Archon 5 player seating

We had our storyline today. I was very suprised to be the victim of what I would call a slight oversight on the creators of The Archon. We had 5 players and I was player '2'. When the 3rd round occured, I was completely stunned to discover that I was first, again. Checking the Optimal Seating page in the Archon spreadsheet, we found the following: 5 Players Round 1 1 2 3 4 5 Round 2 2 5 3 1 4 Round 3 2 1 5 4 3 Now, I don't mind being first but when there are 3 other Meths that haven't been first by the end of the 3rd round, I find this just wrong. I suggest this should be changed or reviewed. If there is a reason why the seating exists so that the 2nd player starts first for two rounds, I would like to hear it. For the 3rd round, I suggest the following: 5,4,3,2,1 OR 4,3,2,1,5 OR 3,2,1,5,4 This would 'spread out' the players that are first and still not cause a seating arrangement so that the there are players with the same prey/predator relationship for different rounds. Anyone have comments on this? Am I just crazy? Mark Allen Prince of Ottawa

On Mon, 08 Sep 2003 00:11:41 GMT, Mark Allen <alle...@rogers.com> wrote: >Anyone have comments on this? Don't have 5 player tournaments. :> >Am I just crazy? You can still hope. Sanity is for losers. :P Carpe noctem. Lasombra http://www.TheLasombra.com

"Mark Allen" <alle...@rogers.com> wrote in message news:1PP6b.13914$mk1....@news02.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com... > We had our storyline today. I was very suprised to be the victim of what I > would call a slight oversight on the creators of The Archon. Going first is not being a victim. Depending of your deck, it may be a hudge advantage.

"The Lasombra" <TheLa...@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:najnlvge5otmng63h...@4ax.com... > On Mon, 08 Sep 2003 00:11:41 GMT, Mark Allen <alle...@rogers.com> > wrote: > > >Anyone have comments on this? > > Don't have 5 player tournaments. :> "-how was your 5 players tournament ? -well, i had a bad deck but hopefully i made it to the finals, as did all my friends..." =)

Reyda expounded: [ quoted text not captured ] Either way it shouildn't be the same person. You need to change round 2 as well. I'd go for 12345 54213 31524 Everyone gets to first or second and fourth or fifth. No one sits in the same place twice. OTOH you do get 54 and 21 in he second round and 31 24 in the third. That's four lots of people having the same neighbour. The original seating had the same (all in the thrid round) -as did all the alternatives suggested by Mark. I suspect that 4 pairs reversed is the minimum possible but I'm not going to try to prove it. Mark's ideas: 54321 is not good as 3 goes 3rd every time 43215 3 is second or thrid every time -probably the best of the three. 32154 4 goes fourth or fifth each time.

Timlagor expounded: > OTOH you do get 54 and 21 in he second round and 31 24 in the third. > > That's four lots of people having the same neighbour. The original > seating had the same (all in the third round) -as did all the > alternatives suggested by Mark. OOPS Missed the 43 in the third round of mine. However I miscounted the reversed pairs in all the others too so probably five reversed pairs is the minimum.

Mark Allen wrote: > We had our storyline today. I was very suprised to be the victim of what I > would call a slight oversight on the creators of The Archon. We had 5 > players and I was player '2'. When the 3rd round occured, I was completely > stunned to discover that I was first, again. Checking the Optimal Seating > page in the Archon spreadsheet, we found the following: > > 5 Players > Round 1 1 2 3 4 5 > Round 2 2 5 3 1 4 > Round 3 2 1 5 4 3 > > Now, I don't mind being first but when there are 3 other Meths that haven't > been first by the end of the 3rd round, I find this just wrong. I suggest > this should be changed or reviewed. If there is a reason why the seating > exists so that the 2nd player starts first for two rounds, I would like to > hear it. For the 3rd round, I suggest the following: > > 5,4,3,2,1 OR 4,3,2,1,5 OR 3,2,1,5,4 5,4,3,2,1 has player number 3 sitting 3rd *thrice* so that you will not have to repeat a seat even once. Why is his repetition so much less important than yours? 4,3,2,1,5 causes 5 to play 5th (undisputedly the worst seat, where 1-4 are ostensibly tied) twice. It also has 1 sitting 4th twice. 3,2,1,5,4 is again in violation of the neighbors rule and has 2 playing in the second seat twice and 4 sitting in the worst-place fifth seat twice. So all of those options are less optimal than the one shown in the optimal seating charts. Repeating 5th is less optimal than repeating 1st. Repeating thrice is less optimal than repeating twice. -- LSJ (vte...@white-wolf.com) V:TES Net.Rep for White Wolf, Inc. Links to V:TES news, rules, cards, utilities, and tournament calendar: http://www.white-wolf.com/vtes/

LSJ wrote: > 3,2,1,5,4 is again in violation of the neighbors rule and has 2 playing > in the second seat twice and 4 sitting in the worst-place fifth seat twice. Ignore the bit about neighbors. All the possibilities (including the optimal one) suffer that. [ quoted text not captured ]

Timlagor wrote: > You need to change round 2 as well. > > I'd go for > > 12345 > 54213 > 31524 4 is the grand-predator of 1 in all three rounds. Such repetition is ranked more highly than seat repetition. http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=3C9CAE29.1015B5%40white-wolf.com [ quoted text not captured ]

LSJ wrote: > Timlagor wrote: >> You need to change round 2 as well. >> >> I'd go for >> >> 12345 >> 54213 >> 31524 > > 4 is the grand-predator of 1 in all three rounds. > > Such repetition is ranked more highly than seat repetition. > http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=3C9CAE29.1015B5%40white-wolf.com > Thanks for the link. I can now see why there is a repeat placement of player 2 in the first seat for a 5 player table. This is exactly the answer I was looking for. After examining the link, I don't think that this issue can be resolved without the inclusion of and exception. Mark Allen Prince d'Ottawa

Mark Allen wrote: > LSJ wrote: >>Such repetition is ranked more highly than seat repetition. >>http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=3C9CAE29.1015B5%40white-wolf.com >> > > Thanks for the link. I can now see why there is a repeat placement of player > 2 in the first seat for a 5 player table. This is exactly the answer I was > looking for. After examining the link, I don't think that this issue can be > resolved without the inclusion of and exception. FYI: If you ever go looking for the link in the future, it's included in the Archon, on the optimal seating sheet. [ quoted text not captured ]

LSJ expounded: > Mark Allen wrote: > > We had our storyline today. I was very suprised to be the victim of what I > > would call a slight oversight on the creators of The Archon. We had 5 > > players and I was player '2'. When the 3rd round occured, I was completely > > stunned to discover that I was first, again. Checking the Optimal Seating > > page in the Archon spreadsheet, we found the following: > > > > 5 Players > > Round 1 1 2 3 4 5 > > Round 2 2 5 3 1 4 > > Round 3 2 1 5 4 3 > > > > Now, I don't mind being first but when there are 3 other Meths that haven't > > been first by the end of the 3rd round, I find this just wrong. I suggest > > this should be changed or reviewed. If there is a reason why the seating > > exists so that the 2nd player starts first for two rounds, I would like to > > hear it. For the 3rd round, I suggest the following: > > > > 5,4,3,2,1 OR 4,3,2,1,5 OR 3,2,1,5,4 > > 5,4,3,2,1 has player number 3 sitting 3rd *thrice* so that you will not have > to repeat a seat even once. Why is his repetition so much less important than > yours? 1st is very much an extreme position to be in whereas 3rd is almost the same as 2-5 in terms of transfers so repeating it isn't as serious. (clearly 3 times of anything is pretty serious though). > 4,3,2,1,5 causes 5 to play 5th (undisputedly the worst seat, where 1-4 are > ostensibly tied) twice. It also has 1 sitting 4th twice. I would certainly dispute that! 5th at least gets 4 transfers in the first round. 5th is undisputably worse than 4th but 1-3 are not necessarily better. Obviously it depends on your crypt but I often prefer 5th to all of 1-3 and it's almost invariably better than at least one of them. Sometimes the first turn is a complete write-off in first place: one transfer can be of no use at all in which case going first won't compensate you even the slightest bit. (NB not "can't be of any use") In 5th your first turn is ALWAYS going to contribute. Perhaps that's just due to th eway I build my crypts but I suspect that the boundary in the points system for building vampires has a lot to do with it. (getting extra point at 7 or whatever it is) I reckon this one is still better. 1 and 5 both sit at both ends of the spectrum whereas the original has 2 in Second and then First twice meaning they never get more than 2 transfers in their first turn -no 7/8-cap until the 3rd turn and IC members have to wait for the FOURTH turn (barring accelerators). I don't think that 1st is /necessarily/ bad but a lot of decks don't like it and few feel neutrally about it; if 2 likes being 2nd once and 1st twice, they probably gained an unreasonable advantage from it -far more so than 5th. > 3,2,1,5,4 is again in violation of the neighbors rule and has 2 playing > in the second seat twice and 4 sitting in the worst-place fifth seat twice. I dispute your "worst-place". Do other people agree with LSJ that 5th is "indesputably worst"? (or even just worst) > So all of those options are less optimal than the one shown in the optimal > seating charts. Repeating 5th is less optimal than repeating 1st. Repeating As I say I would generally rather repeat 5th than 1st. I don't think I've ever heard anyone groan at being 5th whereas I regularly hear groans over being first.

LSJ expounded: > Timlagor wrote: > > You need to change round 2 as well. > > > > I'd go for > > > > 12345 > > 54213 > > 31524 > > 4 is the grand-predator of 1 in all three rounds. Bah! and Humbug! Missed that. I give up ;)

Timlagor expounded: > > 3,2,1,5,4 is again in violation of the neighbors rule and has 2 playing > > in the second seat twice and 4 sitting in the worst-place fifth seat twice. > > I dispute your "worst-place". Wow you actually have 5th place in the rules! (I couldn't check the link until I reconnected) I think that's a mistake but by those rules the Archon's order is certainly better than my preferred one.

Timlagor wrote: > LSJ expounded: >>4,3,2,1,5 causes 5 to play 5th (undisputedly the worst seat, where 1-4 are >>ostensibly tied) twice. It also has 1 sitting 4th twice. > > I would certainly dispute that! 5th at least gets 4 transfers in the > first round. 5th is undisputably worse than 4th but 1-3 are not > necessarily better. Obviously it depends on your crypt but I often > prefer 5th to all of 1-3 and it's almost invariably better than at least > one of them. Further analysis/summaries of this available (thanks to Josh Duffin and Google) at: http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=a77o0p%24jbgk9%241%40ID-121616.news.dfncis.de http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=a7839h%24ivl7o%241%40ID-121616.news.dfncis.de (And, indirectly, in the thread surrounding the first link as well). [ quoted text not captured ]

>Thanks for the link. I can now see why there is a repeat placement of player >2 in the first seat for a 5 player table. This is exactly the answer I was >looking for. After examining the link, I don't think that this issue can be >resolved without the inclusion of and exception. > >Mark Allen I think the issue of seating 4 and 5 player tournaments is simple to resolve - don't play more than one round.

LSJ <vte...@white-wolf.com> wrote in message news:<3F5C77D7...@white-wolf.com>... > Mark Allen wrote: > 4,3,2,1,5 causes 5 to play 5th (undisputedly the worst seat, where 1-4 are > ostensibly tied) twice. It also has 1 sitting 4th twice. I'll dispute that 5th seat is the worst. I often like going 5th if I'm playing a fast bleed deck. With 4 transfers, Info Highway, Dreams and Zillah's available, it quite possible to influence out a vampire on your first turn. Your prey will likely have only had 5 transfers so they are potentially stuck eating your first bleed with no defense, if not your predator's first bleed (via bounce) as well! This can give you the Edge which often doesn't move during the second turn--Meths are wary of intercept since minions are usually in play, and no one wants their first vampire torpored with no chance to rescue. The major drawbacks to going 5th aren't really that bad IMO. You don't get any "extra" transfers. The main problem is with contestation of Master cards, but that doesn't happen that often right out of the gate in my experience.

"Timlagor" <Timlagor...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:MPG.19c6a596c...@news.freeserve.com... [LSJ wrote] > > 3,2,1,5,4 is again in violation of the neighbors rule and has 2 playing > > in the second seat twice and 4 sitting in the worst-place fifth seat twice. > > I dispute your "worst-place". > > Do other people agree with LSJ that 5th is "indesputably worst"? (or > even just worst) As you might have seen in the thread LSJ linked to, I did end up agreeing that while seats 1-4 are (with the caveat that for a particular deck you have in mind, this may not be true) equally good/bad. Seat 5 is worse because you have to go later than player #4 without getting any more transfers in exchange for going later. That is, going first is supposed to be just as good as going second, because while you only get 1 transfer on your first turn, you get to play a master card and discard a card before they get a turn, and on your second turn you can act before them if you have a 1-capacity vampire, etc. Going fifth, though, your predator gets as many transfers, master phases, and discards as you do on their first turn, *and* they'll get to take an action with those transfers before you do. Now, for any specific deck, it might be that going first is worse than going fourth (or even fifth!) because all of your vampires are 8-caps or something, and you don't have any early-game masters to get some use out of taking an earlier turn than the fourth- and fifth-seat players. But when developing seating charts, the only assumption we can make about the players' decks is that they will have at least 12 vampires in their crypts and 60 cards in their libraries. :-) In other words, we assume that for the entire population of possible VTES decks, going first is a good thing for about as many decks as it's a bad thing for. > As I say I would generally rather repeat 5th than 1st. I don't think > I've ever heard anyone groan at being 5th whereas I regularly hear > groans over being first. This turns out to be mainly because people don't realize that they're getting screwed by being 5th, I think. :-) They're happy to get out a vampire on "their" first or second turn, without considering that their predator got to have just as many transfers, got to take his/her turn earlier, and had a predator with fewer transfers. Josh ...to this numbered swiss account...

Jeff Kuta wrote: > LSJ <vte...@white-wolf.com> wrote in message news:<3F5C77D7...@white-wolf.com>... > >>Mark Allen wrote: >>4,3,2,1,5 causes 5 to play 5th (undisputedly the worst seat, where 1-4 are >>ostensibly tied) twice. It also has 1 sitting 4th twice. > > > I'll dispute that 5th seat is the worst. > > I often like going 5th if I'm playing a fast bleed deck. With 4 It isn't a matter what what a given player "often" likes when playing a given deck archetype. It's a matter of whether the seating position is on even footing with the others in a general way, without regard to a particular crypt draw or deck archetype. > transfers, Info Highway, Dreams and Zillah's available, it quite > possible to influence out a vampire on your first turn. Your prey will > likely have only had 5 transfers so they are potentially stuck eating How do you get the "quite possible" benefit of the option of using Info Highway, Dreams, and Zillah's, but your prey (who actually gets first shot at them) only gets it in "unlikely" cases? > your first bleed with no defense, if not your predator's first bleed > (via bounce) as well! This can give you the Edge which often doesn't > move during the second turn--Meths are wary of intercept since minions > are usually in play, and no one wants their first vampire torpored > with no chance to rescue. So you'd rather be 4th, actually, going solely by the above. Then you'd have all of the advantages you describe above, except that your prey would have had only 4 transfers and would not have had the benefit of the additional master phase action nor discard phase. > The major drawbacks to going 5th aren't really that bad IMO. You don't > get any "extra" transfers. The main problem is with contestation of > Master cards, but that doesn't happen that often right out of the gate > in my experience. See the links given in the previous article to a more in depth analysis. [ quoted text not captured ]

LSJ expounded: > Timlagor wrote: > > LSJ expounded: > >>4,3,2,1,5 causes 5 to play 5th (undisputedly the worst seat, where 1-4 are > >>ostensibly tied) twice. It also has 1 sitting 4th twice. > > > > I would certainly dispute that! 5th at least gets 4 transfers in the > > first round. 5th is undisputably worse than 4th but 1-3 are not > > necessarily better. Obviously it depends on your crypt but I often > > prefer 5th to all of 1-3 and it's almost invariably better than at least > > one of them. > > Further analysis/summaries of this available (thanks to Josh Duffin and > Google) at: > > http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=a77o0p%24jbgk9%241%40ID-121616.news.dfncis.de > http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=a7839h%24ivl7o%241%40ID-121616.news.dfncis.de > > (And, indirectly, in the thread surrounding the first link as well). I found that interesting thanks. I am not convinced. 1) I think that the advantage of a discard and MPA are limitted 2) I think that the game gives advantages to 7/8 Caps mostly meaning that it isn't just due to personal preference that people play decks that don't like going first. Lots of stuff kicks in around 7/8 and beyond that a lot of extra points are liable to go into disciplines you aren't using. 3) The transfer difference, when it kicks in, will cost you a whole round rather than a place or two within the round. Compare 1st and 4th: 1st gets to a 1-cap, 5cap, or 9cap first. 4th gets to 2cap, 3cap, 4 cap, 6cap, 7cap, 8cap, 10cap, 11cap first. [for 5cap read 5 capacity points of vampires though mostly I'm talking about single vampires because getting your first strategy-useful vampire out is probably the most critical point) The MPA and discard simply doesn't make up for this imo. 5th while clearly not as good as 4th still has all that advantage over 1st. If you think of 1st as 6th with an extra MPA and discard the question becomes "Is the D+MPA+1transfer worth as much as the position?" It almost requires doublethink: I seem to be telling myself that you are both underestimating and overestimating the importance of play order. I'll try to clarify my instincts into an argument: -) It is very important what order you 'get going' in but that is not the same as the order you get turns in, which is relatively irrelevant. I don't think people dislike 1st because they haven't thought about it enough. Not because I think they have thought about it enough but because they have sat in 1st and not liked it -their conclusions are empirical rather than analytical.

Joshua Duffin expounded: > As you might have seen in the thread LSJ linked to, I did end > up agreeing that while seats 1-4 are (with the caveat that > for a particular deck you have in mind, this may not be true) > equally good/bad. Seat 5 is worse because you have to go > later than player #4 without getting any more transfers in > exchange for going later. I agree that 5th is worse than 4th. I do not agree that 1-4 are equal. > That is, going first is supposed to be just as good as going > second, because while you only get 1 transfer on your first !*SUPPOSED*! Why do you suppose this. I suppose that it is as close to equal as it reasonable can be. That is not the same thing as equal AT ALL. > Now, for any specific deck, it might be that going first is > worse than going fourth (or even fifth!) because all of your > vampires are 8-caps or something, and you don't have any > early-game masters to get some use out of taking an earlier > turn than the fourth- and fifth-seat players. But when > developing seating charts, the only assumption we can make > about the players' decks is that they will have at least 12 > vampires in their crypts and 60 cards in their libraries. > :-) In other words, we assume that for the entire population > of possible VTES decks, going first is a good thing for about > as many decks as it's a bad thing for. The entire populatin of VTES decks is irrelevent. You should consider the population of VTES decks that actually stand a chance of doing anything worthwhile. I don't agree that the capacities of the vampires in the crypts of viable decks are anything like evenly distributed. Did you realise you were assuming this? The hidden assumptions in LSJ's arguments are the problem. He doesn't only assume the number of cards -he assumes an even distribution that is alsmot certainly not present. You might also want to consider the likelyhood of having a playable Master in the first turn AND AGAIN IN THE SECOND TURN in a viable deck. Pretty improbable as a deck likely to do this would a) have to have mostly Masters that can be played without minions b) almost certainly get jammed on masters once its minions get rolling. Granted there are some Master intensive decks that could do it and any deck /might/ get the mileage out of it (so the possibility is worth something) but it's really not very likely (so it isn't worth much). As you rightly pointed out to LSJ, while the discard is potentially useful, you are unlikely to know what you should discard. > > As I say I would generally rather repeat 5th than 1st. I don't think > > I've ever heard anyone groan at being 5th whereas I regularly hear > > groans over being first. > This turns out to be mainly because people don't realize > that they're getting screwed by being 5th, I think. :-) > They're happy to get out a vampire on "their" first or > second turn, without considering that their predator got > to have just as many transfers, got to take his/her turn > earlier, and had a predator with fewer transfers. I don't think anyone really fails to realise this. Sounds like LSJ propaganda to me! ;-P What do you mean: "This turns out"??!!??!!!!!!!!!!! Where on Earth did this come from? You mean LSJ persuaded you? I reckon that the disadvantage 5 has to 4 is much smaller than the advantage 5 has over 1 -I'd take a small disadvantage to my predator for a bigger one over my prey. Actually I don't think that the disadvantage is that great but it does build over the two or three vamps (usually) you are going to bring out. The main thing limiting this advantage is the inability of vampires to act the turn they come out (and their ability to block/react). You may have noticed that I haven't discussed positions 2 and 3. It may well be that a proper analysis would show 3 to be the best position over all. My point is that 1-4 ARE NOT EQUAL -merely as equal as possible- and 5th is only necessarily worse than 4th. Obviously people can (and do) build their crypts with all this in mind and here you hit another bump. Consider the capacity point you can get out: Round/Player 1 2 3 4 5 1 1 2 3 4 4 2 5 6 7 8 8 3 9 10 11 12 12 If you throw in a 5cap it is ONLY better than a 6cap if you sit in place 1; 4 out of 5 times you will be better off with the 6cap -which puts you at a disadvantage when you sit in place 1. This effect reduces the value of constructing your crypt for first place. I'm definitely leaning to the opinion that 3rd is the best seat overall (then 4 followed by 5 and 2 about equal and 1st being worst). [clearly individual decks will have their own preferences -this opinion is meant to be an aggregate of the preferences of viable decks] Of course Transfer accelerators (Info H and Z's Val) push the balance back towards 1st place... it's still a balance not a flat plain though so assumptions are thoroughly unwarranted. Hmm rather long. I hope it's not too boring ;) Come on LSJ gotta increase your posting figures ;-P

In article <MPG.19c709e68...@news.freeserve.com>, Timlagor...@yahoo.com says... > I don't agree that the capacities of the vampires > in the crypts of viable decks are anything like evenly distributed. > The hidden assumptions in LSJ's arguments are the problem. He doesn't > only assume the number of cards -he assumes an even distribution that is > alsmot certainly not present. Do you have any proof of these statements? Has anyone done an "average capacity and distribution" analysis of the deck archive? > You might also want to consider the likelyhood of having a playable > Master in the first turn AND AGAIN IN THE SECOND TURN in a viable deck. > Pretty improbable as a deck likely to do this would > a) have to have mostly Masters that can be played without minions > b) almost certainly get jammed on masters once its minions get rolling. Do you mean you've never drawn 2 playable masters in your first 8-9 cards? > If you throw in a 5cap it is ONLY better than a 6cap if you sit in place > 1; 4 out of 5 times you will be better off with the 6cap -which puts you > at a disadvantage when you sit in place 1. This effect reduces the value > of constructing your crypt for first place. Unless the 5 cap is "right" for your deck. This assumes that 6 caps in general are "better" than 5 caps for a given deck. > I'm definitely leaning to the opinion that 3rd is the best seat overall > (then 4 followed by 5 and 2 about equal and 1st being worst). Do you have any examples to back any of this up with? Why is 3rd better than 2nd or 4th in any way? > it's still a balance not a flat plain though > so assumptions are thoroughly unwarranted. Riiight... -- -Snapcase

In message <MPG.19c702681...@news.freeserve.com>, Timlagor <Timlagor...@yahoo.com> mumbled something about: >I found that interesting thanks. >I am not convinced. > >1) I think that the advantage of a discard and MPA are limitted You're wrong. Parthenon. Info Highway. Creepshow Casino. Dreams. Montreal. (and numerous others) Getting these first is HUGE. >2) I think that the game gives advantages to 7/8 Caps mostly meaning >that it isn't just due to personal preference that people play decks >that don't like going first. No. The game is still currently action-oriented, therefore the smallest vampires are still the ones with the most advantages. Weenie decks are still a major threat if not handled cross-table properly. Midcaps are starting to become much more viable. Investing a lot of pool in a 7/8 cap vampire is still a dangerous proposition, especially after it gets torporized and diablerized. >Lots of stuff kicks in around 7/8 and beyond that a lot of extra points >are liable to go into disciplines you aren't using. Lots of stuff also kicks in around 3/4 though, and even Smudge can become a Prince on turn 2. >3) The transfer difference, when it kicks in, will cost you a whole >round rather than a place or two within the round. > >Compare 1st and 4th: >1st gets to a 1-cap, 5cap, or 9cap first. >4th gets to 2cap, 3cap, 4 cap, 6cap, 7cap, 8cap, 10cap, 11cap first. >[for 5cap read 5 capacity points of vampires though mostly I'm talking >about single vampires because getting your first strategy-useful vampire >out is probably the most critical point) When that's Antoinette duChamp, 1st doesn't look so bad after all. >The MPA and discard simply doesn't make up for this imo. 5th while >clearly not as good as 4th still has all that advantage over 1st. Yes, he has the advantage of being able to watch as his prey gains the Edge or becomes a Prince. >I don't think people dislike 1st because they haven't thought about it >enough. Not because I think they have thought about it enough but >because they have sat in 1st and not liked it -their conclusions are >empirical rather than analytical. I love going first. The worst thing that can happen to you is that you have all even vampires in your crypt draw, but that happens if you're 3rd or 5th, too. I typically try very hard to use at least five odd-cap vampires so that I can 'arrange' my transfers appropriately in nearly all cases. -- Derek "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge." - C. Darwin, 1871

Timlagor <Timlagor...@yahoo.com> wrote ... <MPG.19c709e68...@news.freeserve.com>... > The entire populatin of VTES decks is irrelevent. > You should consider the population of VTES decks > that actually stand a chance of doing anything > worthwhile. Do you know of an algorithm that will determine a worthwhile VTES deck, then? Could you post it please, it will make deck designing a whole lot simpler. > As you rightly pointed out to LSJ, while the discard > is potentially useful, you are unlikely to know > what you should discard. I don't know about that. In the first round of a tournament you may not know anything about your opponents' decks, but in subsequent rounds you may know enough to determine whether certain cards are useful or not. Even apart from that you should always be able to look at your hand in isolation and decide *if* something needs to be discarded, some cards are only really handy later (foreshadowing destruction, for example), others are only useful with other cards (ghouled, for example), and you hardly ever want your hand full of something (votes, for example). True, you may not always want to use your discard as first player- but if you do, which I find is quite common for highly focused decks, then it is very useful indeed. > I reckon that the disadvantage 5 has to 4 is much smaller than the > advantage 5 has over 1 -I'd take a small disadvantage to my predator for > a bigger one over my prey. How does 5 have an advantage over 1? By the time 5's first minion gets to act, 1 has already had an opportunity to act, has had one more transfer and has had the same number of master phases and one more discard. > Consider the capacity point you can get out: > > Round/Player > 1 2 3 4 5 > 1 1 2 3 4 4 > 2 5 6 7 8 8 > 3 9 10 11 12 12 > > If you throw in a 5cap it is ONLY better than > a 6cap if you sit in place 1; 4 out of 5 times > you will be better off with the 6cap -which > puts you at a disadvantage when you sit in > place 1. You are assuming all transfers go onto a single vampire and that a larger capacity vampire is better than a smaller. Neither assumption is always true. Further to this stuff: LSJ, When checking for a repeated seating order, should "cross-table" in a 4 player game be considered the same thing as "grand-prey/predator" in a 5 player? I.e. if in round 1 I (A) am cross-table from another player (B), on a four-player table, should this prevent A X B and B X A seatings on subsequent five-player tables? * lehrbuch

Snapcase expounded: > > The hidden assumptions in LSJ's arguments are the problem. He doesn't > > only assume the number of cards -he assumes an even distribution that is > > alsmot certainly not present. > Do you have any proof of these statements? Has anyone done an "average > capacity and distribution" analysis of the deck archive? I don't think I need to prove that LSJ has made this assumption. I am fairly certain that he has not done (or used) such an analysis. Therefore his assumption is unwarranted. LSJ's analysis absolutely requires that the appropriate assumption hold (whatever distribution he needs to assume for it to work -it may not be as simple as an even distribution but I'm not about to work it out). > > You might also want to consider the likelyhood of having a playable > > Master in the first turn AND AGAIN IN THE SECOND TURN in a viable deck. > > Pretty improbable as a deck likely to do this would > > a) have to have mostly Masters that can be played without minions > > b) almost certainly get jammed on masters once its minions get rolling. > > Do you mean you've never drawn 2 playable masters in your first 8-9 > cards? I mean that I don't always (or even often) draw 2 playable masters in my first 8-9. > > If you throw in a 5cap it is ONLY better than a 6cap if you sit in place > > 1; 4 out of 5 times you will be better off with the 6cap -which puts you > > at a disadvantage when you sit in place 1. This effect reduces the value > > of constructing your crypt for first place. > > Unless the 5 cap is "right" for your deck. This assumes that 6 caps in > general are "better" than 5 caps for a given deck. That is true. In general a 6-cap is better though it could be two 3caps or a 2 and a 4 or... I was ignoring those for simplicity. Obviously if the 5cap is exactly what you want then you will put it in. > > I'm definitely leaning to the opinion that 3rd is the best seat overall > > (then 4 followed by 5 and 2 about equal and 1st being worst). > Do you have any examples to back any of this up with? Why is 3rd better > than 2nd or 4th in any way? Nope. I'm just leaning towards that opinion.

lehrbuch expounded: > > The entire populatin of VTES decks is irrelevent. > > You should consider the population of VTES decks > > that actually stand a chance of doing anything > > worthwhile. > > Do you know of an algorithm that will determine a worthwhile VTES > deck, then? Could you post it please, it will make deck designing a > whole lot simpler. I don't. I didn't say it was an analysis that could be done (though looking at all the tournament winning decks would probably give a moderately good indication; to some slight extent these will be ones that can succeed in position 1 already). I said that it was an analysis that is required before sweeping statements comparing the quality of starting positions can be made with confidence. > > As you rightly pointed out to LSJ, while the discard > > is potentially useful, you are unlikely to know > > what you should discard. > > I don't know about that. In the first round of a tournament you may > not know anything about your opponents' decks, but in subsequent > rounds you may know enough to determine whether certain cards are The first round is where you get your extra discard with absolutely no information about other decks whatsoever. > useful or not. Even apart from that you should always be able to look > at your hand in isolation and decide *if* something needs to be > discarded, some cards are only really handy later (foreshadowing True. Often you won't know what you should discard if anything - sometimes you will. How do you value this against transfers? Claiming an equality is a gross assumption. > > I reckon that the disadvantage 5 has to 4 is much smaller than the > > advantage 5 has over 1 -I'd take a small disadvantage to my predator for > > a bigger one over my prey. > > How does 5 have an advantage over 1? By the time 5's first minion > gets to act, 1 has already had an opportunity to act, has had one more > transfer and has had the same number of master phases and one more > discard. 1 has only has an opportunity to act if they get a 1cap (or 2-5cap to 5s 5+cap). This is very often not the case. 5 will be acting with a bigger (or multiple) vampire(s). > You are assuming all transfers go onto a single vampire and that a > larger capacity vampire is better than a smaller. Neither assumption > is always true. I agree. If you have smaller vampires then gets more of them. Unless 1 has a 1cap (5/9cap) they've lost their transfer advantage with only the MPA+D which may or may not help them to compensate. It's further complicated by 1 being able to add a 3 and a 6 to get 9 which makes it easier to build for position 1 but it still may not be convenient and no one has analysed whether it is likely to be. LSJ claims that the MPA+D effect is exactly right to make positions 1-4 equal. I simply don't believe he has done the necessary analysis to make this claim. Furthermore I don't believe that the claim is actually right.

Derek Ray expounded: > >1) I think that the advantage of a discard and MPA are limitted > You're wrong. > Parthenon. Info Highway. Creepshow Casino. Dreams. Montreal. > (and numerous others) > Getting these first is HUGE. > >2) I think that the game gives advantages to 7/8 Caps mostly meaning > >that it isn't just due to personal preference that people play decks > >that don't like going first. > No. The game is still currently action-oriented, therefore the smallest > vampires are still the ones with the most advantages. Weenie decks are > still a major threat if not handled cross-table properly. Weenie decks are indeed the ones that like to go first. Have you analysed this thoroughly so you can show me the figures that demonstrate that this effect exacly balances all the decks that don't like to go first? Weenies bring another problem to the table: they like going first so much that you shouldn't let them repeat 1st place. 1st is an EXTREME position in a way that 5th isn't -mostly you either love it or hate it; 5th is just "sort of not very good". > Midcaps are starting to become much more viable. Investing a lot of > pool in a 7/8 cap vampire is still a dangerous proposition, especially > after it gets torporized and diablerized. > > >Lots of stuff kicks in around 7/8 and beyond that a lot of extra points > >are liable to go into disciplines you aren't using. > > Lots of stuff also kicks in around 3/4 though, That hardly helps the person with 1 transfer. > and even Smudge can become a Prince on turn 2. <snip> > When that's Antoinette duChamp, 1st doesn't look so bad after all. The right deck LOVES going 1st. i never denied it. > >The MPA and discard simply doesn't make up for this imo. 5th while > >clearly not as good as 4th still has all that advantage over 1st. > > Yes, he has the advantage of being able to watch as his prey gains the > Edge or becomes a Prince. ONLY IF THE PREY HAS THE RIGHT CAP VAMPIRE. Usually it will be someone cross-table that gets the first bleed in. > >I don't think people dislike 1st because they haven't thought about it > >enough. Not because I think they have thought about it enough but > >because they have sat in 1st and not liked it -their conclusions are > >empirical rather than analytical. > > I love going first. The worst thing that can happen to you is that you > have all even vampires in your crypt draw, but that happens if you're > 3rd or 5th, too. Doesn't happen in 5th (5th gets 4 transfers). > I typically try very hard to use at least five odd-cap > vampires so that I can 'arrange' my transfers appropriately in nearly > all cases. Good plan. if you don't have to make sacrifices to manage this then you probably find 1-4 more even but such a constraint is a further cost on your building which makes the analysis we aren't doing even more complicated. People don't dislike 1st on the basis of thought at all -it is purely a matter of experience. Since we aren't going to analyse the queston rigorously and completely, expeeriential evidence is probably much the most reliable indicator. If everyone agrees with Derek then 1st is probably the best position and it's even more imperative that no one repeats that seat! ;P

Timlagor wrote: > 1) I think that the advantage of a discard and MPA are limitted As you like. > 2) I think that the game gives advantages to 7/8 Caps mostly meaning > that it isn't just due to personal preference that people play decks > that don't like going first. > Lots of stuff kicks in around 7/8 and beyond that a lot of extra points > are liable to go into disciplines you aren't using. As you like. It doesn't help with the analysis. You'd have to first show some basis for the supposition that 7/8's are the most advantageous capacities to the majority of decks. > 3) The transfer difference, when it kicks in, will cost you a whole > round rather than a place or two within the round. > > Compare 1st and 4th: > 1st gets to a 1-cap, 5cap, or 9cap first. > 4th gets to 2cap, 3cap, 4 cap, 6cap, 7cap, 8cap, 10cap, 11cap first. > [for 5cap read 5 capacity points of vampires though mostly I'm talking > about single vampires because getting your first strategy-useful vampire > out is probably the most critical point) > The MPA and discard simply doesn't make up for this imo. 5th while > clearly not as good as 4th still has all that advantage over 1st. Invalid logic. 1 through 4 are ramped to be even. You analyze this by comparing 1 (a quarter of the field) with the other three quarters combinined masquerading as 4 alone. By your logic, 3 is better than 4. (1cap, 2cap, 3cap, 5cap, 6cap, 7cap, 9cap, 10cap, and 11cap vs. 4cap and 8cap). This is true if you lump in all of 1 2 and 3 as 3. And 2 is better than 3 (with 2 being 4 1 and 2). And 1 is better than 2 (with 1 being 3 4 and 1). > If you think of 1st as 6th with an extra MPA and discard the question > becomes "Is the D+MPA+1transfer worth as much as the position?" > > It almost requires doublethink: I seem to be telling myself that you are > both underestimating and overestimating the importance of play order. > I'll try to clarify my instincts into an argument: -) > > It is very important what order you 'get going' in but that is not the > same as the order you get turns in, which is relatively irrelevant. > > I don't think people dislike 1st because they haven't thought about it > enough. Not because I think they have thought about it enough but > because they have sat in 1st and not liked it -their conclusions are > empirical rather than analytical. Interesting hypothesis. [ quoted text not captured ]

Timlagor wrote: > Joshua Duffin expounded: >>That is, going first is supposed to be just as good as going >>second, because while you only get 1 transfer on your first > > !*SUPPOSED*! > Why do you suppose this. I suppose that it is as close to equal as it > reasonable can be. That is not the same thing as equal AT ALL. Mistaken translation. Josh related the goal of the game mechanic - that the positions are supposed to be equal. That is, the mechanics of the game are as they are in an attempt to achieve the goal of making going first no better or worse (on average) than going second. >>Now, for any specific deck, it might be that going first is >>worse than going fourth (or even fifth!) because all of your >>vampires are 8-caps or something, and you don't have any >>early-game masters to get some use out of taking an earlier >>turn than the fourth- and fifth-seat players. But when >>developing seating charts, the only assumption we can make >>about the players' decks is that they will have at least 12 >>vampires in their crypts and 60 cards in their libraries. >>:-) In other words, we assume that for the entire population >>of possible VTES decks, going first is a good thing for about >>as many decks as it's a bad thing for. > > The entire populatin of VTES decks is irrelevent. You should consider > the population of VTES decks that actually stand a chance of doing > anything worthwhile. I don't agree that the capacities of the vampires > in the crypts of viable decks are anything like evenly distributed. > > Did you realise you were assuming this? > > The hidden assumptions in LSJ's arguments are the problem. He doesn't > only assume the number of cards -he assumes an even distribution that is > alsmot certainly not present. I simply do not assume a particular arbitrary distribution. If you can provide a working definition of the class of all of the decks you think should be factored into the equation, with a logical basis for including the decks in that class while excluding others, please do so. This is basic information theory. Lacking a specific model/dictionary/class, an appropriate general class is used. > You might also want to consider the likelyhood of having a playable > Master in the first turn AND AGAIN IN THE SECOND TURN in a viable deck. And you'd have to contrast that with the likelihood of having a playable master card in the first turn at all. And include the likelihood of getting a playable master in the second turn after not playing one in the first turn and then discarding a card in your discard phase of the first turn. > Pretty improbable as a deck likely to do this would > a) have to have mostly Masters that can be played without minions > b) almost certainly get jammed on masters once its minions get rolling. Not much meat there for counterpoint. > Granted there are some Master intensive decks that could do it and any > deck /might/ get the mileage out of it (so the possibility is worth > something) but it's really not very likely (so it isn't worth much). As Unsupported assertion. > you rightly pointed out to LSJ, while the discard is potentially useful, > you are unlikely to know what you should discard. Another unsupported assertion. >>>As I say I would generally rather repeat 5th than 1st. I don't think >>>I've ever heard anyone groan at being 5th whereas I regularly hear >>>groans over being first. >> >>This turns out to be mainly because people don't realize >>that they're getting screwed by being 5th, I think. :-) >>They're happy to get out a vampire on "their" first or >>second turn, without considering that their predator got >>to have just as many transfers, got to take his/her turn >>earlier, and had a predator with fewer transfers. > > > I don't think anyone really fails to realise this. Sounds like LSJ > propaganda to me! ;-P Well founded logic is propaganda? At least try it before you knock it. > What do you mean: "This turns out"??!!??!!!!!!!!!!! > Where on Earth did this come from? You mean LSJ persuaded you? Ah, the exclamation point logic. That's strong mojo. I yield and quiver. > I reckon that the disadvantage 5 has to 4 is much smaller than the > advantage 5 has over 1 -I'd take a small disadvantage to my predator for > a bigger one over my prey. What advantage does 5 have over 1? > Actually I don't think that the disadvantage is that great but it does > build over the two or three vamps (usually) you are going to bring out. > The main thing limiting this advantage is the inability of vampires to > act the turn they come out (and their ability to block/react). True for all players. > You may have noticed that I haven't discussed positions 2 and 3. It may > well be that a proper analysis would show 3 to be the best position over > all. My point is that 1-4 ARE NOT EQUAL -merely as equal as possible- > and 5th is only necessarily worse than 4th. I understand your point. I'm just looking for the supporting evidence. > Obviously people can (and do) build their crypts with all this in mind > and here you hit another bump. > > Consider the capacity point you can get out: > > Round/Player > 1 2 3 4 5 > 1 1 2 3 4 4 > 2 5 6 7 8 8 > 3 9 10 11 12 12 > > If you throw in a 5cap it is ONLY better than a 6cap if you sit in place > 1; 4 out of 5 times you will be better off with the 6cap -which puts you > at a disadvantage when you sit in place 1. This effect reduces the value > of constructing your crypt for first place. Assuming you only ever bring out 1 vampire, OK. With that mistaken assumption as a given, the same can be said as: If you "throw in" a 3 cap it is ONLY [sic] better than a 4 cap if you sit in place 3. 4 out of 5 times you will be better off with the 4 cap - which puts you at a disadvantage when you sit in place 3. And so on for all seating positions (with the appropriate combining of seats 4 and 5). > > I'm definitely leaning to the opinion that 3rd is the best seat overall > (then 4 followed by 5 and 2 about equal and 1st being worst). > [clearly individual decks will have their own preferences -this opinion > is meant to be an aggregate of the preferences of viable decks] As you wish. And if you build decks optimized for sitting in good seats (so as to compound the presumed advantage), don't be surprised if those decks work better in the seats they are optimized for. With that unsubstantiated position as a given, however, it seems like it would be better to build decks that would not "suffer" as much when sitting in a "bad" seat - so as to mitigate the disadvantage of having to go first if you find yourself there. > Of course Transfer accelerators (Info H and Z's Val) push the balance > back towards 1st place... it's still a balance not a flat plain though IH and ZV's only benefit 1st insofar as IH can be used before someone else can contest it. Otherwise, they benefit all positions equally. > so assumptions are thoroughly unwarranted. Agreed. Hence my position of not making unwarranted assumptions about the class of decks. > Hmm rather long. I hope it's not too boring ;) > > Come on LSJ gotta increase your posting figures ;-P -- [ quoted text not captured ]

lehrbuch wrote: > LSJ, > > When checking for a repeated seating order, should "cross-table" in a > 4 player game be considered the same thing as "grand-prey/predator" in > a 5 player? I.e. if in round 1 I (A) am cross-table from another > player (B), on a four-player table, should this prevent A X B and B X > A seatings on subsequent five-player tables? If possible. That is criterion #9. [ quoted text not captured ]

Timlagor wrote: > I don't think I need to prove that LSJ has made this assumption. I am > fairly certain that he has not done (or used) such an analysis. > Therefore his assumption is unwarranted. Your "therefore" does not follow. > LSJ's analysis absolutely requires that the appropriate assumption hold Incorrect. The analysis is done based on the general class, out of necessity, since no more specific workable class definition is available. That is, the best available workable class definition is used. > (whatever distribution he needs to assume for it to work -it may not be > as simple as an even distribution but I'm not about to work it out). Correct. :-) >>Unless the 5 cap is "right" for your deck. This assumes that 6 caps in >>general are "better" than 5 caps for a given deck. > > That is true. In general a 6-cap is better though it could be two 3caps > or a 2 and a 4 or... I was ignoring those for simplicity. Your "in general" is an unfounded divergence from the general case. [ quoted text not captured ]

Timlagor <Timlagor...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<MPG.19c7c0918...@news.freeserve.com>... > I don't think I need to prove that LSJ has made this assumption. I am > fairly certain that he has not done (or used) such an analysis. > Therefore his assumption is unwarranted. Someone /did/ do such an analysis about a year back or so. Haven't been able to locate it in google (it was pretty informative, though). Perhaps he is using this as his basis. > LSJ's analysis absolutely requires that the appropriate assumption hold > (whatever distribution he needs to assume for it to work -it may not be > as simple as an even distribution but I'm not about to work it out). Your counterargument contends that such a distribution does not exist (indeed, you seem quite certain of it). Why do you assume this? What sort of distribution do you think is out there? > I mean that I don't always (or even often) draw 2 playable masters in my > first 8-9. *shrug*. Perhaps you just have bad luck. Ignoring that, there are still many unique masters that are better to get out before anyone else does. Going first affords you that advantage. > > Unless the 5 cap is "right" for your deck. This assumes that 6 caps in > > general are "better" than 5 caps for a given deck. > > That is true. In general a 6-cap is better though it could be two 3caps > or a 2 and a 4 or... I was ignoring those for simplicity. Still holds for 5 capacity points (1 and 4 or 2 and 3). > > > I'm definitely leaning to the opinion that 3rd is the best seat overall > > > (then 4 followed by 5 and 2 about equal and 1st being worst). > > Do you have any examples to back any of this up with? Why is 3rd better > > than 2nd or 4th in any way? > > Nope. I'm just leaning towards that opinion. Why? -- -Snapcase

Snapcase <shotgu...@optonline.netREMOVE> wrote: > Do you have any proof of these statements? Has anyone done an "average > capacity and distribution" analysis of the deck archive? Yes, I did, a while ago. Keep meaning to get back to that, as well as be more consistent in my newletter writing. This post has some details: http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=a6q94g%24ga23v%241%40ID-123937.news.dfncis.de&oe=UTF-8&output=gplain In brief, the findings at that point were: "* 36.9% of all winning decks were high capacity decks (I think this was eyeballed, but I believe my cutoff was that most vampires were 7 or 8 and up) * 15.4% of all winning decks were strictly weenie decks There are a lot of decks (nearly 50%) which I slotted as mid-capacity, but that almost certainly includes the high end of "weenie" decks." I did a more rigorous study later, but I can't figure out where I put that. Timlagor wrote: > > If you throw in a 5cap it is ONLY better than a 6cap if you sit in place > > 1; 4 out of 5 times you will be better off with the 6cap -which puts you > > at a disadvantage when you sit in place 1. This effect reduces the value > > of constructing your crypt for first place. > > Unless the 5 cap is "right" for your deck. This assumes that 6 caps in > general are "better" than 5 caps for a given deck. Yuh-huh. I can think of lots of examples where a 5-cap is preferable to a 6-cap in a deck. Sure, a 6-cap might get you more points of disciplines, but that isn't always what you need, like if you're, oh, playing Atonement or something. Other examples abound. Xian

>> I don't think people dislike 1st because they haven't thought about it >> enough. Not because I think they have thought about it enough but >> because they have sat in 1st and not liked it -their conclusions are >> empirical rather than analytical. > >Interesting hypothesis. I looked through Archons I have where I played (just constructed). Sample size is likely way too small, the specious conclusions are: I always want to play second as I average 4 VPs per game (one game says so); third is also good; first and fifth are similar and not so good; I have *no* results for going fourth which is ... weird. This assumes I didn't make any mistakes, not out of the question as looking at the Archons was boring. If I wanted to do it right, of course, I'd take everyone's results and see what the distribution of VPs (or VPs and TWs) segregating 4 and 5 player tables. But, that's like effort. And, it still wouldn't take into account variance of play skill. In this batch of tournaments, I was first as many times as I was everything else combined, which means others likely had similar skews of seat position. I have maybe half the Archons for the area; the others may paint a very different picture, like, maybe, I've actually been fourth in a tournament at some point. BTW, as to preference, usually prefer even transfers as I unintentionally, sometimes build all even decks with no Dreams or Govern to oddify.

In message <MPG.19c7c6ff1...@news.freeserve.com>, Timlagor <Timlagor...@yahoo.com> mumbled something about: >Derek Ray expounded: >> >1) I think that the advantage of a discard and MPA are limitted >> You're wrong. >> Parthenon. Info Highway. Creepshow Casino. Dreams. Montreal. >> (and numerous others) >> Getting these first is HUGE. You need to respond to this. It's critical. >> >2) I think that the game gives advantages to 7/8 Caps mostly meaning >> >that it isn't just due to personal preference that people play decks >> >that don't like going first. >> No. The game is still currently action-oriented, therefore the smallest >> vampires are still the ones with the most advantages. Weenie decks are >> still a major threat if not handled cross-table properly. > >Weenie decks are indeed the ones that like to go first. Have you >analysed this thoroughly so you can show me the figures that demonstrate >that this effect exacly balances all the decks that don't like to go >first? For fuck's sake, man, how thoroughly do I need to analyse "weenies are strong and win lots"? Search Google if you must, but I'm not wasting my time, this is a given. Is it for nothing that every single player asks himself, prior to bringing a deck to a tournament, "What will I do if I sit in front of weenie DOM tap-and-bleed?" >Weenies bring another problem to the table: they like going first so >much that you shouldn't let them repeat 1st place. 1st is an EXTREME And you definitely shouldn't let them repeat 4th, because they can get 4 vampires on the first turn that way and go uphill from there. Swings and roundabouts; it works out to the same. >position in a way that 5th isn't -mostly you either love it or hate it; >5th is just "sort of not very good". No. 1st is more or less the same as 2nd, 3rd, and 4th, though I would rank them from best to worst in that order. 5th sucks compared to all of them. >> Midcaps are starting to become much more viable. Investing a lot of >> pool in a 7/8 cap vampire is still a dangerous proposition, especially >> after it gets torporized and diablerized. >> >> >Lots of stuff kicks in around 7/8 and beyond that a lot of extra points >> >are liable to go into disciplines you aren't using. >> >> Lots of stuff also kicks in around 3/4 though, > >That hardly helps the person with 1 transfer. Info Highway. Dreams. Montreal. >> and even Smudge can become a Prince on turn 2. ><snip> >> When that's Antoinette duChamp, 1st doesn't look so bad after all. > >The right deck LOVES going 1st. i never denied it. The right deck also loves going 2nd, 3rd, and 4th. If your main vamp is Isabel Giovanni, you want to go 1st. If your main vamp is Reverend Blackwood, you want to go 2nd. If your main vamp is Matthias, you want to go 3rd. If your main vamp is Victorine Lafourcade, you want to go 4th. If you're sitting in the 4th slot with Isabel Giovanni, you've lost a speed advantage you'd otherwise have. If you're sitting in first with Matthias and you don't have a 6-cap handy as well (who could that be?), you're in slow shape. >> >The MPA and discard simply doesn't make up for this imo. 5th while >> >clearly not as good as 4th still has all that advantage over 1st. >> >> Yes, he has the advantage of being able to watch as his prey gains the >> Edge or becomes a Prince. > >ONLY IF THE PREY HAS THE RIGHT CAP VAMPIRE. Usually it will be someone >cross-table that gets the first bleed in. Totally dependent on which decks are being played. Assuming the best situation for all decks, the guy going first gets to bleed first because he's got a 1-cap out and HE WENT FIRST. >> I typically try very hard to use at least five odd-cap >> vampires so that I can 'arrange' my transfers appropriately in nearly >> all cases. > >Good plan. if you don't have to make sacrifices to manage this then you >probably find 1-4 more even but such a constraint is a further cost on >your building which makes the analysis we aren't doing even more >complicated. It's a neglible cost, and there is no analysis to be done. All such analysis would be entirely based on the decks at the table, which is impossible to successfully recreate because that sort of thing isn't tracked. If you don't think it's a negligible cost, take all your decks apart right now and look at the crypts. I bet at least 4 are odd in each, barring single-vampire trick decks. >People don't dislike 1st on the basis of thought at all -it is purely a >matter of experience. Since we aren't going to analyse the queston Speaking of analysis, you are using vague evidence based entirely from your own perception here to claim that "people" dislike 1st. I don't agree with your perception, and mine is contradictory. Can we stop with the "argument from mob rule" approach, please? [ quoted text not captured ]

On Tue, 9 Sep 2003 12:04:54 +0100, Timlagor <Timlagor...@yahoo.com> wrote: >lehrbuch expounded: >> Do you know of an algorithm that will determine a worthwhile VTES >> deck, then? Could you post it please, it will make deck designing >> a whole lot simpler. > >I don't. I didn't say it was an analysis that could be done ... Exactly. No-one can analyse adequately to give definite answers to any of this. > The first round is where you get your extra discard with absolutely > no information about other decks whatsoever. Not always true. I played in a tournament last weekend. In the first round I had a good idea what 3 of the other 4 players at my table would play. I also knew roughly what 3 of the players at the other table would play. I knew what clan the decks were and their focus (vote/bleed/combat/useless). > True. Often you won't know what you should discard if > anything - sometimes you will. How do you value this > against transfers? You can't. > Claiming an equality is a gross assumption. Why is claiming *not equal* also not a gross assumption? > 1 has only has an opportunity to act if they get a 1cap (or 2-5cap > to 5s 5+cap). This is very often not the case. 5 will be acting > with a bigger (or multiple) vampire(s). 5 only gets to act if 4,3,2 and 1 have not burned/torpored his minion(s). The ability of 1 to act is only contingent upon his organisation of transfers (barring a possible pentex subversion or other irritating master card, which 5 has to worry about as well). The ability of 5 to act is contingent on *all* the other players not taking actions to prevent it. > LSJ claims that the MPA+D effect is exactly right to make positions > 1-4 equal. I simply don't believe he has done the necessary analysis > to make this claim. Furthermore I don't believe that the claim is > actually right. Isn't that why two of the seating guidelines are: "7. A player doesn't play in the same seat position, if possible. 8. Starting transfers are equitably distributed. [NOAL]" * lehrbuch

On Tue, 09 Sep 2003 18:47:17 -0400, Derek Ray <lor...@yahoo.com> scrawled: [snip] >>People don't dislike 1st on the basis of thought at all -it is purely a >>matter of experience. Since we aren't going to analyse the queston > >Speaking of analysis, you are using vague evidence based entirely from >your own perception here to claim that "people" dislike 1st. I don't >agree with your perception, and mine is contradictory. I'll just throw in here that at tournaments i have judged, of all the people who have complained about what placed turn they get, they have always complained about being 1st. I try and tell them to just think of it as going 4th, but with a bonus transfer and MPA. which, really, it is. but they just don't get it. salem domain:canberra http://www.geocities.com/salem_christ.geo/vtes.htm

lehrbuch wrote: Hey! I remember you from the last time or two this got seriously discussed. > Timlagor wrote: > > LSJ claims that the MPA+D effect is exactly right to make positions > > 1-4 equal. I simply don't believe he has done the necessary analysis > > to make this claim. Furthermore I don't believe that the claim is > > actually right. That's funny. LSJ not analysing something VTES related. That's about as likely as President Clinton beating President "I remind my dad of Dan Quayle" Bush in the 2004 election. > Isn't that why two of the seating guidelines are: > > "7. A player doesn't play in the same seat position, if possible. > 8. Starting transfers are equitably distributed. [NOAL]" Heh. I love having a rule named after me. For the interested reader, the thread that originally went over all this, as lehrbuch may recall, was this: http://tinyurl.com/n349 Regards, Noal

salem expounded: > I'll just throw in here that at tournaments i have judged, of all the > people who have complained about what placed turn they get, they have > always complained about being 1st. Anyone else have any opinion? > I try and tell them to just think of it as going 4th, but with a bonus > transfer and MPA. which, really, it is. but they just don't get it. 5th is unequivocally worse than 4th. In many people's opinion the extra MPA+D is not adequate compensation for getting to a decent number of transfers late. (what people think of 2nd is neither here nor here ;)

Snapcase expounded: > > I don't think I need to prove that LSJ has made this assumption. I am > > fairly certain that he has not done (or used) such an analysis. > > Therefore his assumption is unwarranted. > > Someone /did/ do such an analysis about a year back or so. Haven't > been able to locate it in google (it was pretty informative, though). > Perhaps he is using this as his basis. Really? Damn -Would have been interesting to see it. > > LSJ's analysis absolutely requires that the appropriate assumption hold > > (whatever distribution he needs to assume for it to work -it may not be > > as simple as an even distribution but I'm not about to work it out). It may be that he has used this as his basis in which case it would be nice if he said so. I assumed (perhaps rashly) that he would have presented such an analysis if he had one. > Your counterargument contends that such a distribution does not exist > (indeed, you seem quite certain of it). Why do you assume this? What > sort of distribution do you think is out there? I expect it to be fairly random. Of course an analysis of winning decks would be skewed by the assumptions inherent in the current system anyway. > > I mean that I don't always (or even often) draw 2 playable masters in my > > first 8-9. > *shrug*. Perhaps you just have bad luck. Ignoring that, there are > still many unique masters that are better to get out before anyone > else does. Going first affords you that advantage. This requires that a) you have them in your deck b) you get them in your opening hand c) someone else gets them in their deck d) they get them in their opening hand. (if no-one else has the same card in hand then you would have got it down first anyway) This is pretty unlikely. To illustrate assume 5 copies of the same unique master in each 90-card deck -you have a less than 15% (11.5%) chance of both having it in your opening hand. How often do you put 5 of a Unique Master in a deck? (let alone having someone else in the same game do the same thing with the same Unique Master) It drops below 6% if you each have 3 copies in an 80 card library. I'm not surprised I haven't seen this much. The fact that there are many such cards just makes it even less likely that you will be playing lots of the same one as someone else. > > > > I'm definitely leaning to the opinion that 3rd is the best seat overall > > > > (then 4 followed by 5 and 2 about equal and 1st being worst). > > > Do you have any examples to back any of this up with? Why is 3rd better > > > than 2nd or 4th in any way? > > > > Nope. I'm just leaning towards that opinion. > > Why? Partly because there are so many good 3-cap (eg. sup of your best deck discipline) and 7-cap vampires. You're likely to have one or the other in your deck/initial uncontrolled region and you get to go before 4th. Also because in comparing against the other players. v 1st You get to 2,3,6,7,10,11 caps first. v 2nd 3,7,11 first (no one gets more than 3 capacities before their predator) v 4th 1,2,3,5,6,7,9,10,11 first v 5th ditto. If you are runing strictly 4 and 8 caps you would rather go later. If you are running 1/2 caps or '5/6 caps AND NOT 3 caps' you would (/might) rather go earlier. In the former case it will cost you a whole round; in the latter you have lost a chance at an in-round timing advantage. If you move later, you are more likely to miss an in-round advantage; earlier you are more likely to miss a whole round. You are unlikely to be playing a crypt that is all the same capacity- mod-4: the 4and8caps is pretty unlikely whereas only 3,4,7,8,11 caps is at least possible (in your opening uncontrolled region). As I say, this is far from a rigorous analysis which I believe to be rather more work than it would be worth and probablly impossible. ***************************** This next bit is not really relevant but I worked it all out so I'm leaving it in ;P Counting the number of cap-points reached before the other players that's: 3rd 6,3,9,9 1st 8,6,3,3 2nd 3,8,6,6 4th 8,5,2,11 5th 8,5,2,0 *****************************

Derek Ray expounded: > >> >1) I think that the advantage of a discard and MPA are limitted > >> You're wrong. > >> Parthenon. Info Highway. Creepshow Casino. Dreams. Montreal. > >> (and numerous others) > >> Getting these first is HUGE. > > You need to respond to this. It's critical. Well since you insist. How often do you see any of these contested in teh first round? I don't think I've ever seen a contestation in the first round -I may have but, even if I have, that I don't remember it is a clear indication of its rarity. I have not been aware of people discarding things to avoid contestation at this point either (easier to miss but I would generally expect someone to comment on it). Personally, I rarely have more than one vampire-free Master to play in the first two rounds and I have never seen (potential) contestation in the first two rounds. Maybe other people see it every game; I haven't. > >> >2) I think that the game gives advantages to 7/8 Caps mostly meaning > >> >that it isn't just due to personal preference that people play decks > >> >that don't like going first. > >> No. The game is still currently action-oriented, therefore the smallest > >> vampires are still the ones with the most advantages. Weenie decks are > >> still a major threat if not handled cross-table properly. > > > >Weenie decks are indeed the ones that like to go first. Have you > >analysed this thoroughly so you can show me the figures that demonstrate > >that this effect exacly balances all the decks that don't like to go > >first? > > For fuck's sake, man, how thoroughly do I need to analyse "weenies are > strong and win lots"? Search Google if you must, but I'm not wasting my > time, this is a given. That wasn't the question. The question was: "does their preference for going first exactly (*exactly* mind) balance other decks' preference for going later?" I'm not going to attempt to analyse this as I don't think it's feasible. Establishing that 1-4 are equal REQUIRES this analysis however. establishing that 1st is always better than 5th does too. > >Weenies bring another problem to the table: they like going first so > >much that you shouldn't let them repeat 1st place. 1st is an EXTREME > > And you definitely shouldn't let them repeat 4th, because they can get 4 > vampires on the first turn that way and go uphill from there. Swings > and roundabouts; it works out to the same. I thought your argument was that weenie decks like going first so that balances out other decks not wanting to. Either weenie decks prefer to go first in which case having someone repeat first unbalances the tournament in their favour if they are weenies (or Masters I suppose) and against them if they are not playing weenies Or weenie decks don't care where they sit in which case only the preferences of other decks need be considered. > >> Midcaps are starting to become much more viable. Investing a lot of > >> pool in a 7/8 cap vampire is still a dangerous proposition, especially > >> after it gets torporized and diablerized. > >> > >> >Lots of stuff kicks in around 7/8 and beyond that a lot of extra points > >> >are liable to go into disciplines you aren't using. > >> > >> Lots of stuff also kicks in around 3/4 though, > > > >That hardly helps the person with 1 transfer. > > Info Highway. Dreams. Montreal. Maybe we just haven't seen the true power of these cards yet so we don't contest them in teh first round like you do... > >> and even Smudge can become a Prince on turn 2. > ><snip> > >> When that's Antoinette duChamp, 1st doesn't look so bad after all. > > > >The right deck LOVES going 1st. i never denied it. > > The right deck also loves going 2nd, 3rd, and 4th. > > If your main vamp is Isabel Giovanni, you want to go 1st. > If your main vamp is Reverend Blackwood, you want to go 2nd. > If your main vamp is Matthias, you want to go 3rd. > If your main vamp is Victorine Lafourcade, you want to go 4th. > > If you're sitting in the 4th slot with Isabel Giovanni, you've lost a > speed advantage you'd otherwise have. > > If you're sitting in first with Matthias and you don't have a 6-cap > handy as well (who could that be?), you're in slow shape. > > >> >The MPA and discard simply doesn't make up for this imo. 5th while > >> >clearly not as good as 4th still has all that advantage over 1st. > >> > >> Yes, he has the advantage of being able to watch as his prey gains the > >> Edge or becomes a Prince. > > > >ONLY IF THE PREY HAS THE RIGHT CAP VAMPIRE. Usually it will be someone > >cross-table that gets the first bleed in. > > Totally dependent on which decks are being played. > > Assuming the best situation for all decks, the guy going first gets to > bleed first because he's got a 1-cap out and HE WENT FIRST. So now you are saying that 1st is much the best position which strikes me as a very good reason not to let someone sit there more than once. Assuming that people have designed their decks knowing where they would sit (your assumption in effect) is clearly worthless however. > >> I typically try very hard to use at least five odd-cap > >> vampires so that I can 'arrange' my transfers appropriately in nearly > >> all cases. > > > >Good plan. if you don't have to make sacrifices to manage this then you > >probably find 1-4 more even but such a constraint is a further cost on > >your building which makes the analysis we aren't doing even more > >complicated. > > It's a neglible cost, and there is no analysis to be done. All such > analysis would be entirely based on the decks at the table, which is > impossible to successfully recreate because that sort of thing isn't > tracked. Much as Churches through the ages have enjoyed telling people otherwise, being unable to analyse something does not justify picking your favourite conclusion and claiming that the evidence justifies it. > If you don't think it's a negligible cost, take all your decks apart > right now and look at the crypts. I bet at least 4 are odd in each, > barring single-vampire trick decks. Ok thought about this a bit more and looked at decks. Most decks do have at least 4 odd-caps. This doesn't actually solve the problem though as it is a base-4 problem not a binary one -you need a 2-mod-4-cap (2/6/10) and an odd-cap in your crypt to be able to take advantage of your odd transfers and then you can only be sure of doing so at some point in your transferring (not necessarily with your first vampire and not necessarily with your last jus tnecessarily with at least one of them) > >People don't dislike 1st on the basis of thought at all -it is purely a > >matter of experience. Since we aren't going to analyse the queston > > Speaking of analysis, you are using vague evidence based entirely from > your own perception here to claim that "people" dislike 1st. I don't > agree with your perception, and mine is contradictory. Ok. Is that just yours or "you and the people you have played with"'s. So far I think people dislike going 1st. Salem agrees that this is the case but believes they are wrong to do so and you say that you like going first. I put my opnion on here to find out what other people think. If it turns out that everyone else likes going first or doesn't care so long as they aren't 5th then I will know that my notions are ill-conceived or the people I've played with are just dense/weird (no that's not what I think of them). > Can we stop with the "argument from mob rule" approach, please? Nope. I have explained why I think that concensus opinion is probably the best judge of this. You have said nothing to dispute my reasoning.

Noal McDonald expounded: > That's funny. LSJ not analysing something VTES related. That's about > as likely as President Clinton beating President "I remind my dad of > Dan Quayle" Bush in the 2004 election. You mean given that the one can't stand but the other couldn't win an election if it had already been bought for him? > Heh. I love having a rule named after me. For the interested reader, > the thread that originally went over all this, as lehrbuch may recall, > was this: > > http://tinyurl.com/n349 More to read Hurraah!

lehrbuch expounded: > >> Do you know of an algorithm that will determine a worthwhile VTES > >> deck, then? Could you post it please, it will make deck designing > >> a whole lot simpler. > > > >I don't. I didn't say it was an analysis that could be done ... > > Exactly. No-one can analyse adequately to give definite answers to > any of this. And therefore it is unfounded to say that 1st-4th are equal and all better than 5th. > > The first round is where you get your extra discard with absolutely > > no information about other decks whatsoever. > > Not always true. I played in a tournament last weekend. In the first > round I had a good idea what 3 of the other 4 players at my table > would play. I also knew roughly what 3 of the players at the other > table would play. I knew what clan the decks were and their focus > (vote/bleed/combat/useless). Hmm I forgot about 'scouting' (/knowing the players very well). > > True. Often you won't know what you should discard if > > anything - sometimes you will. How do you value this > > against transfers? > > You can't. > > > Claiming an equality is a gross assumption. > > Why is claiming *not equal* also not a gross assumption? (I assume you mean "not also a gross assumption" ;) I concede that it is an assumption. Have you ever played 'Pin the tail on the donkey'? (Children's party game: draw a large donkey without a tail and make a seperate tail/tails out of a strip of paper. Put a drawing pin through the end (base) of the tail (where it should join the donkey's rear) and pin up the picture of the tial-less donkey. Blindfold a child and give them the tail -they have to try to stick it in the right place.) The reasons are similar -equality is a very narrow band of possibilities (even being generous in your definition of "equal") whereas "not equal" is EVERYTHING ELSE. If you don't have any information to base a conclusion on then "not equal" is a much more sensible assumption in any reasonably large set of possibilities. My assumption is also based on empirical evidence -no one (except Derek and maybe Salem so far) likes going first (or rather we do dislike it). > 5 only gets to act if 4,3,2 and 1 have not burned/torpored his > minion(s). The ability of 1 to act is only contingent upon his > organisation of transfers (barring a possible pentex subversion or > other irritating master card, which 5 has to worry about as well). > The ability of 5 to act is contingent on *all* the other players not > taking actions to prevent it. Another complication :-) Probably not a very major effect though. After all, only 1 and 4 have any motive to hi 5s vampire that early and 1 only has a 1cap to do it with (barring accelerators). > > LSJ claims that the MPA+D effect is exactly right to make positions > > 1-4 equal. I simply don't believe he has done the necessary analysis > > to make this claim. Furthermore I don't believe that the claim is > > actually right. > > Isn't that why two of the seating guidelines are: > > "7. A player doesn't play in the same seat position, if possible. > 8. Starting transfers are equitably distributed. [NOAL]" Maybe. The rule that no player can sit 5th more than once appears to supercede this however which is the main bone of contention.

Xian expounded: > Snapcase <shotgu...@optonline.netREMOVE> wrote: > > Do you have any proof of these statements? Has anyone done an "average > > capacity and distribution" analysis of the deck archive? > > Yes, I did, a while ago. Keep meaning to get back to that, as well as > be more consistent in my newletter writing. This post has some > details: http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=a6q94g%24ga23v%241%40ID-123937.news.dfncis.de&oe=UTF-8&output=gplain > > In brief, the findings at that point were: > > "* 36.9% of all winning decks were high capacity decks (I think this > was eyeballed, but I believe my cutoff was that most vampires were 7 > or 8 and up) > * 15.4% of all winning decks were strictly weenie decks > > There are a lot of decks (nearly 50%) which I slotted as mid-capacity, > but that almost certainly includes the high end of "weenie" decks." Interesting but the question here is about 1caps and 5caps vs 3/4caps and 7/8 caps so I suspect this one won't be much use. (I'll look once I get online again). > I did a more rigorous study later, but I can't figure out where I put > that. Let us know if it turns up :-) > Timlagor wrote: > > > If you throw in a 5cap it is ONLY better than a 6cap if you sit in place > > > 1; 4 out of 5 times you will be better off with the 6cap -which puts you > > > at a disadvantage when you sit in place 1. This effect reduces the value > > > of constructing your crypt for first place. > > > > Unless the 5 cap is "right" for your deck. This assumes that 6 caps in > > general are "better" than 5 caps for a given deck. > > Yuh-huh. I can think of lots of examples where a 5-cap is preferable > to a 6-cap in a deck. Sure, a 6-cap might get you more points of > disciplines, but that isn't always what you need, like if you're, oh, > playing Atonement or something. Other examples abound. Good point. How about Legendary Vampire ;-) We should of course take such things into consideration which would make a priori analysis even harder and empirical evidence even more likely to be the most reliable method. I'll go look at that post now.

LSJ expounded: > >>That is, going first is supposed to be just as good as going > >>second, because while you only get 1 transfer on your first > > > > !*SUPPOSED*! > > Why do you suppose this. I suppose that it is as close to equal as it > > reasonable can be. That is not the same thing as equal AT ALL. > > Mistaken translation. > > Josh related the goal of the game mechanic - that the > positions are supposed to be equal. That is, the mechanics > of the game are as they are in an attempt to achieve the > goal of making going first no better or worse (on average) > than going second. Josh said quite clearly that he agreed that 1-4 are equal because "going first is supposed to be just as good as going second..". He definitely agreed that this was not merely the intention but had been achieved. I don't think I misunderstood. > > The entire populatin of VTES decks is irrelevent. You should consider > > the population of VTES decks that actually stand a chance of doing > > anything worthwhile. I don't agree that the capacities of the vampires > > in the crypts of viable decks are anything like evenly distributed. > > > > Did you realise you were assuming this? > > > > The hidden assumptions in LSJ's arguments are the problem. He doesn't > > only assume the number of cards -he assumes an even distribution that is > > alsmot certainly not present. > > I simply do not assume a particular arbitrary distribution. You do very much assume a particular arbitrary distribution. You assume the exact distribution that would make your MPA+D worth the same as the extra transfers. > If you can provide a working definition of the class of all of the decks you > think should be factored into the equation, with a logical basis for including > the decks in that class while excluding others, please do so. You are claiming that 1-4 are equal and better than 5. Your arguments in support of this require a rigorous analysis of the crypts of viable decks which you haven't produced. It's your job to establish the criteria and show that they work. Personally I'm not convinced that such an analysis is possible -the fact that your arguments require it is a problem for your arguments. Since I'm such a nice chap I will suggest some criteria to get you started ;) At least 30 cap-points in the crypt At least 12 vampires At least 3 different vampires No more than 5 of any one vampire No more than 20 vampires in the crypt. For each crypt there exist 3 disciplines such that - at least half of any vampire's discipline points are in those disciplines - at least 2/3 of the diiscipline points in the crypt are in those disciplines. I dare say the numbers could be a lot better but I'm sure you get the general idea. I'd want to look at the numbers a bit more closely if i was to do all that work. Such criteria would eliminate most of the completely unplayable crypts while preserving pretty much every viable crypt. There would still be a lot of very bad crypts but it would be a lot closer than all possible crypts. This would give you a distributino of vampires in crypts to consider for the effects of the transfers. The alternative criterion that I have already suggested is: decks that have won tournaments. In this case there will be no bad crypts. OTOH you will miss a lot of possible crypts; however there have been a lot of tournaments so the sample will be big enough to at least give an indication of the overall situation. It has the further advantage that there are accompanying decks to compare for the effects of the MPA+D. Neither criteria are perfect but both would yield useful data. > This is basic information theory. Lacking a specific model/dictionary/class, > an appropriate general class is used. So what general class did you use? What where the figures? > > You might also want to consider the likelyhood of having a playable > > Master in the first turn AND AGAIN IN THE SECOND TURN in a viable deck. > > And you'd have to contrast that with the likelihood of having a playable > master card in the first turn at all. > > And include the likelihood of getting a playable master in the second > turn after not playing one in the first turn and then discarding a > card in your discard phase of the first turn. Not at all. the advantage of the 'extra MPA' is at issue. It is equally useless in the even of no Master and one Master. > > Granted there are some Master intensive decks that could do it and any > > deck /might/ get the mileage out of it (so the possibility is worth > > something) but it's really not very likely (so it isn't worth much). As > Unsupported assertion. Supported by experience. In most games that I have played, most players do not play Master cards in the first round. If you have witnessed/records of lots of games in which people played Master cards in both of the first two rounds then I will be happy to take your word for it and look at the question more closely. I expect other people's experience to be similar to mine in this respect. If you wish to dispute my assertion I will try to justify it. I didn't expect anyone to do so. > > you rightly pointed out to LSJ, while the discard is potentially useful, > > you are unlikely to know what you should discard. > Another unsupported assertion. Ditto. 'not likely' might be better in this case. > >>This turns out to be mainly because people don't realize > >>that they're getting screwed by being 5th, I think. :-) > >>They're happy to get out a vampire on "their" first or > >>second turn, without considering that their predator got > >>to have just as many transfers, got to take his/her turn > >>earlier, and had a predator with fewer transfers. > > > > I don't think anyone really fails to realise this. Sounds like LSJ > > propaganda to me! ;-P > > Well founded logic is propaganda? You made this claim in your e-mail. (think that's where it was) There is no logic involved - the claim is that "people failed to think about it"; I disagree: I think people do consider their predator's position. NB 'smiley' after the word propaganda. > At least try it before you knock it. Nah. I prefer logic thanks. > > What do you mean: "This turns out"??!!??!!!!!!!!!!! > > Where on Earth did this come from? You mean LSJ persuaded you? > > Ah, the exclamation point logic. That's strong mojo. > I yield and quiver. Just as you should. (especially since it wasn't aimed at you) > > I reckon that the disadvantage 5 has to 4 is much smaller than the > > advantage 5 has over 1 -I'd take a small disadvantage to my predator for > > a bigger one over my prey. > > What advantage does 5 have over 1? 4 transfers when 1 has only had 1. 8 " " " " " " 5. (and acting with the resulting vampires first) <SNIP -gotta go now> > > so assumptions are thoroughly unwarranted. > > Agreed. Hence my position of not making unwarranted assumptions about the > class of decks. But you DO make unwarranted assumptions. Here is your assumption: The advantage of seating earlier exactly equals the disadvantage of having fewer transfers in the first round for some unspecified but (assumed to be general) set of decks. In one of your posts, you seemed to try to back this up with the assumption: The capacities of vampires in crypts are evenly distributed.

On Sun, 14 Sep 2003 01:04:41 +0100, Timlagor <Timlagor...@yahoo.com> scrawled: >LSJ expounded: >> >>That is, going first is supposed to be just as good as going >> >>second, because while you only get 1 transfer on your first >> > >> > !*SUPPOSED*! >> > Why do you suppose this. I suppose that it is as close to equal as it >> > reasonable can be. That is not the same thing as equal AT ALL. >> >> Mistaken translation. >> >> Josh related the goal of the game mechanic - that the >> positions are supposed to be equal. That is, the mechanics >> of the game are as they are in an attempt to achieve the >> goal of making going first no better or worse (on average) >> than going second. > >Josh said quite clearly that he agreed that 1-4 are equal because "going >first is supposed to be just as good as going second..". He definitely >agreed that this was not merely the intention but had been achieved. I >don't think I misunderstood. I disagree. It looked very much to me like Josh was saying the attempted goal of the starting transfer ramp up was to make seating position more equitable. He never said that that goal was acheived exactly. I got the impression that he felt the ramp up was at least better than no ramp-up. [ quoted text not captured ]

Timlagor wrote: > LSJ expounded: >>If you can provide a working definition of the class of all of the decks you >>think should be factored into the equation, with a logical basis for including >>the decks in that class while excluding others, please do so. > > You are claiming that 1-4 are equal and better than 5. Your arguments in > support of this require a rigorous analysis of the crypts of viable > decks which you haven't produced. It's your job to establish the No. The arguments are based on the immediately obvious idea that 5-caps are as commonly found in crypts as 4-caps (repeat for all other pairings) in the absence of any evidence that there is some artificial imbalance to be found. > criteria and show that they work. Personally I'm not convinced that such > an analysis is possible -the fact that your arguments require it is a > problem for your arguments. No. If you wish to base arguments on a non-uniform distribution, then you have to justify the non-uniform assumption. Assuming the default is justified (by default). > Since I'm such a nice chap I will suggest some criteria to get you > started ;) I've got criteria to get me started: the rules of the game and the existing crypt cards. > At least 30 cap-points in the crypt Unsupported restriction. See "logical basis for including decks..." above. > At least 12 vampires A given. > At least 3 different vampires Unsupported restriction. > No more than 5 of any one vampire Unsupported restriction. > No more than 20 vampires in the crypt. Unsupported restriction (albeit supportable, unlike the others). > For each crypt there exist 3 disciplines such that > - at least half of any vampire's discipline points are in those > disciplines > - at least 2/3 of the diiscipline points in the crypt are in those > disciplines. Unsupported restriction. > I dare say the numbers could be a lot better but I'm sure you get the > general idea. I'd want to look at the numbers a bit more closely if i > was to do all that work. You should. Even with the above unsupported restrictions in place, you'd come out with a result that showed seats 1-4 as equal, since none of the above artificial restrictions produce any artificial favoring of any particular capacity. (The first looks like it might favor non-first-seating at first glance, but doesn't after closer inspection), and even if it did, that would be mitigated by the fact that decks don't stop influencing after the first vampire is brought out, typically. > Such criteria would eliminate most of the completely unplayable crypts > while preserving pretty much every viable crypt. There would still be a For very small values of "pretty much", perhaps. [...] >>This is basic information theory. Lacking a specific model/dictionary/class, >>an appropriate general class is used. > > So what general class did you use? What where the figures? Legal crypts with existing vampires. What figures are you having trouble deriving from that class? >>And include the likelihood of getting a playable master in the second >>turn after not playing one in the first turn and then discarding a >>card in your discard phase of the first turn. > > Not at all. the advantage of the 'extra MPA' is at issue. It is equally > useless in the even of no Master and one Master. You can get a benefit of going first by having a discard before your extra MPA with which to draw a usable master card for that additional MPA. >>>Granted there are some Master intensive decks that could do it and any >>>deck /might/ get the mileage out of it (so the possibility is worth >>>something) but it's really not very likely (so it isn't worth much). As >> >>Unsupported assertion. > > Supported by experience. In most games that I have played, most players > do not play Master cards in the first round. If you have > witnessed/records of lots of games in which people played Master cards > in both of the first two rounds then I will be happy to take your word > for it and look at the question more closely. I expect other people's > experience to be similar to mine in this respect. I witness many games in which the person playing first plays a master card on his second turn. >>>you rightly pointed out to LSJ, while the discard is potentially useful, >>>you are unlikely to know what you should discard. >> >>Another unsupported assertion. > > Ditto. 'not likely' might be better in this case. I frequently know what I should discard just by looking at my hand and knowing my deck. Knowledge of other players' decks is good, but not necessary, to that end. >>>I reckon that the disadvantage 5 has to 4 is much smaller than the >>>advantage 5 has over 1 -I'd take a small disadvantage to my predator for >>>a bigger one over my prey. >> >>What advantage does 5 have over 1? > > 4 transfers when 1 has only had 1. vs. 1 transfer when 5 has had 0. 5 transfers when 5 has had 4. > 8 " " " " " " 5. > (and acting with the resulting vampires first) Except for the 1 caps. >>Agreed. Hence my position of not making unwarranted assumptions about the >>class of decks. > > But you DO make unwarranted assumptions. Here is your assumption: No. I make warranted assumptions. > The advantage of seating earlier exactly equals the disadvantage of > having fewer transfers in the first round for some unspecified but > (assumed to be general) set of decks. > > > > In one of your posts, you seemed to try to back this up with the > assumption: > > The capacities of vampires in crypts are evenly distributed. That assumption is warranted. [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <MPG.19cda5dbc...@news.freeserve.com>, Timlagor...@yahoo.com says... > > Your counterargument contends that such a distribution does not exist > > (indeed, you seem quite certain of it). Why do you assume this? What > > sort of distribution do you think is out there? > > I expect it to be fairly random. Of course an analysis of winning decks > would be skewed by the assumptions inherent in the current system > anyway. Wouldn't random imply evenly distributed? There's no chance that an X cap would show up more than a Y cap. Roll a die a few hundred times and record the frequencies and get back to me. > This requires that > a) you have them in your deck > b) you get them in your opening hand > c) someone else gets them in their deck > d) they get them in their opening hand. > (if no-one else has the same card in hand then you would have got it > down first anyway) <snip> There's still plenty of masters that you want to play early in the game. See other threads for a list. Multiply your low % of drawing (and other % of possibly contesting) early unique masters by the number of games you play in a tournament/day/week. It occurs more than you'd think. > Partly because there are so many good 3-cap (eg. sup of your best deck > discipline) and 7-cap vampires. You're likely to have one or the other > in your deck/initial uncontrolled region and you get to go before 4th. <snip> There are plenty of good (insert other caps here). This is fairly irrelevant. If your deck contains neither, then it doesn't apply. If your deck contains one or the other or both and you don't draw them, it doesn't apply. Assuming that 3 caps and 7 caps are desirable for a given deck is just poor logic (and probably poor deckbuilding). > You are unlikely to be playing a crypt that is all the same capacity- > mod-4: the 4and8caps is pretty unlikely whereas only 3,4,7,8,11 caps is > at least possible (in your opening uncontrolled region). Again, depending on the deck. Your uncontrolled region may contain some/none/all of the above. -- -Snapcase

On Sun, 14 Sep 2003 07:29:03 GMT, Snapcase <shotgu...@optonline.netREMOVE> scrawled: >Wouldn't random imply evenly distributed? There's no chance that an X >cap would show up more than a Y cap. Roll a die a few hundred times and >record the frequencies and get back to me. Not at all. Roll 2d6 a few hundred times and get back to me with the results. i think you'll find '7' occurs a lot more frequently than any other of the possible values from 2 to 12 (inclusive). But 2d6 still randomly gives you a number between 2 and 12. Just not evenly. In fact, a discrete uniform distribution (where any of the values are equally likely as any other) is rather a rare case. Most real-world stuff can be approximated by a normal distribution (depending on how good you need your approximation to be ;), which is quite often far from evenly distributed, as it's most noted feature is it's 'hump' at the middle. [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <frp8mvga8uoa4i4t0...@4ax.com>, salem_ch...@yahoo.com says... > Not at all. Roll 2d6 a few hundred times and get back to me with the > results. i think you'll find '7' occurs a lot more frequently than any > other of the possible values from 2 to 12 (inclusive). > But 2d6 still randomly gives you a number between 2 and 12. Just not > evenly. Yeah, craps, house always wins and all that. Isn't a 1dX more even? Rolling multiples and adding should change the distribution quite a bit. 7's gonna occur more often on 2d6 because there are more combinations of numbers that make 7 than any other combination. The point is taken though. Different random distributions can either imply even or non-even. So what's the "default"? Back to the vampire distribution... There's certainly more midcaps than other vampires in the game. So it's possible there's our "hump in the middle" in terms of distribution for what capacities are going to show up first in a given deck. Be cool if Xian finds his more detailed analysis of the whole thing. -- -Snapcase

In message <MPG.19cd9b332...@news.freeserve.com>, Timlagor <Timlagor...@yahoo.com> mumbled something about: >Derek Ray expounded: >> >> >1) I think that the advantage of a discard and MPA are limitted >> >> You're wrong. >> >> Parthenon. Info Highway. Creepshow Casino. Dreams. Montreal. >> >> (and numerous others) >> >> Getting these first is HUGE. >> >> You need to respond to this. It's critical. > >Well since you insist. >How often do you see any of these contested in teh first round? I don't Rarely. Someone often discards them, though. It's not worth contesting these Masters (except Info Highway, which you can just yield on your turn), for the most part, because they cost pool and you're just putting yourself at a needless disadvantage. (Montreal isn't worth contesting because you can usually steal it.) Getting them first means that you get the use of it until/if people decide to contest it with their own, and sometimes you can get people to flat-out discard them. There are more and more of these Masters being printed each day; Bleeding the Vine, Sunset Strip, etc. Take your pick. Most people strongly underestimate the power of the Master phase. >rarity. I have not been aware of people discarding things to avoid >contestation at this point either (easier to miss but I would generally >expect someone to comment on it). Consider it commented on, then. >Personally, I rarely have more than one vampire-free Master to play in >the first two rounds and I have never seen (potential) contestation in >the first two rounds. Maybe other people see it every game; I haven't. Then you aren't putting enough Masters in your decks? I routinely see one zero-requirement Master on the first turn. Occasionally two. The limited number of such Masters indicates that contestation is a real possibility, and therefore it is an advantage to Go First. >> For fuck's sake, man, how thoroughly do I need to analyse "weenies are >> strong and win lots"? Search Google if you must, but I'm not wasting my >> time, this is a given. > >That wasn't the question. The question was: "does their preference for >going first exactly (*exactly* mind) balance other decks' preference for >going later?" I'm not going to attempt to analyse this as I don't think >it's feasible. Establishing that 1-4 are equal REQUIRES this analysis >however. establishing that 1st is always better than 5th does too. Your question is meaningless. LSJ responded to this in his post; when no suitable analysis is available, the general case is used. Trying to cram a square peg into a round hole and asking for popular opinion on whether square pegs are good isn't going to cut it. >Either weenie decks prefer to go first in which case having someone >repeat first unbalances the tournament in their favour if they are >weenies (or Masters I suppose) and against them if they are not playing >weenies So repeating 1st is an advantage if they're weenies and a disadvantage if they're not, meaning there is no need to discriminate specifically against 1st because you can't control what decks people play. Sounds balanced; thanks for proving it for me, moving on. >> Info Highway. Dreams. Montreal. > >Maybe we just haven't seen the true power of these cards yet so we don't >contest them in teh first round like you do... Yes, I think you haven't seen the true power of most of those cards. >> >The right deck LOVES going 1st. i never denied it. >> >> The right deck also loves going 2nd, 3rd, and 4th. >> >> If your main vamp is Isabel Giovanni, you want to go 1st. >> If your main vamp is Reverend Blackwood, you want to go 2nd. >> If your main vamp is Matthias, you want to go 3rd. >> If your main vamp is Victorine Lafourcade, you want to go 4th. Haven't answered this one yet. Restated simply: Restricting the 1st position specifically because it is first is unnecessary, because the advantages of any given position are based entirely on what type of deck you are playing, something which cannot be predicted. Any attempts to compensate based on such speculative prediction are doomed to either fail miserably or make the situation worse. >So now you are saying that 1st is much the best position which strikes >me as a very good reason not to let someone sit there more than once. As I stated immediately prior to this paragraph: >No. 1st is more or less the same as 2nd, 3rd, and 4th, though I would >rank them from best to worst in that order. 5th sucks compared to all >of them. Please learn to read. >Much as Churches through the ages have enjoyed telling people otherwise, >being unable to analyse something does not justify picking your >favourite conclusion and claiming that the evidence justifies it. See LSJ's post for why the general case is used when no specific case is available or analysable. Bringing the Church into it is simple hand-waving on your part. >Ok thought about this a bit more and looked at decks. >Most decks do have at least 4 odd-caps. > >This doesn't actually solve the problem though as it is a base-4 problem >not a binary one -you need a 2-mod-4-cap (2/6/10) and an odd-cap in your >crypt to be able to take advantage of your odd transfers and then you >can only be sure of doing so at some point in your transferring (not >necessarily with your first vampire and not necessarily with your last >jus tnecessarily with at least one of them) I don't agree; show your work, please. I believe that all that is necessary to properly "arrange" transfers so that none are wasted is to have an odd-cap vampire available so you don't get the obvious "gotcha" of sitting first with 2-4-6-8 face down. >> Can we stop with the "argument from mob rule" approach, please? > >Nope. I have explained why I think that concensus opinion is probably >the best judge of this. You have said nothing to dispute my reasoning. Consensus opinion is NEVER the best judge of anything, as demonstrated by two thousand plus years of recorded history. Mob rule sucks. Mobs are stupid. A whole bunch of people liking or disliking something bears absolutely no logical connection to whether or not it is the best, or worst, or whatever you're trying to prove. No matter how much you'd like it to be true, it's NOT. [ quoted text not captured ]

"Snapcase" <shotgu...@optonline.netREMOVE> skrev i meddelandet news:MPG.19ce7a329...@news.optonline.net... [ quoted text not captured ] Vampire capacity distribution: 1: 19 2: 43 3: 65 4: 68 5: 86 6: 92 7: 76 8: 73 9: 60 10: 52 11: 11 Which of course says nothing on how often a given vampire capacity is in a crypt as the numbers only reflect how many vampires there is to choose from.... -- /Henrik Isaksson

On Sun, 14 Sep 2003 23:32:01 +0200, "Henrik Isaksson" <hen...@nissamedia.net> scrawled: >"Snapcase" <shotgu...@optonline.netREMOVE> skrev i meddelandet >news:MPG.19ce7a329...@news.optonline.net... >> In article <frp8mvga8uoa4i4t0...@4ax.com>, >> salem_ch...@yahoo.com says... >> >> > Not at all. Roll 2d6 a few hundred times and get back to me with the >> > results. i think you'll find '7' occurs a lot more frequently than any >> > other of the possible values from 2 to 12 (inclusive). >> > But 2d6 still randomly gives you a number between 2 and 12. Just not >> > evenly. >> >> Yeah, craps, house always wins and all that. Isn't a 1dX more even? >> Rolling multiples and adding should change the distribution quite a bit. >> 7's gonna occur more often on 2d6 because there are more combinations of >> numbers that make 7 than any other combination. >> >> The point is taken though. Different random distributions can either >> imply even or non-even. So what's the "default"? there is no default. when learning about stats, the uniform distribution was generally the start point, but fromt here we quite quickly went to normal distributions. >> Back to the vampire distribution... >> >> There's certainly more midcaps than other vampires in the game. So it's >> possible there's our "hump in the middle" in terms of distribution for >> what capacities are going to show up first in a given deck. Be cool if >> Xian finds his more detailed analysis of the whole thing. > >Vampire capacity distribution: >1: 19 >2: 43 >3: 65 >4: 68 >5: 86 >6: 92 >7: 76 >8: 73 >9: 60 >10: 52 >11: 11 > >Which of course says nothing on how often a given vampire capacity is in a crypt as the numbers >only reflect how many vampires there is to choose from.... But, as a basis to make approximations, such data would be an ok starting point. However, i am a bit worried that the data is accross all three groups, when in fact it should possibly be divided into g1/2, and g2/3. as an interesting side note, it looks like you could have an ok stab at approximating the above distribution with a suitable truncated normal distribution. :) those lecturers were right! [ quoted text not captured ]

Henrik Isaksson wrote: > Vampire capacity distribution: > 1: 19 > 2: 43 > 3: 65 > 4: 68 > 5: 86 > 6: 92 > 7: 76 > 8: 73 > 9: 60 > 10: 52 > 11: 11 > > Which of course says nothing on how often a given vampire capacity is in a crypt as the numbers > only reflect how many vampires there is to choose from.... Thanks for those numbers. More numbers (lumping the above numbers together by seat affinity): Capacity mod 4: 1: 19+86+60 = 165 (25.5%) 2: 43+92+52 = 187 (28.9%) 3: 65+76+11 = 152 (23.4%) 0: 68+73 = 143 (22.1%) [ quoted text not captured ]

Derek Ray expounded: > >Well since you insist. > >How often do you see any of these contested in teh first round? I don't > > Rarely. Someone often discards them, though. > > It's not worth contesting these Masters (except Info Highway, which you > can just yield on your turn), for the most part, because they cost pool > and you're just putting yourself at a needless disadvantage. (Montreal > isn't worth contesting because you can usually steal it.) I rarely see people discard them. It may be unobservance on my part but I don't think so. I will look out for them more. Since masters played in the first round aren't that common anyway it seems highly improbable that they are frequently discarded. > Getting them first means that you get the use of it until/if people > decide to contest it with their own, and sometimes you can get people to > flat-out discard them. There are more and more of these Masters being > printed each day; Bleeding the Vine, Sunset Strip, etc. Take your pick. > > Most people strongly underestimate the power of the Master phase. That just means that getting the first MPA is less likely to help. > >rarity. I have not been aware of people discarding things to avoid > >contestation at this point either (easier to miss but I would generally > >expect someone to comment on it). > Consider it commented on, then. I would expect people to comment when they do it. You aren't doing it though your seeing it a lot is interesting. > >Personally, I rarely have more than one vampire-free Master to play in > >the first two rounds and I have never seen (potential) contestation in > >the first two rounds. Maybe other people see it every game; I haven't. > > Then you aren't putting enough Masters in your decks? Possible. Then again I don't cycle a lot of cards in my first couple of turns and I don't want to pick up more than one a turn later in the game. Maybe I just use more Clan or Vampire-targetting Masters. > I routinely see one zero-requirement Master on the first turn. > Occasionally two. The limited number of such Masters indicates that > contestation is a real possibility, and therefore it is an advantage to > Go First. Is this "occasionally two" in your hand or at the table? Please make up your mind as to whether there are lots and lots of these unique no-requirement masters so everyone should have one or there are very few so they are likely to get contested. > >That wasn't the question. The question was: "does their preference for > >going first exactly (*exactly* mind) balance other decks' preference for > >going later?" I'm not going to attempt to analyse this as I don't think > >it's feasible. Establishing that 1-4 are equal REQUIRES this analysis > >however. establishing that 1st is always better than 5th does too. > > Your question is meaningless. LSJ responded to this in his post; when > no suitable analysis is available, the general case is used. Trying to > cram a square peg into a round hole and asking for popular opinion on > whether square pegs are good isn't going to cut it. THERE IS NO "GENERAL CASE". It is a completley meaningless phrase. What you mean is you have no evidence so you are making a convenient assumption. There is absolutely no basis to believe that the assumed distribution is more likely than any of the thousands of others. As Salem points out elsewhere, a normal distribution would be much more likely to fit reasonably well usually and you would still need parameters. In this case the distribution is completely in the control of the design team though so there is no reason to expect any particular distribution unless they were both statistically proficient and trying to achieve something in particular. > >Either weenie decks prefer to go first in which case having someone > >repeat first unbalances the tournament in their favour if they are > >weenies (or Masters I suppose) and against them if they are not playing > >weenies > > So repeating 1st is an advantage if they're weenies and a disadvantage > if they're not, meaning there is no need to discriminate specifically > against 1st because you can't control what decks people play. Sounds > balanced; thanks for proving it for me, moving on. DO you think weenies prefer to go first? You seem to be undecided on this as well. > >> If your main vamp is Isabel Giovanni, you want to go 1st. > >> If your main vamp is Reverend Blackwood, you want to go 2nd. > >> If your main vamp is Matthias, you want to go 3rd. > >> If your main vamp is Victorine Lafourcade, you want to go 4th. > > Haven't answered this one yet. Restated simply: > > Restricting the 1st position specifically because it is first is > unnecessary, because the advantages of any given position are based > entirely on what type of deck you are playing, something which cannot be > predicted. Any attempts to compensate based on such speculative > prediction are doomed to either fail miserably or make the situation > worse. The (dis)advantages are indeed dependent on the deck. If the (dis)advantages to a deck are likely to be more extreme for a particular position then it is moe important not to compound them by repetition. Compounding them in this way unabalances the tournament -whether this benefits or harms of player in question is irrelevant: either way it unbalances the tournament. > >Much as Churches through the ages have enjoyed telling people otherwise, > >being unable to analyse something does not justify picking your > >favourite conclusion and claiming that the evidence justifies it. > See LSJ's post for why the general case is used when no specific case is > available or analysable. Bringing the Church into it is simple > hand-waving on your part. Nah just colourful language and a useful analogy. There is no "general case". He is not assuming a "general case" he is assuming an equal distribution (I think though that may not be the one he needs to support his conclusions): this is a very specific and unjustified assumption. There is absolutely nothing 'general' or 'default' about it. In case you missed the analogy: the reason I brought in Churches is that they ask people to believe arbitrary things on their word alone and claim it is stupid not to assume that their position is right as there is no evidence to contradict it. [ok not every Church does this, especially in modern times (tm) but if I can't indulge in flights of rhetoric in a casual argument on a newsgroup... well you can't stop me to nyah! ;-P] > >Ok thought about this a bit more and looked at decks. > >Most decks do have at least 4 odd-caps. > > > >This doesn't actually solve the problem though as it is a base-4 problem > >not a binary one -you need a 2-mod-4-cap (2/6/10) and an odd-cap in your > >crypt to be able to take advantage of your odd transfers and then you > >can only be sure of doing so at some point in your transferring (not > >necessarily with your first vampire and not necessarily with your last > >jus tnecessarily with at least one of them) > > I don't agree; show your work, please. I believe that all that is > necessary to properly "arrange" transfers so that none are wasted is to > have an odd-cap vampire available so you don't get the obvious "gotcha" > of sitting first with 2-4-6-8 face down. Suppose you have only 6-caps and sit in seat 4. Clearly you are not going to get full advantage from your transfers on the first vampire. This is because it isn't about odd or even but about 1, 2, 3 or 4 transfers in the first turn. If you have only 3 and 7 caps then you need to bring out three vampires to reach the point where you have 4X+1 cap-points on the table -bringing the third vampire out with the last of your transfers in that turn. > >> Can we stop with the "argument from mob rule" approach, please? > >Nope. I have explained why I think that concensus opinion is probably > >the best judge of this. You have said nothing to dispute my reasoning. > > Consensus opinion is NEVER the best judge of anything, as demonstrated > by two thousand plus years of recorded history. Simply not true. The whole scientific advance over the last couple of centuries is based on concensus supported by eveidence. Morality is entirely based on concensus. Vampire players are already a self-selected group of generally more intelligent and thoughtful players. > Mob rule sucks. Mobs are stupid. A whole bunch of people liking or > disliking something bears absolutely no logical connection to whether or > not it is the best, or worst, or whatever you're trying to prove. No > matter how much you'd like it to be true, it's NOT. I am not talking about "mobs" which are by definition irrational. I am talking about concensus. If a whole bunch of intelligent people can think about something and discuss it and look at the games they play in various positions and decide that most of them dislike sitting 1st then that is powerful evidence that 1st is a bad place to sit. By contrast, assuming that there is a particular distribution of vampire capacities in useful crypts and arbitrarily allocating a value to MPA+D earlier in comparison to extra transfers is essentially completely worthless. Presumably you don't expect all your friends to come on and tell me how right you are and how seat 5 absolutely sucks and they never win when they start 5th ;P I am quite willing to accept that MPA+D a bit earlier has value. Claiming that it exactly cancels the effect of extra transfers over the aggregate of all (useful) decks however is completely unfounded. Your (Derek) appear to accept that seats 1-4 are unequal. I am prepared to accept that 5 is worse than 4. Everything else depends on what's in the deck (library+crypt). In order to make any further general statement about the relative quality of any pair of seats you require an analysis of the decks. A general conclusion could be reached by using an aggregate of the possible (/useful) decks BUT you would need to analyse the composition of such decks. Thus if it could be established that 90% of decks used 4 and 8 caps almost exclusively and played no Masters that didn't require a vampire in play, you could be pretty confident that going 5th was better than 1st. If OTOH 90% of players like to bring out a 1 or 5 cap first and play lots of no-requirement Masters 1st place would be the best. Clearly the actual situation isn't nearly this clear-cut nonetheless the point remains: YOU CANNOT ARBITRARILY ASSUME THAT THE DISTRIBUTION OF VAMPIRES FITS THE REQUIREMENTS FOR SEATS 1-4 TO BE EQUAL AND ALL BETTER THAN 5. There is nothing general about such an assumption -it is very specific.

Snapcase expounded: > In article <MPG.19cda5dbc...@news.freeserve.com>, > Timlagor...@yahoo.com says... > > > > Your counterargument contends that such a distribution does not exist > > > (indeed, you seem quite certain of it). Why do you assume this? What > > > sort of distribution do you think is out there? > > > > I expect it to be fairly random. Of course an analysis of winning decks > > would be skewed by the assumptions inherent in the current system > > anyway. > > Wouldn't random imply evenly distributed? There's no chance that an X > cap would show up more than a Y cap. Roll a die a few hundred times and > record the frequencies and get back to me. Actually no (as pointed out by Salem). Actually that's not what I meant anyway (should have been clearer). What i really meant was arbitrary: that is to say a distribution taken arbitrarily from the (huge) set of all possible distributions of which an equal distribution is only one. Suppose 1,000 possible distributions (pretty conservative) -99.9% of them are not equal/even. The distribution is determined arbitrarily by what vampires are printed. Clearly it's more complicated than just the number of each capacity as some are clearly better than others and they fit into different decks and... > > This requires that > > a) you have them in your deck > > b) you get them in your opening hand > > c) someone else gets them in their deck > > d) they get them in their opening hand. > > (if no-one else has the same card in hand then you would have got it > > down first anyway) > > <snip> > > There's still plenty of masters that you want to play early in the game. > See other threads for a list. > > Multiply your low % of drawing (and other % of possibly contesting) > early unique masters by the number of games you play in a > tournament/day/week. It occurs more than you'd think. bear in mind that my % was assuming two decks intent on getting the same card out at the beginning of the game -The probability of which is pretty darn slim in itself. I don't think I've seen it occur even once. I may have missed a couple but I haven't seen that many Masters brought out in the first turn at all -3 in a game being pretty high. I'm not denying that it can happen - I just don't think it's that big an effect over all decks. As you say, there are plenty of Masters you might want to get out right at the beginning. This just makes it even less likely that anyone else is trying hard to ge the same Master out at that point. Finally -if you're multiplying across all the games you play, you have to multiply the transfers effect which hit ERVERY TIME as well. > > Partly because there are so many good 3-cap (eg. sup of your best deck > > discipline) and 7-cap vampires. You're likely to have one or the other > > in your deck/initial uncontrolled region and you get to go before 4th. > <snip> > There are plenty of good (insert other caps here). This is fairly > irrelevant. If your deck contains neither, then it doesn't apply. If > your deck contains one or the other or both and you don't draw them, it > doesn't apply. Assuming that 3 caps and 7 caps are desirable for a > given deck is just poor logic (and probably poor deckbuilding). (talking about something I had formed as a loose opinion and isn't actually relevant to the main question here) I don't assume that 3 and 7 caps are desirable when I build a deck (though as Derek pointed out, it's probably a good idea to have some odd-caps) but I do find that they are often vampires that I want to include. this experience leads me to conclude that they are often going to feature in my decks in future. In the paragraph above I was trying to analyse the reasons behind this. 3-caps are (generally) the first to get a sup Discipline and 7 caps get an extra point in design (I think). There are plenty of other desirable vampires -just not necessarily as many of each cap. > > You are unlikely to be playing a crypt that is all the same capacity- > > mod-4: the 4and8caps is pretty unlikely whereas only 3,4,7,8,11 caps is > > at least possible (in your opening uncontrolled region). > > Again, depending on the deck. Your uncontrolled region may contain > some/none/all of the above. Indeed it may. However it is much *more likely* to contain one of 3, 4, 7, 8, or 11 than only 4s, and 8s. The whole question is about probabilities across the decks you might be playing.

salem expounded: > there is no default. when learning about stats, the uniform > distribution was generally the start point, but fromt here we quite > quickly went to normal distributions. UNIFORM -that's the word i've been looking for! :-) Besides I wanted to quote this bit for Derek ; ) Here it is again: "there is no default".

[ quoted text not captured ] Fine. Then use the average of all possible distributions. You'll end up at the same place. If you desire not to end up there, you have to come up with some reasonable restrictions on which distributions to include/exclude. [ quoted text not captured ]

LSJ expounded: > Henrik Isaksson wrote: > > Vampire capacity distribution: > > 1: 19 > > 2: 43 > > 3: 65 > > 4: 68 > > 5: 86 > > 6: 92 > > 7: 76 > > 8: 73 > > 9: 60 > > 10: 52 > > 11: 11 > > > > Which of course says nothing on how often a given vampire capacity is in a crypt as the numbers > > only reflect how many vampires there is to choose from.... > > Thanks for those numbers. > > More numbers (lumping the above numbers together by seat affinity): > > Capacity mod 4: > > 1: 19+86+60 = 165 (25.5%) > 2: 43+92+52 = 187 (28.9%) > 3: 65+76+11 = 152 (23.4%) > 0: 68+73 = 143 (22.1%) Interesting that it's not until the 9caps that 1st place really catches up. I could have sworn i'd already posted these numbers... Anyway, here are some more equally irrelevant numbers: Vampires that could be brought out first turn: transfers possible vamps increase 1 19 n/a 2 62 226% 3 127 105% 4 195 054% 5 281 044%

Timlagor wrote: > LSJ expounded: >>Capacity mod 4: >> >>1: 19+86+60 = 165 (25.5%) >>2: 43+92+52 = 187 (28.9%) >>3: 65+76+11 = 152 (23.4%) >>0: 68+73 = 143 (22.1%) > > Interesting that it's not until the 9caps that 1st place really catches > up. Addition is commutative. 1: 60+86+19 = 165 2: 52+92+43 = 187 3: 11+76+65 = 152 0: 00+73+68 = 143 Now it's 3 and 4 that catch up. Whoopee. [ quoted text not captured ]

LSJ expounded: > Timlagor wrote: > > LSJ expounded: > >>Capacity mod 4: > >> > >>1: 19+86+60 = 165 (25.5%) > >>2: 43+92+52 = 187 (28.9%) > >>3: 65+76+11 = 152 (23.4%) > >>0: 68+73 = 143 (22.1%) > > > > Interesting that it's not until the 9caps that 1st place really catches > > up. > > Addition is commutative. > > 1: 60+86+19 = 165 > 2: 52+92+43 = 187 > 3: 11+76+65 = 152 > 0: 00+73+68 = 143 > > Now it's 3 and 4 that catch up. Whoopee. Transfers are NOT commutative. You can commute the addition all you like: you still reach 4 transfers before you reach 9 transders when playing.

LSJ expounded: > Timlagor wrote: > > salem expounded: > > > >>there is no default. when learning about stats, the uniform > >>distribution was generally the start point, but fromt here we quite > >>quickly went to normal distributions. > > > > > > UNIFORM -that's the word i've been looking for! :-) > > > > Besides I wanted to quote this bit for Derek ; ) > > Here it is again: "there is no default". > > Fine. Then use the average of all possible distributions. You'll > end up at the same place. Lack of information still doesn't support firm conclusions. There is no basis for using the average of all possible distributions. We do not have a situation where the distribution is determined probabilistically and we know that each possible distribution has equal probability. The distribution is fixed: failure to find out what it is does not support using an average. The fact that it is determined by the design team's actions makes any distribution of probabilities of distributions of vampire caps in useful decks completely non-uniform so their average is very unlikely to be uniform. Taking an average is just as pointless as arbitrarily picking a distribution. Even if it was established that the relevant distribution was uniform, you haven't shown that this is in any way equivalent to the MPA+D timing advantage. You're conclusion requires you to hit one particular distribution to satisfy the MPA+D advantage. You appear to assume that the uniform distribution is the one you require and the one we have but you have justified neither of these assumptions beyond saying that they are as good as any other (of which there are many possible). Even allowing a fair degree of lattitude for what constitutes equality, it seems overwhelmingly unlikely that the actual distribution is going to coincide with the one required. > If you desire not to end up there, you have to come up with some > reasonable restrictions on which distributions to include/exclude. Not at all. If you deire to end up somewhere you have to establish that there is a reason to do so. Why should we use the "average" (do you mean "mean" [arithmetic or geomoetric?], "mode", or "median"?) anyway?

[ quoted text not captured ] So? We're talking about the relative values of a given deck sitting at each seat. (You claim that 1st is worse). For the cap mod 4 = 1 cases, first is better[*]. This is true for 9 caps just as for 5 caps. * Insofar as these numbers mean anything at all - that is, for decks that only bring out 1 vampire, etc. [ quoted text not captured ]

Timlagor wrote: > There is no basis for using the average of all possible distributions. For those that cannot see the foundation of the current, use this: The optimal seating charts assume that the game is designed so that seats 1 through 4 are equal and that seat 5 is worse. [ quoted text not captured ]

LSJ expounded: > Timlagor wrote: > > LSJ expounded: > >>Timlagor wrote: > >>>LSJ expounded: > >>>>Capacity mod 4: > >>>> > >>>>1: 19+86+60 = 165 (25.5%) > >>>>2: 43+92+52 = 187 (28.9%) > >>>>3: 65+76+11 = 152 (23.4%) > >>>>0: 68+73 = 143 (22.1%) > >>> > >>>Interesting that it's not until the 9caps that 1st place really catches > >>>up. > >> > >>Addition is commutative. > >> > >>1: 60+86+19 = 165 > >>2: 52+92+43 = 187 > >>3: 11+76+65 = 152 > >>0: 00+73+68 = 143 > >> > >>Now it's 3 and 4 that catch up. Whoopee. > > > > Transfers are NOT commutative. You can commute the addition all you > > like: you still reach 4 transfers before you reach 9 transders when > > playing. > > So? So it's 1 that catches up when you reach 9 transfers. Your case with 3 and 4 catching up never happens in a game. > We're talking about the relative values of a given deck sitting at each > seat. (You claim that 1st is worse). I do claim that 1 is worst but my main claim is that 1-4 aren't equal and 5 isn't necessarily worse than 1-3 (on aggregate). Above all I'm claiming that your assertions are unsupported. I am also claiming that for most decks 1st has a more extreme effect (whether good or bad) on the game than 5th and so it is more important not to repeat 1st than not to repeat 5th because you will unbalance the tournament more. ******************************** Crucially I think that the 'ditribute starting transfers evenly between players' is more important than the 'don't repeat 5th (or anything else if it were to be changed)' rule. ******************************** Incidentally, assuming (some) 5 player tables, repeating 5th is less detrimental to the equitable distribution of transfers than repeating 1st is because 4th and 5th each having 4 transfers skews the table average for transfers in the first round. (2.8 instead of 2.5 on 5p tables) > For the cap mod 4 = 1 cases, first is better[*]. This is true for 9 caps just > as for 5 caps. I just don't understand what you are trying to say here. > * Insofar as these numbers mean anything at all - that is, for decks that > only bring out 1 vampire, etc. They mean nothing because the vampires are not equally likely to be played anyway. after that anything that makes it mean less is irrelevant.

Looking at the size of this thread and the fact that for every argument in one direction, there seems to be a 'solid' argument in the opposite, it brings me to one conclusion: there isn't a huge difference where you start, and even if there was, sometimes you get some good luck - sometimes bad. The hand and crypt that you start with (IMHO) are significantly more important than if you get 1, 2...4 transfers in the first turn. It is a game that is a combination of luck and strategy. Concentrate on those variables that you can affect, and cross your fingers (or use whatever method of improving your luck you choose) for those you can't. A previous thread pointed out that solving this sort of problem, with so many variables and so many starting conditions is at the very best, non-trivial, and is very likely to be intractable. I for one think that the seating arrangements are fine as they are. As long as there are no glaringly obvious errors (ie. violations of the first couple of seating 'rules'), which I suspect would have been pointed out and corrected by now, then go with the luck of the draw and good luck to you all! If you think you have a better way, then propose that method, and let others peer review your work. Simply pointing the finger and saying "it's broke, you made it like that, you fix it" is exactly the sort of problem that I see regularly in SO many places. It is better to approach a problem with "I believe that this isn't as good as it could be. Do you mind if I have a go a proposing a better system?" is a MUCH better methodology. Also, the continual back and forth of "I disagree - here's an example" is simply one-upmanship and manages to prove nothing. There have also been some claims of 'proof' that have been based upon incorrect math. Unless you know statistics very well, it is easy to get it very wrong, especially when basing it upon what intuitively appears to be correct. (I am not going to point fingers, because it doesn't matter in the slightest to the outcome of the 'argument'.) Instead, I will again say, if you have a better system, propose it and let us look at it in the same light as you looked at the current system - if not, belt up and find something else to think about. Try to enjoy the game, not get embroiled in the minutiae! (Except for LSJ, of course, being that it's his job!) Cheers all!

You're going out of your way to be obtuse in order to maintain your position. As such I'm stopping here until you demonstrate some semblance of a clue; the specific instance is that you keep arguing that nothing can be assumed about X and then attempt to make your own assumptions that because X cannot be assumed, anti-X must be assumed. No; NEITHER can be assumed, so you work from as general a case as possible. Again, see LSJ's posts. In message <MPG.19cfcd6ed...@news.freeserve.com>, Timlagor <Timlagor...@yahoo.com> mumbled something about: >Derek Ray expounded: >> >> Consensus opinion is NEVER the best judge of anything, as demonstrated >> by two thousand plus years of recorded history. > >Simply not true. The whole scientific advance over the last couple of >centuries is based on concensus supported by eveidence. Correct. You are attempting to base your entire argument on consensus (www.m-w.com) alone, unsupported by any evidence. >Morality is entirely based on concensus. And popular morality is a pile of shit; cf. Inquisition. >I am not talking about "mobs" which are by definition irrational. I am >talking about concensus. If a whole bunch of intelligent people can >think about something and discuss it and look at the games they play in >various positions and decide that most of them dislike sitting 1st then >that is powerful evidence that 1st is a bad place to sit. Absolutely and completely wrong. You have GOT to get off this kick that mob opinion has any bearing whatsoever on the truth. Until you can manage this, the discussion is not worth continuing. >YOU CANNOT ARBITRARILY ASSUME THAT THE DISTRIBUTION OF VAMPIRES FITS THE >REQUIREMENTS FOR SEATS 1-4 TO BE EQUAL AND ALL BETTER THAN 5. And you cannot arbitrarily assume that it doesn't, either. [ quoted text not captured ]

Timlagor <Timlagor...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<MPG.19cdae933...@news.freeserve.com>... [lehrbuch] > > Why is claiming *not equal* also not a gross assumption? > > (I assume you mean "not also a gross assumption" ;) > > I concede that it is an assumption. > > Have you ever played 'Pin the tail on the donkey'? Yes. > The reasons are similar -equality is a very narrow band of > possibilities (even being generous in your definition of > "equal") whereas "not equal" is EVERYTHING ELSE. If you > don't have any information to base a conclusion on then > "not equal" is a much more sensible assumption in any > reasonably large set of possibilities. Depends where you learnt your statistics. I was taught "when you know *nothing* assume everything is equally likely and modify your expectations as you proceed". Something to do with a monk? I'd agree that the starting positions are not equal, but for that statement to be meaningful you have to go on to describe how they are not equal. You can't do this. No one can. The game is not open to such an analysis. If you assume that they are equal then you've finished and can go home. (And criteria 7 and 8 even things out in the event that the starting positions are not equal in some unknown manner). > My assumption is also based on empirical evidence -no one > (except Derek and maybe Salem so far) likes going first > (or rather we do dislike it). Well, I at least always like going first. I hate going 4th or later. [snip (in)ability to act when minions already in torpor] > Another complication :-) > Probably not a very major effect though. After all, only 1 and 4 have > any motive to hi 5s vampire that early and 1 only has a 1cap to do it > with (barring accelerators). None of these effects are major. An extra transfer here or an extra discard there, neither of these are going to consistently swing a game in anyone's favour. And 4 who is the most likely to hit 5 early, probably, has at least a 4 cap to do it with, or 4, 1 caps or some combination thereof. If I'm playing a weenie combat deck my goal is normally to try and stick my prey or predator's first vampire into torpor before they act. [lehrbuch] > > Isn't that why two of the seating guidelines are: > > > > "7. A player doesn't play in the same seat position, if possible. > > 8. Starting transfers are equitably distributed. [NOAL]" > > Maybe. The rule that no player can sit 5th more than once appears to > supercede this however which is the main bone of contention. Yes, because 5th is total pants. You are a turn behind the game. * lehrbuch

ri...@yahoo.com (lehrbuch) writes: > Yes, because 5th is total pants. You are a turn behind the game. Unless you're playing weenies, in which case it's the best position you can be. The worst position to defend against a weenie horde is going first. -- hg@ It's better to open your mouth and appear stupid, iki.fi than to hold it shut and keep thinking you know it all.

(Janne Hägglund) wrote: > ri...@yahoo.com (lehrbuch) writes: >>Yes, because 5th is total pants. You are a turn behind the game. > > Unless you're playing weenies, in which case it's the best position you can > be. The worst position to defend against a weenie horde is going first. How is going 1st vs. a 5th-seat weenie any worse than going 5th vs. a 4th-seat weenie? [ quoted text not captured ]

LSJ <vte...@white-wolf.com> writes: > How is going 1st vs. a 5th-seat weenie any worse than going 5th vs. a > 4th-seat weenie? If you go 5th versus a 4th-seat weenie: 1) You can see he's packing weenies, and adjust your transfers accordingly. 2) You have four transfers to bring up a blocker/deflector/reducer/rusher, instead of just one. [ quoted text not captured ]

Blargleman expounded: > A previous thread pointed out that solving this sort of problem, with so > many variables and so many starting conditions is at the very best, > non-trivial, and is very likely to be intractable. I for one think that the > seating arrangements are fine as they are. As long as there are no glaringly > obvious errors (ie. violations of the first couple of seating 'rules'), > which I suspect would have been pointed out and corrected by now, then go > with the luck of the draw and good luck to you all! > > If you think you have a better way, then propose that method, and let others > peer review your work. Simply pointing the finger and saying "it's broke, > you made it like that, you fix it" is exactly the sort of problem that I see > regularly in SO many places. It is better to approach a problem with "I > believe that this isn't as good as it could be. Do you mind if I have a go a > proposing a better system?" is a MUCH better methodology. In this case I favour 12345 25314 43215 (21543 is current last round) Breaks the "thou shalt not repeat seat 5" rule but has a much more even distribution of starting transfers -all 6-10 (9, 6, 8, 9, 10); compared to 4-12 in the current version (7, 4, 10, 12, 9). 54321 as the third round has the drawback that 3 goes 3rd every time but is otherwise better [than 43215] (9, 7, 9, 10, 7 and no other repeats of seat -3 pairs of repeated seats the minimum?) and is still imo better than 21543 (Archon current). My attempt to rearrange it completlely ran into the 'player opposite' rule without my noticing it and I haven't tried again. > Try to enjoy the game, not get embroiled in the minutiae! (Except for LSJ, > of course, being that it's his job!) If we can't argue about something trivial, we'll have to find something important to argue about! Clearly people shouldn't be allowed to talk beyong announcing actions dring a game! ;P

h...@iki.fi.remove.these.to.reply.invalid expounded: > LSJ <vte...@white-wolf.com> writes: > > > How is going 1st vs. a 5th-seat weenie any worse than going 5th vs. a > > 4th-seat weenie? > > If you go 5th versus a 4th-seat weenie: > > 1) You can see he's packing weenies, and adjust your transfers accordingly. > > 2) You have four transfers to bring up a blocker/deflector/reducer/rusher, > instead of just one. 1st gets 4 transfers in the second round.

(Janne Hägglund) wrote: > LSJ <vte...@white-wolf.com> writes: > > >>How is going 1st vs. a 5th-seat weenie any worse than going 5th vs. a >>4th-seat weenie? > > > If you go 5th versus a 4th-seat weenie: > > 1) You can see he's packing weenies, and adjust your transfers accordingly. Likewise the 1st seat. > 2) You have four transfers to bring up a blocker/deflector/reducer/rusher, > instead of just one. No, you've got 4 instead of 4 (or 5 if 1st guessed correctly on the first turn). [ quoted text not captured ]

(Janne Hägglund) wrote: > > Yes, because 5th is total pants. You are a turn behind the game. > > Unless you're playing weenies, in which case it's the best position you can > be. The worst position to defend against a weenie horde is going first. Not true. If you're first, you have 5 xfers before the before the last player's minions can act. The advantage is to the 1st player in this case. My belief is that peoples' subjective opinions do not hold up to logical or statistical analyses. Regards, Noal

Timlagor wrote: > In this case I favour > 12345 > 25314 > 43215 > > (21543 is current last round) > > Breaks the "thou shalt not repeat seat 5" rule but has a much more even > distribution of starting transfers -all 6-10 (9, 6, 8, 9, 10); compared > to 4-12 in the current version (7, 4, 10, 12, 9). Unfortunately, the prohibition against repeating seats, esp. seat 5, takes precedence over equitable starting transfers. Before you change the order of priorties, you have to objectively prove that there is a need to do so. Regards, Noal

. YOU ARE NOT REQUIRED TO USE THE OPTIMAL SEATING CHART, YOU CRETINS. - Ben Peal, Prince of Boston fu...@mindstorm.com

In article <MPG.19cfd155f...@news.freeserve.com>, Timlagor...@yahoo.com says... > Actually that's not what I meant anyway (should have been clearer). What > i really meant was arbitrary: that is to say a distribution taken > arbitrarily from the (huge) set of all possible distributions of which > an equal distribution is only one. > Suppose 1,000 possible distributions (pretty conservative) -99.9% of > them are not equal/even. Probably the best would be to take the average of them, as lsj suggested. What that will yield, I have no idea. I avoided more than the required statistics class in school. > The distribution is determined arbitrarily by what vampires are printed. > Clearly it's more complicated than just the number of each capacity as > some are clearly better than others and they fit into different decks > and... True. There's the "potential" random distribution and then there's the "realistic" one (where Appolonius is omitted). > bear in mind that my % was assuming two decks intent on getting the same > card out at the beginning of the game -The probability of which is > pretty darn slim in itself. It is. I moved on to generalize to "masters you would like to see early in the game". > I don't think I've seen it occur even once. I may have missed a couple > but I haven't seen that many Masters brought out in the first turn at > all -3 in a game being pretty high. I'm not denying that it can happen - > I just don't think it's that big an effect over all decks. I see it happen pretty often. > As you say, there are plenty of Masters you might want to get out right > at the beginning. This just makes it even less likely that anyone else > is trying hard to ge the same Master out at that point. It's possible. Again, there are masters that you want to play at the beginning of the game (first turn even) that give you a sustained positive effect over the course of the game even if nobody else is trying to get one out. A first turn Barrens can turn a mediocre/bad draw into a fantastic one in short order. A first turn transfer accelerator can quickly offset the disadvantages of going earlier than someone else in the first 4 turns. > Finally -if you're multiplying across all the games you play, you have > to multiply the transfers effect which hit ERVERY TIME as well. Yep. I'm gonna contend that the master/discard phase benefits you get are equally as important. > In the paragraph above I was trying to analyse the reasons behind this. > 3-caps are (generally) the first to get a sup Discipline and 7 caps get > an extra point in design (I think). There are plenty of other desirable > vampires -just not necessarily as many of each cap. I'm pretty sure there are. I tend to prefer the 4 caps with a superior and a regular; I tend to build 2 discipline decks. 6 caps are nice because you can get 2 out over 3 turns given 4 transfer blocks. We can go round on this forever. > Indeed it may. However it is much *more likely* to contain one of 3, 4, > 7, 8, or 11 than only 4s, and 8s. The whole question is about > probabilities across the decks you might be playing. Yep. Which can probably never be definitively answered. Although hopefully more analysis is done on the deck archive. It's fascinating stuff, really. -- -Snapcase

"lehrbuch" <ri...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:5fee5473.03091...@posting.google.com... > > If I'm playing a weenie combat deck my goal is normally to try and > stick my prey or predator's first vampire into torpor before they act. > This seems like something worth talking about. I have the opposite inclination. Unless I think that the minion is going to be minion tapped, or will Govern/freak/enchant, then I would prefer to ignore them so that they can hurt their prey some. Rush them when it becomes clear, either through the fame you just played or that they have become too good at weakening their prey. If they have a blood doll, sure kill it. Otherwise bleeding for 1/2 and making sure you don't die is good enough for me. I am interested in the alternate philosophy. Why is it better to kill the first minion out of the gate? Colin Riggs my overwhelming urge is to BUILD then CRUSH. Is this wrong?

Ben Peal <fu...@optical.mindstorm.com> wrote: > > YOU ARE NOT REQUIRED TO USE THE > OPTIMAL SEATING CHART, YOU CRETINS. Assuming you understand the Archon seating charts, why wouldn't you? > - Ben Peal, Prince of Boston > fu...@mindstorm.com Kevin M., Prince of Henderson, NV (USA) "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

"Colin Riggs" <colin...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<bk8sli$qkuum$1...@ID-146737.news.uni-berlin.de>... [ quoted text not captured ] I used to think killing the first minion out of the gate was good as well. Mostly because losing the minion would force the player to influence out another one, if he wanted anything to do that game. Of course, for some time my decks lacked the ousting/forward power required in tournament games. So I focused on having that power in my deck design. The thought that was automatically associated with that focus on power was, 'naturally', to use it as soon as possible. Now, I feel more ambivalent to that method. The lack of pressure on the grandprey is a major issue. And your prey might just refuse to transfer up new minions, or clam up with the minions he does have. On the other hand, it might totally unleash his forward power, since he thinks his minions are going to be dying anyways... Building and then acting is good. Also keeps the glaring focus of the table off you for a bit. Tobias

"Colin Riggs" <colin...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<bk8sli$qkuum$1...@ID-146737.news.uni-berlin.de>... <cut> > I am interested in the alternate philosophy. Why is it better to kill the > first minion out of the gate? If I've read Peter Bakija correctly (and please, somebody correct me if I'm wrong), the theory behind pounding every minion that your prey brings out as quickly as she brings them out is this: If you keep killing their minions, they'll have to keep bringing out more, thereby draining their pool. This should be much faster than bleeding for one and occasionally torporizing bouncers or blockers. Personally, I agree that it's much better to wait and just do little bleeds until your prey is almost ready to oust your grandprey, or shortly before that (I tend to err on the side of caution, when I remember to). The time you spend defending, by shredding enough of your predator's minions to make her clam up, will act as enough psychological deterrent to your prey to keep them from messing with you, encourage them to race to kill your grandprey, or both. Whenever I tried just killing my prey's guys to get at their pool by making them bring out more guys, I almost always ended up with not enough cards left in my deck to really do much after my prey was ousted. Kushiel

Kevin M. expounded: > Ben Peal <fu...@optical.mindstorm.com> wrote: > > > > YOU ARE NOT REQUIRED TO USE THE > > OPTIMAL SEATING CHART, YOU CRETINS. But that is up to the Organiser not the players who may want to whinge about it ;P > Assuming you understand the Archon seating charts, why wouldn't you? Well maybe because you think that equitable distribution of starting transfers is more important than not repeating seat 5. I'm not quite sure whether those seating criteria are required by the VEKN rules oronly the first one (no pred-prey repeat)? I suspect that the argument may only apply to 5-player tournaments anyway. (or if you're only running a 2 round tournament in which case you positively shouldn't do so -especially if you understand the Archon)

> > > If I'm playing a weenie combat deck my goal is normally to try and > > > stick my prey or predator's first vampire into torpor before they act. > > > > > This seems like something worth talking about. I have the opposite > > inclination. Unless I think that the minion is going to be minion tapped, or > > will Govern/freak/enchant, then I would prefer to ignore them so that they > > can hurt their prey some. Rush them when it becomes clear, either through > > the fame you just played or that they have become too good at weakening > > their prey. If they have a blood doll, sure kill it. Otherwise bleeding for > > 1/2 and making sure you don't die is good enough for me. I think this depends on what your ousting strategy is. If you're packing Fame/TitR, I'd focus on knocking down my predator's minions to keep him off my back because I'm probably playing less pool management (to make room for the Fames/TitR). If I was using bleeds, I'd knock down my prey's vampires first to keep them from generating pool and force him to spend down his pool to keep playing the game. In either situation you'll likely have to rush both ways, but that's how I determine my priorities. It's very important that as a combat deck player you size up the table balance quickly. If you knock down your predator's blockers when your grand-predator is a S/B deck, you're drastically unbalancing the table. On the other hand, beating up your prey will lead to the aforementioned strong grand-prey problem or a walled-up prey that will be tough to oust in time. You need to be able to see who is near an oust and how that will influence the game since you need not only your prey's VP, but also 1 other in order to win by being the last player standing.

On Wed, 17 Sep 2003, Colin Riggs wrote: > This seems like something worth talking about. I have the opposite > inclination. I agree. I'll stare at a hand of absolute ass-whuppin for half the game, if I think the table is headed in the right direction anyway. This stops working when your predator makes his move, of course. > I am interested in the alternate philosophy. Why is it better to kill the > first minion out of the gate? Because your predator is really aggressive? I can't think of any good reasons to auto-squish your prey, though. Maybe if his deck is so tuned against yours that you know it's going to take repeated efforts to get the job done? David Cherryholmes Duke Radiology P.E.T. Facility (919) 684-7714 david.che...@duke.edu

Kevin Mergen wrote: > Ben Peal <fu...@optical.mindstorm.com> wrote: > > > > YOU ARE NOT REQUIRED TO USE THE > > OPTIMAL SEATING CHART, YOU CRETINS. > > Assuming you understand the Archon seating charts, why wouldn't you? It doesn't matter. You're not required to use it. [ quoted text not captured ]

"Colin Riggs" <colin...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<bk8sli$qkuum$1...@ID-146737.news.uni-berlin.de>... > "lehrbuch" <ri...@yahoo.com> wrote in message > news:5fee5473.03091...@posting.google.com... > > I am interested in the alternate philosophy. Why is it better to kill the > first minion out of the gate? I don't think this is true at all really. If you're playing rush, you need to control the actions of your prey and your predator. Your prey should always be your priority unless you're in danger of being ousted quickly. If your prey is inclined to bloat, you can't let this happen unless you know you'll have more than enough rush actions available. If your predator is all about stealth bleed, it's probably impossible for you to beat them to the first oust so you must rush upstream ASAP. If they manage to push through a bleed for 4+ on their first action, that could mean 1 less minion for you the entire game. It has been said the best predator/worst prey has no minions and infinite pool. If you're playing combat, rush upstream to create this situation, and downstream to prevent it.

David Cherryholmes <david.che...@duke.edu> wrote in message news:<Pine.GSO.4.21.030917...@petsparc.duhs.duke.edu>... > > I am interested in the alternate philosophy. Why is it better to kill the > > first minion out of the gate? > > Because your predator is really aggressive? I can't think of any good > reasons to auto-squish your prey, though. Maybe if his deck is so tuned > against yours that you know it's going to take repeated efforts to get the > job done? > > David Cherryholmes The reason that springs to mind offhand is if you know your prey's deck happens to be built around having a certain minion in play. Say, oh, the many decks out there that want Matthias out for Renewed Vigor blood gain. Or a Call the Great Beast deck where they're shooting for Huitz as their first minion. Or a Turbo Baron/Turborika deck. This does mean you have to know what you're facing, though. -John Flournoy

Timlagor wrote: > Kevin M. expounded: > > Ben Peal wrote: > > > YOU ARE NOT REQUIRED TO USE THE > > > OPTIMAL SEATING CHART, YOU CRETINS. > > But that is up to the Organiser not the players who may want to whinge > about it ;P Incorrect. Preliminary round seating is determined by the judge. If a player feels that he or she has a better seating system, then he or she may winge to the judge about it. The judge is free to ignore this cretin. > > Assuming you understand the Archon seating charts, why wouldn't you? > > Well maybe because you think that equitable distribution of starting > transfers is more important than not repeating seat 5. I'm not quite > sure whether those seating criteria are required by the VEKN rules > oronly the first one (no pred-prey repeat)? For those cretins too lazy to do something as basic as look this up on the White Wolf site: www.white-wolf.com/vtes/veknRules.html "Section 3.1.2. Preliminary Rounds Seating The judge will randomly assign players in groups of five. In the event that the number of players is not evenly divisible by five, the judge will assign players in groups of four and five, such that as many groups as possible contain five players. If the players cannot be divided into groups of 4 and 5 (i.e., there are 6, 7, or 11 players), then the judge may elect to use a seating arrangement in which some players sit out each round (while still ensuring that every player plays the same number of games, usually equal to one less than the number of rounds). The judge will group players randomly, using prepared index cards, a computerized system for generating random groupings, or another randomizing method. Each table has five positions, numbered one through five, arranged clockwise around the table. The first player assigned to a table occupies position one, and so on. When play begins for each round, the player in position one plays first (with a default of one transfer during the influence phase), and so on. At tables with only four players, the empty position for turn rotation is ignored. The judge must ensure that exact predator-prey relationships are not duplicated from round to round whenever possible. When this occurs, the judge will randomly rearrange the seating assignments of all players at the affected table. The judge may, at his or her discretion, reseat players who were assigned to table together during any previous round to different tables." [ quoted text not captured ]

David Cherryholmes wrote: > Colin Riggs wrote: > > > This seems like something worth talking about. I have the opposite > > inclination. > > I agree. I'll stare at a hand of absolute ass-whuppin for half the game, > if I think the table is headed in the right direction anyway. This stops > working when your predator makes his move, of course. Yeah, it's entirely situationally dependent. > > I am interested in the alternate philosophy. Why is it better to kill the > > first minion out of the gate? > > Because your predator is really aggressive? I can't think of any good > reasons to auto-squish your prey, though. Maybe if his deck is so tuned > against yours that you know it's going to take repeated efforts to get the > job done? Personally, I like to go and get that VP and 6 pool. Given that the payload is Fame/Tension/Bleeds and the delivery system is combat...well...time to get crackin'. But again, it's entirely situationally dependent. Your predator might be fast out of the gate and in need of smiting. You might be able to get bleeds through without having to torporize your prey's minions, saving torporization for the finishing blow and saving the combat cards in your hand to back up any threats you want to make. Your prey's kung-fu may be better than yours, so you might have to sell your services, in exchange for help with ousting your prey. [ quoted text not captured ]

kushiel) wrote: > If I've read Peter Bakija correctly (and please, somebody correct > me if I'm wrong), the theory behind pounding every minion that your > prey brings out as quickly as she brings them out is this: If you > keep killing their minions, they'll have to keep bringing out more, > thereby draining their pool. This should be much faster than bleeding > for one and occasionally torporizing bouncers or blockers. Correct. I think the whole idea of playing slow is very counterproductive to what a Ruch deck does. You hit the ground running. Kill every vampire your prey brings out as quickly as possible. If they bring out more vampires, you kill them too, costing them more pool, allowing you to oust them faster. If they don't bring out more vampires, you can just bleed them out at your leisure, rushing defensively as necessary, as they aren't going to be gaining more pool at any significant rate. Kill them quickly. If you give them time to set up, your attacks get foiled, they gain more pool, whatever. Just hit the ground running and kill, kill, kill, kill, kill the poor. The rush deck is all about killing your 1st prey as quickly as possible, and then playing a waiting/defensive game till the game comes down to you and one other guy, and you should be the last one standing--Rush decks live and die by the 3 VPs necessary to get a table win. Sometimes you can pull off 4. I've gotten 5 at least once with a Rush deck. Usually, though, it is all about getting 3. To this end, just tear into your prey as quickly and brutally as possible, only Rushing up stream as necessary to stay alive. Once your prey is dead and you have 1 VP, it is time to hunker down like a rabid hedge hog and just stay alive. Yeah, it isn't fun to be the prey of a good Rush deck--unless you have reasonable combat defense (which isn't that hard to have, but it is often ignored), you might not even get to take a single action. Yes, it is a drag. But it is also a drag to get stealth bled for 15 in two turns, and that happens far more often. > > Personally, I agree that it's much better to wait and just do little > bleeds until your prey is almost ready to oust your grandprey, or shortly > before that (I tend to err on the side of caution, when I remember to). Meh. If you let your prey get set up, he can gain pool, gain VPs, and potentially foil you. If you kill every vampire he puts into play before it takes an action, you have a much easier time ousting them. More than once have I lost a game simply because for whatever reason one of my prey's vampires survived till the turn after he came out (hand jam, lucky combat defense, something) and got Minion Tapped, meaning I had to bleed through another 6 or 8 pool, which isn't insignificant. Letting your prey get set up is just asking to lose. Kill. That is why the deck exists. > The time you spend defending, by shredding enough of your predator's > minions to make her clam up, will act as enough psychological deterrent > to your prey to keep them from messing with you, encourage them to race > to kill your grandprey, or both. Nah. You'll just piss off your predator, get them ousted, and then have a whole new, un-mangled, fresh and new predator with 6 more pool than you. Rush forward with reckless abandon. Ruch backwards shrewedly as needed. Don't rush cross table, ever. The only time I'll ever rush cross table is when someone does something to cost me the from across the table (like Kindred Restructures to steal my hard earned VP)--once I have been tooled and I in a losing position due to crosstable shenanigans , I will make them lose the game out of pure spite. And not feel bad doing it. > Whenever I tried just killing my prey's > guys to get at their pool by making them bring out more guys, I almost > always ended up with not enough cards left in my deck to really do much > after my prey was ousted. Use more combat cards? It shouldn't take that much effort to kill your first prey under good conditions (i.e. limited combat defense, which is what you usually find in tournament play). Once he is dead, you just wait to be the last guy standing. -Peter

David Cherryholmes wrote > Because your predator is really aggressive? I can't think of any good > reasons to auto-squish your prey, though. You win the game by ousting your prey. If you auto squish your prey, he doesn't get to generate more pool through actions or master card plays on that minion; he doesn't get to set up defensive technology; he doesn't get to move quick and oust his prey and gain 6 more pool. Kill your prey. That is how the game was designed. And how Rush decks work best. Just like most other decks. -Peter

"Peter D Bakija" <pd...@lightlink.com> wrote in message news:aadbb36b.0309...@posting.google.com... > Just hit the ground running and kill, kill, kill, kill, kill the poor. Efficiency and progress is ours once again... Now that we have the neu-ta-ron bomb! > The rush deck is all about killing your 1st prey as quickly as > possible, and then playing a waiting/defensive game till the game > comes down to you and one other guy, and you should be the last one > standing--Rush decks live and die by the 3 VPs necessary to get a > table win. Sometimes you can pull off 4. I've gotten 5 at least once > with a Rush deck. Usually, though, it is all about getting 3. To this > end, just tear into your prey as quickly and brutally as possible, > only Rushing up stream as necessary to stay alive. Once your prey is > dead and you have 1 VP, it is time to hunker down like a rabid hedge > hog and just stay alive. I think this all applies more to weenie rush combat decks more than any other type. There are probably two reasons for this: one, larger-vamp rush decks are usually hybrids of some kind, incorporating +bleed or other stuff. And two, no matter what kind of deck you have, the one that comes out blazing is always at risk of getting put down like the rabid dog that it is. A weenie deck is less vulnerable to getting table-squished in this situation, I think. The "play slower, let your prey do stuff" approach seems to me to be based on the philosophy of "lay low until you can unexpectedly grab a VP or two". A lot of people nowadays, I think, have come to find this philosophy useful in that it helps avoid becoming the target of table wrath too early in the game. Table wrath is bad. :-) There's also the argument that demolishing your prey immediately seriously upsets table balance, in that your grandprey gets pretty much a free hand for as long as it takes you to oust your prey. If that's even a turn or two too much, he may have 2 VPs by the time you get to him, and be too far ahead of you to catch up - ie if you can't then crush *him* instantly, he'll oust you before you do. None of this is to deny the potential effectiveness of the "attack left until there ain't nothing left to attack" approach. It can work. It can work well. But there are other possible routes to victory, especially when/if an area's table politics have come to a point where you have to be subtle to not be preemptively stopped. Josh kill the poor tonight!

Ben Peal <fu...@optical.mindstorm.com> wrote: > Kevin Mergen wrote: >> Ben Peal <fu...@optical.mindstorm.com> wrote: >> > >> > YOU ARE NOT REQUIRED TO USE THE >> > OPTIMAL SEATING CHART, YOU CRETINS. >> >> Assuming you understand the Archon seating charts, why wouldn't you? > > It doesn't matter. You're not required to use it. That doesn't really answer the question, though. I believe the Archon seating charts to be the best available, which is why I use them. Obviously, someone not using the Archon seating charts would have to believe that those charts were NOT the best available, but I'd still like to know WHY they didn't think those charts were the best available. (I think Timlagor answered this question already, though.) > - Ben Peal, Prince of Boston > fu...@mindstorm.com Kevin M., Prince of Henderson, NV (USA) [ quoted text not captured ]

> Meh. If you let your prey get set up, he can gain pool, gain VPs, and > potentially foil you. If you kill every vampire he puts into play > before it takes an action, you have a much easier time ousting them. > More than once have I lost a game simply because for whatever reason > one of my prey's vampires survived till the turn after he came out > (hand jam, lucky combat defense, something) and got Minion Tapped, > meaning I had to bleed through another 6 or 8 pool, which isn't > insignificant. > Damn straight. I'm currently finding myself very fond of allies as rush defence (as well as General Duties): Anam the Devourer + Jake Washington + either Muddles or Shamblers going into my FoS decks. They really foil non-stealthy beat 'em up decks. This Bakija style rush would hose this defence, utterly. Sarrasine and Normal would go straight to torpor, and Anam and Muddled would never get into play. I got some Deja Vous here. I think I have posted this exact thing sometime ago.

John Flournoy expounded: > David Cherryholmes <david.che...@duke.edu> wrote > > > > I am interested in the alternate philosophy. Why is it better to kill the > > > first minion out of the gate? > > > > Because your predator is really aggressive? I can't think of any good > > reasons to auto-squish your prey, though. Maybe if his deck is so tuned > > against yours that you know it's going to take repeated efforts to get the > > job done? > > > > David Cherryholmes > > The reason that springs to mind offhand is if you know your prey's > deck happens to be built around having a certain minion in play. Say, > oh, the many decks out there that want Matthias out for Renewed Vigor > blood gain. Or a Call the Great Beast deck where they're shooting for > Huitz as their first minion. Or a Turbo Baron/Turborika deck. This > does mean you have to know what you're facing, though. That's simple. If you see Arika, Anson, Huitz, Baron or Alexandra, you take them down immediately (if you can); can't take em out before they enter play anyway (unless you have a Brainwash handy and you see a minion with 8 blood and not out ;-D

Ben Peal expounded: > Timlagor wrote: > > Kevin M. expounded: > > > Ben Peal wrote: > > > > YOU ARE NOT REQUIRED TO USE THE > > > > OPTIMAL SEATING CHART, YOU CRETINS. > > > > But that is up to the Organiser not the players who may want to whinge > > about it ;P > > Incorrect. Preliminary round seating is determined by the judge. > > If a player feels that he or she has a better seating system, then > he or she > may winge to the judge about it. The judge is free to ignore this > cretin. In what way does that contradict my comment? (aside from your spelling of "whinge" ;P) > > > Assuming you understand the Archon seating charts, why wouldn't you? > > > > Well maybe because you think that equitable distribution of starting > > transfers is more important than not repeating seat 5. I'm not quite > > sure whether those seating criteria are required by the VEKN rules > > oronly the first one (no pred-prey repeat)? > > For those cretins too lazy to do something as basic as look this up > on > the White Wolf site: That's me ;-D

Kevin M. expounded: > Ben Peal <fu...@optical.mindstorm.com> wrote: > > Kevin Mergen wrote: > >> Ben Peal <fu...@optical.mindstorm.com> wrote: > >> > > >> > YOU ARE NOT REQUIRED TO USE THE > >> > OPTIMAL SEATING CHART, YOU CRETINS. > >> > >> Assuming you understand the Archon seating charts, why wouldn't you? > > > > It doesn't matter. You're not required to use it. > > That doesn't really answer the question, though. I believe the Archon > seating charts to be the best available, which is why I use them. > Obviously, someone not using the Archon seating charts would have to believe > that those charts were NOT the best available, but I'd still like to know > WHY they didn't think those charts were the best available. (I think > Timlagor answered this question already, though.) Reading the rules Ben so kindly posted. It also appears that the Archon seating arrangemts are ILLEGAL -they're not random. ********************************************* The judge will group players randomly, using prepared index cards, a computerized system for generating random groupings, or another randomizing method. ********************************************* The Archon seating groups people according to a pre-generated system -it is not random. The random assignment of numbers to players is not sufficient to meet this criterion as stated. So why is this a bad thing? I don't think it is particularly. It might have a marginal effect to do with the subsets people play in but the randomness of assigning numbers is enough. Just thought I would point out that nearly every tournament to date has been in contravention of the VEKN rules ;-) This could be solved by inserting 'for the first round' somewhere in the above paragraph and saying 'the judge may use a pregenerated pattern to commute the players for subsequent rounds or generate them randomly'.

Timlagor wrote: > Reading the rules Ben so kindly posted. It also appears that the Archon > seating arrangemts are ILLEGAL -they're not random. They are, if seeded randomly. [ quoted text not captured ]

In message <MPG.19d38bfa1...@news.freeserve.com>, Timlagor <Timlagor...@yahoo.com> mumbled something about: >Reading the rules Ben so kindly posted. It also appears that the Archon >seating arrangemts are ILLEGAL -they're not random. > >********************************************* >The judge will group players randomly, using prepared index cards, a >computerized system for generating random groupings, or another >randomizing method. >********************************************* >The Archon seating groups people according to a pre-generated system -it >is not random. The random assignment of numbers to players is not >sufficient to meet this criterion as stated. OK, I'm about to toss you in the permanent "troll" bin for this one. Please explain why the above arrangement is NOT random? Say I have the following seating chart: 1 2 3 4 -- 5 6 7 8 -- 9 10 11 12 I write 12 people's names on index cards, shuffle the index cards randomly, and deal them out facedown to each position. We turn over the index cards, and that is who each player's number is. Please explain how a repeatable, consistent, or predictable pattern will be obtained from this method? Show your work, please. You tried in the other thread, but there was some confusion as to exactly what was intended; I consider more than just the first vampire when I'm bringing them out. (So if I sit in seat 1 with Matthias and Blanche, I put 1 on Matthias, 2 on both, and then bring out the one that needs bringing out the most on the 3rd turn. Transfers optimized.) So I'll let you get away with that one, but definitely not this one. -- Derek "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge." - C. Darwin, 1871

Derek Ray expounded: > In message <MPG.19d38bfa1...@news.freeserve.com>, > Timlagor <Timlagor...@yahoo.com> mumbled something about: > > >Reading the rules Ben so kindly posted. It also appears that the Archon > >seating arrangemts are ILLEGAL -they're not random. > > > >********************************************* > >The judge will group players randomly, using prepared index cards, a > >computerized system for generating random groupings, or another > >randomizing method. > >********************************************* > >The Archon seating groups people according to a pre-generated system -it > >is not random. The random assignment of numbers to players is not > >sufficient to meet this criterion as stated. > > OK, I'm about to toss you in the permanent "troll" bin for this one. > Please explain why the above arrangement is NOT random? Say I have the > following seating chart: > > 1 2 3 4 -- 5 6 7 8 -- 9 10 11 12 > > I write 12 people's names on index cards, shuffle the index cards > randomly, and deal them out facedown to each position. We turn over the > index cards, and that is who each player's number is. > > Please explain how a repeatable, consistent, or predictable pattern will > be obtained from this method? Show your work, please. You go on to the second round and use the predetermined pattern from Archon.

"Joshua Duffin" <jtdu...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<bkail6$r8bc9$1...@ID-121616.news.uni-berlin.de>... > "Peter D Bakija" <pd...@lightlink.com> wrote in message > news:aadbb36b.0309...@posting.google.com... > > > Just hit the ground running and kill, kill, kill, kill, kill the poor. > > Efficiency and progress is ours once again... > Now that we have the neu-ta-ron bomb! It's nice and quick and clean and gets things done! Away with excess enemy, and no less value to property... > > The rush deck is all about killing your 1st prey as quickly as > > possible, and then playing a waiting/defensive game till the game > > comes down to you and one other guy, and you should be the last one > > standing--Rush decks live and die by the 3 VPs necessary to get a > > table win. I think these days, it depends. If your prey is obviously playing Minion Tap or something that relys on bloating, you *must* destroy all of their vampires. If, on the other hand, it's a bleed deck without a lot of bloating, then you can probably let him soften up his prey while you bleed for one or two per minion. [Josh wrote] > And > two, no matter what kind of deck you have, the one that > comes out blazing is always at risk of getting put down > like the rabid dog that it is. So true, these days. > A weenie deck is less > vulnerable to getting table-squished in this situation, > I think. Unless, of course, you're playing at a table with *lots* of votes, and they decide to take you out first. But good players don't do this too frequently... > There's also the argument that demolishing your prey > immediately seriously upsets table balance, in that your > grandprey gets pretty much a free hand for as long as it > takes you to oust your prey. See this waaaay too frequently. > None of this is to deny the potential effectiveness of > the "attack left until there ain't nothing left to attack" > approach. It can work. It can work well. Well, at least it works better than the "attack right until you're the last man standing" way. Currently, I'm taking a lay-low approach, primarily because I'm (sadly) the top player at any given table, so I'm immediately a threat no matter what I'm playing. When I play. Stupid rockstar lifestyle getting in the way. Xian

David Cherryholmes <david.che...@duke.edu> wrote in message news:<Pine.GSO.4.21.030917...@petsparc.duhs.duke.edu>... > On Wed, 17 Sep 2003, Colin Riggs wrote: > > > This seems like something worth talking about. I have the opposite > > inclination. > > I agree. I'll stare at a hand of absolute ass-whuppin for half the game, > if I think the table is headed in the right direction anyway. This stops > working when your predator makes his move, of course. > > > I am interested in the alternate philosophy. Why is it better to kill the > > first minion out of the gate? > > Because your predator is really aggressive? And what about the path of 2 VPs... why isn't anyone talking about it? I know it's a rather hard route to follow and not usually the best option, but it is an option none the less. The idea is to constantly rush upstream and destroy every minion in your path. Your grandprey gets one VP every time, but no one else at the table can get a VP and you get the table win... Occassionally you will have to cross-table rush to prevent a quick oust, but most people are busy setting up and won't know what you're doing until it's too late. > I can't think of any good reasons to auto-squish your prey, though. > Maybe if his deck is so tuned against yours that you know it's going > to take repeated efforts to get the job done? Killing your preys minions quickly can really backfire if you're using large minions yourself. I would only use the "mad rush" technique if I was playing weenie rush or if my prey was really vulerable to this tactic. > > David Cherryholmes > Duke Radiology > P.E.T. Facility > (919) 684-7714 > david.che...@duke.edu Cheers, Howard

Hollowboy wrote: > Damn straight. I'm currently finding myself very fond of allies as > rush defence (as well as General Duties): Anam the Devourer + Jake > Washington + either Muddles or Shamblers going into my FoS decks. They > really foil non-stealthy beat 'em up decks. Exactly. If your deck's main plan for winning the game is "kill people", then letting your prey set up in the name of "not looking too scary" is just asking to lose. Yeah, if you pound them from the get go, the rest of the table might look at you and say "ooh. scary." and then gang up on you and kill you. But they also might not. On the other hand, if you let your prey set up, he *will* do everything he can to foil your killing, and it might just work. If you build a deck to kill things, then kill them. > This Bakija style rush would hose this defence, utterly. Sarrasine and > Normal would go straight to torpor, and Anam and Muddled would never > get into play. If my prey never takes an action, he can't do anything to make my life hard. Like gain more pool. Or recruit chump blockers. Or rescue vampires from torpor. Or Sensory Deprive me. Or move the table around so that he isn't my prey any more. The optimal situation for any Rush deck is when your prey never takes an action. Ever. 'Cause all of his vampires are dead. That way, you get a quick VP, 6 more pool, and can then act to manage the table such that you win. You might not, sure, but it is a good way to start to try. -Peter

Joshua Duffin wrote: > Efficiency and progress is ours once again... > Now that we have the neu-ta-ron bomb! It is so sad that no one gets that around here anymore. > I think this all applies more to weenie rush combat decks > more than any other type. There are probably two reasons > for this: one, larger-vamp rush decks are usually hybrids > of some kind, incorporating +bleed or other stuff. I think that is a very reasonable possibility. For the purposes of most of (if not all of) my arguments, I'm assuming that we are discussing a solid, weenie rush deck. Not some kooky hybrid. > And > two, no matter what kind of deck you have, the one that > comes out blazing is always at risk of getting put down > like the rabid dog that it is. A weenie deck is less > vulnerable to getting table-squished in this situation, > I think. I dunno. I think the weenie rush deck has enough cross table leverage to prevent this sort of thing--yeah. the rest of the table can conspire to kill him, but if he realizes that he is getting screwed and is in a losing position due to cross table shenanigans, the rush deck can go rogue and really hose someone across the table. As there are two people who can suffer from this, it is perfectly possible that they will simply ignore the rush deck and try and just go faster--if, say,the rush deck's grand prey takes advantage of the lack of pressure from the rush deck's prey, it can pick up 2 VPs quick, and get into a showdown 6 pool ahead, which can be significant. If I were in that situation (i.e. across the table from a rush deck as a not rush deck), I wouldn't fall into the cross table shenanigans trap--I'd just kill my prey and get the VPs I can. Maybe I'll win anyway. This game suffers a great deal (as can be seen from the constant threads that erupt around the idea) from the "precognitive table management" syndrome--rather than just killing your prey, people look at the table early, and try to figureout what will happen in the future, and spend a lot of time dicking around trying to manage the "trouble" players and decks in an attempt to rig the game in their favor. Screw that. Kill your prey. > > The "play slower, let your prey do stuff" approach seems > to me to be based on the philosophy of "lay low until you > can unexpectedly grab a VP or two". A lot of people > nowadays, I think, have come to find this philosophy > useful in that it helps avoid becoming the target of > table wrath too early in the game. Table wrath is bad. > :-) Meh. The game is about killing your prey. If you get table wrath for killing your prey, screw'em. And if I'm playing a rush deck, I can :-) > There's also the argument that demolishing your prey > immediately seriously upsets table balance, in that your > grandprey gets pretty much a free hand for as long as it > takes you to oust your prey. If that's even a turn or > two too much, he may have 2 VPs by the time you get to > him, and be too far ahead of you to catch up - ie if you > can't then crush *him* instantly, he'll oust you before > you do. This is not an insignificant issue. But as the rush deck, you just plow forward as fast as possible, get your 1 VP, and then worry about it. Yeah, that other player might have too large of an advantage when you get there, but that is a risk you take. The games I have won as a rush deck came about simply by killing my prey. The games where I dick around and have to mess with fools across table generally result in me losing. -Peter, who wants to lynch the landlord.

Kevin Mergen wrote: > Ben Peal wrote: > > Kevin Mergen wrote: > >> Ben Peal <fu...@optical.mindstorm.com> wrote: > >> > > >> > YOU ARE NOT REQUIRED TO USE THE > >> > OPTIMAL SEATING CHART, YOU CRETINS. > >> > >> Assuming you understand the Archon seating charts, why wouldn't you? > > > > It doesn't matter. You're not required to use it. > > That doesn't really answer the question, though. Yes, it does, Kevin. Yeah, the Optimal Seating Chart is the best available, but if people are gonna whine and bitch and moan about seating order and deem their way to be better, then they should quit being a bunch of jackasses and come up with their own seating chart BECAUSE THEY CAN. How many more times and in how many more ways does this need to be said? - Ben Peal, Prince of Boston fu...@mindstorm.com

Timlagor whinged: > Ben Peal expounded: > > Timlagor wrote: > > > Kevin M. expounded: > > > > Ben Peal wrote: > > > > > YOU ARE NOT REQUIRED TO USE THE > > > > > OPTIMAL SEATING CHART, YOU CRETINS. > > > > > > But that is up to the Organiser not the players who may want to whinge > > > about it ;P > > > > Incorrect. Preliminary round seating is determined by the judge. > > > > If a player feels that he or she has a better seating system, then > > he or she may winge to the judge about it. The judge is free to > > ignore this cretin. > > In what way does that contradict my comment? (aside from your spelling > of "whinge" ;P) I was merely correcting your pedantic statement. [ quoted text not captured ]

Jeff Kuta wrote: > It has been said the best predator/worst prey has no minions and > infinite pool. Unless that predator is playing with Anarch Revolts. ;) [ quoted text not captured ]

Noal McDonald expounded: > Timlagor wrote: > > In this case I favour > > 12345 > > 25314 > > 43215 > > > > (21543 is current last round) > > > > Breaks the "thou shalt not repeat seat 5" rule but has a much more even > > distribution of starting transfers -all 6-10 (9, 6, 8, 9, 10); compared > > to 4-12 in the current version (7, 4, 10, 12, 9). > > Unfortunately, the prohibition against repeating seats, esp. seat 5, > takes precedence over equitable starting transfers. > > Before you change the order of priorties, you have to objectively > prove that there is a need to do so. That's exactly what we were arguing about when "Blargleman" posted his rant.

Ben Peal expounded: [ quoted text not captured ] I have said what I thought was wrong and why, *and what I thought would be better* and why for both the cases I didn't like (2 rounds -LSJ agrees with me, and 5 players -we disagree) that have come to my attention. 1) since most organisers use the Archon and I like to go to other people's tournaments, I feel it is worth raising the subject when I think it could be better. 2) Since this issue probably doesn't arise in most cases -ie anything with more than 5 players- it's not terribly important. 3) I have no objection to arguing about things that aren't particularly important if I'm not bored and someone thinks it worth responding. 4) If you want to whinge about my whingeing you are welcome to do so but you'll only get yourself embroiled in it ;P Kevin's question was why people wouldn't want to use the Archon. You didn't answer it so there isn't any point in being rude to him for pointing that out -you just said people didn't have to which isn't relevant to the question. "Why might some people want to break the Law?" "People don't have to break the law."

Joshua Duffin wrote: > There's also the argument that demolishing your prey > immediately seriously upsets table balance, in that your > grandprey gets pretty much a free hand for as long as it > takes you to oust your prey. If that's even a turn or > two too much, he may have 2 VPs by the time you get to > him, and be too far ahead of you to catch up - ie if you > can't then crush *him* instantly, he'll oust you before > you do. Let's take this a couple of steps further: In a 4-player table, if applying such pressure on your prey caused your grandprey to get a free ride, then _his_ grandprey - aka YOU - would likewise get a free ride. Then it becomes a one-on-one battle. In a 5-player table, your grandprey gets the free ride, meaning that your grandpredator is giving your predator a free ride, meaning that you're not getting a free ride, meaning that you're prey can put pressure on your grand- prey...etc...etc... Of course, this is assuming a perfect model. [ quoted text not captured ]

In message <MPG.19d3e8dda...@news.freeserve.com>, Timlagor <Timlagor...@yahoo.com> mumbled something about: >Derek Ray expounded: >> OK, I'm about to toss you in the permanent "troll" bin for this one. >> Please explain why the above arrangement is NOT random? Say I have the >> following seating chart: >> >> 1 2 3 4 -- 5 6 7 8 -- 9 10 11 12 >> >> I write 12 people's names on index cards, shuffle the index cards >> randomly, and deal them out facedown to each position. We turn over the >> index cards, and that is who each player's number is. >> >> Please explain how a repeatable, consistent, or predictable pattern will >> be obtained from this method? Show your work, please. > >You go on to the second round and use the predetermined pattern from >Archon. Which is also random, because the initial seeding was random. NEXT! -- Derek "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge." - C. Darwin, 1871

Timlagor wrote: > Ben Peal expounded: > > Kevin Mergen wrote: > > > Ben Peal wrote: > > > > Kevin Mergen wrote: > > > >> Ben Peal <fu...@optical.mindstorm.com> wrote: > > > >> > > > > >> > YOU ARE NOT REQUIRED TO USE THE > > > >> > OPTIMAL SEATING CHART, YOU CRETINS. > > > >> > > > >> Assuming you understand the Archon seating charts, why wouldn't you? > > > > > > > > It doesn't matter. You're not required to use it. > > > > > > That doesn't really answer the question, though. > > > > Yes, it does, Kevin. Yeah, the Optimal Seating Chart is the best > > available, but if people are gonna whine and bitch and moan about > > seating order and deem their way to be better, then they should > > quit being a bunch of jackasses and come up with their own seating > > chart BECAUSE THEY CAN. > > > > How many more times and in how many more ways does this need to > > be said? > > I have said what I thought was wrong and why, *and what I thought would > be better* and why for both the cases I didn't like (2 rounds -LSJ > agrees with me, and 5 players -we disagree) that have come to my > attention. Great! Fine! If a judge thinks they have a better system, or wants to try a system someone else recommends, then they're free to try it! > 1) since most organisers use the Archon and I like to go to other > people's tournaments, I feel it is worth raising the subject when I > think it could be better. Great! Fine! If a judge thinks they have a better system, or wants to try a system someone else recommends, then they're free to try it! > 2) Since this issue probably doesn't arise in most cases -ie anything > with more than 5 players- it's not terribly important. Right! Stop talking about it! :) > Kevin's question was why people wouldn't want to use the Archon. You > didn't answer it so there isn't any point in being rude to him for > pointing that out -you just said people didn't have to which isn't > relevant to the question. IT DOES NOT MATTER WHAT THEIR REASONS ARE. [ quoted text not captured ]

[ quoted text not captured ] So, I guess your answer to my question is, "Because they're jackasses." Thanks. ;) > - Ben Peal, Prince of Boston > fu...@mindstorm.com Kevin M., Prince of Henderson, NV (USA) "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

[ quoted text not captured ] c.f. <http://photos.groups.yahoo.com/group/benpealfanclub/vwp?.dir=/&.dnm=GRRRR!! !+it+is+Ben!.jpg> > - Ben Peal, Prince of Boston > fu...@mindstorm.com Kevin M., Prince of Henderson, NV (USA) [ quoted text not captured ]

pd...@lightlink.com (Peter D Bakija) wrote in message news:<aadbb36b.03091...@posting.google.com>... [ quoted text not captured ] And of course, if you vaporize minions of your prey all day long, you can build up to three+ minions. Then you might have a minion to spare from vaporizing your prey to manage the table with. Of course, you could just bleed with that minion. Tobias Deventer

"Timlagor" <Timlagor...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:MPG.19d425bb6...@news.freeserve.com... > That's exactly what we were arguing about when "Blargleman" posted his > rant. Rant? Rant you say? The Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary defines a 'rant' as: [OD. ranten, randen, to dote, to be enraged.] To rave in violent, high-sounding, or extravagant language, without dignity of thought; to be noisy, boisterous, and bombastic in talk or declamation; as, a ranting preacher. I was polite and to the point. I never flamed anyone, nor implied the same. As for complaining about others 'rant'ing, Timlagor, I don't think you have the right to talk. This entire thread has been your rant. Please come down off your soapbox and move on with your life. As it has been pointed out, on numerous occasions, you don't HAVE to use the Archon, as long as your choice is: 1. By the rules 2. Accepted by the other players Simple. Enjoy the game.

On 17 Sep 2003, Ben Peal wrote: > Personally, I like to go and get that VP and 6 pool. Given that the payload > is Fame/Tension/Bleeds and the delivery system is combat...well...time to > get crackin'. I agree. And to that end, I play more copies of Fame and Tension than anyone else I know (4/2 for a standard rush deck). I just disagree with Peter that it's better to auto-nuke than to let them spend their 15 pool, but I'll address that in the appropriate spot. > But again, it's entirely situationally dependent. Your predator might be fast > out of the gate and in need of smiting. You might be able to get bleeds > through without having to torporize your prey's minions, saving torporization > for the finishing blow and saving the combat cards in your hand to back up > any threats you want to make. Your prey's kung-fu may be better than yours, > so you might have to sell your services, in exchange for help with ousting > your prey. All these things are true. I was talking about The Default Plan. [ quoted text not captured ]

On 18 Sep 2003, Peter D Bakija wrote: > Exactly. If your deck's main plan for winning the game is "kill > people", then letting your prey set up in the name of "not looking too > scary" is just asking to lose. I disagree. At least, this isn't necessarily true. One of the differences we're going to have in this discussion is that you're driving a weenie deck, while I am driving a multi-rush deck. I'll even concede that weenies are "better". But, it's not something I or many other people are going to play, there are other deck styles that rely on rush, and strategies that work for one don't necessarily work for the other. Given the weenie focus, you have a lot of minion actions, but I think the actual combat is pretty narrow. There are going to be a lot of things that stymie you. It's more important for your deck to not let the prey get a toe-hold than it would be for, say, Karsh, or Wynn, or Lazernuts. These types of decks can be built in such a way that you can be reasonably confident of mowing through whatever anti-combat they are playing. In such a case, the benefits of them spending 15 pool outweigh the risk that their deck actually gets to function. As with so many weenie decks, half your deck's strength relies on denying the opponent the ability to play his. More robust decks (while more fragile in other ways, and probably overall) don't need to live in fear that their neighbors may get to act. > Yeah, if you pound them from the get > go, the rest of the table might look at you and say "ooh. scary." and > then gang up on you and kill you. But they also might not. On the > other hand, if you let your prey set up, he *will* do everything he > can to foil your killing, and it might just work. Hopefully, he'll also take a stab at killing his prey. I get your point about getting the first VP and then being free to wall up. What I don't concede is that this particular deck you're discussing does particularly well with "one forward, the rest back". IME, mono-potence just doesn't kill things *that* well to survive successive and possibly Darwinianly-selected predators smashing up against them. Also consider this: a fast grab of one VP and turtling up *may* work. Is it necessarily better than pinging your prey with light bleeds while he comes close to ousting his prey, *then* dropping Fame and multi-rushing him into the dirt, and grabbing a quick two n' twelve? Then you turtle up with even more pool and fewer successive players to wall up against. And you were never the table threat. Outside of leveraging the weenie advantages of little pool expendatures and blah-blah-blah, even a little extra "love" from across the table can spell disaster. > If you build a deck to kill things, then kill them. Yes, all in good time. As I think I mentioned, there may be tables where you do just hurl yourself at your prey, and basically play it the way you've described. But it wouldn't be my first choice, and espousing it as the One True Way is poor advice to the people trying to learn this game. Unless, perhaps, you also advise that they just play -- and only play -- your deck. Even with that deck, though, I'd still hang back a little and see what my prey will do. > If my prey never takes an action, he can't do anything to make my life > hard. Like gain more pool. Or recruit chump blockers. Or rescue > vampires from torpor. Or Sensory Deprive me. Or move the table around > so that he isn't my prey any more. And, yet, these things aren't equivelant to "you lose". None of them are good, and we'd rather not have impediments thrown in our way, but Rabid Rush creates its own impediments that you are hand-waving away. > The optimal situation for any Rush deck is when your prey never takes > an action. Ever. 'Cause all of his vampires are dead. That way, you > get a quick VP, 6 more pool, and can then act to manage the table such > that you win. You might not, sure, but it is a good way to start to > try. But how do you get that "quick" 6 pool? Bleeding for one with your six minions? Is your prey going to just keep bringing out minions? You say yourself the goal is him not getting to play. If I'm clearly not going to get to play no matter what I do, why should I stupidly feed into your strategy, when you were the guy who just made me waste two hours of my life in a non-game? For a deck that can lunge, say via Freak Drive, I'd much rather let them spend themselves down to around ten pool and then drop Fame on them, followed by a couple of repeated dunk and rescues for the oust out of nowhere. [ quoted text not captured ]

David Cherryholmes wrote > I disagree. At least, this isn't necessarily true. One of the > differences we're going to have in this discussion is that you're driving > a weenie deck, while I am driving a multi-rush deck. Oh, absolutely. I coming completely from a weenie rush perspective. A multi rush deck is going to be both more flexible and more capable of picking up later if it lets its prey grow some, so it'll do better this way. But then the multi rush deck has different weaknesses. > I'll even concede > that weenies are "better". But, it's not something I or many other people > are going to play, there are other deck styles that rely on rush, and > strategies that work for one don't necessarily work for the other. Absolutely. Again, I am coming completely from the weenie rush perspective. > Hopefully, he'll also take a stab at killing his prey. I get your point > about getting the first VP and then being free to wall up. What I don't > concede is that this particular deck you're discussing does particularly > well with "one forward, the rest back". IME, mono-potence just doesn't > kill things *that* well to survive successive and possibly > Darwinianly-selected predators smashing up against them. It often depends on what you are faced with. Most of the game wins I come up with, however, come from ousting my first pray quickly, and then treading water/going backwards and forwards some till it comes down to a 2 person game, and then winning from there. Going forward constantly has its advantages too, depending on what is where. > Also consider this: a fast grab of one VP and turtling up *may* > work. Is it necessarily better than pinging your prey with light bleeds > while he comes close to ousting his prey, *then* dropping Fame and > multi-rushing him into the dirt, and grabbing a quick two n' twelve? I'd say yes, as by then, he may have twice as much pool as he had before due to Minion Taps. And he might have chump blockers to foil rush attempts. And he might have defensive locations making rushing difficult. And they might set up the vote network needed to rearrange the table. If they never do anything (or close to it), they won't have anything like this. It is usually *much* easier killing 1 minion a turn for 3 or 4 turns than it is 3 or 4 minions in one turn. > Yes, all in good time. As I think I mentioned, there may be tables where > you do just hurl yourself at your prey, and basically play it the way > you've described. But it wouldn't be my first choice, and espousing it as > the One True Way is poor advice to the people trying to learn this > game. Unless, perhaps, you also advise that they just play -- and only > play -- your deck. Even with that deck, though, I'd still hang back a > little and see what my prey will do. Meh. I'm handing out the advice that makes the world go round--kill your prey. Too much of this game is sullied by folks who don't realize that killing your prey is what you are supposed to do. If I come across a tad hyperbolically, then so be it. I'm willing to err on the side of convincing people that killing their prey is always a good idea. 'Cause it is. Granted, if my prey brings out, say, a Gangrel as their first vampire, I'll often hang back and see what he does. 'Cause if my prey is a fortitude/protean Gangrel deck, I'm hosed. But if my prey brings out a vampire with limited to no combat ability apparent, it is going down right quick. > But how do you get that "quick" 6 pool? Bleeding for one with your six > minions? Is your prey going to just keep bringing out minions? You say > yourself the goal is him not getting to play. If I'm clearly not going to > get to play no matter what I do, why should I stupidly feed into your > strategy, when you were the guy who just made me waste two hours of my > life in a non-game? If you keep bringing out minions, I kill them and you lose pool. If you don't bring out minions, I bleed you for +/- 6 a turn while you are gaining zero. And I might Fame the one you did bring out. Either way works out fine. You start with 30. You bring out a 6 point minion (nice and average). It dies before you get anything from it. You have 24 pool left. If you don't bring out any minions and spend any more pool, you are going to be ousted in about 4 turns (multiple bleeds, Computer Hackings, maybe some fame abuse), which, early in the game, is pretty fast. Yes. Sitting to the left of a rush deck, if you aren't packing reasonable combat defense (Obediance, Fortitude, fight back--a good handfull of Potence or Protean can totally *hose* a rush deck like mad), sucks. You are just getting killed. But so does sitting next to a Malk S+B deck if you aren't packing a dozen deflecitons. And you get ousted just as fast. > For a deck that can lunge, say via Freak Drive, I'd much rather let them > spend themselves down to around ten pool and then drop Fame on them, > followed by a couple of repeated dunk and rescues for the oust out of > nowhere. Which can certainly work. Especially in something like a Lasvernus multi rush deck that has a lot more room for flexibility (like bounce and Conditionings). But so can just hitting the ground running with a weenie rush deck. -Peter

Blargleman expounded: > > "Timlagor" <Timlagor...@yahoo.com> wrote in message > news:MPG.19d425bb6...@news.freeserve.com... > > That's exactly what we were arguing about when "Blargleman" posted his > > rant. > > Rant? Rant you say? > > The Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary defines a 'rant' as: > > [OD. ranten, randen, to dote, to be enraged.] To rave in violent, > high-sounding, or extravagant language, without dignity of thought; to be > noisy, boisterous, and bombastic in talk or declamation; as, a ranting > preacher. > > I was polite and to the point. I never flamed anyone, nor implied the same. Well ok. > As for complaining about others 'rant'ing, Timlagor, I don't think you have > the right to talk. This entire thread has been your rant. Actually I never said there was anything wrong with ranting. > Please come down off your soapbox and move on with your life. As it has been > pointed out, on numerous occasions, you don't HAVE to use the Archon, as > long as your choice is: > 1. By the rules > 2. Accepted by the other players It's a very nice soapbox

pd...@lightlink.com (Peter D Bakija) wrote in message news:<aadbb36b.0309...@posting.google.com>... > Correct. I think the whole idea of playing slow is very > counterproductive to what a Ruch deck does. > > You hit the ground running. Kill every vampire your prey > brings out as quickly as possible. If they bring out > more vampires, you kill them too... Absolutely. If you start letting your prey's minions get actions before you know it they've all got leather jackets and .44s and the zombies and war ghouls are out. Thumping fat vampires before they're minion tapped is also vital. The point of weenie combat is to get up and hitting quickly. Because *your* vampires are small they are fragile and if your prey gets an opportunity to get his defences organised you are screwed. As Peter and others state this is totally different if you're playing a fattie rush deck, In this case you will probably need to do some equiping or something to protect your investment. At least observation of your prey's disciplines is needed before you can go careening willy nilly into combat. A protean surprise, for example, isn't a critical error with rushing weenies, but it often is with rushing fatties. * lehrbuch

pd...@lightlink.com (Peter D Bakija) wrote in message news:<aadbb36b.03091...@posting.google.com>... > David Cherryholmes wrote > > Because your predator is really aggressive? I can't think of any good > > reasons to auto-squish your prey, though. > > You win the game by ousting your prey. If you auto squish your prey, > he doesn't get to generate more pool through actions or master card > plays on that minion; he doesn't get to set up defensive technology; > he doesn't get to move quick and oust his prey and gain 6 more pool. > > Kill your prey. That is how the game was designed. And how Rush decks > work best. Just like most other decks. > > -Peter I agree that you have to go after your prey, but like others have said, it can also be counter-productive. I too am of the school of "lie low, then lunge for the VP". I think the key point as you acknowledged before is that this "kill, kill, then kill some more" strategy only applies to weenie combat because it cannot deal with an entrenched prey. A multi-rush or fattie-rush deck will be able to counter the entrenched prey and cannot bleed as fast, so letting the prey spend down his pool makes more sense. It all depends on the combat deck you're playing, there is no One True Path to victory with combat, but all roads do lead to your prey at some point. Aramis