenues seemed worth it to me. Instead I focused on trying > to find ways to combat the beast without becoming the beast, which > probably made me a better player in other ways. But I still lost a > ton of games. That sounds like what I kind of did with all that intercept in Los Angeles. Of course, unlike DI, intercept isn't just a single card I could blame and want banned. I don't know; maybe there's a rough analogy there or maybe there isn't. Fred

On Sep 24, 10:04 am, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > Well, actually I thought the part you snipped had some interesting ideas > about why some people look at DI and think it's so powerful and others > look at it and think it's fairly normal. I'm sorry, was there new stuff in there? I thought basically your point was that I (or people like me) can't separate out the objective effects of DI from the objective effects of other cards, nor our subjective feelings about DI from the objective facts, and so just sort of get these "feelings" about things and ask for the naughty-boo- boo card to get banned. A.K.A. we're just kind of dumb about it. Did I miss something? > That sounds like what I kind of did with all that intercept in Los > Angeles. Of course, unlike DI, intercept isn't just a single card I > could blame and want banned. I don't know; maybe there's a rough analogy > there or maybe there isn't. Intercept is easy, Fred. What happens right after a successful block? The only problem is, you can't win combats every time, and you don't get to do it with ContraMajesty!(TM) in just one card. Intercept has never bothered me a bit, personally. -- David Cherryholmes

"bluedevil" <david.che...@gmail.com> wrote in message news:c7358e3a-de48-4295...@e53g2000hsa.googlegroups.com... On Sep 24, 10:04 am, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > > Well, actually I thought the part you snipped had some interesting ideas > > about why some people look at DI and think it's so powerful and others > > look at it and think it's fairly normal. > > I'm sorry, was there new stuff in there? I thought basically your > point was that I (or people like me) can't separate out the objective > effects of DI from the objective effects of other cards, nor our > subjective feelings about DI from the objective facts, and so just > sort of get these "feelings" about things and ask for the naughty-boo- > boo card to get banned. A.K.A. we're just kind of dumb about it. Did > I miss something? Yea, you did. That thing was kind of wordy, even for me, but I promise you the words "objective" and "subjective" didn't appear in it. (Hmmm... somebody's getting kind of sensitive, I think...) It boiled down to me trying to figure out what the value of DI actually is in the card wars you guys are always asserting make such a big difference in all those games. Fred

./end lurk DI can cancel a Freak Drive, ending a chain effect. DI can cancel an Awe, ensuring a critical vote does not pass. DI can cancel a Forgotten Labyrinth, allowing a vital action not to pass. DI can cancel that turn 2 ally, thus removing critically needed offence/defence DI can cancel the last remaining prevent in your hand, forcing you to take agg/excessive damage DI can cancel your Psyche from crosstable, making Rots hit DI can do all this, at just about any point in time. Show me one other card that has this kind of targeted strike ability, versatility of play, ease of use, and power of effect. Really. just one... ./lurk

"Blooded Sand" <sand...@gmail.com> wrote in message news:c0050921-5a8f-4c10...@m44g2000hsc.googlegroups.com... [ quoted text not captured ] Sure. Any intercept card. It doesn't do exactly that particular set of things but it can make any action in the game fail. Of course, it's only potentially one card in a card war with the stealth or other things the actor could play to rescue the situation but so is Direct Intervention: actions and combat cards can be replayed, action modifiers and reactions that got canceled are harder but can be substituted for in many situations, and the situation can likewise be saved against a DI. Are they exactly equal? No - nor should they be given DI's unique cost and the limitation inherent in an OOT master. For that reason, your stab at showing that DI possesses some over the top benefit is not proved. Just to be clear, _any_ reactive-type effect in a CCG has to be more flexible than the proactive effect(s) against which it's used and/or it has to provide some unusual or extreme benefit or it wouldn't - on balance - be worth using. Just how flexible or beneficial that should be exactly isn't clear and is debatable and this certainly leaves room for the opinion that DI is over the top anyway. But some people aren't always clear on that point, so I like to mention it from time to time. Fred

On Sep 24, 2:59 pm, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > "Blooded Sand" <sandm...@gmail.com> wrote in message > > news:c0050921-5a8f-4c10...@m44g2000hsc.googlegroups.com... > > > ./end lurk > > > DI can cancel a Freak Drive, ending a chain effect. > > DI can cancel an Awe, ensuring a critical vote does not pass. > > DI can cancel a Forgotten Labyrinth, allowing a vital action not to > > pass. > > DI can cancel that turn 2 ally, thus removing critically needed > > offence/defence > > DI can cancel the last remaining prevent in your hand, forcing you to > > take agg/excessive damage > > DI can cancel your Psyche from crosstable, making Rots hit > > DI can do all this, at just about any point in time. I've stood on the sidelines long enough, especially since I'm one of those "L.A. players that don't use D.I." Fred you're on crack. If I owned enough I'd have at least 1-3 in every deck. They are just that useful, and yes it is mainly for their versatility. There are a ton of points during this thread that I am not going to repeat that give very good reasons why this card is inappropriate (and the fact that very few other counter cards are even printed, let alone used, since D.I. is easier to put in instead). > > Show me one other card that has this kind of targeted strike ability, > > versatility of play, ease of use, and power of effect. > Sure. Any intercept card. It doesn't do exactly that particular set > of things but it can make any action in the game fail. Let's look at Blooded Sands points (that are not even as complete as Darb's, but you are answering him right now). > > DI can cancel a Freak Drive, ending a chain effect. An intercept card cannot block a Freak Drive, it may stop one action but not the chain effect. > > DI can cancel an Awe, ensuring a critical vote does not pass. The intercept card may stop the action, but if we are at apoint when the Awe can be played it won't do you any good. But we'll give you that one for now. > > DI can cancel a Forgotten Labyrinth, allowing a vital action not to > > pass. No single intercept card can stop this one, you'll need at least 2. > > DI can cancel that turn 2 ally, thus removing critically needed > > offence/defence The point of the opening thread was that there were no vamps in play to use that magic 'intercept card' you are referring to. > > DI can cancel the last remaining prevent in your hand, forcing you to > > take agg/excessive damage How is an intercept card gonna stop this? If you've intercepted then you're in combat buddy. > > DI can cancel your Psyche from crosstable, making Rots hit Repeat: how is an intercept card going to stop this? All that intercept card did was put you in combat. Can a single intercept card fail actions? Sure. Can it stop a key card during an an action? Occassionally. Can they stop combat cards, referrendum modifiers, reactions, your block fails modifiers or 3 stealth or more actions? No. Can D.I.? Why, yes it can > Of course, it's only potentially one card in a card war with the > stealth or other things the actor could play to rescue the situation > but so is Direct Intervention: actions and combat cards can be replayed, > action modifiers and reactions that got canceled are harder but can > be substituted for in many situations, and the situation can likewise > be saved against a DI. Are they exactly equal? No - nor should they > be given DI's unique cost and the limitation inherent in an OOT master. > For that reason, your stab at showing that DI possesses some over the > top benefit is not proved. It's versatility is it's over the top benefit. Will it always get its desired effect when played? No. But good players will only play it when the chance it will is opportune (or they're desperate, which is almost the same thing). > Just to be clear, _any_ reactive-type effect in a CCG has to be more > flexible than the proactive effect(s) against which it's used and/or > it has to provide some unusual or extreme benefit or it wouldn't - on > balance - be worth using. Exactly. Done and done. And until it ever gets banned you can just send those useless ones that you are not using in your collection to me and these other "L.A. guys who don't play D.I." Frankly, I don't see how you missed them, I see at least one played a game. Which is why a straight out ban is better than some stupid TemptationOGP restriction, that can still fuck you but at least it's only once a game. Sheesh

On Sep 24, 5:25 pm, Robert Scythe <robe...@exploretalent.com> wrote: > Exactly. Done and done. And until it ever gets banned you can just > send those useless ones that you are not using in your collection to > me and these other "L.A. guys who don't play D.I." Frankly, I don't > see how you missed them, I see at least one played a game. Which is > why a straight out ban is better than some stupid TemptationOGP > restriction, that can still fuck you but at least it's only once a > game. Sheesh That should be: one played a game TO GOOD USE.

> > DI can cancel an Awe, ensuring a critical vote does not pass. Not the Awe I'm really ever worried, its the Voter Cap getting DI'ed that can wreck someone.

All right - I don't know what happened to my first post. Apologies if this is a repost... "Robert Scythe" <rob...@exploretalent.com> wrote in message news:711e814f-0979-4975...@a19g2000pra.googlegroups.com... On Sep 24, 2:59 pm, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > "Blooded Sand" <sandm...@gmail.com> wrote in message > news:c0050921-5a8f-4c10...@m44g2000hsc.googlegroups.com... > I've stood on the sidelines long enough, especially since I'm one of > those "L.A. players that don't use D.I." Fred you're on crack. If I > owned enough I'd have at least 1-3 in every deck. I did not know that. You've never said a thing about it that I recall. Darby and Kevin have talked about it at times but I hadn't recall you ever saying a lot about it. And since you don't ACTUALLY play them very often that I've noticed, you'll have to forgive me for not reading your mind. If there are any other LA players out there not heard from thus far who don't ACTUALLY play DIs much but would if they could, I apologize in advance for not reading your minds either and misrepresenting what you might otherwise do that I can't really know. I can only know what I've physically seen played. I'm sorry you're short on them. In my book, that's a good reason why precons should be printed with, like, 2 or 3 DIs in them so people can stop complaining about not having and use a card they think is good. And, as a side benefit, I wouldn't have to hear people make this ghost argument or get blindside by someone like you about how many they would play if they could. There's no answer to that. Also, note that 1-3 is a little different from David's 3+-in-every- deck. > They are just that useful, and yes it is mainly for their versatility. Fair enough. > Let's look at Blooded Sands points (that are not even as complete as > Darb's, but you are answering him right now). His SINGLE point is exactly the same as Darby's. No one ever claimed DI wasn't flexible so why belabor this? The question is whether the flexibility is sufficiently balanced by the cost. How does it make a better or worse argument by how big a list of the different possibilities a person can list? > you can just > send those useless ones that you are not using in your collection to > me and these other "L.A. guys who don't play D.I." Frankly, I don't > see how you missed them, I see at least one played a game. One per game? You're missing the context, here. The complaint is that the card's taking over, making games frustrating. Three or four per deck, causing a half dozen or more played per game. I didn't mean to imply the card was never seen in LA; I don't know where you got that - I'm just saying people don't pack huge numbers of them like what David has talked about (with his past players) or the person posting as sg3kmb...@gmail.com or what Peter fears would happen if he started using them. I don't think the average is one per game that I've noticed when I play there but even if you're right, this hardly makes a problem card that needs calls for banning or event modification. Bleh! It makes me want to start tracking their play, more because I don't think the results of the card getting played are what people claim than the shear numbers of them. I don't know who'd have time to track it though. Fred

On Sep 24, 9:18 pm, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > > I've stood on the sidelines long enough, especially since I'm one of > > those "L.A. players that don't use D.I." Fred you're on crack. If I > > owned enough I'd have at least 1-3 in every deck. > > I did not know that. You've never said a thing about it that I recall. Not a big deal. I don't care about having more. I have plenty of decks with them in it. I was just fucking around really. > Darby and Kevin have talked about it at times but I hadn't recall you ever > saying a lot about it. And since you don't ACTUALLY play them very often > that I've noticed, you'll have to forgive me for not reading your mind. > If there are any other LA players out there not heard from thus far who > don't ACTUALLY play DIs much but would if they could, I apologize in > advance for not reading your minds either and misrepresenting what you > might otherwise do that I can't really know. I can only know what I've > physically seen played. It's not a 'read mind' thing. Darby's (and Peter's) reasoning is the same as most of ours for not playing them: they are an annoying 'dick' card, inappropriate, and can slow the game down a lot (moreso if you draw out the D.I. phase, especially 'un-fun' as you put it, in a casual game). I'll tell you where most of my D.I.s go: in my not so competitive decks to help them out a bit more. that should say something. Hell, I played PTO until it was gone. I hated that card, but until they got rid of it I had to use what is at my disposal for even fun decks to have a chance of winning. L.A.s metagame is a little to disjointed to actually plan for. You'll have something fun and than you'll have someone like P. Johnson who will say "I just put this together in 5 minutes lets see how it works". Up comes Arika followed by Leandro. > I'm sorry you're short on them. In my book, that's a good reason > why precons should be printed with, like, 2 or 3 DIs in them so > people can stop complaining about not having and use a card they > think is good. And, as a side benefit, I wouldn't have to hear people > make this ghost argument or get blindside by someone like you about > how many they would play if they could. There's no answer to that. Again, not really that important, didn't mean to blindside you. Just saying that most decks can use 1-3 of these easy. > Also, note that 1-3 is a little different from David's 3+-in-every- > deck. 1 - 3 is just about as annoying. > > Let's look at Blooded Sands points (that are not even as complete as > > Darb's, but you are answering him right now). > > His SINGLE point is exactly the same as Darby's. No one ever claimed > DI wasn't flexible so why belabor this? The question is whether > the flexibility is sufficiently balanced by the cost. How does > it make a better or worse argument by how big a list of the different > possibilities a person can list? Because more is better, and the flexibility is not sufficiently balanced by the cost. Not only did I lose a game the other day to 2 well played D.I.'s, the person who played them took the table. Here in L.A. > > you can just > > send those useless ones that you are not using in your collection to > > me and these other "L.A. guys who don't play D.I." Frankly, I don't > > see how you missed them, I see at least one played a game. > > One per game? You're missing the context, here. You missed my addendum. At least one played a game to good use. Meaning it didn't get countered by the play of another card and affected the game irreversibly. That's what I mean by good use. It doesn't mean just once a game do I see it played. Sorry for not being clear. >The complaint is > that the card's taking over, making games frustrating. Three or four > per deck, causing a half dozen or more played per game. I didn't mean > to imply the card was never seen in LA; I don't know where you got that - > I'm just saying people don't pack huge numbers of them like what David > has talked about (with his past players) or the person posting as > sg3kmb613...@gmail.com or what Peter fears would happen if he started > using them. I don't think the average is one per game that I've noticed > when I play there but even if you're right, this hardly makes a problem > card that needs calls for banning or event modification. Yes it does, but again, I wasn't being clear. > Bleh! It makes me want to start tracking their play, more because > I don't think the results of the card getting played are what people > claim than the shear numbers of them. I don't know who'd have time to > track it though. Nobody. It's just an annoying card like some other annoying cards that we don't have to deal with anymore that weren't getting a lot of play but could certainly skew things up. Only D.I. can go in nearly every deck. Even the flawed TWDA shows that. And remember, you don't need more than 1 - 3 of them in a deck for it to be useful (kind of like PTO, seat switchers, Edge Explosion, Memories of Mortality, Succubus Club, et al).

"Robert Scythe" <rob...@exploretalent.com> wrote in message news:64948781-7fed-422c...@n38g2000prl.googlegroups.com... On Sep 24, 9:18 pm, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > > Darby and Kevin have talked about it at times but I hadn't recall you ever > > saying a lot about it. And since you don't ACTUALLY play them very often > > that I've noticed, you'll have to forgive me for not reading your mind. > > If there are any other LA players out there not heard from thus far who > > don't ACTUALLY play DIs much but would if they could, I apologize in > > advance for not reading your minds either and misrepresenting what you > > might otherwise do that I can't really know. I can only know what I've > > physically seen played. > > It's not a 'read mind' thing. Darby's (and Peter's) reasoning is the > same as most of ours for not playing them: ... Well it is in the sense that I caught a hint of an accusation that I'm misrepresenting the LA playgroup. I don't want to do that. My references to playing in LA as a place where you don't see a card can only be based on what I've experienced. If there's some backcurrent of annoyance with DI there, too, I can't know it from play experiences because there aren't that many played and I don't here a whole lot of people complaining about it, either. But of course, you have to take into account that if I see DI once a game, I'm not going to think, "GAWD I'M SO TIRED OF THAT CARD!" I mean, one DI per game doesn't seem like a lot to me and if that's all I see, I'm not going to the card affects the game all that much. Once in a while it does but not that often. > > > Let's look at Blooded Sands points (that are not even as complete as > > > Darb's, but you are answering him right now). > > > > His SINGLE point is exactly the same as Darby's. No one ever claimed > > DI wasn't flexible so why belabor this? The question is whether > > the flexibility is sufficiently balanced by the cost. How does > > it make a better or worse argument by how big a list of the different > > possibilities a person can list? > > Because more is better, and the flexibility is not sufficiently > balanced by the cost. Not only did I lose a game the other day to 2 > well played D.I.'s, the person who played them took the table. Here in > L.A. Sure, in any game, any strong card can be a key. I believe some people focus in on the contribution the DIs make because the flexibility annoys them and don't see that a lot of cards made big swings in the same game. I can't accuse any particular person of doing that because I don't know but it would explain a lot in my mind about why some people view the card as so much more powerful than other people. > It's just an annoying card like some other annoying cards that > we don't have to deal with anymore that weren't getting a lot of play > but could certainly skew things up. Only D.I. can go in nearly every > deck. I don't know. The Barrens. Elder Library. Dreams. As I said a lot earlier in the thread, I like cards that can contribute to your position a lot more reliably. > Even the flawed TWDA shows that. I don't believe it showed that, no. The 70-some decks Peter counted had about 2/3rd of a card per deck and they weren't necessarily distrubuted one-per-deck. So a fair percentage of decks had zero DIs in them. It may be the card in the game that goes in the widest variety of decks, I suppose. (Well, Blood Doll might be there somewhere.) > And remember, you don't need > more than 1 - 3 of them in a deck for it to be useful (kind of like > PTO, seat switchers, Edge Explosion, Memories of Mortality, Succubus > Club, et al). That's actually kind of my point. The fact that people don't usually _want_ more than 1-3 of them in decks is what touches on my idea of a card being overpowered. I believe to show that a card is overpowered, there has to be an element of depending on the card as a 'catch-all'; people WANT to throw lots more copies of an overpowered card in their decks at the expense of more specialized strategy because an overpowered card is just better. One to three of a master doesn't indicate that to me, especially given that lots of people don't choose to use them at all. The card looks like it must be "self-balancing" in some way or another to cause people to consistently use no more of them than they do. Sure, it's flexible as hell but there must be SOME drawbacks to it because people could clearly choose to use more in their decks and don't. Fred

> Sure, > it's flexible as hell but there must be SOME drawbacks to it because > people could clearly choose to use more in their decks and don't. > > Fred It's bloody hard to get?

"Robert Scythe" <rob...@exploretalent.com> wrote in message news:711e814f-0979-4975...@a19g2000pra.googlegroups.com... On Sep 24, 2:59 pm, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > "Blooded Sand" <sandm...@gmail.com> wrote in message > news:c0050921-5a8f-4c10...@m44g2000hsc.googlegroups.com... > I've stood on the sidelines long enough, especially since I'm one of > those "L.A. players that don't use D.I." Fred you're on crack. If I > owned enough I'd have at least 1-3 in every deck. I did not know that. You've never said a thing about it that I recall. Darby and Kevin have talked about it at times but I hadn't recall you ever venturing an opinion. So noted. I'm sorry you're short on them. In my book, that's a good reason why precons should be printed with, like, 2 or 3 DIs in them so people can stop complaining about not having and use a card they think is good. And, as a side benefit, I wouldn't have to hear people make this ghost argument or get blindside by someone like you about how many they would play if they could. There's no answer to that. Also, note that 1-3 is a little different from David's 3+-in-every- deck. > They are just that useful, and yes it is mainly for their versatility. Fair enough. > Let's look at Blooded Sands points (that are not even as complete as > Darb's, but you are answering him right now). His SINGLE point is exactly the same as Darby's. No one ever claimed DI wasn't flexible so why belabor this? The question is whether the flexibility is sufficiently balanced by the cost. How does it make a better or worse argument by how big a list of the different possibilities a person can list? > you can just > send those useless ones that you are not using in your collection to > me and these other "L.A. guys who don't play D.I." Frankly, I don't > see how you missed them, I see at least one played a game. One per game?!? You're missing the context, here. The complaint is that the card's taking over, making games frustrating. Three or four per deck, causing a half dozen or more played per game. I didn't mean to imply the card was never seen in LA; don't know where you got that - I'm just saying people don't pack huge numbers of them like what David has talked about (with his past players) or the person posting as sg3kmb...@gmail.com or what Peter fears would happen if he started using them. I don't think the average is one per game that I've noticed when I play there but even if you're right, this hardly makes a problem card that needs calls for banning or event modification. Bleh! It makes me want to start tracking their play, more because I don't think the results of the card getting played are what people claim than the shear numbers of them. I don't know who'd have time to track it though. Fred

"Blooded Sand" <sand...@gmail.com> wrote in message news:56417d9b-5a4b-4607...@e39g2000hsf.googlegroups.com... > > Sure, > > it's flexible as hell but there must be SOME drawbacks to it because > > people could clearly choose to use more in their decks and don't. > > It's bloody hard to get? It's not that hard. Heart of Nizchetus is hard to get. The Unmasking is hard to get. DIs aren't that difficult. Fred

On Sep 26, 9:01 pm, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > "Blooded Sand" <sandm...@gmail.com> wrote in message [ quoted text not captured ] And yet... I have 3 Hearts. I have 2 Umasking. Playing since Jyhad, and trading pretty madly when I feel like it, I have 1 DI. Do you know what people want for a single bloody DI? Your argument has been that for it to be seen as overpowered, you need proof. Granted, it's extremely desirable as a card amongst just about everyone who plays this game (and even if you do not WANT to play this freaking card, you would not complain about having three for trade at least). Which does give some support to the point that it is a very strong card. How many people trade for, um, lets see, I don't know, Eyes of the dead? Granted, comparing Wallpaper to Strong card (tm) is unfair. So how much more do people trade for DA than for a Heart? Heart is as nearly universally applicable, has an incredibly strong effect, and has nearly no drawbacks? 1 DI= 1 Heart? More?

On Sep 26, 3:04 pm, Blooded Sand <sandm...@gmail.com> wrote: > > So how much more do people trade for DA than for a Heart? Heart is as > nearly universally applicable, has an incredibly strong effect, and > has nearly no drawbacks? > > 1 DI= 1 Heart? More? Heh, I would trade a DI for a Heart easy. I don't think anyone would do that trade.

[ quoted text not captured ] Would you trade 1 Heart for 2, maybe 3 DI?

"Blooded Sand" <sand...@gmail.com> wrote in message On Sep 26, 9:01 pm, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > > "Blooded Sand" <sandm...@gmail.com> wrote in message > > > Sure, > > > it's flexible as hell but there must be SOME drawbacks to it because > > > people could clearly choose to use more in their decks and don't. > > > > > It's bloody hard to get? > > > > It's not that hard. Heart of Nizchetus is hard to get. The Unmasking is > > hard to get. DIs aren't that difficult. > > And yet... > > I have 3 Hearts. > > I have 2 Umasking. > > Playing since Jyhad, and trading pretty madly when I feel like it, I > have 1 DI. Wow! Why?!? DIs are 3 times as common as Hearts in 3rd Edition AND were printed in a Sabbat Wars precon AND were in the original Sabbat AND Heart of Niz is about the most broken card in the game, bar none including DI. In my opinion, at least... > Do you know what people want for a single bloody DI? Your > argument has been that for it to be seen as overpowered, you need > proof. Granted, it's extremely desirable as a card amongst just about > everyone who plays this game (and even if you do not WANT to play this > freaking card, you would not complain about having three for trade at > least). Which does give some support to the point that it is a very > strong card. Go buy them on EBAY for crying out loud. Go sell your 3 Hearts of Cheatings for 20$+, your 2 Unmaskings for 30$ and I gurantee you, the $120 will buy more than 6 DIs. You're not trading in the right place, friend! There's always some variation in the prices. Looking through completed listings on EBAY, I see 2 DI sold for $30 - that's higher than I'm used to but maybe they're moving up. http://cgi.ebay.com/VTES-SABBAT-3RD-DIRECT-INTERVENTION-X2_W0QQitemZ130256535349QQcmdZViewItem?hash=item130256535349&_trkparms=39%3A1%7C66%3A2%7C65%3A13%7C240%3A1318&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14 2 Hearts sold for $41 - about what I'm used to seeing. http://cgi.ebay.com/VTES-Heart-of-Nizchetus-3rd-x2_W0QQitemZ170263047926QQcmdZViewItem?hash=item170263047926&_trkparms=39%3A1%7C66%3A2%7C65%3A13%7C240%3A1318&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14 1 Unmasking sold for $22.50 - a bit of steal, there! http://cgi.ebay.com/The-Unmasking-Vtes-Jyhad-Gehenna_W0QQitemZ180289835081QQcmdZViewItem?hash=item180289835081&_trkparms=39%3A1%7C66%3A2%7C65%3A13%7C240%3A1318&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14 1 DI for $9.50 - that's more like it. http://cgi.ebay.com/VTES-1x-Direct-Intervention_W0QQitemZ250292852741QQcmdZViewItem?hash=item250292852741&_trkparms=39%3A1%7C66%3A2%7C65%3A13%7C240%3A1318&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14 1 Unmasking for $35 - that frequently happens. http://cgi.ebay.com/VTES-1x-Unmasking_W0QQitemZ250292855433QQcmdZViewItem?hash=item250292855433&_trkparms=39%3A1%7C66%3A2%7C65%3A13%7C240%3A1318&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14 Someone selling them for $15 apiece "Buy-it-now" at this very moment. This seller is sometimes a bit high on the price - he likes to sit on cards until an impatient buyer comes along, which is probably why they're available at all. Still, only $15! http://cgi.ebay.com/Direct-Intervention-3rd-Vtes-Jyhad-Vampire-CCG-Card_W0QQitemZ310063543571QQcmdZViewItem?_trksid=p3286.m20.l1116 No one is selling HoN or The Umasking through Buy-it-now at the moment. I have seen both for $30 or more buy-it-now prices in the past. There is also an auction going on currently for 4 DIs that stands at $17 at the moment but you can't take much from a pre-final auction price. On the whole, the evidence doesn't support your contention that DIs are harder to get than Unmaskings and HoNs. They are clearly in demand - but they're far from the worst card out there. EBAY price alone tends to support my pleas for WW to reprint HoN and The Unmasking. For the record, though, I agree DI should be reprinted a log more often, too. Fred

[ quoted text not captured ] I don't have a Heart. If I did, I might trade it for 3 DI. Would be a tough call. More likely, I'd try to get 2 or 3 Coagulated Entities for it. Would I *give up* 3 DI for it? Not really, because I only have like 4 of them. Heart is universally useful, but no deck really needs it. One of my decks actually needs DI for a specific purpose (I generally run 2 of them in that deck, possibly 3) and I wouldn't want to get rid of all of them.

[ quoted text not captured ] So what you are effectively saying is that DI are more useful to you than a heart? Please note that I am using HoN as an example due to its undisputed power rating. Anybody wanna disagree HoN is powerful, like waaaaaaaaaaaay powerful? ;)

[ quoted text not captured ] 3 DI's more valuable than 1 Heart. Yeah, sure, I guess so.

[ quoted text not captured ] Because the Heart is more powerfull than the DI's, or because fit into every single deck you can build, and Heart not so often? Because maybe, while the Heart has a strong effect, one of its strongest effects is possibly giving you an early DI? Or allowing you to recycle that early DI?

On Sep 12, 9:51 pm, "Kevin M." <youw...@imaspammer.org> wrote: > nikol...@hotmail.com wrote: > > extrala <ralf.lamm...@gmx.de> wrote: > >> What did the other four finalists play? Especially the guy > >> with the 3 GW 9 VPs. > > > He played a crazy Garou deck that totally detroyed every table he sat > > down at. He played with a lot of disc less combat cards to support > > them, Aim: Vitals, weighted walking sticks, glancing blow dodges etc, > > and none of the combat decks in the tournament could handle them (at > > one point he dodged the first strike, then used a stick and Aim on his > > additional strike for 5...). 90% of my combat coolness is played > > prerange, and I have very few ranged strikes and no maneuvers, so the > > damn doggies kept running away! :) > > > He pacified my deck totally in the two first rounds, and in the final > > chose to sit as my pred. He didnt know that his predator was playing > > an all out anti brujah bleed deck with Blood Brother Ambush. He had > > his first two garous DI'd in the same turn (me as his prey, and his > > predator played one too) and only managed to get one in. After that I > > had two princes and second traditions enough and he never got another > > one in play. I kept him alive against the anti brujah, which enabled > > me to go forward full throttle, with very little pressure from him. > > If his deck has just a little time to build up, its very very hard to > > stop. > > If this isn't enough to cause Direct Intervention to be placed AT THE VERY > TOP of the watch list for 2009 -- and hopefully banned in 2010 -- then > nothing ever will. > > This guy gets 3GW/9VP with a well-made/metagamed deck, and loses... to a > stupid Direct Intervention. Wow, nice reward. > > What Direct Intervention does is bad and wrong, as it stops people from > being able to play the game. (Yes, Sudden/Wash has a similar ability, but > you know damn well that the game is made to be played with library cards > being used by your minions, so please don't try to throw up straw men to > avoid the DI discussion.) > > Thoughts Betrayed was changed because it used to say "You are unable to > play the game." > > Protect Thine Own was banned because it says "You are unable to play the > game, in the most un-fun way the designers of this card game could think > of." > > Direct Intervention is a silver bullet, and we all know it. Why is it > still part of this game?? > > Kevin M., Prince of Las Vegas > "Know your enemy, and know yourself; in one-thousand battles > you shall never be in peril." -- Sun Tzu, *The Art of War* > "Contentment... Complacency... Catastrophe!" -- Joseph Chevalier > Please visit VTESville daily!http://vtesville.myminicity.com/ Direct Intervention does several things that are bad for the game: 1) It gives Methuselahs a chance to totally wreck the predator/prey relationship at almost any given moment. Sudden Reversal is less problematic because it's actually Methuselahs dueling over resources at that point. Plus Master cards are much less frequently played than minion cards. 2) It gives Methuselahs a power equivalent to the best defense of any minion card. Need to stop that stealth or intercept? Done. Need to stop that political action? Done. Need to stop that once per combat card? Done. It obviously and by design trumps any minion card, but is that really necessary? 3) It benefits reactive decks or slow disproportionately because they naturally use a significant portion cards on opponent's turns. Intercept is becoming problematic in some circles. Jay Kristoff's Auspex weenie deck and imitators have had massive success in recent history. 4) It will cut down on negotiations and time-wasting during a game. Too often someone is holding a DI (or bluffing) and trying to work some sort of a deal. Some say jokingly that "the cheating phase never ends" but we all know that in reality it's "the DI phase that never ends." I think those reasons are sufficient to ban the card. We got rid of seat changing votes due to #1 and DI clearly violates predator/prey. Now, the more interesting thing in my mind is what happens *after* DI is banned. We will actually truly and finally determine what cards are the most detrimental for VTES's long-tem health. Una Freak Drive decks may become rampant because DI is one of the few trumps to that deck. Stealth bleed could become more powerful because intercept decks can't stop a key action modifier. Large cap voters could benefit from no counters to Voter Captivation or once-per-game power political actions. Immortal Grapple combat would also become stronger. But as long as Direct Intervention is part of the game, true card strength evaluation will remain artful guesswork. Recently we (me, Ira Fay, Chris Shorb, Nat Hammond, and Rob Williams) banned DI in a small series of online games at JOL. Those games have become much more interesting with that single card banned. In almost all respects, the tables have collapsed just as they should. Once one player is hurting, they almost inevitably have crumbled because they didn't have the resources to help themselves. This I think is good for the game. No miraculous saves from some cross-table "angel" who is meddling too much in others' affairs. Now, I do like some of the newer "cancel" cards which have hit the scene: Approximation of Loyalty, False Resonance, Hide the Mind, Scalpel Tongue, Tangle Atropos' Hand, etc. These keep in the spirit of the disciplines and encourage offense and ousting. I wouldn't even mind if there were more cancel reactions like Power of One. They all have requirements and keep in the theme of the game. This is a good road to travel. Hopefully we've walked far enough down this road to get rid of "the crutch" once and for all. Jeff

Jeff Kuta wrote: > I think those reasons are sufficient to ban the card. We got rid of > seat changing votes due to #1 and DI clearly violates predator/prey. Not really. Seat-changing offered a to-win avenue to undermine pred/prey. DI (and Bum's Rush and Kindred Spirits and whatever) only offer one half of the equation -- the ability to affect things across the table. They lack the main half of the equation -- the incentive to abandon pred/prey.

On Sep 26, 8:41 am, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > > And remember, you don't need > > more than 1 - 3 of them in a deck for it to be useful (kind of like > > PTO, seat switchers, Edge Explosion, Memories of Mortality, Succubus > > Club, et al). > That's actually kind of my point. The fact that people don't usually > _want_ more than 1-3 of them in decks is what touches on my idea of > a card being overpowered. I believe to show that a card is overpowered, > there has to be an element of depending on the card as a 'catch-all'; > people WANT to throw lots more copies of an overpowered card in their > decks at the expense of more specialized strategy because an overpowered > card is just better. One to three of a master doesn't indicate that to > me, especially given that lots of people don't choose to use them at all. > The card looks like it must be "self-balancing" in some way or another > to cause people to consistently use no more of them than they do. Sure, > it's flexible as hell but there must be SOME drawbacks to it because > people could clearly choose to use more in their decks and don't. Are you deliberately being obtuse? Did you happen to notice that every card that I mentioned that you do not need very many of to be useful (i.e. skews the game, to your advantage usually) is already banned? Realize that it only takes one or 2 plays of a bent card to mess with the game and you do not need to pack a shitload of them for that to happen. While D.I. exists there will be plenty of counter card designs that will never be used or printed. Got a specific weakness in your deck? Use D.I. Don't have a specific weakness in your deck? Use D.I.

"Robert Scythe" <rob...@exploretalent.com> wrote in message news:375441aa-cad7-479b...@g17g2000prg.googlegroups.com... On Sep 26, 8:41 am, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > > And remember, you don't need > > more than 1 - 3 of them in a deck for it to be useful (kind of like > > PTO, seat switchers, Edge Explosion, Memories of Mortality, Succubus > > Club, et al). > > That's actually kind of my point. The fact that people don't usually > _want_ more than 1-3 of them in decks is what touches on my idea of > a card being overpowered. I believe to show that a card is overpowered, > there has to be an element of depending on the card as a 'catch-all'; > people WANT to throw lots more copies of an overpowered card in their > decks at the expense of more specialized strategy because an overpowered > card is just better. One to three of a master doesn't indicate that to > me, especially given that lots of people don't choose to use them at all. > The card looks like it must be "self-balancing" in some way or another > to cause people to consistently use no more of them than they do. Sure, > it's flexible as hell but there must be SOME drawbacks to it because > people could clearly choose to use more in their decks and don't. > > Are you deliberately being obtuse? Did you happen to notice that every > card that I mentioned that you do not need very many of to be useful > (i.e. skews the game, to your advantage usually) is already banned? Actually, Memories of Mortality you do or your allies are going to be pretty vulnerable to weenies. Succubus Club and Edge Explosion are unique permanents so there's a distinct difference there. Obviously if you can get a unique permanent in play and it doesn't expend itself in the course of doing it's work, there's a limit to how many you need. I dispute that PTO should be considered overpowered; same problem - it's very powerful but had limitations on it that kept it from being an over- powered crutch card with which to win games just by throwing lots of them in your deck. All that said, we're left with seat switchers which actually demonstrates the point you're making. OK, I'll give it to you. I don't think it's _that_ obtuse for me not to have picked out how seat switchers is an example of what you meant but sure. People would put like 1-3 in their decks and make a critical play at a critical moment and win the game and it all very annoying and arguably overpowered in a certain way. I don't think DIs are like seat switchers. At least, they don't leave me with the same kind, "shit-that-was-too-easy" kind of reaction seat- switchers did. > Realize that it only takes one or 2 plays of a bent card to mess with > the game and you do not need to pack a shitload of them for that to > happen. Yea, but what bugs me about the argument is that there's so many holes in it. DI helps you win what I've been referring to as a "card war" - an exchange of one guy trying to do a thing and someone else trying to stop him doing that thing. Sometimes it might involve a big-bleed vs. an intercept-and-pummel-in-combat kind of decision point but usually it's not that dramatic a difference. It's an incredibly flexible card but it's still only one card in those wars so if you pick the wrong moment to use it, it doesn't help and the MPA cost is kind of steep for a miss like that. I guess if you're good enough at picking your moment it might make an unusual difference but it hasn't been my experience that people can. I thought seat switchers were _much_ easier to predict when you could use them to roll up a game. PTO was, too, if you want to insist that it was overpowered. And both of those cards didn't have anything like the same cost as DI, whether you're successful or not. Fred

[ quoted text not captured ] I assume you think you're trying to "trap" me into saying that DI is "soooooooooooooo broken" or something... Whatever. Heart goes in every deck, not DI. I have like 4 DI's and no Hearts. I have one deck that needs DI in order to defend against block fails, which is a common enough mechanic that I feel I need to defend against it. I don't play DI in any other decks because I always find something better to take the slot. If I was going to play one of Sudden Reversal and DI, I'd almost always pick the SR because it doesn't cost a pool and cancels more powerful cards. It's way stronger than DI. But even with SR, I tend to find too many good master cards that make my own deck go which I feel warrant including more than a card that is purely reactive. I wouldn't trade 3 DI's for a Heart because I want to be able to continue playing my No Secrets deck that I believe needs DI. No deck needs Heart, though every deck is better with it. If I felt that it was more important to win tournaments, I'd do my best to get a Heart, either by trading or by paying a ridiculous amount to buy one. Since I'm more interested in being able to make a lot of different decks which may be competitive but perhaps not tournament-winning, I don't care that much for the Heart. Sure, it's broken, but it doesn't really enable any combos that weren't already possible (just maybe less likely without that crazy cycling). I'd certainly trade 1 DI for a Heart because the Heart is so much better. When I have to start trading multiples, well.... I prefer to generally trade 1-for-1 anyway. If I need to trade multiple rares to get the rare I want, then I start to wonder how much I really need that card... Most of the time, the answer is not that much. And having to potentially cripple one of my most annoying decks is a significant cost in my eyes. And before you say that it's broken because taking it out of my deck would possibly cripple the deck, I'll let you know that taking Static Virtues out would cripple it even worse, so obviously Static Virtue is also incredibly broken... =P Of all the arguments for why DI needs to be banned, I think I'm least impressed by the "how many of them would you trade for a Heart of Nicktezeczktezesksteshire" one.

>>3 DI's more valuable than 1 Heart. Yeah, sure, I guess so. Trade and then DI the HEart and still have 2 cards left over.

On Sep 26, 1:04 pm, Blooded Sand <sandm...@gmail.com> wrote: > And yet... > > I have 3 Hearts. > > I have 2 Umasking. > > Playing since Jyhad, and trading pretty madly when I feel like it, I > have 1 DI. Do you know what people want for a single bloody DI? Your > argument has been that for it to be seen as overpowered, you need > proof. Granted, it's extremely desirable as a card amongst just about > everyone who plays this game (and even if you do not WANT to play this > freaking card, you would not complain about having three for trade at > least). Which does give some support to the point that it is a very > strong card. > > How many people trade for, um, lets see, I don't know, Eyes of the > dead? Granted, comparing Wallpaper to Strong card (tm) is unfair. > > So how much more do people trade for DA than for a Heart? Heart is as > nearly universally applicable, has an incredibly strong effect, and > has nearly no drawbacks? > > 1 DI= 1 Heart? More? I have x3 Third Edition DIs I'd be willing to trade. I could use more Hearts (of course), but I'd trade them for other things, too.

On Sep 26, 7:16 pm, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > I dispute that PTO should be considered overpowered; same problem - it's > very powerful but had limitations on it that kept it from being an over- > powered crutch card with which to win games just by throwing lots of them > in your deck. I certainly hope we do not re-open a debate that is now moot, but I want to note that not everyone agrees with your assertion that PTO was merely a fun problem, not a power problem. I'm sure you've heard it before, but I think noting that PTO burns a vampire in one card, compared to how difficult that is to do in combat, is a good argument. In turn, I have heard the counter-arguments about other cards that burn vampires. We stand where we stand, but I think PTO was also a balance problem. By my reckoning, that gives you two seat switchers and PTO.... the preponderance of banned cards. This undermines your follow-up in my eyes. > Yea, but what bugs me about the argument is that there's so many holes > in it. DI helps you win what I've been referring to as a "card war" - > an exchange of one guy trying to do a thing and someone else trying to > stop him doing that thing. Sometimes it might involve a big-bleed vs. an > intercept-and-pummel-in-combat kind of decision point but usually it's > not that dramatic a difference. I disagree with this as well. It's usually played to dramatic effect. YMMV. > It's an incredibly flexible card but > it's still only one card in those wars so if you pick the wrong moment > to use it, it doesn't help and the MPA cost is kind of steep for a miss > like that. I guess if you're good enough at picking your moment it > might make an unusual difference but it hasn't been my experience that > people can. I guess I mostly see it played by good players then. -- David Cherryholmes

"bluedevil" <david.che...@gmail.com> wrote in message news:32f1dfa9-8d10-4158...@m45g2000hsb.googlegroups.com... On Sep 26, 7:16 pm, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > > I dispute that PTO should be considered overpowered; same problem - it's > > very powerful but had limitations on it that kept it from being an over- > > powered crutch card with which to win games just by throwing lots of them > > in your deck. > > I certainly hope we do not re-open a debate that is now moot, but I > want to note that not everyone agrees with your assertion that PTO was > merely a fun problem, not a power problem. I'm sure you've heard it > before, but I think noting that PTO burns a vampire in one card, > compared to how difficult that is to do in combat, is a good > argument. In turn, I have heard the counter-arguments about other > cards that burn vampires. We stand where we stand, but I think PTO > was also a balance problem. Sure. I'm not claiming a community consensus on that one. But there are some distinct parallels here: 1) Long periods of time in which both cards have stayed legal, had their haters, and inspired long contentious threads despite the fact that no particular new tech had been created to exploited their power over the years. (This contrasts with, for instance, Succubus Club.) 2) Lack of evidence that use of the card was becoming more ubiquitous over time. This is probably easier for a "general" plug-it-in-anywhere card like DI than a card like PTO which only drops into a specialized deck. You could point at the popularity of Inner Circle (particularly Arika) decks to judge it but, unfortunately, there's so many other considerations that it tends to lead to arguments that go in circles. At least, say, the deck archetype that used PTO wasn't horribly overrepresented and I don't get the sense that people have abandoned Inner Circle members because PTO is gone - for what it's worth. 3) The evidence against PTO seems to totally rely on the same type of evidence being lodged against DI: simple assertion that it's effect is too powerful based entirely on discussions of card mechanics. Well, OK, some people like Peter seem to think the number of them which show up in the TWDA buttresses their position but I sure don't. There is one difference, though. I didn't mourn the loss of PTO overmuch. While not overpowered, having it played on you usually ruined your game and that's not good thing for the game. More to the point in this discussion, it didn't strike me as doing anything useful in the game. Inner Circle members have plenty of other strengths, they didn't need PTO. I agree with certain other people here who have posted that DI has a few important functions in terms of being a defense-of-last-resort for certain kinds of decks against certain types of opposing strategies. I think someone used the term, "evening out" which is appropriate. Fred