Single Rarities

I mentioned this in another post and just wanted to make it more prevalent in relation to the CL debate which I'm really tired of arguing because everyone's (including my own) arguments are circular. What I want to propose is the possibility that future (if they do come) expansions to be single rarity sets or a level that's close to that (Vamps and Library cards being distinctly different like they are is what I mean). Does this not eliminate all argument over the game as the availability as I've seen it has brewed down to the pro NL people stating you can make decks out of commons? And since everything would basically be common, would this not mean your argument is satisfied as well as the primary argument that some rares are "inherently powerful" because there would be no rares? Also an argument that has been posed is that Jyhad was designed as a truly even game. If it was truly designed as a level playing field type of game, why did they opt to not follow this line of rarity from the beginning? Just some questions to ponder. Vince

Vince Johnson wrote: >>Also an argument that has been posed is that Jyhad was designed as a truly even game. If it was truly designed as a level playing field type of game, why did they opt to not follow this line of rarity from the beginning?>> Because it is a Collectible Card Game, and Rares mean more money from people who want to get them for whatever reason. Without rarity levels, the collectability aspect of the game is thrown out of the window, and makes some folks mad (people are actually less inclined to buy CCGs sets that don't have Rares, even if the Rares aren't all that good, as has been experienced with other game releases). Even with rarity levels, there is nothing making the particualr rares in the set all that much more useful than the commons, and in Jyhad, they did a fine job of this in most cases. Rarity exists to make it hard to get all the cards in a given set, so people will spend more money buying cards, hoping to get the Rares they need to complete a set or use for decks. If Rares are extra powerful, there is more incentive to spend lots of money to get more rares. In Jyhad, this was not the case--there were very few "extra powerful" rares in the set (at the time, the only chase cards were probably Freak Drive, Pulled Fangs, and maybe Giant's Blood), thus the incentive to buy lots and lots of cards came from needing lots of commons (which isn't an issue in MTG. Once you have 4 of each common, you start throwing out the rest, and being pissed that you have to pay for them to get your Time Spiral, or whatever) and from wanting to complete sets or get cards you don't have. As it is, there was simply no connection between the Rarity scheme and the power of a given card. There are a lot more Rares in Jyhad on the level of Hell Hound, Cat Burglary, and Behind You than there are on the level of Freak Drive and Golconda. In comparison, cards like Majesty, Wake, and Theft of Vitae are hightly potent, and much more impotant in terms of actual play value than most Rares. Had, say, Majesty and Wake been Rare, then sure, I would buy that the Rarity=Power balance factor was an issue. As it is, however, this was simply not the case. In Ancient Hearts (and noticably not in DS...), WOTC probably injected "power rares" (which they did) in an attempt to boost lagging sales, and didn't give any thought to the effect on game balance. They had already alientaed their distributers on the vast over printing of the basic Jyhad set, and then probably lost a good chunk of money on the VTES reprint debacle. When DS finally came out, the available pool of players was limited to buy the set, and DS suffered from being a small set with way too much stuff all over the place, and as such, didn't have much to reccomend it (what, really, all that good came out of DS? Thoughts Betrayed, which was a debacle in and of itself as well as being common; Praxis Seizure cards became as good as commons; Some of the vampires were cool. That's about it). When AH came around, they really needed it to have a selling point. Sadly, the easiest selling point for an CCG expansion is "power rares". Thus, ToRIII and RTI were born. Luckily, the rules team decided that play value should take precident over sales figures (well, whatever figures there are at this point...), and errataed all the "power rares" to become more in line like they should be. Peter D Bakija PD...@aol.com "I dunno, Marge. Trying is the first step towards failure." -Homer

PDB6 <pd...@aol.comANTISPAM> wrote in message news:19990509110545...@ng56.aol.com... [ quoted text not captured ] Yes, but wouldn't you also agree that the fact that the price on a Jyhad box is less than it was at cost when the game first came out. And all of the other boxes have dropped significantly from their full retail prices. So is the game truly enough of a money maker for the collector to truly warrant varied rarities? If the game were truly left to the player which jyhad mostly is at this point, it would only make sense that future expansions single rarity sets. Certainly dealers still make money off of Jyhad, but I doubt they can attest to it being their livelihood or the bulk of their sales. And I don't buy the argument that people are less inclined to buy a game that has no varied rarity because too many people complain about the unfairness of rarities as it is now. What I would say is the reason people don't buy those games is because they aren't as fun to play or get to be boring quick. As for your listing of cards to in relation to power. Magic is the same way. There are completely useless rares in ever set. Laces are a good example of this. You can't tell me that just becuase half the rares in Jyhad are useless, that the commons make up for it pull a Cat Burglary over a Immortal Grapple or Day Op. Vince

In article <7h4ccq$g5k$1...@bgtnsc02.worldnet.att.net>, "Vince Johnson" <Miste...@worldnet.att.net> wrote: > And I don't buy the argument that people are less inclined to buy a > game that has no varied rarity because too many people complain about > the unfairness of rarities as it is now. What I would say is the > reason people don't buy those games is because they aren't as fun to > play or get to be boring quick. The problem comes when rares are much better cards than commons. For example, if a new clan were to be introduced, I sure wouldn't want levelized rarity. Why? Because I don't want as many Hunting Grounds for this clan as I might get a core card to playing the clan. Mike -- Mike Bohlmann, MAIP http://www.shout.net/~mbohlman/ V:EKN Prince of Urbana-Champaign Editor of the Fragment of the Book of Nod --== Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ ==-- ---Share what you know. Learn what you don't.---

PDB6 wrote: > Vince Johnson wrote: > Because it is a Collectible Card Game, and Rares mean more money from people > who want to get them for whatever reason. Without rarity levels, the i fully agree > Jyhad, they did a fine job of this in most cases. Rarity exists to make it hard > to get all the cards in a given set, so people will spend more money buying > cards, hoping to get the Rares they need to complete a set or use for decks. If > Rares are extra powerful, there is more incentive to spend lots of money to get this is very logical > > more rares. In Jyhad, this was not the case--there were very few "extra > powerful" rares in the set (at the time, the only chase cards were probably > Freak Drive, Pulled Fangs, and maybe Giant's Blood), thus the incentive to buy > lots and lots of cards came from needing lots of commons (which isn't an issue now here i would disagree. there are far more powerful rares even in the first edition (Jyhad) than you name here, and for a tournament deck, you would want multiples of such rares (freak drive, day/dawn operation, kine dominance, etc. ). generally speaking, if play worth is about the same in every rarity category, there will always be rare cards worth putting 4-10 times in your deck (as well as there are common cards worth putting 10 into your deck). this is the real problem. evenb if you manage to trade in 10 freak drives, you'll give away many other useful rares. you can become either collector or player, or have just plenty amounts of money... i support the rarity scheme so that the company makes enough profit out of the cards. this means the game will be continued with new series (if not too frequent). but forcing players to buy enormous amounts of cards just to make their tournament deck ideas work is a rip-off. many cards are inherently limited in a deck. these are usually the unique cards (or with similar effect, like praxis seizures) which are good for their value but not over-powerful. you wouldn't want to sit on a bunch of useless cards once you got the one copy you need out. and you wouldn't want to contest it with every other player at the table. if all unique cards were rare, this was already help a bit. but the game is as it is, and there are rare cards in all sets that are useful enough to put plenty of copies into a decent deck. this is why i favor a CL for rare cards -- Jens Niemann (V:EKN Prince of Stuttgart) @}---}----- close your eyes, you can find all you need in your mind -----{---{@ (Dream Theater)

In article <3736CC47...@ike.uni-stuttgart.de>, Jens Niemann <nie...@ike.uni-stuttgart.de> writes >now here i would disagree. there are far more powerful rares even in the first >edition (Jyhad) than you name here, Define powerful. You need to before your argument has any depth. There are many cards in the sets as whole, and the first set, with abilities not found elsewhere, or which give you a greater benefit than a common card (at an increased cost). However, if you pay adequately for an effect, it is no more powerful than paying less for a weaker effect, and cost can comprise many things - card space (Corruption is a "powerful" card but requires large amounts of card space), time, pool cost, blood cost, requirements, reactionary (does someone else have to do something) and so forth. -- James Coupe (Prince of Mercia, England) Vampire: Elder Kindred Network http://madnessnetwork.hexagon.net http://www.obeah.demon.co.uk

Jens Niemann wrote in message <3736CC47...@ike.uni-stuttgart.de>... > > >PDB6 wrote: > >> Vince Johnson wrote: >> Because it is a Collectible Card Game, and Rares mean more money from people >> who want to get them for whatever reason. Without rarity levels, the > >i fully agree > >> Jyhad, they did a fine job of this in most cases. Rarity exists to make it hard >> to get all the cards in a given set, so people will spend more money buying >> cards, hoping to get the Rares they need to complete a set or use for decks. If >> Rares are extra powerful, there is more incentive to spend lots of money to get > >this is very logical > >> >> more rares. In Jyhad, this was not the case--there were very few "extra >> powerful" rares in the set (at the time, the only chase cards were probably >> Freak Drive, Pulled Fangs, and maybe Giant's Blood), thus the incentive to buy >> lots and lots of cards came from needing lots of commons (which isn't an issue > >now here i would disagree. there are far more powerful rares even in the first >edition (Jyhad) than you name here, and for a tournament deck, you would want >multiples of such rares (freak drive, day/dawn operation, kine dominance, etc. ). >generally speaking, if play worth is about the same in every rarity category, there >will always be rare cards worth putting 4-10 times in your deck (as well as there >are common cards worth putting 10 into your deck). this is the real problem. evenb >if you manage to trade in 10 freak drives, you'll give away many other useful >rares. you can become either collector or player, or have just plenty amounts of >money... > Jens; To date, you've spoken of excessively powerful rares in the main set, but without making any reference to specifics. The rest of us aren't seeing the set in the same light as you. Which are the rares that you are referring to? >i support the rarity scheme so that the company makes enough profit out of the >cards. this means the game will be continued with new series (if not too frequent). >but forcing players to buy enormous amounts of cards just to make their tournament >deck ideas work is a rip-off. many cards are inherently limited in a deck. these >are usually the unique cards (or with similar effect, like praxis seizures) which >are good for their value but not over-powerful. you wouldn't want to sit on a bunch >of useless cards once you got the one copy you need out. and you wouldn't want to >contest it with every other player at the table. if all unique cards were rare, >this was already help a bit. but the game is as it is, and there are rare cards in >all sets that are useful enough to put plenty of copies into a decent deck. this is >why i favor a CL for rare cards Agreed, rares are useful enough to put in multiple copies, but the point most people are making is that there are common cards that work just as effectively in tournament situations. You don't _need_ to put a rare into a deck. Yes, it makes a deck more diverse, interesting to play, and might help in niche situations, but are they _neccesary_? I don't think so. As to limiting uniques to rare status, well, that would go far to elimianting the contestation rules, but who wants that? Contestation was made to create a dynamic of interaction between players, to simulate the struggle over limited resources. The issue of uniqueness isn't solved by limiting rares. Again, when discussing the need to limit rares in tournament play, you have to realize that you won't do much to limit players who know how to build good decks, and you won't do much to help players with small collections. They have to figure out how to use commons effectively, rather than worry about hte niche effects that rares provide to players with large collections. Regards, R. David Zopf Atom Weaver (& V:EKN Prince of Charlotte, NC)

Richard Zopf wrote: > > >multiples of such rares (freak drive, day/dawn operation, kine dominance, > etc. ). > >generally speaking, if play worth is about the same in every rarity > category, there > >will always be rare cards worth putting 4-10 times in your deck (as well as > there > >are common cards worth putting 10 into your deck). this is the real > problem. evenb > >if you manage to trade in 10 freak drives, you'll give away many other > useful > >rares. you can become either collector or player, or have just plenty > amounts of > >money... > > > > Jens; To date, you've spoken of excessively powerful rares in the main set, > but without making any reference to specifics. The rest of us aren't seeing > the set in the same light as you. Which are the rares that you are > referring to? i haven't spoken of _excessively_ powerful rares (though there were some, but have been rules down, like TORIII). i've spoken of powerful rares, just as powerful as other rarities, and i have made reference to such. want another sample? tribute to the master? still more? well, you need to figure out for your own deck which _card_ is worth putting many copies into your deck. and if you find out these cards are rare, then you won't probably be able to do it - except, of course, you are one of those willing to spend real much for V:TES... [ quoted text not captured ] no, but you will be limited to a limited choice of working decks, and one or the other particularly useful rare for just that deck would probably enhance it if you had the numbers. and when i think of m:tg tourneys: if you know that most people are playing xyz type decks, you can tune your deck against it. > > help in niche situations, but are they _neccesary_? I don't think so. no they aren't. you just get better decks if you can afford to play with lots of them (i mean, for instance, if you can afford to put 8 tribute to the masters in your tourney deck). > > As to limiting uniques to rare status, well, that would go far to > elimianting the contestation rules, but who wants that? Contestation was > made to create a dynamic of interaction between players, to simulate the > struggle over limited resources. The issue of uniqueness isn't solved by > limiting rares. i don't see that limiting uniques to rares would change anything about contestation. i said that you don't put many copies of unique cards into a deck, and not too many of the most playable, just because you can't afford to a) contest cards with everybody else b) keep on discarding that 8th eco terrorist after you have the first on the table unique cards are cards that inherently limit themselves to only a few copies in the deck. this would effectively make a CL unnecessary. > > Again, when discussing the need to limit rares in tournament play, you > have to realize that you won't do much to limit players who know how to > build good decks, and you won't do much to help players with small > collections. They have to figure out how to use commons effectively, rather a) limit good deck builders: not my intention b) oh yes it would help! i see it every time i play with such players. they are not limited to 'sitting around' but their decks are less competitive by any means. > > than worry about hte niche effects that rares provide to players with large > collections. now i wouldn't call that niche effects. for instance, many powerful pool-gaining cards are rares. now while you can count on non-rare pool-gaining, it would definitely enhance your deck by using rares. same for combat cards. same for most other type/use of card. you generate a visible effect. i was astonished that someone would see that different. but maybe i have impaired vision. are we really talking about negligible effects? or are there enough rare cards that effectively emnhance a deck built around commons and uncommons? your opinions please. [ quoted text not captured ]

James Coupe wrote: > In article <3736CC47...@ike.uni-stuttgart.de>, Jens Niemann > <nie...@ike.uni-stuttgart.de> writes > >now here i would disagree. there are far more powerful rares even in the first > >edition (Jyhad) than you name here, > > Define powerful. You need to before your argument has any depth. a strong card. one worth putting into your deck. as opposed to a weak card, not worth taking. a card you would favor over others to put into your deck. a card fitting into your ('winning' or whatever) combo. one of the better cards in the set. not one of the scrap. a card with a better-than-average (whatever high) cost effectivity. > > > There are many cards in the sets as whole, and the first set, with > abilities not found elsewhere, or which give you a greater benefit than > a common card (at an increased cost). However, if you pay adequately > for an effect, it is no more powerful than paying less for a weaker i would disagree. i claim there is a difference example: social charm costs no blood for +1 bleed. legal manipulations costs 1 blood for +2 bleed. you get more, but you have to pay more. anyway i would favor the latter because i can generate a higher effect with only a single action. > > effect, and cost can comprise many things - card space (Corruption is a > "powerful" card but requires large amounts of card space), time, pool > cost, blood cost, requirements, reactionary (does someone else have to > do something) and so forth. you name it. i got the impression i have been misunderstood. i didn't say: rares are more powerful. whether they are or are not just doesn't matter. i said: there are powerful cards in all rarities. but rares are much harder to come by, and without a CL impossible for most players to obtain in numbers. [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <3737EB87...@ike.uni-stuttgart.de>, Jens Niemann <nie...@ike.uni-stuttgart.de> wrote: [snip] > > help in niche situations, but are they _neccesary_? I don't think > > so. > > no they aren't. you just get better decks if you can afford to play > with lots of them (i mean, for instance, if you can afford to put 8 > tribute to the masters in your tourney deck). Just wanted to point out, Tribute to the Master is a common. --== Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ ==-- [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <3737F0A4...@ike.uni-stuttgart.de>, Jens Niemann <nie...@ike.uni-stuttgart.de> wrote: > a strong card. one worth putting into your deck. > as opposed to a weak card, not worth taking. > a card you would favor over others to put into your deck. > a card fitting into your ('winning' or whatever) combo. > one of the better cards in the set. not one of the scrap. > a card with a better-than-average (whatever high) cost effectivity. So you are including Majesty, Lost in Crowds, Conditioning, Govern the Unaligned, and other such commons in your list of powerful cards? But you're also including cards you need to have for what you want to do as powerful? There must be something getting lost in the translation from German. By that definition, if I want to use Dawn Operations with Weather Control and Skin of Night, Weather Control is a powerful card. It's not; it sucks for the most part until you put it in this combination. Now if you start talking about cards with better-than-average cost effectivity, you start making sense. Wake falls into this category as does Freak Drive and Zip Gun. Would you please name others? I'll bet you a Kruegl of your favorite Pils that I can name a common that is as good as any rare you name. > example: social charm costs no blood for +1 bleed. legal manipulations > costs 1 blood for +2 bleed. you get more, but you have to pay more. > anyway i would favor the latter because i can generate a higher effect > with only a single action. But not always. If you are playing Presence weenies, they are going to start running out of blood quickly if they are paying 1 for all of their bleeds. If you end up having to hunt at some point instead of taking a bleed action, you've lost all your benefit of that extra +1 bleed. > you name it. i got the impression i have been misunderstood. i didn't > say: rares are more powerful. whether they are or are not just doesn't > matter. i said: there are powerful cards in all rarities. but rares > are much harder to come by, and without a CL impossible for most > players to obtain in numbers. So am I correct to understand that you are saying all rarities have equal power levels (with a few obvious exceptions like ToRIII)? So, the goal is to limit Mr. Suitcase's access to large numbers of rares? But now all of a sudden, you've limited Mr. Handbag's access to the powerful commons that he can substitute in place of the rares he doesn't have. A CL doesn't magically make it easier for people to get rares in numbers. Look at Magic's early days. All tournaments played with a 4CL as did many play groups. Did that make getting a Lotus or a Mox any easier? No. It still takes a heck of a lot of cards to get to the four of a given rare you are searching for, even if you are Mr. Suitcase. The whole point of the issue is people's ability to make competitive decks. Mr. Handbag can make a deck that is just as competitive with a box full of commons Mr. Suitcase gave him as Mr. Suitcase can make by using his larger access to rares. With a CL, Mr. Handbag can only use a small subset of those commons Mr. Suitcase gave him. Mike -- Mike Bohlmann, MAIP http://www.shout.net/~mbohlman/ V:EKN Prince of Urbana-Champaign Editor of the Fragment of the Book of Nod [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <3737EB87...@ike.uni-stuttgart.de>, Jens Niemann <nie...@ike.uni-stuttgart.de> wrote: > well, you need to figure out for your own deck which _card_ is worth > putting many copies into your deck. and if you find out these cards > are rare, then you won't probably be able to do it - except, of > course, you are one of those willing to spend real much for V:TES... You make it sound like it's easy to build whatever deck you want if you own a lot of cards. It's still not possible to build every deck you can possibly imagine unless you own cases (not boxes) upon cases of cards. I'd love to try a deck using lots of Daring the Dawn and Force of Will with vampires that have a Heart of Darkness. But I've only got 1 Daring the Dawn. And I probably own about 3 boxes worth of Sabbat. And what if I did have those cards? It would still require skill to figure out the right mix. The same sort of skill a new player needs to learn when his main access is to commons; you have to take what you have and do the best you can with it. Why should it be any different? If you want it to be different, try a card game where the cards aren't collectible and you get a full set right away. > no, but you will be limited to a limited choice of working decks, and > one or the other particularly useful rare for just that deck would > probably enhance it if you had the numbers. So a person with fewer cards has fewer options for decks they can build than a person who has more cards? There's a shocker. And rares may enhance it but aren't required? I've got 1 Fists of Death. Does that mean I don't put it in my Potence decks? No. Does it mean my deck doesn't work if I don't draw it? No. If it did, I wouldn't bother trying to make such a deck. > and when i think of m:tg tourneys: if you know that most people are > playing xyz type decks, you can tune your deck against it. You can generally expect to see a certain set of decks at a V:TES tournament: weenie bleed, weenie vote, rush combat, vote, stealth & bleed. I like that. I hope we never have just one deck type that is dominant. In any case, what point were you trying to make with this statement? > no they aren't. you just get better decks if you can afford to play > with lots of them [rares] No, if you make a deck centered around a rare, you get a better deck if you play with appropriate numbers of them, sometimes "lots." But if you don't have those rares, why are you trying to make a deck focused on them for a tournament? > (i mean, for instance, if you can afford to put 8 > tribute to the masters in your tourney deck). As someone else pointed out, Tribute to the Master is a common. > unique cards are cards that inherently limit themselves to only a few > copies in the deck. this would effectively make a CL unnecessary. All cards in Jyhad have some form of opportunity cost. Freak Drive costs you a blood and you can't repeat the same action types. You can only play one Command the Beast on a bleed because of the limit on same named action modifiers. You can't have more than one Slave Auction in play because it's unique. You can play multiple Fists of Death, but they're going to each cost you one and they might be overkill. > a) limit good deck builders: not my intention Right, but you are limiting what good deck builders can do because of others' inability to make good decks. Everyone still has to make good decks out of the cards they have. Mr. Handbag can make a deck just as effective as Mr. Suitcase can by using the right mix of commons. > b) oh yes it would help! i see it every time i play with such players. > they are not limited to 'sitting around' but their decks are less > competitive by any means. Rares don't magically give a person good deck building skill. If you take a really tuned deck that has several rares and give it to a newbie to play, they are almost certain to get their butts handed to them. If you take a really tuned deck that has almost all commons in it and give it to the newbie, the same will probably happen. Rares do not a good player make. > now i wouldn't call that niche effects. for instance, many powerful > pool-gaining cards are rares. now while you can count on non-rare > pool-gaining, it would definitely enhance your deck by using rares. Many? I can think of one: Slave Auction. And I certainly feel that there are better alternatives like Blood Doll and STI. > same for combat cards. Potence combat is the one exception to not needing rares (or uncommons) to make an effective deck. Because if anyone uses S:CE at all, your deck will be severely hampered. IG is a necessity for Potence based combat. Otherwise, there is no main deck strategy that requires the use of rares. That includes weenie bleed, weenie vote, Presence vote, Stealth & Bleed. > same for most other type/use of card. you generate a visible > effect. No one is going to deny that rares aren't useful to help your deck. But they are by no means absolutely necessary to make a competitive deck. There is no other reason to seek a CL than to allow people without as many cards as others to make competitive decks. > or are there enough rare cards that effectively emnhance a > deck built around commons and uncommons? your opinions > please. I could build a weenie Presence deck that would have no need for any rares or uncommons. Social Charms and Majesties being the meat. You might add some uncommon Misdirections to speed it up more, but they aren't necessary. [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <3737EB87...@ike.uni-stuttgart.de>, Jens Niemann <nie...@ike.uni-stuttgart.de> wrote: > > > Richard Zopf wrote: > > than worry about hte niche effects that rares provide to players with large > > collections. > > now i wouldn't call that niche effects. for instance, many powerful pool-gaining > cards are rares. now while you can count on non-rare pool-gaining, it would > definitely enhance your deck by using rares. same for combat cards. same for > most other type/use of card. you generate a visible effect. i was astonished > that someone would see that different. but maybe i have impaired vision. are we > really talking about negligible effects? or are there enough rare cards that > effectively emnhance a deck built around commons and uncommons? your opinions > please. I also think that most tourney-level decks are based on commons rather than rares - there are very few rares that I think you can build a tourney deck around and expect it to do better than one built around straightforward common-based strategies like weenie bleed, weenie vote, malk stealth&bleed, ventrue vote/bleed, those kinds of things. As for pool-gaining cards, I think only a few of them are rares. Minion Tap, for example, is common, as is Blood Doll. Even Tribute to the Master is common, not rare, as someone else pointed out already. There are a few decent rare pool-gain-type cards (Golconda, Giant's Blood, Art Museum/etc.) but I would say that none of them are better than the old Minion Tap/5th Tradition standby (5th Tradition being uncommon). This may be a bit excessive, but here's a quick summary of my take on the Jyhad rares (no expansion set commentary right now because that would make this even more absurdly long). (These are organized by card type, then alphabetically, because that's how the checklist that I was using was organized.) ------- Cat Burglary - 1 bleed at 1 stealth. Not tourney competitive. Distraction - cycle five cards or tap a vampire. Not tourney competitive. The Embrace - create a new vampire. Tourney competitive. Good for making weenie hordes. May produce a more effective deck than one based on The 3rd Tradition - Progeny, but only because you can make your Embrace deck even more weenie than your Progeny deck. Probably not tourney-dominating, or at least I've never heard of one winning an actual tourney. Entrancement - +1 bleed or steal an ally. Tourney playable. Not tourney dominating. Far Mastery - steal an ally or retainer. Tourney playable. Not tourney dominating. Kindred Intelligence - action version of Effective Management. Tourney playable. Not tourney dominating. Kine Dominance - +1 bleed/+1 stealth or steal a location. Tourney playable. Not tourney dominating. Magic of the Smith - get an equipment card out of your library. Not tourney competitive. Patagia: Flaps Allowing Limited Golem, err, Flight - a Nosfer-only version of IR Goggles. Not tourney competitive. Psychic Projection - give +1 intercept to one minion/all minions till your next turn. Not tourney competitive. Psychic Veil - give +1 stealth to all vamps/all minions till your next turn. Maybe tourney playable. Not tourney dominating. Ritual Challenge - +1 hand damage for a Gangrel. Tourney playable. Not tourney dominating. Business Pressure - burn pool to gain votes. Not tourney competitive. Day Operation - make an action unblockable. Tourney playable. Can produce victory points. But without Return to Innocence, Not tourney dominating. Freak Drive - untap a vampire. Tourney playable. Without repeat actions, Not tourney dominating. Ritual of the Bitter Rose - all your vamps gain blood from one diablerie. Not tourney competitive. Telepathic Vote Counting - force one vamp not to vote or change your mind about having called the vote. Maybe tourney playable. Not tourney dominating. Hell Hound - two-life, no bleed, no equipment ally. Not tourney competitive. The Knights - two life, no bleed ally. Not tourney competitive. Political Ally - one life, three bleed ally. Maybe tourney playable, definitely not tourney dominating. Renegade Garou - three life, no bleed, beat-people-up ally. Tourney playable. Not tourney dominating. The Slashers - three life, no bleed ally. Not tourney competitive. Thadius Zho, Mage - three life, one bleed ally. Maybe tourney playable. Not tourney dominating. Behind You - maneuver/dodge, usable only first round. Tourney playable. Not tourney dominating. Body of Sun - agg damage to you and opponent/only to opponent. Maybe tourney playable. Not tourney dominating. Burst of Sunlight - agg damage to you and opponent. Maybe tourney playable. Not tourney dominating. Conquer the Beast - weird discipline-requiring version of Trap. Not tourney competitive. Fists of Death - +1/+2 hand damage. Tourney playable. Not tourney dominating. Poor man's version - Increased Strength, no blood cost, common. Flesh of Marble - prevent all but one damage. Tourney playable. Not tourney dominating. Immortal Grapple - hand strikes only for one round. Very tourney playable. Occasionally tourney winning, but I haven't heard of an IG deck winning a really big tourney yet - therefore not tourney dominating. Does have a strong impact on the game though; should have been uncommon or common rather than rare. Pulled Fangs - one damage, victim can't hunt. Tourney playable, but not overpowered since it no longer does agg damage. Not tourney dominating. Aaron's Feeding Razor - hunt for two blood. Not tourney competitive. Ivory Bow - one ranged agg damage unique weapon. Tourney playable, maybe. Susceptible to all the difficulties of using weapons; Not tourney dominating. Monocle of Clarity - ask a question, tell me no lies. Banned. Otherwise a Really Bad Idea. Might dominate tournaments if it were allowed under DCI rules and original card text/binding answers. Rowan Ring - paralyzing unique weapon. Banned. Probably would be tourney playable, but not tourney dominating. RPG Launcher - 6R weapon, only usable at range on second round or later. Not tourney competitive. Sengir Dagger - agg damage unique melee weapon. Maybe tourney playable, not tourney dominating. Soul Gem of Etrius - if vamp is burned, may return from the dead. Tourney playable, but no longer overpowered since the 'good' ways to get your vamp burned no longer work with this. (Golconda removes from game, RTI banned/removes from game, etc.) Talbot's Chainsaw - unique weird weapon. Not tourney competitive. Cunctator Motion - ante vote card. Banned. Not real useful anyway. First Tradition: The Masquerade - skip turns or pay pool. Maybe tourney playable. Not tourney dominating. High Stakes - ante vote card. Banned. Kinda funny but probably not real useful anyway. all Justicars - make a vamp have three votes. Tourney playable. Not tourney dominating. all Praxis Seizures - make a vamp have two votes. Tourney playable. Became uncommon in Dark Sovereigns, making them pretty easy to come by. Not tourney dominating; although vote decks do well in tourneys, you can make a non-Praxis Seizure vote deck that is just as good as one with Praxis Seizures. Rumors of Gehenna - two master phase actions. Tourney playable. Useful but not game-breaking. Not tourney dominating. Charnas the Imp - does damage to a vampire. Maybe tourney playable, but rather slow-acting. Not tourney dominating. Ghoul Escort - burn to untap instead of combat when blocked. Maybe tourney playable, but slower-acting than Majesty/Earth Meld/etc. Not tourney dominating. Ghoul Retainer - does 1 hand damage or uses a weapon. Not tourney competitive. J.S. Simmons, Esq. - +1 bleed, unique. Tourney playable. A better version of Laptop Computer since he costs no pool, but not tourney dominating. Jackie Therman - 1 maneuver per combat, unique. Maybe tourney playable. Equivalent to uncommon IR goggles. Not tourney dominating. Mr. Winthrop - +1 intercept, unique. Tourney playable. A no- pool version of Sports Bike or Raven Spy; still not tourney dominating. Murder of Crows - 1R damage per round. Not tourney competitive. Resplendent Protector - prevent one damage per combat. No pool cost compared to Flak Jacket, but probably not as good as Leather Jacket. Not tourney dominating. Tasha Morgan - +1 bleed, unique. Just like JS Simmons; tourney playable but not dominating. Al's Army Apparatus - get a weapon out of library into hand. Not tourney competitive. Anarch Troublemaker - tap two vampires or burn an equipment and hand it over. May produce victory points as a max-two-minion Misdirection, but not tourney dominating. Arcane Library - tap to put a pool on a Tremere. Tourney playable. Good for long-term pool gain or cheap vampires, but not tourney dominating, mostly due to the time scale of the payoff. Art Museum - tap to put a pool on a Toreador. Same as Arcane Library comments. Betrayer - burn a pool, burn another to guess the vamp and burn the Betrayer. Tourney playable in the Legbiter-style Betrayer deck, probably. Tourney dominating? Doubtful; it's a real nasty deck from the looks of it but I haven't heard of it winning any real-life major tournies. Blood Puppy - put three of your pool on it, add more later, burn it to gain the pool, burnable by other Methuselahs. Not tourney competitive. Curse of Nitocris - controller loses a pool per untap; changes hands when the Edge does. Not tourney competitive. Ecoterrorists - tap to put a pool on a Gangrel. Same as Arcane Library comments. Fragment of the Book of Nod - tap to draw two cards and discard down. Tourney playable. Handy for card cycling but not much better than The Barrens (common); stealable; not tourney dominating. Giant's Blood - fill up a vamp, only usable once. Tourney playable, but due to only one use, not tourney dominating. Golconda: Inner Peace - a large vamp is either removed from game to gain its capacity in pool, or its controller pays two to avoid that. Tourney playable, but without Soul Gem tricks and no guarantee your opponents will have big vamps to be removed, not tourney dominating. Hostile Takeover - everyone bids pool to buy someone's vamp. Tourney playable. A fairly nasty card; often usable as a master- phase bleed for about 3, although probably not if the victim is playing a weenie deck. I seem to recall a deck using lots of these winning a real-life tourney somewhere, but I don't think it was Origins or anything. Probably not tourney dominating. Kindred Society Games - victim vamp must pay a blood to untap. Not tourney competitive. Madness Network - Malks can act on other people's turns. Tourney playable in the right deck. Like Betrayer, I haven't heard of these decks dominating any big tournaments yet. Malkavian Prank - guess pool, win prizes or lose pool. Maybe tourney playable, not tourney dominating unless you have reliable psychic powers. Malkavian Time Auction - sell off something you have to the highest bidder and the second-highest bidder. Not tourney competitive. Millicent Smith, Puritan Vampire Hunter - burns a blocked vamp. Maybe tourney playable. Mostly just slows down the table a bit. Not tourney dominating. Smiling Jack, the Anarch - put your pool on him, other people burn pool or vamp blood. Unique, burnable. Maybe tourney playable, but I've never heard of him dominating a tourney. Society of Leopold - victim burns a blood or is burned. Tourney playable. A nasty card in the right deck (with Cryptic Mission), but I've had a hard time even winning games with it, let alone tourneys. Countermeasures are Sudden Reversal or Hunting Grounds, which is pretty limited. Still probably not tourney dominating. The Spawning Pool - tap to hurt a vamp after the first round. Maybe tourney playable. Far from tourney dominating. Succubus Club - trade stuff. Probably tourney playable. Probably not tourney dominating unless everyone wants to make you win for some reason. Temptation of Greater Power - like Hostile Takeover, but costs 3 pool instead of 1 and requires a Justicar instead of a Ventrue. However if the owner wins he pays full price instead of half. Maybe tourney playable, probably not tourney dominating since the pool cost gets harsh if you play a lot of them. Vampiric Disease - diseased vampires lose blood. Not very tourney competitive. XTC-Laced Blood - victim vamp must hunt a lot. Burnable. Not tourney competitive. ------- Whew. That was lengthy. If you (or anyone) disagrees with my assessments, please explain how the card can be more effectively used than I think (or why it really sucks). By 'not tourney competitive' what I mean is that playing with this card is unlikely to help you win a tournament compared with other cards you could use instead - due to high cost, minimal effect, whatever. Josh 'even you?' (marge simpson) 'no. not me. never.' (stephen hawking) [ quoted text not captured ]

"Joe C." wrote: > > Just wanted to point out, Tribute to the Master is a common. > yep. i'm sorry. i don't remember what card actually i was thinking of. do you agree that there are powerful rares you would _want_ to put lots of in your deck? -- Jens Niemann [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <373846BF...@ike.uni-stuttgart.de>, Jens Niemann <nie...@ike.uni-stuttgart.de> wrote: > yep. i'm sorry. i don't remember what card actually i was thinking of. About the only one I can think of is Slave Auction. And unless you're playing in a large game, Short Term Investment is just as good. > do you agree that there are powerful rares you would _want_ to put > lots of in your deck? How many is "lots?" To a person who plays with a 4CL, 8 might be a lot. There are very few rare cards that you would really want to put that many of in your deck. These would be ones like Freak Drive, Immortal Grapple (if you still count it as rare even though it's uncommon in Sabbat), Awe, and that's about it. Otherwise, the only other time you might put lots of a rare in your deck is if it is core to your concept. Which could be said of the above cards. There are NO rares I put in every deck I build. There are NO rares I put in most of the decks I build. Why? Because there just aren't any that are that much of a help for every deck. Jens, every time you post, you make me feel worse and worse about your reasons for a card limit. To me, it's really sounding like you want to penalize people for buying lots of cards when the only thing they've done is approproate more of their funds towards purchasing cards than other people. While these other people have access to cards they can use to make quite competitive decks. To me, it just sounds like you're saying that people with more cards can make more decks, so they should be penalized. There simply aren't any rare cards that have that large an impact on the game when one plays with the official rulings and errata. And in no way is it impossible for someone to build a very competitive deck using only commons. Mike -- Mike Bohlmann, MAIP http://www.shout.net/~mbohlman/ V:EKN Prince of Urbana-Champaign Editor of the Fragment of the Book of Nod [ quoted text not captured ]

mboh...@shout.net wrote: > In article <3737EB87...@ike.uni-stuttgart.de>, > Jens Niemann <nie...@ike.uni-stuttgart.de> wrote: > > > well, you need to figure out for your own deck which _card_ is worth > > putting many copies into your deck. and if you find out these cards > > are rare, then you won't probably be able to do it - except, of > > course, you are one of those willing to spend real much for V:TES... > > You make it sound like it's easy to build whatever deck you want > if you own a lot of cards. It's still not possible to build every > deck you can possibly imagine unless you own cases (not boxes) upon > cases of cards. I'd love to try a deck using lots of Daring the this is exactly my opinion. why should we limit this allowance to few individuals who have these cases? (well, i opened 1 case of jyhad, and have another one lying around waiting for sale...) > > Why should it be any different? If you want it to be different, > try a card game where the cards aren't collectible and you get a > full set right away. to attract more people. to not scare them off tournament play. to make jyhad more popular, to have more competition in tournament play. > > > > no, but you will be limited to a limited choice of working decks, and > > one or the other particularly useful rare for just that deck would > > probably enhance it if you had the numbers. > > So a person with fewer cards has fewer options for decks they can > build than a person who has more cards? There's a shocker. And > rares may enhance it but aren't required? > > I've got 1 Fists of Death. Does that mean I don't put it in my > Potence decks? No. Does it mean my deck doesn't work if I don't > draw it? No. If it did, I wouldn't bother trying to make such > a deck. but would it enhance your deck if you had 4 or 8 of them? thats the question i am discussing here. and surely once you will play against somebody who plays that deck just with a couple of cards more than you have, and achieve better results with his deck. i don't say he always wins and you always lose. maybe its just 60-40, or 55-45. either way i think it is unnecessary to promote such big shot decks. when most people _already_ don't use that many rare cards, ewhy not limit them for anybody else? > > > > and when i think of m:tg tourneys: if you know that most people are > > playing xyz type decks, you can tune your deck against it. > > You can generally expect to see a certain set of decks at a V:TES > tournament: weenie bleed, weenie vote, rush combat, vote, stealth > & bleed. I like that. I hope we never have just one deck type > that is dominant. In any case, what point were you trying to make > with this statement? just in general i'd like to point out that most people can't afford to play with 10 rares of one type, so you would not have to assume your opponents are playing those. but if someone actually does, he possibly hoses you because you don't have the force to counter it. > > > > no they aren't. you just get better decks if you can afford to play > > with lots of them [rares] > > No, if you make a deck centered around a rare, you get a better > deck if you play with appropriate numbers of them, sometimes > "lots." But if you don't have those rares, why are you trying to > make a deck focused on them for a tournament? because i think it it the best deck i can build? because i think i'll win the tournament with that deck? why do people generally favor one deck over the other? > > > > (i mean, for instance, if you can afford to put 8 > > tribute to the masters in your tourney deck). > > As someone else pointed out, Tribute to the Master is a common. that was really a backshot... awww > > > > unique cards are cards that inherently limit themselves to only a few > > copies in the deck. this would effectively make a CL unnecessary. > > All cards in Jyhad have some form of opportunity cost. Freak Drive > costs you a blood and you can't repeat the same action types. > You can only play one Command the Beast on a bleed because of > the limit on same named action modifiers. You can't have more than > one Slave Auction in play because it's unique. You can play > multiple Fists of Death, but they're going to each cost you one > and they might be overkill. this is a good example. if i played a rush deck, i'd take plenty of those, plus some torn signposts. the deck may perform so well that i'd prefer it to, say, my S/B deck. but without them, it would be inferior and i'd take another one. why shoulöd i play a deck in a tournament of which i think it is not the best i could probably build? > > > > a) limit good deck builders: not my intention > > Right, but you are limiting what good deck builders can do because > of others' inability to make good decks. Everyone still has to > make good decks out of the cards they have. Mr. Handbag can > make a deck just as effective as Mr. Suitcase can by using the right > mix of commons. i disagree. see above. mr. suitcase can often (not always) top the effectiveness of any deck composed of common cards. > > > > b) oh yes it would help! i see it every time i play with such players. > > they are not limited to 'sitting around' but their decks are less > > competitive by any means. > > Rares don't magically give a person good deck building skill. i never said so > > If you take a really tuned deck that has several rares and give > it to a newbie to play, they are almost certain to get their > butts handed to them. If you take a really tuned deck that has i never claimed newbies get better by handing them out lots of rares > > almost all commons in it and give it to the newbie, the same > will probably happen. > > Rares do not a good player make. i never claimed such. why do you suggest that? > > > > now i wouldn't call that niche effects. for instance, many powerful > > pool-gaining cards are rares. now while you can count on non-rare > > pool-gaining, it would definitely enhance your deck by using rares. > > Many? I can think of one: Slave Auction. And I certainly feel > that there are better alternatives like Blood Doll and STI. one is even enough. but i's add eco terrorists and similar stuff to the list. > > > > same for combat cards. > > Potence combat is the one exception to not needing rares (or > uncommons) to make an effective deck. Because if anyone uses S:CE > at all, your deck will be severely hampered. IG is a necessity for take immortal grapple, use all all nice combat rares you wish. i know it's a combo based on many cards, but all combat decks face this problem. > > Potence based combat. Otherwise, there is no main deck strategy > that requires the use of rares. That includes weenie bleed, > weenie vote, Presence vote, Stealth & Bleed. just because you haven't invented one doesn't mean there is none. but i'd like to pick up this idea. if ruse of rares is not required, why do you fear a rare CL so much? it's fairer for less wealthy players and doesn't hamper the deck building strategies of other people. why do you speak up against it? i wanna know... > > > > same for most other type/use of card. you generate a visible > > effect. > > No one is going to deny that rares aren't useful to help your > deck. But they are by no means absolutely necessary to make > a competitive deck. There is no other reason to seek a CL not absolutely, but as you just admitted, they are useful. they can give a certain edge. they make a good deck a better deck. they make a better deck a competitive deck. they make a competitive deck a (possibly) winning deck. the requirements of expensive cards drives away people who would otherwise like to play in a tournament environment. but they say: "why should i play with my chances decreased by some amount as opposed to other wealthier players? why should i play in a game where the chances are not determined by skill and luck alone, but also by the resources i am able to spend?" what do you say to those people? i would like to see more people playing jyhad. on the last tourney i attended were 7 participants. that's frustrating... > > than to allow people without as many cards as others to make > competitive decks. > > > or are there enough rare cards that effectively emnhance a > > deck built around commons and uncommons? your opinions > > please. > > I could build a weenie Presence deck that would have no need > for any rares or uncommons. Social Charms and Majesties being > the meat. You might add some uncommon Misdirections to speed > it up more, but they aren't necessary. so you would limit yourself to one deck style. is that what we want? > > Mike -- [ quoted text not captured ]

Joshua Duffin wrote: [ quoted text not captured ] few or very few, there _are_ competitive rares, and tourney decks often show a poor variety, so that one card or the other takes a large portion of deck slots. > > weenie bleed, weenie vote, malk stealth&bleed, ventrue vote/bleed, > those kinds of things. > > As for pool-gaining cards, I think only a few of them are rares. yes, there are few cards. but they are. and one with many copies can provide a better deck. > > Minion Tap, for example, is common, as is Blood Doll. Even > Tribute to the Master is common, not rare, as someone else > pointed out already. There are a few decent rare pool-gain-type > cards (Golconda, Giant's Blood, Art Museum/etc.) but I would > say that none of them are better than the old Minion Tap/5th > Tradition standby (5th Tradition being uncommon). btw. some uncommons appear to me just as 'rare' as rares. 5th trad. is one of them. i pulled about 10 day operations but only 2 5th traditions out of my boxes... > > > This may be a bit excessive, but here's a quick summary of my > take on the Jyhad rares (no expansion set commentary right now > because that would make this even more absurdly long). (These > are organized by card type, then alphabetically, because that's > how the checklist that I was using was organized.) > > ------- I'm picking out those cards which i think are (or may become when the right man composes the right deck) competitive tournament rares. they might be integral part of a real competitive deck, i.e. playing without these would make the deck inferior (no, and i don't mean you can throw it in the bin, i just mean somewhat worse than without these cards), and you would perhaps have to choose another deck strategy. with some notes starting with * Entrancement - +1 bleed or steal an ally. Tourney playable. Not tourney dominating. *a couple would enhance any presence bleed deck Far Mastery - steal an ally or retainer. Tourney playable. Not tourney dominating. *a couple would enhance any dominate bleed deck Kine Dominance - +1 bleed/+1 stealth or steal a location. Tourney playable. Not tourney dominating. *a couple would enhance any dominate bleed deck, even more than the above Day Operation - make an action unblockable. Tourney playable. Can produce victory points. But without Return to Innocence, Not tourney dominating. * a cool card for any ventrue bleed/vote deck Freak Drive - untap a vampire. Tourney playable. Without repeat actions, Not tourney dominating. * ditto. vote AND bleed in the same turn. just great Fists of Death - +1/+2 hand damage. Tourney playable. Not tourney dominating. Poor man's version - Increased Strength, no blood cost, common. Immortal Grapple - hand strikes only for one round. Very tourney playable. Occasionally tourney winning, but I haven't heard of an IG deck winning a really big tourney yet - therefore not tourney dominating. Does have a strong impact on the game though; should have been uncommon or common rather than rare. * a key card to counter majesty/presence bleed decks. a game winner Pulled Fangs - one damage, victim can't hunt. Tourney playable, but not overpowered since it no longer does agg damage. Not tourney dominating. * it's history but it used to be a very strong card before the errata. Aaron's Feeding Razor - hunt for two blood. Not tourney First Tradition: The Masquerade - skip turns or pay pool. Maybe tourney playable. Not tourney dominating. J.S. Simmons, Esq. - +1 bleed, unique. Tourney playable. A better version of Laptop Computer since he costs no pool, but not tourney dominating. *makes useful combo with freak drive Tasha Morgan - +1 bleed, unique. Just like JS Simmons; tourney playable but not dominating. Anarch Troublemaker - tap two vampires or burn an equipment and hand it over. May produce victory points as a max-two-minion Misdirection, but not tourney dominating. * strong card. play it myself Arcane Library - tap to put a pool on a Tremere. Tourney playable. Good for long-term pool gain or cheap vampires, but not tourney dominating, mostly due to the time scale of the payoff. Art Museum - tap to put a pool on a Toreador. Same as Arcane Library comments. Betrayer - burn a pool, burn another to guess the vamp and burn the Betrayer. Tourney playable in the Legbiter-style Betrayer deck, probably. Tourney dominating? Doubtful; it's a real nasty deck from the looks of it but I haven't heard of it winning any real-life major tournies. *has its strenghts in environments where a certain type of deck is most frequent Ecoterrorists - tap to put a pool on a Gangrel. Same as Arcane Library comments. Fragment of the Book of Nod - tap to draw two cards and discard down. Tourney playable. Handy for card cycling but not much better than The Barrens (common); stealable; not tourney dominating. *cool for weenies or freak drives. only bad if someone other than your prey or predator steals it. Giant's Blood - fill up a vamp, only usable once. Tourney playable, but due to only one use, not tourney dominating. *inherently limited, so not target of my CL discussion Golconda: Inner Peace - a large vamp is either removed from game to gain its capacity in pool, or its controller pays two to avoid that. Tourney playable, but without Soul Gem tricks and no guarantee your opponents will have big vamps to be removed, not tourney dominating. Hostile Takeover - everyone bids pool to buy someone's vamp. Tourney playable. A fairly nasty card; often usable as a master- phase bleed for about 3, although probably not if the victim is playing a weenie deck. I seem to recall a deck using lots of these winning a real-life tourney somewhere, but I don't think it was Origins or anything. Probably not tourney dominating. * potentially nasty, as you said. got 3 of them but didn't try in a tourney... Madness Network - Malks can act on other people's turns. Tourney playable in the right deck. Like Betrayer, I haven't heard of these decks dominating any big tournaments yet. Millicent Smith, Puritan Vampire Hunter - burns a blocked vamp. Maybe tourney playable. Mostly just slows down the table a bit. Not tourney dominating. Smiling Jack, the Anarch - put your pool on him, other people burn pool or vamp blood. Unique, burnable. Maybe tourney playable, but I've never heard of him dominating a tourney. Society of Leopold - victim burns a blood or is burned. Tourney playable. A nasty card in the right deck (with Cryptic Mission), but I've had a hard time even winning games with it, let alone tourneys. Countermeasures are Sudden Reversal or Hunting Grounds, which is pretty limited. Still probably not tourney dominating. The Spawning Pool - tap to hurt a vamp after the first round. Maybe tourney playable. Far from tourney dominating. Temptation of Greater Power - like Hostile Takeover, but costs 3 pool instead of 1 and requires a Justicar instead of a Ventrue. However if the owner wins he pays full price instead of half. Maybe tourney playable, probably not tourney dominating since the pool cost gets harsh if you play a lot of them. -- [ quoted text not captured ]

mboh...@shout.net wrote: About the only one I can think of is Slave Auction. And unless you're playing in a large game, Short Term Investment is just as good. > do you agree that there are powerful rares you would _want_ to put > lots of in your deck? How many is "lots?" To a person who plays with a 4CL, 8 might be a lot. There are very few rare cards that you would really want to put that many of in your deck. -4 i s already a lot for most people. 8 is definitely a lot for me. -yes there are few, but there are _some_ These would be ones like Freak Drive, Immortal Grapple (if you still count it as rare even though it's uncommon in Sabbat), Awe, and that's about it. Otherwise, the only other time you might put lots of a rare in your deck is if it is core to your concept. Which could be said of the above cards. -you name it. and there are a couple more. and more will perhaps come -with a new expansion. it's enough for me. There are NO rares I put in every deck I build. There are NO rares I put in most of the decks I build. Why? Because there just aren't any that are that much of a help for every deck. -hm. wouldn't possibly matter, because those few rares that you put in _every_ deck would be worthwile to trade in for a tournament player. Jens, every time you post, you make me feel worse and worse about your reasons for a card limit. To me, it's really sounding like you want to penalize people for buying lots of cards when the only thing they've done is approproate more of their funds towards purchasing cards than other people. While these other people have access to cards they can use to make quite competitive decks. To me, it just sounds like you're saying that people with more cards can make more decks, so they should be penalized. -you get me wrong. let me explain again. -my interest is to promote the jyhad game. -so my main concern lies with the newbies. of course i don't want -to alienize the old players. i followed the CL debate and found a very -good point from B.D. Redmond, with a remark from Tom Doehne: "3. Rare cards become more valuable. Since you can only have a limited number of each card, the rare stand-ins become much more valuable: Fists of Death in place of Torn Signpost and Undead Strength, Kine Dominance in place of Govern the Unaligned, etc. This favors Mr. Suitcase over the beginning player, a bad thing IMO. I would have to begrudgingly agree with you on this point. Yes it will favour the player with the most cards, and yes, this is a bad thing. However everyone in our game group has a very similar amount of cards, and those of us who have slightly more than the others will often give away cards if someone requires then for a deck concept. " -from a psychological point of view, you need to understand the newbie player who -even in local playgroups gets smacked up by cards like kine dominance or hostile takeover. -they must feel it is just not worthwhile to grow deeper into a game where the is no -bottom to the barrel of buying more and more cards just to have enough rares. -why shouldn't they play other games that are not so demanding on their purse? -btw. even for those who have lots, it's still difficult to acquire specific rares in -large numbers, except if you trade internationally. -but back to the point, i thought it would be a reasonable compromise to limit rare cards. -and my proposal for future expansion would be to make all unique cards rares, so -the limit will be built-in, and not seem so artificially imposed as it would be to cards like -freak drive or day operation. There simply aren't any rare cards that have that large an impact on the game when one plays with the official rulings and errata. -this would mean that all competitive cards are non-rares -are rares really so bad as you claim? And in no way is it impossible for someone to build a very competitive deck using only commons. - i still claim that there are some rares that make a competitive - non-rare deck a more competitive one. -- [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <373854B3...@ike.uni-stuttgart.de>, Jens Niemann <nie...@ike.uni-stuttgart.de> wrote: > Mike Bohlmann wrote: > > You make it sound like it's easy to build whatever deck you want > > if you own a lot of cards. It's still not possible to build every > > deck you can possibly imagine unless you own cases (not boxes) upon > > cases of cards. I'd love to try a deck using lots of Daring the > > this is exactly my opinion. why should we limit this allowance to few > individuals who have these cases? (well, i opened 1 case of jyhad, and > have another one lying around waiting for sale...) Go away, socialist! ;) Maybe that's why this thing is getting on my nerves at this point. Your only argument > to attract more people. to not scare them off tournament play. > to make jyhad more popular, to have more competition in tournament > play. But it's a myth that you have to own lots of rare cards to make a competitive tournament deck. It's a myth, myth, myth. The problem comes when people start whining that they can't make deck X because they don't have enough of rare card Y to do it. That's why it's a collectible card game: you make the best you can out of what you have. And unlike many (most?) other collectible card games, you can make a very competitive deck out of commons. > > I've got 1 Fists of Death. Does that mean I don't put it in my > > Potence decks? No. Does it mean my deck doesn't work if I don't > > draw it? No. If it did, I wouldn't bother trying to make such > > a deck. > > but would it enhance your deck if you had 4 or 8 of them? thats the > question i am discussing here. Not always. If I'm playing with Celerity, Torn Signpost is a much better choice because it doesn't cost any blood. If I'm also using Potence strike cards, Increased Strength is better. The point is, it's not a black or white issue. Have you ever played NL extensively, Jens? The misconception that just adding more of a given card automatically makes a deck better is one many pro-CL people hold. It's just not true in the long run. > and surely once you will play against > somebody who plays that deck just with a couple of cards more than you > have, and achieve better results with his deck. i don't say he always > wins and you always lose. maybe its just 60-40, or 55-45. either way i > think it is unnecessary to promote such big shot decks. when most > people _already_ don't use that many rare cards, ewhy not limit them > for anybody else? So if the win-loss difference is only 60-40 or 55-45, why even bother? How is it possible to know that there aren't other factors like luck, deck building skill, and play skill? Now if adding those extra FoD changed his win percentage to 90-10 I might start to agree with you. But it doesn't work that way. > just in general i'd like to point out that most people can't afford to > play with 10 rares of one type, so you would not have to assume your > opponents are playing those. but if someone actually does, he possibly > hoses you because you don't have the force to counter it. Yet another CL misconception that you have to build a counter in your deck for everything. You don't. You must think about the main deck strategies and how you plan to deal with them, however. This can be as simple as ousting your own prey faster than your predator tries to oust you. > > No, if you make a deck centered around a rare, you get a better > > deck if you play with appropriate numbers of them, sometimes > > "lots." But if you don't have those rares, why are you trying to > > make a deck focused on them for a tournament? > > because i think it it the best deck i can build? because i think i'll > win the tournament with that deck? why do people generally favor one > deck over the other? If you don't have the cards to make it work, it's obviously not the best deck you can build. It may be the deck you want to build, but too bad. That's how it works. Like I said, I'd love to make a Heart of Darkness / Daring the Dawn deck, but I don't have near enough Daring the Dawns. > > All cards in Jyhad have some form of opportunity cost. Freak Drive > > costs you a blood and you can't repeat the same action types. > > You can only play one Command the Beast on a bleed because of > > the limit on same named action modifiers. You can't have more than > > one Slave Auction in play because it's unique. You can play > > multiple Fists of Death, but they're going to each cost you one > > and they might be overkill. > > this is a good example. if i played a rush deck, i'd take plenty of > those, plus some torn signposts. the deck may perform so well that i'd > prefer it to, say, my S/B deck. Most people would definitely say the combat deck would be more fun, but is it going to win as often? Not likely. And you might not need to bother with the FoD at all...see above. > but without them, it would be inferior and i'd take another one. why > shoulöd i play a deck in a tournament of which i think it is not the > best i could probably build? Then why does anyone play in tournaments? Even if I had access to an unlimited card supply, I don't think I'd ever feel that a given deck was the best I could possibly build. Part of that comes from the fact that no one deck type is better than all the rest. I keep saying this, but you just keep passing it over: everyone has to figure out the best deck they can build with the cards they have. And assuming more than a miniscule collection (less than one box of Jyhad), everyone has the same potential for making a competitive deck. > > Right, but you are limiting what good deck builders can do because > > of others' inability to make good decks. Everyone still has to > > make good decks out of the cards they have. Mr. Handbag can > > make a deck just as effective as Mr. Suitcase can by using the right > > mix of commons. > > i disagree. see above. mr. suitcase can often (not always) top the > effectiveness of any deck composed of common cards. No. Absolutely not true. Take a look at the weenie Presence bleed deck that circulated LA a while back. It had some of the Sabbat rare Presence bleed cards, so take those out for your other favorite Presence bleed card. Is it any less effective at ousting its prey? No. > > If you take a really tuned deck that has several rares and give > > it to a newbie to play, they are almost certain to get their > > butts handed to them. If you take a really tuned deck that has > > i never claimed newbies get better by handing them out lots of rares > > > > > almost all commons in it and give it to the newbie, the same > > will probably happen. > > > > Rares do not a good player make. > > i never claimed such. why do you suggest that? So what are you saying? Take access to rares away from players with more cards so that they can't make the decks they want? They aren't winning disproportionatly more tournaments than anyone else, so that's the only thing you are accomplishing. > > Many? I can think of one: Slave Auction. And I certainly feel > > that there are better alternatives like Blood Doll and STI. > one is even enough. but i's add eco terrorists and similar stuff to > the list. Not every clan has these, either. So not every deck has access to them at all. And you just glossed over the point that Slave Auction sucks and took it to prove your point.... > > Potence based combat. Otherwise, there is no main deck strategy > > that requires the use of rares. That includes weenie bleed, > > weenie vote, Presence vote, Stealth & Bleed. > > just because you haven't invented one doesn't mean there is none. If I'm inventing a new deck strategy, it is not a main one. Main means popular or common. The fact that all these types _can_ be built without rares means that Mr. Handbag can make competitive decks. > but i'd like to pick up this idea. if ruse of rares is not required, > why do you fear a rare CL so much? I don't fear it. I'm just about up to equal time in NL play as I have in CL, both 4CL and 6CL. For the first year, we had small collections but still played with a card limit. For the second year, I lived in Vienna and played with Carl's group and 4CL. When I returned to the states, I played 6CL for over a year. Only for the past year or so have I played NL. CL does nothing that advocates claim it does in tournament situations. The only thing it accomplishes is to eliminate many possible decks. > it's fairer for less wealthy players and doesn't hamper the deck > building strategies of other people. why do you speak up against > it? i wanna know... I don't have a problem with it in your local groups because the dynamic is different (see previous threads). In a tournament, however, a CL only accomplishes one thing - elimination of viable tournament decks. And to make sure you don't think I was bad at playing CL, I've always had decks that made people quiver when they realised that I was playing them. In Vienna, I took part in two sealed deck tournaments with a 2nd place finish in the first and a 1st place finish in the second one. In other words, I'd like to think I know how to build a deck with limited access to cards. It can be done. And it's far from impossible. > > I could build a weenie Presence deck that would have no need > > for any rares or uncommons. Social Charms and Majesties being > > the meat. You might add some uncommon Misdirections to speed > > it up more, but they aren't necessary. > > so you would limit yourself to one deck style. is that what we want? Argh! Do I have to state everything that should be obvious? I could also make a S&B deck that would have no need for any rares or uncommons with Govern the Unaligned, Conditioning, Lost in Crowds, and Elder Impersonation for meat. Here it is, I'm going to lay it all down. Tournaments, among other things, measure deck building skill. Every player has to look at his or her collection and figure out what the best possible deck is that they can make. If a person doesn't have many cards, their choices are limited. However, they are not automatically doomed to failure, because they can still make a deck that is competitive with Mr. Suitcase if they have the deck building skill. And Mr. Suitcase is not automatically given an advantage by having more cards, because he still has to have the deck building skill to make a good deck. Americans have this weird sensitivity for anything approaching socialist or communist ideas (yes, I know they are different). Taking things away (decks they can build) from people who have more than others (have more cards) so that people without much (have fewer cards) reeks of socialism. That is all for the political commentary of the day. :) [ quoted text not captured ]

Jens wrote: >>to attract more people. to not scare them off tournament play. to make jyhad more popular, to have more competition in tournament play.>> Assuming that you are talking about a CL for Rares only (which I believe you are and have been), I assure you, the decks that will scare newbies out of tournaments (if this is what you are worried about) are the ones made of all commons. The weenie Pre bleed/Misdirection decks. The weenie Pre/KRC/vote decks. The Malk high efficiency S+B decks. These are the decks that run people over and kill them, and make them re-think their choice of entertainment. All common based. A CL on Rares will do nothing to curtail these kinds of decks. The only thing that does curtail is the ability to make fringe decks that can compete against them. The decks with lots of Rares--what, a Malk Prank deck? A Renegade Garou Army deck? An all Psychic Veil, all the time deck? These are not tourney dominating. These are not scary. These do not frighten away the children. The newbies get axed by: A) S+B decks. All common. B) S:CE decks. Majesty is common. C) Weenie bleed/vote decks. All common. Limiting Rares does not stop this effect. Card limits in general do not stop this effect (the three above examples all do sparkilingly well under a blanket CL, as their is so much redundancy in the neccessary cards. The decks that can compete with them, however, do poorly under blanket CL). >>but i'd like to pick up this idea. if ruse of rares is not required, why do you fear a rare CL so much? it's fairer for less wealthy players and doesn't hamper the deck building strategies of other people. why do you speak up against it? i wanna know...>> We speak up against it because: A) It is a bad idea, B) It does not accomplish what you hope it does, C) It is completely unecessary, D) It penalizes marginalized deck designs, making only the incredibly common, obvious designs competetive. In most cases, Rares simply do not dominate tournament play. I can think of a handful of Rares that are used in large amounts in a competetive deck-IG in a Pot Rush deck; Freak Drive in some weird multi action deck; well, I can't think of any more. For example, a CL on Rares would prevent me from playing my singularly effective Rush combat deck, as it uses 12 IG and 8 Behind You. Without these cards, the deck becomes unable to compete against common based decks, like weenie bleed and any S:CE deck. Thus, my deck, which acts as a foil to these powerful, common based deck designs, fails to act as a foil (because it is unplayable), and these decks do better than they would have if my deck had been playable. Then, as to the 8 Behind You!s. You would honestly claim that my use of 8 Behind You!s is an unfair advantage I have because I managed to get up those 8 sucky Rares? Without them, my Nosferatu Rush deck would be not that good. On the other hand, I could just play with the Brujah instead, replace all the Behind You!s with common Flash, and have a deck that is pretty much as effective, just more obvious. >>but they say: "why should i play with my chances decreased by some amount as opposed to other wealthier players? why should i play in a game where the chances are not determined by skill and luck alone, but also by the resources i am able to spend?" what do you say to those people?>> Well, it is a Collectible Card Game, not the Glorious People's Socialist Card Game Collective, so people who have lots of cards are always going to have some sort of edge over people who have few. That is the gift and curse of CCGs. If that is a huge problem, stay away from CCGs. There are plenty of great board games that cost, say, 30 bucks US, you can play forever, and do not have this issue at all--Star Fleet Battles. Titan. Diplomacy. Battletech. Whatever. Or, more constructively, you can show them how to build tournament winning decks that are built almost exclusively out of commons. Go digging through web deck archives--there are plenty. [ quoted text not captured ]

Jens Niemann wrote in message <37386304...@ike.uni-stuttgart.de>... [ quoted text not captured ] But to limit rares to 2 per deck would merely mean that they would get smacked up by Bonding or Banishment. If they can't deal with the effects of the rares, then they can't deal with the effects of commons. What they need is instruction on how to counteract various strategies, using the resources they've got. _That's_ what you, the experienced player should be providing them. _Tell them_ how to beat rare cards they are facing by using the cards from their particular collection. Have them use a few Deflections on those bleeds, or some Enhanced Senses, or Sudden Reversal (all common cards). >-they must feel it is just not worthwhile to grow deeper into a game where >the is no >-bottom to the barrel of buying more and more cards just to have enough >rares. The first time it is demonstrated to them how easy it is in Jyhad to counteract a rare card with a commonly available card, they'll lose that feeling altogether. I have four seperate newbies in my group right now, each of which has bought a single booster box of Jyhad (They spend US$15 each). Each of them has a deck that is tournament playable, which we went over the details of how to play it, what to expect, etc. and used their $15.00 collections. One of them took 2.5 VP in his first tournament (Praxis Seizure: North Carolina), which was his fourth time playing ever. All were satisfied with the performance of their decks, and mentioned that they recognized most of their errors were from play decisions. This issue you have with having enough rares hasn't been demonstrated in the play groups I've participated in. (Includes playgroups of 25+ members in Boston, Atlanta, and a smaller playgroup in North Carolina) These are experienced players, many of whom have played the game since its release. >-why shouldn't they play other games that are not so demanding on their >purse? > Its only as demanding as they allow it to be. >-but back to the point, i thought it would be a reasonable compromise to >limit rare cards. I think its reasonable to print rare cards that don't need to be limited in this fashion, like WotC has done to date. If some overly powerful rares slip by, I think its reasonable to moderate their effect through errata. > >There simply aren't any rare cards that have that large an impact >on the game when one plays with the official rulings and errata. > >-this would mean that all competitive cards are non-rares >-are rares really so bad as you claim? > It means that most rare cards are no better than a comparable common card. The few exceptions have errata. >And in no way is it impossible for someone to build a very >competitive deck using only commons. > >- i still claim that there are some rares that make a competitive >- non-rare deck a more competitive one. > Those that do, including the ones to which you responded in Mike Bohlman's post, are in no way _more_ competitive than a deck that makes use of a comparable common card. Also, you don't account for the fact that many rares are, so to speak, "self-limiting". Meaning the opportunity to play them in the course of a game is infrequent, and so to include many copies of the card reduces the value of each one you draw. Example: I have 8 Kine Dominance in my deck. The first one I steal an HG from my prey. The second one I steal Elysium: the Arboretum. One the third one I draw, no one is playing any more locations. I now have a card that acts like a superior Bonding, but I must pay two blood to use. At this time I would be better off with the Bonding. So next time I build the deck, less KD for me...

In article <373846BF...@ike.uni-stuttgart.de>, Jens Niemann <nie...@ike.uni-stuttgart.de> wrote: > > do you agree that there are powerful rares you would _want_ to put > lots of in your deck? Currently, I'd love some additional Terror Frenzy, but for the most part it's just part of a combo I'd like to use. Do I see this as a reason for CL on rares? nope. So here's some steps for the Mr. Handbag playgroup, that may help. Step 1: For playgroup games, the use of proxies, unless your group has a huge problem with that. Test out your new deck ideas prior to any investment. This should allow Mr. Handbag to see how his deck would look with a Mr. Suitcase collection. Step 2: Ok Mr. Handbag, you like your new deck, you want to play it in the next tourney, check with your local playgroup, beg and borrow. Still don't quite have enough, try trading or purchasing the singles to finish it off. Hope that helps. ~joe [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <37385D50...@ike.uni-stuttgart.de>, Jens Niemann <nie...@ike.uni-stuttgart.de> wrote: > > > Joshua Duffin wrote: > > > I also think that most tourney-level decks are based on commons > > rather than rares - there are very few rares that I think you > > can build a tourney deck around and expect it to do better than > > one built around straightforward common-based strategies like > > few or very few, there _are_ competitive rares, and tourney decks > often show a poor variety, so that one card or the other takes a large > portion of deck slots. You mean that tourney decks often have a lot of copies of some particular card? I agree. But the cards they have lots of copies of (at least in the winning decks) are almost always commons. Social Charm. Majesty. Govern the Unaligned. Deflection. Wake with Evening's Freshness. Nobody wins tournaments playing my 7 Society of Leopold deck. At least, not that I've heard of. People have been known to win tournaments playing 12 Immortal Grapple decks, but people have also been known to utterly defeat those IG decks with their 12 Skin of Steel decks. This is where I think the difference of opinion lies: in my experience, I have never seen or heard of new players getting scared away from Jyhad tournies because they don't feel they can compete with all the rares that the existing players play with. They may get scared away because they don't feel they can compete with the super-speedy efficient decks that people play in tournies, or because they don't like designing and playing such single-minded decks - witness the recent weenie dominate misdirection thread here. But basically nobody dominates tournaments by having more rares than the losers. > > As for pool-gaining cards, I think only a few of them are rares. > > yes, there are few cards. but they are. and one with many copies > can provide a better deck. Not of the pool-gaining rares, no. None of them are useful in large quantity to my mind. Many of them are self-limiting (the Art Museum types, Giant's Blood) and Golconda gets rid of your vampires if you use it to gain pool. > btw. some uncommons appear to me just as 'rare' as rares. 5th trad. is one > of them. i pulled about 10 day operations but only 2 5th traditions out of > my boxes... Well, it is unfortunate when that happens (I don't have as many 2nd Traditions as I'd like) but it's just a distribution problem I think. I've got lots of 5th Traditions and 1 Day Operation. > I'm picking out those cards which i think are (or may become when the right > man composes the right deck) competitive tournament rares. > they might be integral part of a real competitive deck, i.e. playing > without > these would make the deck inferior (no, and i don't mean you can throw it > in the bin, i just mean somewhat worse than without these cards), and you > would perhaps have to choose another deck strategy. with some notes > starting with * The thing is, you can obviously make decks that win tournaments at least as often without using any of these cards ever. It's not even a 55%/45% thing. It's a 50%/50% thing. If the only change you make to a weenie presence bleed deck is switching out two Social Charms for two Entrancements, there's no way the Entrancement deck is more likely to win the tournament. Social Charm is at least as good. Maybe better. > Entrancement - +1 bleed or steal an ally. Tourney playable. > Not tourney dominating. > *a couple would enhance any presence bleed deck Not the presence bleed decks that would rather (a) gain pool by using Social Charm instead at superior, (b) bleed for more by using Legal Manipulations instead, (c) tap people's vampires by using Propaganda instead... I think you take the idea that versatility is always good too far. Versatility is not always good in Jyhad tourney decks. > Far Mastery - steal an ally or retainer. Tourney playable. Not > tourney dominating. > *a couple would enhance any dominate bleed deck Completely not accurate, in my opinion, since it is not a bleed card and you have no assurance that anyone will be playing with allies or retainers worth stealing with an action. > Kine Dominance - +1 bleed/+1 stealth or steal a location. Tourney > playable. Not tourney dominating. > *a couple would enhance any dominate bleed deck, even more than the above Would enhance any dominate bleed deck that always has 2 blood to blow on a mere +1 bleed. No good for weenie dominate decks. The location stealing is occasionally really great and often really useless. > Day Operation - make an action unblockable. Tourney playable. > Can produce victory points. But without Return to Innocence, > Not tourney dominating. > * a cool card for any ventrue bleed/vote deck A cool card, sure, but its disadvantages are *real* and not trivial. You have to take other cards out to put Day Ops in, you know. What do you weaken to add unblockability to your deck? What support mechanisms do you put in to make sure you can get your vamps back out of torpor? Against a non-intercept-using opponent, wouldn't Bonding be much better? > Freak Drive - untap a vampire. Tourney playable. Without > repeat actions, Not tourney dominating. > * ditto. vote AND bleed in the same turn. just great Cute but pricey at 1 blood and needing to have at least two useful action types to take. Again, you take other things out of your deck to put this in; will you still have enough vote and bleed actions to get to 'double up' after squeezing Freak Drives in? Will your vamps still have enough blood to be useful to you? > Fists of Death - +1/+2 hand damage. Tourney playable. Not > tourney dominating. Poor man's version - Increased Strength, > no blood cost, common. A good card for one-big-strike Potence decks, but unless there is some reason they can't use Undead Strength, Increased Strength is even better since it costs no blood. The blood cost is very significant in a combat deck - same reason many people use Undead Strength rather than Pushing the Limit. > Immortal Grapple - hand strikes only for one round. Very > tourney playable. Occasionally tourney winning, but I haven't > heard of an IG deck winning a really big tourney yet - therefore > not tourney dominating. Does have a strong impact on the game > though; should have been uncommon or common rather than rare. > * a key card to counter majesty/presence bleed decks. a game winner This is the only key rare I know of. It is good against Strike: Combat Ends but crappy against Skin of Steel. It is far easier to make a weenie bleed deck and win a tournament with it than it is to make an IG combat deck and win a tournament with it, no matter how many cards you own. > Pulled Fangs - one damage, victim can't hunt. Tourney playable, > but not overpowered since it no longer does agg damage. Not > tourney dominating. > * it's history but it used to be a very strong card before the errata. Sure, but now it's got nothing on Disarm. > Aaron's Feeding Razor - hunt for two blood. Not tourney I really don't think this will go anywhere ever. It's unique. You can make a deck based on getting a vampire to hunt for lots of blood at once and sticking lots of Blood Dolls on him, but there are much easier and more effective ways to build a pool machine - ones that won't fall apart if your vamp with the Razor gets beat up in combat. > First Tradition: The Masquerade - skip turns or pay pool. Maybe > tourney playable. Not tourney dominating. I've played with this in friendly games, but I don't think it'd get you anywhere in a tournament. Why not just call a Kine Resources Contested instead? > J.S. Simmons, Esq. - +1 bleed, unique. Tourney playable. A better > version of Laptop Computer since he costs no pool, but not > tourney dominating. > *makes useful combo with freak drive Uh huh. So does Laptop Computer. Not a useful enough combo, especially given the existence of Archon Investigation and Justicar Retribution. > Tasha Morgan - +1 bleed, unique. Just like JS Simmons; tourney > playable but not dominating. > > Anarch Troublemaker - tap two vampires or burn an equipment > and hand it over. May produce victory points as a max-two-minion > Misdirection, but not tourney dominating. > * strong card. play it myself I never have. No surprise factor once you put it in play, unlike Misdirection. If you fail to oust, your prey gets to use it, which is not exactly strong. > Arcane Library - tap to put a pool on a Tremere. Tourney playable. > Good for long-term pool gain or cheap vampires, but not tourney > dominating, mostly due to the time scale of the payoff. These are perfectly nice cards, but will never be broken because they are *so slow*. Buying one of these even on your second turn just puts you one action closer to being ousted by a weenie bleed or vote deck. > Art Museum - tap to put a pool on a Toreador. Same as Arcane > Library comments. > > Betrayer - burn a pool, burn another to guess the vamp and burn > the Betrayer. Tourney playable in the Legbiter-style Betrayer > deck, probably. Tourney dominating? Doubtful; it's a real nasty > deck from the looks of it but I haven't heard of it winning any > real-life major tournies. > *has its strenghts in environments where a certain type of deck is most > frequent Which is to say, not in tournaments? ;-) > Ecoterrorists - tap to put a pool on a Gangrel. Same as Arcane > Library comments. > > Fragment of the Book of Nod - tap to draw two cards and discard > down. Tourney playable. Handy for card cycling but not much > better than The Barrens (common); stealable; not tourney dominating. > *cool for weenies or freak drives. only bad if someone other than your prey > or predator steals it. But hardly at all better than The Barrens. Also, it is unique, thus limiting the impact of a card limit. > Giant's Blood - fill up a vamp, only usable once. Tourney playable, > but due to only one use, not tourney dominating. > *inherently limited, so not target of my CL discussion > > Golconda: Inner Peace - a large vamp is either removed from game > to gain its capacity in pool, or its controller pays two to avoid > that. Tourney playable, but without Soul Gem tricks and no > guarantee your opponents will have big vamps to be removed, not > tourney dominating. I really don't see how to abuse this. Minion Tap/Golconda could be cute, but Minion Tap/5th Tradition/Minion Tap again is a much easier way to gain the same amount of pool while keeping your vamp in play the whole time. > Hostile Takeover - everyone bids pool to buy someone's vamp. > Tourney playable. A fairly nasty card; often usable as a master- > phase bleed for about 3, although probably not if the victim > is playing a weenie deck. I seem to recall a deck using lots of > these winning a real-life tourney somewhere, but I don't think > it was Origins or anything. Probably not tourney dominating. > * potentially nasty, as you said. got 3 of them but didn't try in a > tourney... I've heard good things about this but haven't seen it in action. Anyone who's been a victim of the crazy Hostile Takeover deck care to comment? > Madness Network - Malks can act on other people's turns. Tourney > playable in the right deck. Like Betrayer, I haven't heard of > these decks dominating any big tournaments yet. Doesn't give you any extra actions by itself. Useful in concept decks, but will never become a tourney-dominating archetype. (When I make sweeping statements like that, I'm just giving my thoughts on the card by the way. If I turn out to be wrong, feel free to make me eat my words. ;-) > Millicent Smith, Puritan Vampire Hunter - burns a blocked vamp. > Maybe tourney playable. Mostly just slows down the table a bit. > Not tourney dominating. This is even less abusable than Society of Leopold. You don't get to choose the vamp that burns. You don't even get to choose whose vamp it will be. And it's unique. And it comes back to burn your vamp if you get blocked. > Smiling Jack, the Anarch - put your pool on him, other people > burn pool or vamp blood. Unique, burnable. Maybe tourney > playable, but I've never heard of him dominating a tourney. Anarch Revolts are just plain better, in my experience. > Society of Leopold - victim burns a blood or is burned. Tourney > playable. A nasty card in the right deck (with Cryptic Mission), > but I've had a hard time even winning games with it, let alone > tourneys. Countermeasures are Sudden Reversal or Hunting Grounds, > which is pretty limited. Still probably not tourney dominating. It's really annoying (I think) to get your vamps burned so easily by this card. But it's really hard to turn that into a winning deck, because you can't do much else besides burn vamps, and you bleed pitifully, and can't bleed at all if your prey would torporize your vamps if you did. > The Spawning Pool - tap to hurt a vamp after the first round. > Maybe tourney playable. Far from tourney dominating. This card is so far from broken, the light from broken would take a million years to reach it. Let's see, I'm playing the Nosferatu and I like fighting and spending blood for it. I can either play Pushing the Limit and stuff like that, or I can put 1 blood from a vamp on this card each turn, and then if I block a bleed *and* press to the second round, I can use this to do damage equal to the blood on this card to my opponent. Yeah, that'll be effective. > Temptation of Greater Power - like Hostile Takeover, but costs 3 > pool instead of 1 and requires a Justicar instead of a Ventrue. > However if the owner wins he pays full price instead of half. > Maybe tourney playable, probably not tourney dominating since > the pool cost gets harsh if you play a lot of them. I don't think this one can really be broken like Hostile Takeover might be breakable. Three pool per play (as opposed to 1 for HT) is just too much. Josh 'it's like the story of the grasshopper and the octopus.' [ quoted text not captured ]

> this is exactly my opinion. why should we limit this allowance to few > individuals who have these cases? (well, i opened 1 case of jyhad, and have > another one lying around waiting for sale...) I think one problem this discussion is running into is that you seem to be lumping "skilled player" with "big spender". An idiot with 40 cases isn't going to do squat in a tournament. It's the skill that's going to win the tournament, regardless of the spending done. This, of course, discounts the player that bought 2 decks and thinks he's tournament ready. If you can only afford a few decks of Jyhad, then you likely can't afford any entry or travel expenses to play in the tournaments either. So we have to assume a certain number of cards will be purchased not only for the player to have a tournament viable deck, but to know how to play well enough to use it. And this certainly does not entail buying boxes upon boxes of cards. Just enough to be able to put together a deck with a theme, and to know how most of the card will work. > to attract more people. to not scare them off tournament play. > to make jyhad more popular, to have more competition in tournament play. I don't think what you propose will have any bearing on Jyhad's popularity. It didn't with Magic. In its early days you absolutely had to have the rare cards to win. The guy who spent the most on cards usually won. And Magic had no problems gaining popularity. Someone, possibly you, stated earlier in this thread that Magic is no longer like that. Regardless of whether I believe that, Magic is not gaining popularity like it did in its early stages. If anything it's popularity has started to wane. I know it has in my region. > but would it enhance your deck if you had 4 or 8 of them? thats the question i > am discussing here. and surely once you will play against somebody who plays > that deck just with a couple of cards more than you have, and achieve better > results with his deck. i don't say he always wins and you always lose. maybe > its just 60-40, or 55-45. either way i think it is unnecessary to promote such > big shot decks. It might. It might not. You're assuming that if a common card has a rare version, it is better. And if it is better it will always be preferred. Even before the errata, RtI/Day Op, a combo that I'm sure you would use as an example, isn't always better than a simple bleed. What if your prey uses a common deflection to send it to his prey? What if he uses tons of reductions to reduce your bleed to nothing? You've just burned your own minion and didn't even scratch your prey. I use this case to point out that the rare cards are *not* always better, and are *not* always preferred over the commons. > when most people _already_ don't use that many rare cards, ewhy not limit them > for anybody else? This is a strange statement. If you agree with him that people don't use that many rare cards, then what is your point? If the limit isn't going to affect anyone, then why have it at all? There's no point in having a rule that does nothing. > just in general i'd like to point out that most people can't afford to play > with 10 rares of one type, so you would not have to assume your opponents are > playing those. but if someone actually does, he possibly hoses you because you > don't have the force to counter it. It may be true that most people can't afford to play with 10 rare cards of one type. I know I can't. But your point here isn't really valid. The same can be said about any type of deck you ignore. Most people don't play combat decks. If you don't plan for them, however, you will probably get hosed if you encounter one. The same can be said about voting decks and intercept decks. *Any* type of deck, including a deck using a lot of rare cards. > because i think it it the best deck i can build? because i think i'll win the > tournament with that deck? why do people generally favor one deck over the > other? Again, this has nothing to do with the card itself, but how your skill dictates that you to use it or not use it. Use the example of Legal Manipulations versus Social Charm that someone used. Sure Legal Manipulations will hurt your target more, but *only* if it goes through. If it doesn't you've just weakened your vampire in a failed attempt. If you'd been using Social Charm, all you did was cycle a card. > this is a good example. if i played a rush deck, i'd take plenty of those > [fists of death], plus some torn signposts. the deck may perform so well that > i'd prefer it to, say, my S/B deck. but without them, it would be inferior and > i'd take another one. why shoulöd i play a deck in a tournament of which i > think it is not the best i could probably build? Now you're getting into personal preference. Those Fists of Death cost blood. You may use a big crypt where, to you, the cost is minimal. But to someone who prefers a smaller crypt, that cost is a major issue. None of this has anything to do with the card being rare or not. And even if it was, an opposing player can counter it easily with a few common prevent cards. Rare cards just have nothing to do with whether or not a deck is the best deck you could build. It's skill. It's knowing that your opponent has no counter. And I don't think there's a single rare that isn't countered easily, or used as a counter itself. If anything, rare cards do provide diversity. Mr. Suitcase does have the advantage in that he can come up with a larger variety of decks, but that's what you get if you have a suitcase full of cards. He may have the tools to make a winning deck, but again, and I feel I have to stress this, it's not the rare cards or the numbers of cards that will win. It's the skill of the player. Perfect example: Legbiter (sorry, my friend...or acquaintance... or hmm.. Mr.Biter. Yes, that's it.) We know he's a skilled player. (Although he could be tricking us all.) His infamous Malkavian OOT deck does use a good number of rare cards. But that deck is quite delicate and can be easily spoiled. It's the skill with it that makes it win. Take the sealed-deck contests that he's in. There you have an equal distribution of rare cards divided amongst the players. From what I've read, he does quite well in those games as well. Again, it's the skill that pulls him to victory. I wonder if the same thing could be said about that pseudonym. =) > i disagree. see above. mr. suitcase can often (not always) top the > effectiveness of any deck composed of common cards. I disagree with you here. See above as well. I think just as often as not, he cannot top the effectiveness of any deck composed of common cards. > >>Many? I can think of one: Slave Auction. And I certainly feel that there > are better alternatives like Blood Doll and STI.<< > > one is even enough. but i's add eco terrorists and similar stuff to the list. As I stated earlier in this post, there are counters. Using Ecoterrorists as an example:It costs 2 pool - not worth it late in the game when you don't have the pool to spend It could be Sudden Reversal'ed It's a location, and can be burned a number of ways - Arika, Unnatural Disaster, Arson, Rampage.. Brainwash your uncontrolled vampires. You can't use the card to draw blood back off your uncontrolled vampire, which is what these types often get used for. The point is there are many ways to deal with any card. I can't think of any that can't be dealt with somehow. > >>Potence combat is the one exception to not needing rares (or uncommons) to > make an effective deck. Because if anyone uses S:CE at all, your deck will be > severely hampered. IG is a necessity for Potence based combat.<< > >take immortal grapple, use all all nice combat rares you wish. i know it's a > combo based on many cards, but all combat decks face this problem.< Even this example must be qualified. Potence combat only *needs* IG in a heavy S:CE environment. Of course most tournaments are filled with S:CE. This just goes to show that the rare cards in this case are used to counter the non-rare cards. And if you played in an environment free of S:CE you wouldn't need IG anyway. > >>Otherwise, there is no main deck strategy that requires the use of rares. > That includes weenie bleed, weenie vote, Presence vote, Stealth & Bleed.<< > >just because you haven't invented one doesn't mean there is none.< This is just nonsense. You are just trying to get under his skin here. He obviously is referring to today's tournament environment. Other than Potence combat, there are no main deck strategies in today's tournament environments that require the use of rare card. And even if that deck did exist, there would be a way to counter it. And that counter would probably involve common cards. > but i'd like to pick up this idea. if ruse of rares is not required, why do > you fear a rare CL so much? it's fairer for less wealthy players and doesn't > hamper the deck building strategies of other people. > why do you speak up against it? i wanna know... To throw this back at you again, if you agree that the use of rare cards is not required, then why even introduce a card limit? Under this pretext, a card limit would *not* help less wealthy players in any way. But you obviously don't agree that rare cards are not required. You don't seem to mean decks that are built around rare cards. Those decks are odd, and will surprise people for a time. But then the deck is no longer a surprise to the players and they stop the deck in its tracks. The decks you seem to mean are those that contain a few rare cards in place of non-rare cards (meaning those rare cards give them the edge they needed to win). Do you actually think that the majority of tournaments won by decks that contained a few rare cards, if you were to take those rare cards out and replace them with similar non-rare cards, would lose? I just cannot believe that. Rare cards, no matter how few or how many, do not win for you. I know you haven't said that in as many words, but you nonetheless seem to be saying it in that a deck with rare cards will beat the same deck without rare cards, given the same skill of player on both sides. > > No one is going to deny that rares aren't useful to help your deck. But > they are by no means absolutely necessary to make a competitive deck. There > is no other reason to seek a CL > > not absolutely, but as you just admitted, they are useful. they can give a > certain edge. they make a good deck a better deck. they make a better deck a > competitive deck. they make a competitive deck a (possibly) winning deck. Keyword there: "can". Not "do". Some decks, yes. Some decks, no. Again, this is all personal preference as to what type of deck you want to play. > the requirements of expensive cards drives away people who would otherwise > like to play in a tournament environment. but they say: "why should i play > with my chances decreased by some amount as opposed to other wealthier > players? why should i play in a game where the chances are > not determined by skill and luck alone, but also by the resources i am able to > spend?" what do you say to those people? There is no requirement of expensive cards to play, or even be viable, in a tournament. Why do you keep saying that? If you want to play a Malkavian OOT deck, then sure, there is a requirement of certain cards to make it work. Answer to Q1: They aren't. I don't know who told you that, but he is wrong. You should sit around and watch to get some ideas and see if you like it. Answer to Q2: Your chances are determined by skill and luck. They have nothing to do with the resources you've spent. I don't know who told you that, but he is wrong. You should sit around and watch to get some ideas and see if you like it. > i would like to see more people playing jyhad. on the last tourney i attended > were 7 participants. that's frustrating... That is frustrating, yes. Hell, I don't even have tournaments at all here. But I don't think the lack of distribution or interest has anything to do with card rarities or the lack of card limits. > >>I could build a weenie Presence deck that would have no need for any rares > or uncommons. Social Charms and Majesties being the meat. You might add some > uncommon Misdirections to speed it up more, but they aren't necessary.<< > >so you would limit yourself to one deck style. is that what we want?< He was just using that as an example because it's viable in tournament play. There are plenty of options for players to use if they only want to stick to common cards. Because of the heavy bleed/S:CE decks like the one proposed above, tournament play is limited to a few deck styles (for the most part). Will card limits change that? No. If all cards were common, would it change that? No. Would a Gangrel combat deck become a winning tournament deck if there were card limits? No. Would intercept decks suddenly become viable as a way to get to the finals if there were no rare cards in the tournament? No. p.

> Americans have this weird sensitivity for anything approaching socialist > or communist ideas (yes, I know they are different). Taking things away > (decks they can build) from people who have more than others (have more > cards) so that people without much (have fewer cards) reeks of socialism. Ow ow ow ow! =) p. (who despite living more than half of his life out of country, is an American)

mboh...@shout.net wrote: > In article <3737F0A4...@ike.uni-stuttgart.de>, > Jens Niemann <nie...@ike.uni-stuttgart.de> wrote: > > >-- So you are including Majesty, Lost in Crowds, Conditioning, Govern the Unaligned, and other such commons in your list of powerful cards? -sure. these are strong But you're also including cards you need to have for what you want to do as powerful? There must be something getting lost in the translation from German. By that definition, if I want to use Dawn Operations with Weather Control and Skin of Night, Weather Control is a powerful card. It's not; it sucks for the most part until you put it in this combination. -i would include all cards that would make a tournament deck idea work. -which part of the combo is the real powerful card and which are the -ones that make the other powerful, well, that's opinion. Now if you start talking about cards with better-than-average cost effectivity, you start making sense. Wake falls into this category as does Freak Drive and Zip Gun. Would you please name others? I'll bet you a Kruegl of your favorite Pils that I can name a common that is as good as any rare you name. -i wonder why i always have to name cards... isn't one enough? -immortal grapple, anarch troublemaker, art museum & similar, -golconda, hostile takeover. these come to my mind. now must we start the -discussion of which of the above falls into this category and which not? -isn't it a fact that there _are_ good rare cards worth using multiples -of in your deck? > example: social charm costs no blood for +1 bleed. legal manipulations > costs 1 blood for +2 bleed. you get more, but you have to pay more. > anyway i would favor the latter because i can generate a higher effect > with only a single action. But not always. If you are playing Presence weenies, they are going to start running out of blood quickly if they are paying 1 for all of their bleeds. If you end up having to hunt at some point instead of taking a bleed action, you've lost all your benefit of that extra +1 bleed. -you make me glad today. you just gave me a good point. -you say social charm is a good card? i agree. i prefer legal -manipulations but social charm is good. you deem it better? -just fine. now i throw entrancement into the discussion. -if social charm is a good card, then entrancement is even better. -wanna get rid of that nasty succubus? get it with no slot cost -in your deck that features social charm for a standard. -just replace your 6 social charms for 6 entrancements -(after all, 6 out of 90 cards isn't that much) and your deck -gets better. this is exactly the situation that i am talking about -when promoting a CL for rares. > you name it. i got the impression i have been misunderstood. i didn't > say: rares are more powerful. whether they are or are not just doesn't > matter. i said: there are powerful cards in all rarities. but rares > are much harder to come by, and without a CL impossible for most > players to obtain in numbers. So am I correct to understand that you are saying all rarities have equal power levels (with a few obvious exceptions like ToRIII)? -you are perfectly correct So, the goal is to limit Mr. Suitcase's access to large numbers of rares? But now all of a sudden, you've limited Mr. Handbag's access to the powerful commons that he can substitute in place of the rares he doesn't have. -where have i done this????? A CL doesn't magically make it easier for people to get rares in numbers. Look at Magic's early days. All tournaments played with a 4CL as did many play groups. Did that make getting a Lotus or a Mox any easier? No. It still takes a heck of a lot of cards to get to the four of a given rare you are searching for, even if you are Mr. Suitcase. -i had no problem obtaining rares for my type II decks. it would -have definitely been easier with a 2CL. and people with less cards -would find that, too. The whole point of the issue is people's ability to make competitive decks. Mr. Handbag can make a deck that is just as competitive with a box full of commons Mr. Suitcase gave him as Mr. Suitcase can make by using his larger access to rares. With a CL, Mr. Handbag can only use a small subset of those commons Mr. Suitcase gave him. -i got th eimpression that you didn't carefully read what this discussion was all about. -i started this to impose a CL on rare cards, not on commons. kust to make sure -we are not talking across each other... [ quoted text not captured ]

Joshua Duffin wrote: > IYou mean that tourney decks often have a lot of copies of some > particular card? I agree. But the cards they have lots of copies > of (at least in the winning decks) are almost always commons. > Social Charm. Majesty. Govern the Unaligned. Deflection. Wake > with Evening's Freshness. > > Nobody wins tournaments playing my 7 Society of Leopold deck. At > least, not that I've heard of. People have been known to win now i would think that you haven't heard of many good cards just because nobody had (or was willing to make the effort of gathering) enough rare cards for a powerful deck. and btw. my intent is not to limit over-powerful cards. this is for the rulings/errata team to handle. i want to attract more people by showing them that you can play jyhad without having to spend your last bucks on it. > > tournaments playing 12 Immortal Grapple decks, but people have > also been known to utterly defeat those IG decks with their 12 > Skin of Steel decks. i think this is example enough. who would be able to field 12 IGs? only very few. the rest of us is limited to other deck building startegies. > > > This is where I think the difference of opinion lies: in my > experience, I have never seen or heard of new players getting > scared away from Jyhad tournies because they don't feel they can > compete with all the rares that the existing players play with. maybe it's different in other places. up here the people say: "why should i play jyhad?" here are so many other games to spend money into, and how will i compete against players that have all rares available in numbers to enhance theior tourney decks?" > > They may get scared away because they don't feel they can compete > with the super-speedy efficient decks that people play in > tournies, or because they don't like designing and playing such > single-minded decks - witness the recent weenie dominate misdirection > thread here. But basically nobody dominates tournaments by having > more rares than the losers. -they don't dominate (at least i hope so) but they got a certain edge. -and any intelligent person considering to play tournament would -first have to ask himself if he want to be a normal fish or a big fish. -(i.e. have good or very good chance in a tournament environment) [ quoted text not captured ]

Richard Zopf wrote: > > > > >There simply aren't any rare cards that have that large an impact > >on the game when one plays with the official rulings and errata. > > > >-this would mean that all competitive cards are non-rares > >-are rares really so bad as you claim? > > > It means that most rare cards are no better than a comparable common card. fine that you agree with me ;-) > > The few exceptions have errata. > > >And in no way is it impossible for someone to build a very > >competitive deck using only commons. > > > >- i still claim that there are some rares that make a competitive > >- non-rare deck a more competitive one. > > > Those that do, including the ones to which you responded in Mike Bohlman's > post, are in no way _more_ competitive than a deck that makes use of a a key issue. true or not true? i think the answer to this question determines the outcome of the debate. > > comparable common card. Also, you don't account for the fact that many > rares are, so to speak, "self-limiting". Meaning the opportunity to play oh yes i did. read my previous posts. > > them in the course of a game is infrequent, and so to include many copies of > the card reduces the value of each one you draw. Example: I have 8 Kine > Dominance in my deck. The first one I steal an HG from my prey. The second > one I steal Elysium: the Arboretum. One the third one I draw, no one is > playing any more locations. I now have a card that acts like a superior > Bonding, but I must pay two blood to use. At this time I would be better > off with the Bonding. So next time I build the deck, less KD for me... just commenting on the above, i'd see games where lots of locations are already out when you draw your first KD out of your 90-card deck. and you'll be glad for each one you draw... and even if 8 is too much, i'd bet 5 is just right, and still a number hard to come by, for someone who just spent $15... -- Jens Niemann [ quoted text not captured ]

Patrick Harris wrote: > > to attract more people. to not scare them off tournament play. > > to make jyhad more popular, to have more competition in tournament play. > > I don't think what you propose will have any bearing on Jyhad's popularity. It > didn't with Magic. In its early days you absolutely had to have the rare cards > to win. The guy who spent the most on cards usually won. And Magic had no > problems gaining popularity. Someone, possibly you, stated earlier in this > thread that Magic is no longer like that. Regardless of whether I believe that, > Magic is not gaining popularity like it did in its early stages. If anything > it's popularity has started to wane. I know it has in my region. in my town, most people stopped playing magic because it was too expensive. even with a CL. but all the new expansion you had to buy... i quit 2 years ago when i was 20th place in the german rankings. money was part of the decision, but mainly i didn't have the time. then just last month i got a mail saying i was qualified for the hessian state finals. i was very amused about that ,-) > > > > but would it enhance your deck if you had 4 or 8 of them? thats the question i > > am discussing here. and surely once you will play against somebody who plays > > that deck just with a couple of cards more than you have, and achieve better > > results with his deck. i don't say he always wins and you always lose. maybe > > its just 60-40, or 55-45. either way i think it is unnecessary to promote such > > big shot decks. > > It might. It might not. You're assuming that if a common card has a rare > version, it is better. And if it is better it will always be preferred. Even sometimes it has. and that's it. i'm talking just about these few cases. > > before the errata, RtI/Day Op, a combo that I'm sure you would use as an > example, isn't always better than a simple bleed. What if your prey uses a > common deflection to send it to his prey? What if he uses tons of reductions to > reduce your bleed to nothing? You've just burned your own minion and didn't > even scratch your prey. I use this case to point out that the rare cards are > *not* always better, and are *not* always preferred over the commons. i never said such. and that is one point why i want to quit the discussion here. i don't want to have to say over and over again: "i never said that! please read what i have said!" > > when most people _already_ don't use that many rare cards, ewhy not limit them > > for anybody else? > > This is a strange statement. If you agree with him that people don't use that > many rare cards, then what is your point? If the limit isn't going to affect > anyone, then why have it at all? There's no point in having a rule that does > nothing. because i like this rule. i like a rule that performs like this: "if 95% of people already don't use 10 freak drives (becasue they can't afford), then it wouldn't be a big deal to disallow it for the remaining 5%" and btw. i don't find it a socialist standpoint. socialist would be something like to base starting fees on the worth of cards you play, or your income, or whatever. (nice idea however, $1.00 for each rare in your tourney deck :-))) i'd even promote the NL format if there only _was_ an official CL format. so a player can choose between the two. then we could btw. see what people really prefer. > Again, this has nothing to do with the card itself, but how your skill dictates > that you to use it or not use it. Use the example of Legal Manipulations versus > Social Charm that someone used. Sure Legal Manipulations will hurt your target > more, but *only* if it goes through. If it doesn't you've just weakened your > vampire in a failed attempt. If you'd been using Social Charm, all you did was > cycle a card. ahem, if the attempt failed, the vamp isn't weakened any more than if he failed a social charm, and all i did was cycle a card. q.e.d. > > If anything, rare cards do provide diversity. Mr. Suitcase does have the > advantage in that he can come up with a larger variety of decks, but that's what > you get if you have a suitcase full of cards. He may have the tools to make a > winning deck, but again, and I feel I have to stress this, it's not the rare > cards or the numbers of cards that will win. It's the skill of the player. i claim it's a combination of everything, with the suitcases playing a small role, but a visible one. > > i disagree. see above. mr. suitcase can often (not always) top the > > effectiveness of any deck composed of common cards. > > I disagree with you here. See above as well. I think just as often as not, he > cannot top the effectiveness of any deck composed of common cards. fine. 'as often as not', that's 50% in my math. even if it's 25%, it's enough worth considering the CL. > > >>Potence combat is the one exception to not needing rares (or uncommons) to > > make an effective deck. Because if anyone uses S:CE at all, your deck will be > > severely hampered. IG is a necessity for Potence based combat.<< > > >take immortal grapple, use all all nice combat rares you wish. i know it's a > > combo based on many cards, but all combat decks face this problem.< > > Even this example must be qualified. Potence combat only *needs* IG in a heavy > S:CE environment. Of course most tournaments are filled with S:CE. This just > goes to show that the rare cards in this case are used to counter the non-rare > cards. And if you played in an environment free of S:CE you wouldn't need IG > anyway. so the only ones who could possibly counter S:CE in a heave S:CE environment (however effectively) are mr. suitcases... in full compliance with everything that i have said before. > > > >>Otherwise, there is no main deck strategy that requires the use of rares. > > That includes weenie bleed, weenie vote, Presence vote, Stealth & Bleed.<< > > >just because you haven't invented one doesn't mean there is none.< > > This is just nonsense. You are just trying to get under his skin here. He > obviously is referring to today's tournament environment. Other than Potence > combat, there are no main deck strategies in today's tournament environments > that require the use of rare card. why are you talking about nonsense when in the next sentence you just name one of the strategies that i have hinted at? you endorse my point and then claim it is nonsense???? > > but i'd like to pick up this idea. if ruse of rares is not required, why do > > you fear a rare CL so much? it's fairer for less wealthy players and doesn't > > hamper the deck building strategies of other people. > > why do you speak up against it? i wanna know... > > To throw this back at you again, if you agree that the use of rare cards is not > required, then why even introduce a card limit? Under this pretext, a card > limit would *not* help less wealthy players in any way. you threw it at the wrong person. it was he who claimed that the use of rares is not required [to enhance a competitive deck], not me. please throw it at him! thank you. > > But you obviously don't agree that rare cards are not required. You don't seem > to mean decks that are built around rare cards. Those decks are odd, and will > surprise people for a time. But then the deck is no longer a surprise to the > players and they stop the deck in its tracks. The decks you seem to mean are > those that contain a few rare cards in place of non-rare cards (meaning those > rare cards give them the edge they needed to win). i don't mean a specific type of deck. i mean any deck that features rare cards in excess of a (yet non-existing) CL. > > Do you actually think that the majority of tournaments won by decks that > contained a few rare cards, if you were to take those rare cards out and replace > them with similar non-rare cards, would lose? I just cannot believe that. Rare > cards, no matter how few or how many, do not win for you. I know you haven't > said that in as many words, but you nonetheless seem to be saying it in that a > deck with rare cards will beat the same deck without rare cards, given the same > skill of player on both sides. that comes close. let me be more particular. i claim that: "a deck with rare cards will beat the same deck without rare cards more than 50% of time" this equals to: "a deck with rare cards is better than the same deck without rare cards" and just to be not misunderstand, i don't mean: "each and every deck with rare cards is better than the same deck without rare cards" i just mean there are decks, and not a negligible number, to which the above applies. and i am talking about cases in where both players have equal skill. otherwise the effects would possibly be not measurable because one could not calculate the skill out of the statistic. the goal of this measurement would be to obtain the quality of the deck, not the player. > > > No one is going to deny that rares aren't useful to help your deck. But > > they are by no means absolutely necessary to make a competitive deck. There > > is no other reason to seek a CL > > > > not absolutely, but as you just admitted, they are useful. they can give a > > certain edge. they make a good deck a better deck. they make a better deck a > > competitive deck. they make a competitive deck a (possibly) winning deck. > > Keyword there: "can". Not "do". Some decks, yes. Some decks, no. Again, this > is all personal preference as to what type of deck you want to play. fine. we agree ;-) > There is no requirement of expensive cards to play, or even be viable, in a > tournament. Why do you keep saying that? If you want to play a Malkavian OOT > deck, then sure, there is a requirement of certain cards to make it work. hm, again i am wondering why you just say 'no' and 'yes' in consecutive sentences... now what do you want to say: is there no requirement or is there a requirement? > > Answer to Q1: They aren't. I don't know who told you that, but he is wrong. > You should sit around and watch to get some ideas and see if you like it. > Answer to Q2: Your chances are determined by skill and luck. They have nothing > to do with the resources you've spent. I don't know who told you that, but he > is wrong. You should sit around and watch to get some ideas and see if you like > it. thanks for you opinion. i won't comment on that, except that there are people with other opinions (it has to do with the resources spent as well as it has to do with skill and luck). and i will not decide who of you is wrong or right (after all i neither make the rules nor know better). an experiment could prove both theories, but sadly we cannot attempt such. i just wish to underline that this question must be answered by everybody himself/herself. > > > i would like to see more people playing jyhad. on the last tourney i attended > > were 7 participants. that's frustrating... > > That is frustrating, yes. Hell, I don't even have tournaments at all here. But > I don't think the lack of distribution or interest has anything to do with card > rarities or the lack of card limits. i can assure you that in Stuttgart, it _has_ to do. but i admit that i don't know of other places, and people have different opinions otherwhere. thank you all for your interest and contributions to this thread. my resume so far is the following: some people like NL, some not i would like to point out that i in no way want to force people into having to play in a tournament environment that they don't like (maybe this is why the rebuttals have been quite overwhelming, and not always factual). if anybody (except me) favors a CL of any kind (oh btw. i thought my 'rare CL' was a rather soft limit, not toppling the whole tournament scene) i would like to make another proposal: officially offer two different formats. one with a CL and one without. is diversity that bad? [ quoted text not captured ]

On Wed, 12 May 1999 11:23:40 +0200 Jens Niemann <nie...@ike.uni-stuttgart.de> wrote: >i got th eimpression that you didn't carefully read what this >discussion was all about. i started this to impose a CL on rare >cards, not on commons. kust to make sure we are not talking across >each other... No, I just forgot as the thread continued. In another article: you> anyway i would favor [Legal Manipulations over Social Charm you> because i can generate a higher effect with only a single action. me]But not always. If you are playing Presence weenies, they are me]going to start running out of blood quickly if they are paying me]1 for all of their bleeds. If you end up having to hunt at some me]point instead of taking a bleed action, you've lost all your me]benefit of that extra +1 bleed. >prefer legal manipulations but social charm is good. you deem it >better? just fine. That's not what I said at all. First, you said that you feel that Legal Manipulations is just flat better than Social Charm. I said that it isn't in all situations, like in weenie Presence bleed. >now i throw entrancement into the discussion. >if social charm is a good card, then entrancement is even better. Again, not always. >wanna get rid of that nasty succubus? get it with no slot cost >in your deck that features social charm for a standard. >just replace your 6 social charms for 6 entrancements >(after all, 6 out of 90 cards isn't that much) and your deck >gets better. this is exactly the situation that i am talking about >when promoting a CL for rares. Does your playgroup play with a lot of allies? In my group, Entrancement is about 99% of the time a waste. You might see one or two allies in 3 or 4 games. Usually, you'll see none. Just blindly taking your 6 Social Charm and putting in 6 Entrancments is stupid. In my group, I would argue that the two cards are on near equal footing with Social Charm being slightly better. The reason being that the supeior version of Social Charm (gain a pool) will always do something for you when the superior version of Entrancment may never be used. Serious tournament players don't use allies, either, unless they make a deck around allies using Memories of Mortality. Why? They are so darned fragile. All of them eventually die (except a small few) as they get into combat. Or, if someone is playing rush and doesn't like that ally, you can count on it as dead. Mike -- Posted via Talkway - http://www.talkway.com Exchange ideas on practically anything (tm).

On Wed, 12 May 1999 11:35:38 +0200 Jens Niemann <nie...@ike.uni-stuttgart.de> wrote: > now i would think that you haven't heard of many good cards just > because nobody had (or was willing to make the effort of gathering) > enough rare cards for a powerful deck. and btw. my intent is not to > limit over-powerful cards. this is for the rulings/errata team to > handle. i want to attract more people by showing them that you can > play jyhad without having to spend your last bucks on it. As someone else already pointed out, it's the really efficient decks composed of commons that are goning to scare them off. Heck, when my predator brings out a weenie bleed deck, I get scared. Any newbie can get together the cards he needs to make a weenie Presence bleed deck. Mr. Suitcase would really like that rare Mr. Handbag has to make some funky new deck, so Mr. Suitcase trades him a stack of the commons Mr. Handbag needs to make his deck(s) that he wants. That's a heck of a lot more helpful than trading rare for rare. > > tournaments playing 12 Immortal Grapple decks, but people have > > also been known to utterly defeat those IG decks with their 12 > > Skin of Steel decks. > > i think this is example enough. who would be able to field 12 IGs? > only very few. the rest of us is limited to other deck building > startegies. Putting 12 IG in your deck doesn't magically make you win. At a tournament I ran last fall, a guy had a weenie Potence deck with lots of IG. He didn't plan for people going to long range on him with guns or other strikes. When he ran into those decks, he got trounced. In my own group, I stopped playing one of my Potence rush decks with like 12 IG after more Fortitude started showing up. IG does nothing to get passed Fortitude and is easily neutralized by it with commons. > maybe it's different in other places. up here the people say: > "why should i play jyhad?" here are so many other games to > spend money into, and how will i compete against players that > have all rares available in numbers to enhance theior tourney > decks?" If experienced players like yourself are telling them that you need lots of rares to compete in tournaments, of course they are going to feel that way. But if you show them how what you consider a powerful rare card, IG, is thwarted by a common card, Skin of Steel, they might start to feel otherwise. Joshua Duffin wrote: ] But basically nobody dominates tournaments by having ] more rares than the losers. > they don't dominate (at least i hope so) but they got a certain > edge. and any intelligent person considering to play tournament > would first have to ask himself if he want to be a normal fish or > a big fish. (i.e. have good or very good chance in a tournament > environment) No matter what, people who have more cards are going to have a "certain edge," but only in the decks that they can make, not how competitive they can be. It still requires a skilled player and deckbuilder to win. Otherwise, decks could play by themselves and win; or give a newbie a great deck and they'll do just as well as the original maker. You seem to agree that this is not the case, and that the advantage gained by a person with a larger collection isn't that large. But then you say stuff like replacing 6 Social Charm with 6 Entrancement is a no brainer or that 12 IG automatically makes a deck win. In any case, a 2CL on rares is even sillier than a flat CL with tournament logistics being the main issue. It's already impossible to check every deck for 90 cards, but now you want to add a requirement that requires even more time than just counting the cards in the deck. Plus, it requires the tournament judge to know what cards are rare, an otherwise useless chunk of information when it comes to running a tournament. [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <37394B6A...@ike.uni-stuttgart.de>, Jens Niemann <nie...@ike.uni-stuttgart.de> wrote: > > > Joshua Duffin wrote: > > > Nobody wins tournaments playing my 7 Society of Leopold deck. At > > least, not that I've heard of. People have been known to win > > now i would think that you haven't heard of many good cards just > because nobody had (or was willing to make the effort of gathering) > enough rare cards for a powerful deck. and btw. my intent is not to > limit over-powerful cards. this is for the rulings/errata team to handle. > i want to attract more people by showing them that you can play > jyhad without having to spend your last bucks on it. To me, you *can* play Jyhad without spending all your money on it. A deck of 90 commons can win tournaments just as easily as a deck of 90 rares - probably more easily since it's hard to find 90 cards that are all rare and will make a decent deck. And again, 'all your money' is completely relative. If you have a full-time job, Jyhad is not a particularly expensive hobby even if you *do* spend hundreds of dollars on it. How much does it cost to drink good wine? To play golf? To go to movies every week? To eat at fancy restaurants? To go out to nightclubs? > > tournaments playing 12 Immortal Grapple decks, but people have > > also been known to utterly defeat those IG decks with their 12 > > Skin of Steel decks. > > i think this is example enough. who would be able to field 12 IGs? > only very few. the rest of us is limited to other deck building startegies. I can field 12 IGs. Jon can. Peter can. James can. Noal can. Legbiter can. Zillions of people have that kind of collection, in my experience. There are plenty of boxes of Jyhad out there to be bought for people who want to make decks that rely on rare cards. For people who don't, there are decks that use only common cards and are *more likely to win*. I think I mentioned that an IG deck has never won a major tournament I've heard of? Major tournaments are won by decks that don't rely on stupid rare tricks. Decks that rely on basic everyday strategies like voting and bleeding. Strategies that rely on basic everyday common cards like Govern the Unaligned and Kine Resources Contested. > maybe it's different in other places. up here the people say: > "why should i play jyhad?" here are so many other games to > spend money into, and how will i compete against players that > have all rares available in numbers to enhance theior tourney decks?" Maybe it is different. Around here, it is much cheaper to play Jyhad competively than to play Magic competitively, or Babylon 5, or Legend of the Five Rings... And around here, no one is worried about competing against players with a billion rares, because we all know that a billion commons wins more tournaments. > > They may get scared away because they don't feel they can compete > > with the super-speedy efficient decks that people play in > > tournies, or because they don't like designing and playing such > > single-minded decks - witness the recent weenie dominate misdirection > > thread here. But basically nobody dominates tournaments by having > > more rares than the losers. > > -they don't dominate (at least i hope so) but they got a certain edge. > -and any intelligent person considering to play tournament would > -first have to ask himself if he want to be a normal fish or a big fish. > -(i.e. have good or very good chance in a tournament environment) I really don't think they get a significant edge. Having more experience in playing Jyhad well is more likely to get you to winning a tournament than owning any number of rares. I think I mentioned that replacing your 6 Social Charms with 6 Entrancements is *not* an enhancement for a tournament deck? Because Entrancement *doesn't gain you pool* and the ally-stealing is *useless* unless someone else is playing with allies? In my experience, the choice of being a normal fish or a big fish is the decision as to what kind of deck to play in the tournament, not the decision of how much money you want to spend on cards. If you want to be a normal fish, you play a silly deck, or a combat deck. It might require lots of rares, if you think they're funny. If you want to be a big fish, you play a tried and true tourney-winning deck, like weenie bleed, weenie presence vote, malk stealth and bleed, ventrue vote. It will not have many rares, if it has any at all. I guess I just don't see why there would be people who value competition so much that they want to play in and win tournaments, but are at the same time not willing to spend a few bucks on having enough cards to make competitive decks. They don't need to spend hundreds of dollars on lots of rares to win. They only need to spend a few bucks on lots of commons, and get a little practice. Josh hasn't won a tournament since, like, two years ago... and yet I have all these rares! somebody tell my opponents they can't beat me with those decks full of commons. [ quoted text not captured ]

Jens Niemann wrote in message <37396E85...@ike.uni-stuttgart.de>... >> >> comparable common card. Also, you don't account for the fact that many >> rares are, so to speak, "self-limiting". Meaning the opportunity to play > >oh yes i did. read my previous posts. Fine. if you recognize that the opportunity to play a rare with an unusual effect come up less often in a game, then you recognize that the number in a particular deck should be restricted by the number of times you expect to use it. Since the game designers have been so kind as to include this effect in the game, to "self-limit" rares based on the opportunity to play them, why do you want to take that elegant solution and add an arbitrary restriction on top? It seems non-sensical to me, when the game _by design_ limits these types of cards. >> >> them in the course of a game is infrequent, and so to include many copies of >> the card reduces the value of each one you draw. Example: I have 8 Kine >> Dominance in my deck. The first one I steal an HG from my prey. The second >> one I steal Elysium: the Arboretum. One the third one I draw, no one is >> playing any more locations. I now have a card that acts like a superior >> Bonding, but I must pay two blood to use. At this time I would be better >> off with the Bonding. So next time I build the deck, less KD for me... > >just commenting on the above, i'd see games where lots of locations are already >out when you draw your first KD out of your 90-card deck. and you'll be glad for >each one you draw... and even if 8 is too much, i'd bet 5 is just right, and >still a number hard to come by, for someone who just spent $15... If your goal is to demonstrate to a new player how rares like KD are unneccesary/replaceable, there are common cards and lay tactics they can use to minimize its effect on themselves (intercept, don't play locations), and ways that they can mimic its effect in their own decks (Sudden Reversal, Unnatural Disaster, Arson, Rampage, contestation with blood gain). It seems that you could be doing a lot more to offer counter tactics or advice on game play to your new players. There are plenty of tactics, which have been suggested to you, that fall within the reach of a new player, which can be used to deal with a variety of rare cards in nearly any quantity. Elsewhere in r.g.t-c.jyhad, Martin Ralya, a relatively new player, is reviewing various deck archetypes that are accessible to the new player (see: Help critique my weenie dom deck). I'd suggest copying these articles and dipensing them to your new players. If they have net access, I'd suggest they surf to Lasombra's web site, and review the deck archive there. Most decks there have rarity breakdowns as a part of their statistics. I'd suggest starting a sealed deck league with the new players. All these suggestions go so much farther to help new players see and understand how Jyhad works. If you do these things, they'll hopefully see what you've missed, that a 2CL on rares is a quick fix for a person who has good intentions, but hasn't done anything to make the game more playable by new players. Regards, R. David Zopf Atom Weaver (& V:EKN Prince of Charlotte, NC)

> James Coupe wrote: >> Define powerful. You need to before your argument has any depth. Jens Niemann <nie...@ike.uni-stuttgart.de> wrote: > a strong card. one worth putting into your deck. > as opposed to a weak card, not worth taking. > a card you would favor over others to put into your deck. > a card fitting into your ('winning' or whatever) combo. So what defines a "strong card" as opposed to a "weak card"? In a Ventrue vote deck, both DOtB and IG are weak cards, but they're very powerful in a Nos combat deck. While there are cards that I'd be hard pressed to find a use for, I'd be willing to bet I can make most "useless" cards worth putting into a deck, given the right circumstances. For example, in a sealed deck or draft format, Deal with the Devil is a great card. In constructed deck...well, let's just say that I've not yet found a use for discarding your library away. Hell, I've even found a use for Uriah Winter's text. In short, there's no cookie cutter method of stating what a powerful card is and isn't. > i would disagree. i claim there is a difference > example: social charm costs no blood for +1 bleed. legal manipulations > costs 1 blood for +2 bleed. you get more, but you have to pay more. > anyway i would favor the latter because i can generate a higher effect > with only a single action. This shows me that your strategic thinking lacks depth. If you are playing weenies with Presence, that blood gets expensive. If they run out of blood from Legal Manip (and the Aire of Elation you stack on it) they will have to hunt. Meanwhile, the weenie using Social Charm will continue to bleed more frequently. > i said: there are powerful cards in all rarities. but rares are much > harder to come by, and without a CL impossible for most players to > obtain in numbers. How does imposing a CL for rares translate into players getting more of them? I must not be up on my "new math". Perhaps you can clarify this line of thought better. Noal -- "Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something" -Plato [ quoted text not captured ]

Jens Niemann <nie...@ike.uni-stuttgart.de> wrote: > they must feel it is just not worthwhile to grow deeper into a game > where the is no bottom to the barrel of buying more and more cards > just to have enough rares. why shouldn't they play other games that > are not so demanding on their purse? If that's their mentality, they'll have to stay away from CCGs as a whole. VTES is the _least_ demanding on one's pocket book of all CCGs. You can buy a box of Jyhad cards for $10 and make a good deck from the cards within. Name another CCG that you can do that with. It sure as hell isn't Magic: The Crack Habit. > i still claim that there are some rares that make a competitive > non-rare deck a more competitive one. Back up your claim. Name one rare card that can be put into _any_ deck and automagically make it more competitive. [ quoted text not captured ]

On Wed, 12 May 1999 15:25:13 +0200 Jens Niemann <nie...@ike.uni-stuttgart.de> wrote: [ commons have better rare versions ] > sometimes it has. and that's it. i'm talking just about these few > cases. > i never said such. and that is one point why i want to quit the > discussion here. i don't want to have to say over and over again: > "i never said that! please read what i have said!" I think part of the problem, Jens, is that you aren't quite using the right words to express your thoughts in English. That's not to say your English is very good (it appears to be quite good, and definitely better than my German these days), but there seem to still be learning some of the intracacies and connotations of different words. > i'd even promote the NL format if there only _was_ an official CL > format. so a player can choose between the two. then we could btw. > see what people really prefer. As far as playgroups go, once people give NL a real chance to work, they never go back to CL. In my group, I've got probably 4 to 5 times as many cards as a couple of the players. But I don't win any more than they do. In fact, they probably win more because I'm always trying to do something weird. [ decks with more rares being effective as much as those without ] > fine. 'as often as not', that's 50% in my math. even if it's 25%, > it's enough worth considering the CL. And immediately deciding against it. If the ratio of wins is near 1 to 1 or the person without rares has even more wins, why is a card limit necessary? You continue to make the assumption that if a person has more wins and they win more often than someone who doesn't have a lot of rares, they won because of their collection's size, not their skill. It takes just as much skill to make an effective deck around Social Charm as it does around Entrancment. > so the only ones who could possibly counter S:CE in a heave S:CE > environment (however effectively) are mr. suitcases... in full > compliance with everything that i have said before. So let's limit the commons! After all, you have to have rares to counter them, so let's limit the commons so people don't need as many rares. Then we can make the maximum deck size 0 and go play euchre. > that comes close. let me be more particular. i claim that: > "a deck with rare cards will beat the same deck without rare cards > more than 50% of time" If played by the same player, I say no unless you construct a deck around a combo that requires lots of rares with no common that is somewhat similar. > this equals to: > "a deck with rare cards is better than the same deck without rare > cards" and just to be not misunderstand, i don't mean: > "each and every deck with rare cards is better than the same deck > without rare cards" Here's an example of where your English doesn't quite match what you are trying to say. When you say "A deck with rare cards is" you can replace "a" with "any." It's a generalization. Your two sentences don't mean the same thing. If the first sentence said, "A deck with rares can be better than the same deck without rare cards," you would be saying what you mean. > i just mean there are decks, and not a negligible number, to which > the above applies. and i am talking about cases in where both > players have equal skill. otherwise the effects would possibly be > not measurable because one could not calculate the skill > out of the statistic. the goal of this measurement would be to > obtain the quality of the deck, not the player. Do you have examples of this? A deck with Freak Drives is not inherently better than a similar deck without. A deck with Slave Auctions is not inherently better than a deck with Short Term Investments instead. Someone else wrote (sorry for losing quote): ] There is no requirement of expensive cards to play, or even be ] viable, in a tournament. Why do you keep saying that? If you ] want to play a Malkavian OOT deck, then sure, there is a ] requirement of certain cards to make it work. > hm, again i am wondering why you just say 'no' and 'yes' in > consecutive sentences... > now what do you want to say: is there no requirement or is there a > requirement? There is no requirement. No one is requiring you to play a Malkavian OOT deck. If you want to play a Malkavian OOT deck, you are going to have certain set of cards to make it playable. If you don't have the cards for a given deck, you don't play it. It's like this. If I want to take a trip to Oktoberfest next year, I have to have the money to pay for the trip. If I don't have the money to go to Oktoberfest for vacation, I'll have to figure out something else to do on vacation. It's not a requirement that I have the money to go to Oktoberfest because I don't have to go to Oktoberfest. I can spend the money on something else, perhaps Oktoberfest in Milwaukee. It's as simple as that. ] Answer to Q1: They aren't. I don't know who told you that, but he ] is wrong. You should sit around and watch to get some ideas and see ] if you like it. ] Answer to Q2: Your chances are determined by skill and luck. They ] have nothing to do with the resources you've spent. I don't know ] who told you that, but he is wrong. You should sit around and watch ] to get some ideas and see if you like it. > thanks for you opinion. i won't comment on that, except that there > are people with other opinions (it has to do with the resources > spent as well as it has to do with skill and luck). and i will not > decide who of you is wrong or right (after all i neither make the > rules nor know better). an experiment could prove both theories, > but sadly we cannot attempt such. There's no need for an experiment. Lots and lots of people have experience with both situations. The best players will always come out on top. People with large collections who suck will never be any good no matter how many cards they buy. > i just wish to underline that this question must be answered by > everybody himself/herself. Have you played NL extensively? I doubt it. So how can you answer the question for yourself without being fully informed with your own experience? > officially offer two different formats. one with a CL and one > without. is diversity that bad? This has been brought up before and has been shot down before. If there were people lining up at the door to play in V:TES tournaments, it might be possible. But there just aren't, so only one format is officially supported. [ quoted text not captured ]

mboh...@shout.net wrote: > But it's a myth that you have to own lots of rare cards to make a > competitive tournament deck. Not only is it a myth, it's blatantly untrue. Using rare cards, or even building decks around them, does not guarantee a winning deck. There is always a way to defeat any given deck, and odds are that you will eventually run into said counter during a tournament. It's been my experience that decks based on a single card, rare or otherwise, are usually fragile. > Yet another CL misconception that you have to build a counter > in your deck for everything. You don't. In fact, you shouldn't. If you try to put a counter for every contigency in your deck, your deck will suck goat nuts. The only possible exception is an intercept deck...but even that type of deck will rarely ever have a winning record without a secondary strategy built in. Your deck needs to be focused to be competitive. Anything that dilutes your deck will generally make it less effective. > If you don't have the cards to make it work, it's obviously not > the best deck you can build. It may be the deck you want to build, > but too bad. That's how it works. A CCG is the ultimate lesson in how capitalism works. If you want X, you need to invest the resources needed to get it. If you don't have the resources, you work to get them. If you sit around and whine about how the government or society owes X to you, you deserve to have to beg for your next meal. > Like I said, I'd love to make a Heart of Darkness/Daring the Dawn > deck, but I don't have near enough Daring the Dawns. *nods* ...and I'd love to make a Reversal of Fortune/Millicent Smith/ Toreador Grand Ball vote deck, but I cannot because a lack of the cards I need...and I'm not Mr. Suitcase. I'm Mr. Car Trunk. (Btw. Mike, if you need to borrow some cards at Origins or GenCon, let me know and I'll hook you up.) > Then why does anyone play in tournaments? I play in tournaments because I enjoy competition. However, I prefer to pit unusual strategies against other players, rather than use the same tired decks everyone has seen. In fact, I never play the same deck at two different tournaments. I view deck building as both creative and strategic. > If I'm inventing a new deck strategy, it is not a main one. > Main means popular or common. The fact that all these types > _can_ be built without rares means that Mr. Handbag can make > competitive decks. ...and preventing Mr. Suitcase from designing unusual decks takes away the incentive for players to buy more cards. This is certainly not in the long-term interest of anybody concerned. If Joe Newguy sees that he is prevented from trying new strategies because of an artificial card limit and that he can still make competitive decks with the first box he buys, he will never buy more cards. If he doesn't buy more cards (and neither does his friends) the retailers won't sell what they need to keep it on the shelves so they don't re-order it...and WotC, not getting any re-orders on the product, decides not to support it. Eventually, the CCG in question largely dies out with the exception of a small cult following. Sound familiar? Now how many of you recall when DCI imposed a 2 card limit on specific cards? Raise your hands. Now take a look at the history of Jyhad and compare it to the above paragraph. This is why a 2CL on rares is a blatantly stupid idea. Noal McDonald National Jyhad League -- "Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something" -Plato [ quoted text not captured ]

On Tue, 11 May 1999 17:03:28 +0200, Jens Niemann <nie...@ike.uni-stuttgart.de> wrote: >"Joe C." wrote: >> >> Just wanted to point out, Tribute to the Master is a common. > >yep. i'm sorry. i don't remember what card actually i was thinking of. >do you agree that there are powerful rares you would _want_ to put lots of >in your deck? I can think of one and a half. Freak Drive and Immortal Grapple (which is only half rare since it's uncommon in the Sabbat.) lemme see. Hmm. Nope. Can't think of any others. Maybe 6-8 Behind Yous in a Nossie bonk deck, but 6-8 is not 'lots' to me when i compare it to the thought of 12-20 matching action cards (Computer Hacking, or ... you get the idea.) -- Derek (replying by email? remove the nospam from my domain :)

> sometimes it has. and that's it. i'm talking just about these few cases. Why impose a card limit for just a few cases though? > >> before the errata, RtI/Day Op, a combo that I'm sure you would use as an example, > isn't always better than a simple bleed. What if your prey uses a common deflection > to send it to his prey? What if he uses tons of reductions to reduce your bleed to > nothing? You've just burned your own minion and didn't even scratch your prey. I > use this case to point out that the rare cards are > *not* always better, and are *not* always preferred over the commons.<< > > i never said such. and that is one point why i want to quit the discussion here. i > don't want to have to say over and over again: "i never said that! please read what i > have said!" I have read it. You have argued, in essence, that Mr. Suitcase will always be able to make a better deck than Mr. Handbag, just because he purchased more cards and can replace some of his common cards with rare cards, making the exact same deck better because of the rares. This is assuming an equal skill level. That implies that the rare cards always make the deck better. If you don't think that Mr. Suitcase can always make the better deck, then I don't see that you have any reasons at all for a card limit that will apply only to him. > because i like this rule. i like a rule that performs like this: "if 95% of people > already don't use 10 freak drives (becasue they can't afford), then it wouldn't be a > big deal to disallow it for the remaining 5%" But all this rule would do is exclude that 5%. It wouldn't make the 95% any happier or any more disgruntled. Your rule would only serve to anger that 5% making those types of decks. And that 5% isn't winning tournaments or dominating play in any way. The rule just isn't necessary in my opinion. > and btw i don't find it a socialist standpoint. socialist would be something like to > base starting fees on the worth of cards you play, or your income, or whatever. (nice > idea however, $1.00 for each rare in your tourney deck :-))) I didn't post anything about it being a socialist standpoint. I don't know where this came from. And making someone with rare cards pay to be able to use them is not a nice idea. My Tzimisce deck hasn't gained me VP one yet. It's still in the tweaking stage. I'd hate to have to pay to test it out. > i'd even promote the NL format if there only _was_ an official CL format. so a player > can choose between the two. then we could btw. see what people really prefer. Many people already use card limits in their playgroups. It isn't a bad idea to have an official format for both either. You'd probably see that the same decks would enter both formats and do about the same, depending on table positioning and such. And if you scheduled them both simultaneously, you'd get players choosing which to enter based not on which format they prefer, but which format certain players are in. They'd go to the format a) where Player 1 is so they could see how their deck matches up against his, or just because they like playing with Player 1, or b) where Player 1 isn't because Player 1's deck is specifically designed to destroy decks like theirs. The choice would break down into a strategy to win ("Which format am I likely to do better in?"), rather than a personal preference of formats, if the events were held at the same time.. > ahem, if the attempt failed, the vamp isn't weakened any more than if he failed a > social charm, and all i did was cycle a card. q.e.d. I always forget when the minions pay the cost (when announced, or when successful), but in the situation I described, your vampire could be in danger of an Archon Investigation. And if the action is still technically successful after a reduction or deflection, your vampire does lose that blood and you still haven't affected your prey. > >>If anything, rare cards do provide diversity. Mr. Suitcase does have the advantage > in that he can come up with a larger variety of decks, but that's what you get if you > have a suitcase full of cards. He may have the tools to make a winning deck, but > again, and I feel I have to stress this, it's not the rare cards or the numbers of > cards that will win. It's the skill of the player.<< > i claim it's a combination of everything, with the suitcases playing a small role, but > a visible one. > > >> I disagree with you here. See above as well. I think just as often as not, he > cannot top the effectiveness of any deck composed of common cards.<< > fine. 'as often as not', that's 50% in my math. even if it's 25%, it's enough worth > considering the CL. I just don't think this is logical. Mr. Suitcase's ability to make a deck better would be related to the number of cards that he has, not the number of rare cards. And it's the number of rare cards that you are wanting to restrict. There isn't a deck out there that's just an improved version of a common deck that will be hindered by a card limit. The only decks that would be made non-viable by this rule are those decks specifically designed around rare cards. And those decks just don't rule the tournament scene, so I see no need to remove them. > so the only ones who could possibly counter S:CE in a heave S:CE environment (however > effectively) are mr. suitcases... in full compliance with everything that i have said > before. No. If you *want* to counter S:CE, you would have to make a deck to do so. It doesn't have to be Potence combat. If you *want* to counter S:CE with Potence combat, you would most likely need IG. IG is no longer rare, so Mr. Suitcase would not be the only one who could counter S:CE with Potence combat. > >>This is just nonsense. You are just trying to get under his skin here. He > obviously is referring to today's tournament environment. Other than Potence combat, > there are no main deck strategies in today's tournament environments that require the > use of rare card.<< > > why are you talking about nonsense when in the next sentence you just name one of the > strategies that i have hinted at? you endorse my point and then claim it is > nonsense???? "In today's tournament environment" is the key phrase here. I think we all have seen enough to know what decks are out there. And in those decks, there aren't any strategies in today's tournament environment that *require* rare cards. There are specific decks that do, yes. But the strategies they use can also be used by decks with non-rare cards. Thus, that strategy doesn't *require* the use of rare cards. > >>To throw this back at you again, if you agree that the use of rare cards is not > required, then why even introduce a card limit? Under this pretext, a card limit > would *not* help less wealthy players in any way.<< > > you threw it at the wrong person. it was he who claimed that the use of rares is not > required [to enhance a competitive deck], not me. please throw it at him! thank you. I said "if" you agree. My next paragraph clearly states it is obvious that you don't. > >>But you obviously don't agree that rare cards are not required. You don't seem to > mean decks that are built around rare cards. Those decks are odd, and will surprise > people for a time. But then the deck is no longer a surprise to the players and they > stop the deck in its tracks. The decks you seem to mean are those that contain a few > rare cards in place of non-rare cards (meaning those rare cards give them the edge > they needed to win).<< > > i don't mean a specific type of deck. i mean any deck that features rare cards in > excess of a (yet non-existing) CL. But a card limit will disallow all those types of decks. You must look at specific types in this argument. The types that you are focusing on won't be that affected by a card limit in my opinion. Those few rare cards that they have can be replaced with non-rares and the deck will fare just as well. It is the decks that focus on rare cards that will be most harmed by a card limit. And those decks are hard to win with regularly. They certainly don't dominate tournaments every time they're played. > that comes close. let me be more particular. i claim that: > "a deck with rare cards will beat the same deck without rare cards more than 50% of > time" I disagree. The differences between similar cards are balanced so that replacing doesn't give you that much of an edge. If simply gives you variety in your approach. You may bleed harder, but you have weaker minions. You may hit harder, but also have weaker minions. You may vote stronger, but have less pool. Almost any advantage gained by the rare card has an advantage lost by not staying with the non-rare. > this equals to: > "a deck with rare cards is better than the same deck without rare cards" > and just to be not misunderstand, i don't mean: > "each and every deck with rare cards is better than the same deck without rare cards" > i just mean there are decks, and not a negligible number, to which the above applies. Again, I disagree. The number of decks is negligible. And even those decks that could be considered better do not have so much of an edge that they will likely win more often. Too much of the game is determined by luck of the draw. > and i am talking about cases in where both players have equal skill. otherwise the > effects would possibly be not measurable because one could not calculate the skill out > of the statistic. the goal of this measurement would be to obtain the quality of the > deck, not the player. Of course. > >>Keyword there: "can". Not "do". Some decks, yes. Some decks, no. Again, this is > all personal preference as to what type of deck you want to play.<< > > fine. we agree ;-) woo-HOO=) > >>There is no requirement of expensive cards to play, or even be viable, in a > tournament. Why do you keep saying that? If you want to play a Malkavian OOT deck, > then sure, there is a requirement of certain cards to make it work.<< > > hm, again i am wondering why you just say 'no' and 'yes' in consecutive sentences... > now what do you want to say: is there no requirement or is there a requirement? There is no requirement to make a very competitive deck. There is a requirement to make a specific deck. I thought I made plain enough. Your point regards viability in tournament play. There is no requirement of rare cards there. > thanks for you opinion. i won't comment on that, except that there are people with > other opinions (it has to do with the resources spent as well as it has to do with > skill and luck). It does have to do with all of those, true. But skill and luck have so much more of an effect than do rare cards. I do agree that if someone wants to make a certain deck, let's say a Tzimisce deck (since I like them), they may need rare cards to do it well. But they don't need them to make a competitive deck. If they want to make that Tzimisce deck, then yes they have to go out and spend some money to get the cards they want. But again, that's style and preference, which is an entirely different subject. > and i will not decide who of you is wrong or right (after all i neither make the rules > nor know better). an experiment could prove both theories, but sadly we cannot attempt > such. Don't you know everyone else is always wrong? ;-) > i just wish to underline that this question must be answered by everybody > himself/herself. Right, but that's why we argue as well. Just trying to get the other side to see our thinking. Letting them know we might not understand theirs. > >>That is frustrating, yes. Hell, I don't even have tournaments at all here. But I > don't think the lack of distribution or interest has anything to do with card rarities > or the lack of card limits.<< > > i can assure you that in Stuttgart, it _has_ to do. People didn't buy the cards because they thought that they couldn't be competitive in tournaments without spending hoards of money? That's crazy talk man. We don't have anything here just because nobody but me would buy them, and my wife thinks I have too many already. =) With my old playgroup we had to travel a long way to see any tournaments, so we didn't make it to many. But the city I lived in still had a good Jyhad distribution because we bought the cards anyway, liking the game so much. > but i admit that i don't know of other places, and people have different opinions > otherwhere. Well, you know of two more now, eh? ;-) > officially offer two different formats. one with a CL and one without. This is a proposal that I would have no problems with. I think it's actually a good idea. I don't know if the tournaments could support both, though, unless they held separate events for each. > is diversity that bad? Only if against the Overlord's wishes. ;-) p.

On Tue, 11 May 1999 18:03:00 +0200, Jens Niemann <nie...@ike.uni-stuttgart.de> wrote: >this is exactly my opinion. why should we limit this allowance to few >individuals who have these cases? (well, i opened 1 case of jyhad, and have >another one lying around waiting for sale...) Why should we penalize people for spending money on the game so that WotC will release more expansions? No, don't expect this argument to ever wash - WotC is not in this so we can have fun, they are in this to make money FROM our having fun. They will NEVER support something that causes people to purchase fewer cards, especially when the issue is so borderline. Even with Magic, they solved the problem of hyper-rares by releasing MORE expansions with more powerful commons, instead of just lowering the card limit on rares to almost nil. >> Why should it be any different? If you want it to be different, >> try a card game where the cards aren't collectible and you get a >> full set right away. > >to attract more people. to not scare them off tournament play. >to make jyhad more popular, to have more competition in tournament play. They can be just as competitive with a deckful of commons. Some deckfuls of commons happen to be the perfect antithesis to other decks - Gangrel permanent intercept decks are usually a rude surprise for vote decks who are nearby. Those can be built with a BUTTLOAD of commons. >> I've got 1 Fists of Death. Does that mean I don't put it in my >> Potence decks? No. Does it mean my deck doesn't work if I don't >> draw it? No. If it did, I wouldn't bother trying to make such >> a deck. > >but would it enhance your deck if you had 4 or 8 of them? thats the question >i am discussing here. and surely once you will play against somebody who >plays that deck just with a couple of cards more than you have, and achieve >better results with his deck. i don't say he always wins and you always >lose. maybe its just 60-40, or 55-45. either way i think it is unnecessary >to promote such big shot decks. when most people _already_ don't use that >many rare cards, ewhy not limit them for anybody else? Why force limits when the game comes with natural limits? Most rares come with their own special costs - if you play with too many, you're just as screwed as if you played with none at all. Probably more screwed, because if you play with NONE you don't have to worry about working it into your deck mix. >> You can generally expect to see a certain set of decks at a V:TES >> tournament: weenie bleed, weenie vote, rush combat, vote, stealth >> & bleed. I like that. I hope we never have just one deck type >> that is dominant. In any case, what point were you trying to make >> with this statement? > >just in general i'd like to point out that most people can't afford to play >with 10 rares of one type, so you would not have to assume your opponents >are playing those. but if someone actually does, he possibly hoses you >because you don't have the force to counter it. Most people don't play with 10 rares of one type because 10 of most rares is a recipe for hand jam. Exceptions: Freak Drive and IG. Awe... borderline because of its reliance on other cards to help it along. 10 Awes alone just go boom and fail. Force to counter it? Exactly what incredibly forceful rares are you talking about? >> No, if you make a deck centered around a rare, you get a better >> deck if you play with appropriate numbers of them, sometimes >> "lots." But if you don't have those rares, why are you trying to >> make a deck focused on them for a tournament? > >because i think it it the best deck i can build? because i think i'll win >the tournament with that deck? why do people generally favor one deck over >the other? If you ain't got the cards, don't build the deck or trade and scrounge for the cards so you CAN. I've done it. As in ANY other game, them who puts the resources (practice, thought, money) into the game will do better than those who don't put the resources into the game. >> All cards in Jyhad have some form of opportunity cost. Freak Drive >> costs you a blood and you can't repeat the same action types. >> You can only play one Command the Beast on a bleed because of >> the limit on same named action modifiers. You can't have more than >> one Slave Auction in play because it's unique. You can play >> multiple Fists of Death, but they're going to each cost you one >> and they might be overkill. > >this is a good example. if i played a rush deck, i'd take plenty of those, >plus some torn signposts. the deck may perform so well that i'd prefer it >to, say, my S/B deck. but without them, it would be inferior and i'd take >another one. why shoulöd i play a deck in a tournament of which i think it >is not the best i could probably build? If you don't have the cards to build it, the deck is not the best you can build, because you DON'T HAVE THE CARDS. If you want to build the deck, get the cards. There are plenty of decks you can build that do not require nine zillion Fists of Death. Rush decks typically require an experienced player to be playing them anyway (or they lose badly), so you don't WANT to encourage newbies to play a deck like that. >> Right, but you are limiting what good deck builders can do because >> of others' inability to make good decks. Everyone still has to >> make good decks out of the cards they have. Mr. Handbag can >> make a deck just as effective as Mr. Suitcase can by using the right >> mix of commons. > >i disagree. see above. mr. suitcase can often (not always) top the >effectiveness of any deck composed of common cards. The deck you mention above has been tested repeatedly in multiple tournaments. It has been shown that "often" is an inaccurate statement - the deck is good and effective, but the Rush deck itself is not the same type of force to be reckoned with that a weenie Social Charm horde is. (If the Rush deck doesn't start next to the horde, it is likely to get steamrolled at some point.) This is a very obvious example of Mr. Suitcase's deck not topping the effectiveness of common-card decks. There are others. >> Rares do not a good player make. > >i never claimed such. why do you suggest that? Because you're frantically shrieking that rares should be limited, that rares are bad, and we're trying to figure out why you say this since rares aren't: (a) inherently more powerful than commons (b) going to magically give a player deck building skill (c) anything at all, really, except just harder to get than commons. >> Many? I can think of one: Slave Auction. And I certainly feel >> that there are better alternatives like Blood Doll and STI. > >one is even enough. but i's add eco terrorists and similar stuff to the >list. One is NOT enough to justify such a global limitation as "2 CL on rares." You are going to need to show it being much more widespread. Now, besides that, Eco-terrorists is NOT a game-breaker. Handy to have round? Sure. Worth putting more than 2-3 of in your deck? Nah - you'll be discarding every single one after the first one, and you might want to discard OTHER cards instead. It is a minor convenience, no more. And if you put only 2-3 in your deck, what happens when the first one you draw is halfway down your library? Not very good then, is it? >> Potence combat is the one exception to not needing rares (or >> uncommons) to make an effective deck. Because if anyone uses S:CE >> at all, your deck will be severely hampered. IG is a necessity for > >take immortal grapple, use all all nice combat rares you wish. i know it's a >combo based on many cards, but all combat decks face this problem. And here you even admit that it's a problem - that despite having oodles of rare cards in them, IG decks still have difficulty winning! >> Potence based combat. Otherwise, there is no main deck strategy >> that requires the use of rares. That includes weenie bleed, >> weenie vote, Presence vote, Stealth & Bleed. > >just because you haven't invented one doesn't mean there is none. Then show us one. Nobody is about to make major sweeping restrictions to the game on the basis of Magic-induced rare-paranoia and "someone MIGHT find one in the future!!" >but i'd like to pick up this idea. if ruse of rares is not required, why >do you fear a rare CL so much? it's fairer for less wealthy players >and doesn't hamper the deck building strategies of other people. >why do you speak up against it? i wanna know... First, wealth has little to do with it. I haven't spent much more than $250 total on cards and I can make an AWFUL lot of decks. $250 isn't a whole lot of money to spend - I have no sympathy for people who want to make tournament-winning decks by spending $20 on a game. As I said above, the people who invest the most resources (practice, thought, and money) in ANY game will turn out to be the winners. Jyhad does very well at limiting how much the 'money' factor plays in. Now -- A TWO CARD LIMIT on rares?! Be sensible. A two card limit removes the following deck types: - any Potence combat (making one discipline totally useless) - any of the later-expansion clans' decks (they just don't have very many discipline cards as the Original Seven and HAVE to use their rares) - a number of neat tricks you can do with Gangrel become useless now that they can't Freak Drive (making one clan even more useless than it already was) - any intercept decks (Eagle's Sight is vital if you want to be SURE of hurting your prey - and the Ivory Bow and Sengir Dagger are probably also going to have to be in) - Big pool gain decks (2nd and 5th tradition are rare) Ok, that's five major clumps of decks that can just plain NO LONGER be built anymore because of a two-card limit on rares. But with the two-card limit on rares, you also remove a number of good defenses against: - sneak & bleed (no Rush deck to take care of them anymore, and no pool gain to outlast them) - weenie bleed (with only 2 Atonements you can't be sure of getting one out in time, and no Rush deck for them to fear) - weenie vote (no point in playing intercept to stop all those pesky Praxis Seizures since intercept can't fly anymore, and 2nd Tradition and Delaying Tactics are rare) So all you've really done with a 2-card limit is removed a number of entertaining alternatives, and encouraged the use of three very common deck-types ANYWAY... which just happen to be three of the types that will frustrate new players even more so than seeing some totally wack-ass Gangrel Freak Drive special take four actions per vampire per turn and finally bleed for lots. =) >> No one is going to deny that rares aren't useful to help your >> deck. But they are by no means absolutely necessary to make >> a competitive deck. There is no other reason to seek a CL > >not absolutely, but as you just admitted, they are useful. >they can give a certain edge. they make a good deck a better deck. >they make a better deck a competitive deck. they make a competitive deck a >(possibly) winning deck. >the requirements of expensive cards drives away people who would otherwise >like to play in a tournament environment. but they say: "why should >i play with my chances decreased by some amount as opposed to other >wealthier players? why should i play in a game where the chances are >not determined by skill and luck alone, but also by the resources i am >able to spend?" what do you say to those people? "Why are you playing any game but Monopoly, where the chances are solely determined by luck and a minimum of skill? You certainly can't play any OTHER game this way - resources are a primary ingredient in any game of any significant complexity you wish to play. The people who choose to apply the resources to the game will be better at it than you. Rejoice that you can make a competitive deck out of common cards and the only thing spending more money will do is increase the options for the VARIETY of your deck - not the chances of your winning." >i would like to see more people playing jyhad. on the last tourney i >attended were 7 participants. that's frustrating... hm, you missed the 15-player tourney in Atlanta, and the 20+ player tourney in South Carolina recently. But I know that my friends in Atlanta make a significant effort to "evangelize" the game - to draw others in and show how much fun it can be. Most newbies find the game sufficiently complicated in its original form so that they don't worry about making decks with tons of Rare cards - they just want to make a deck that does what they EXPECT it to do. >> I could build a weenie Presence deck that would have no need >> for any rares or uncommons. Social Charms and Majesties being >> the meat. You might add some uncommon Misdirections to speed >> it up more, but they aren't necessary. > >so you would limit yourself to one deck style. is that what we want? If you want to build multiple deck styles, invest the resources to support those deck styles. With the purchase of one box of Jyhad boosters, list price about $15 these days, you can make two or three different styles of deck. They won't necessarily be tournament-winners, but they'll be quite effective. Buy a second box and you can certainly make at least ONE style of tournament-winner out of it. It may not be loaded with style (like the Horrific Countenance deck that won in Atlanta - a common card, by the way), but it'll be effective. If you want to play Monopoly, play Monopoly. [ quoted text not captured ]

On Tue, 11 May 1999 20:44:27 GMT, jt...@cornell.edu (Joshua Duffin) wrote: >In article <37385D50...@ike.uni-stuttgart.de>, > Jens Niemann <nie...@ike.uni-stuttgart.de> wrote: >> Joshua Duffin wrote: >> >> yes, there are few cards. but they are. and one with many copies >> can provide a better deck. The 900 lb gorillas of pool gain are Minion Tap and Tribute to the Master, neither of which is even uncommon. >> I'm picking out those cards which i think are (or may become when the >right >> man composes the right deck) competitive tournament rares. >> they might be integral part of a real competitive deck, i.e. playing >> without >> these would make the deck inferior (no, and i don't mean you can >throw it >> in the bin, i just mean somewhat worse than without these cards), and >you >> would perhaps have to choose another deck strategy. with some notes >> starting with * If you ain't got the cards, don't build the deck - don't just say "Oh, because I don't have the cards, this deck strategy is unworthy of play for everyone." >> Entrancement - +1 bleed or steal an ally. Tourney playable. >> Not tourney dominating. >> *a couple would enhance any presence bleed deck > >Not the presence bleed decks that would rather (a) gain pool by >using Social Charm instead at superior, (b) bleed for more by >using Legal Manipulations instead, (c) tap people's vampires by >using Propaganda instead... I think you take the idea that >versatility is always good too far. Versatility is not always >good in Jyhad tourney decks. In a tourney deck, I may include ONE Entrancement. Tops. Just in case. This shows no reason that a card limit SHOULD be there. Any deck with five Entrancements is already suffering visibly from the pool gain it could be getting with its Social Charms or Legal Manips. >> Far Mastery - steal an ally or retainer. Tourney playable. Not >> tourney dominating. >> *a couple would enhance any dominate bleed deck > >Completely not accurate, in my opinion, since it is not a bleed >card and you have no assurance that anyone will be playing with >allies or retainers worth stealing with an action. The first cards that came OUT of the Dominate/Protean deck I played in Columbia, when I decided to shave it down and make it tournament-worthy, were Far Mastery, Kine Dominance, and a couple other of the weird Dominate cards. In their place went a couple more Governs and a couple more Conditionings. If a deck is designed to bleed, I want to always be looking at bleed cards, not 'steal ally' cards. >> Kine Dominance - +1 bleed/+1 stealth or steal a location. Tourney >> playable. Not tourney dominating. >> *a couple would enhance any dominate bleed deck, even more than the >above > >Would enhance any dominate bleed deck that always has 2 blood to >blow on a mere +1 bleed. No good for weenie dominate decks. >The location stealing is occasionally really great and often >really useless. +1 bleed at +1 stealth for 2 blood? Give me Bonding instead, which does the same and is free. Location stealing? Poo on that. Not many locations in tournaments. "But what about Kine Dominance/Bonding, for a bleed of 3 at 2 stealth?" ... that costs me 2 blood. Give me Govern and Lost in Crowds, which will cost me 1 blood and let me slap a big ugly modifier on top of it later. >> Day Operation - make an action unblockable. Tourney playable. >> Can produce victory points. But without Return to Innocence, >> Not tourney dominating. >> * a cool card for any ventrue bleed/vote deck > >A cool card, sure, but its disadvantages are *real* and not >trivial. You have to take other cards out to put Day Ops in, >you know. What do you weaken to add unblockability to your deck? >What support mechanisms do you put in to make sure you can get >your vamps back out of torpor? Against a non-intercept-using >opponent, wouldn't Bonding be much better? I don't get it - this card is excellent for that One Last Bleed that gets you a VP. But it's almost as likely to hose you when your predator sees that you have a vampire in torpor - how DO you guarantee that you get the guy back out?? Strong card - big disadvantages come with it. Making a Day Op deck is much harder than it looks. >> Freak Drive - untap a vampire. Tourney playable. Without >> repeat actions, Not tourney dominating. >> * ditto. vote AND bleed in the same turn. just great > >Cute but pricey at 1 blood and needing to have at least two >useful action types to take. Again, you take other things >out of your deck to put this in; will you still have enough >vote and bleed actions to get to 'double up' after squeezing >Freak Drives in? Will your vamps still have enough blood to >be useful to you? If I want to vote and bleed in the same turn, I'll bleed first, use Majesty and untap (1 blood, same cost as Freak Drive), removing a blocker, and then call my vote. I assume Majesty here because only the Ventrue have the correct skill set (ability to bleed big, vote big, AND Freak Drive) to pull this off, and they come with Presence by default. A common card, here, is just as useful as the rare card - and I don't need superior Fortitude to continue if he blocks the bleed or vote. If my prey doesn't have a way to deal with bleeds OR votes, and instead chooses to sit tapped-out and watch, either he's a weenie deck and moves incredibly fast, or he just sucks, and deserves to get ousted. >> Immortal Grapple - hand strikes only for one round. Very >> tourney playable. Occasionally tourney winning, but I haven't >> heard of an IG deck winning a really big tourney yet - therefore >> not tourney dominating. Does have a strong impact on the game >> though; should have been uncommon or common rather than rare. >> * a key card to counter majesty/presence bleed decks. a game winner > >This is the only key rare I know of. It is good against Strike: >Combat Ends but crappy against Skin of Steel. It is far easier >to make a weenie bleed deck and win a tournament with it than it >is to make an IG combat deck and win a tournament with it, no >matter how many cards you own. And note, it is a key card, but it only needs to be included in such large quantity because of a COMMON card: Majesty. Where does the problem truly lie... with the rare card, or the common card? >> Pulled Fangs - one damage, victim can't hunt. Tourney playable, >> but not overpowered since it no longer does agg damage. Not >> tourney dominating. >> * it's history but it used to be a very strong card before the errata. > >Sure, but now it's got nothing on Disarm. And that's why errata is thrown out, to fix overpowered cards. As opposed to slapping random card limits around. >> First Tradition: The Masquerade - skip turns or pay pool. Maybe >> tourney playable. Not tourney dominating. > >I've played with this in friendly games, but I don't think it'd >get you anywhere in a tournament. Why not just call a Kine >Resources Contested instead? Heh. You'll see, next tourney... ;) >> J.S. Simmons, Esq. - +1 bleed, unique. Tourney playable. A better >> version of Laptop Computer since he costs no pool, but not >> tourney dominating. >> *makes useful combo with freak drive > >Uh huh. So does Laptop Computer. Not a useful enough combo, >especially given the existence of Archon Investigation and >Justicar Retribution. Bleh. Color me oh-so-afraid of those evil Gangrel who are going to recruit J.S. Simmons, freak drive, and bleed me for 2. I shall save my Deflections for the buggery Malks who are just going to bleed me for 6 at a gazillion stealth. >> Anarch Troublemaker - tap two vampires or burn an equipment >> and hand it over. May produce victory points as a max-two-minion >> Misdirection, but not tourney dominating. >> * strong card. play it myself > >I never have. No surprise factor once you put it in play, unlike >Misdirection. If you fail to oust, your prey gets to use it, >which is not exactly strong. Not a strong card. I've played it. Entertaining and amusing, but once the Troublemaker's out, your prey taps out every turn (why tempt fate?), making him totally useless. Entertaining to hand off to your prey early on though, and let him zoom around the table for a bit. Only remotely useful this way in decks that tap out themselves though. >> Fragment of the Book of Nod - tap to draw two cards and discard >> down. Tourney playable. Handy for card cycling but not much >> better than The Barrens (common); stealable; not tourney dominating. >> *cool for weenies or freak drives. only bad if someone other than >your prey >> or predator steals it. > >But hardly at all better than The Barrens. Also, it is unique, >thus limiting the impact of a card limit. The Fragment is both powerful and weak at the same time. If you have it, you probably need it - and people will come and steal it. You then must spend time stealing it back instead of ousting your prey. Bad. I like stealing my predator's Fragment - a lot of times it gets him to waste an action stealing it back instead of bleeding me. =) If not, well, I have the Fragment. >> Hostile Takeover - everyone bids pool to buy someone's vamp. >> Tourney playable. A fairly nasty card; often usable as a master- >> phase bleed for about 3, although probably not if the victim >> is playing a weenie deck. I seem to recall a deck using lots of >> these winning a real-life tourney somewhere, but I don't think >> it was Origins or anything. Probably not tourney dominating. >> * potentially nasty, as you said. got 3 of them but didn't try in a >> tourney... > >I've heard good things about this but haven't seen it in action. >Anyone who's been a victim of the crazy Hostile Takeover deck >care to comment? Sucks ASS to be in front of if you have any 4-cap or above out, since they make good targets. Given the prevalence of weenie decks, a Hostile Takeover deck would certainly not be a guaranteed tourney win though - as soon as someone didn't bother to bid on their own vampire, it would slow down enormously. Also the problem of what do you do when your predator's pool gain or weenie deck starts outbidding you? =) >> Millicent Smith, Puritan Vampire Hunter - burns a blocked vamp. >> Maybe tourney playable. Mostly just slows down the table a bit. >> Not tourney dominating. > >This is even less abusable than Society of Leopold. You don't >get to choose the vamp that burns. You don't even get to choose >whose vamp it will be. And it's unique. And it comes back to >burn your vamp if you get blocked. ooo, look out for Millicent in intercept decks though. Sometimes she is just what you need to bring those horrible fast decks to a halt and give you time to administer more beatings. Weenie decks, unfortunately, can easily burn her and probably will just to get her off the table and get the speed back up. [ quoted text not captured ]

On Wed, 12 May 1999 11:23:40 +0200, Jens Niemann <nie...@ike.uni-stuttgart.de> wrote: >mboh...@shout.net wrote: > >> In article <3737F0A4...@ike.uni-stuttgart.de>, >> Jens Niemann <nie...@ike.uni-stuttgart.de> wrote: >Now if you start talking about cards with better-than-average >cost effectivity, you start making sense. Wake falls into this >category as does Freak Drive and Zip Gun. Would you please name >others? I'll bet you a Kruegl of your favorite Pils that I can >name a common that is as good as any rare you name. > >-i wonder why i always have to name cards... isn't one enough? >-immortal grapple, anarch troublemaker, art museum & similar, >-golconda, hostile takeover. these come to my mind. now must we start the >-discussion of which of the above falls into this category and which not? >-isn't it a fact that there _are_ good rare cards worth using multiples >-of in your deck? No, one is NOT enough, Jens. You are asking that sweeping, MAJOR rules changes be made that will completely restructure the entire game. Just because you can find two or three rare cards that are eminently worth using multiples (lots) of is not sufficient justification to overturn four years' worth of play. I have trouble finding more than Freak Drive and IG. On with the show: Skin of Steel counters IG. Freak Drive is pointless if you stop the actions themselves. Anarch Troublemaker sucks - Misdirection is better. Art Museum & similar provide no major benefit for cost unless you get them early in the game - a factor of luck in the draw. Golconda is dubious these days, even in a Minion Tap/Golconda deck, because you suddenly don't have a vampire anymore that can do little things like block and deflect - the ability to take actions is very important. In any case, Sudden Reversal (common) counters it. Hostile Takeover - countered by a number of things besides Sudden Reversal, but weenie decks will ignore it totally. Better than average cost to effectiveness? Sometimes. Overpowered? Nah. Not in the least bit. Worthy of making sweeping major rules changes? ABSOLUTELY not. >-you make me glad today. you just gave me a good point. >-you say social charm is a good card? i agree. i prefer legal >-manipulations but social charm is good. you deem it better? >-just fine. now i throw entrancement into the discussion. >-if social charm is a good card, then entrancement is even better. No. You gain no pool for your bleed with a superior Entrancement, unlike both Legal Manipulations and Social Charm. And allies are not seen very frequently, so it is -very- likely that your Entrancement's secondary purpose will be useless. >-wanna get rid of that nasty succubus? get it with no slot cost >-in your deck that features social charm for a standard. >-just replace your 6 social charms for 6 entrancements >-(after all, 6 out of 90 cards isn't that much) and your deck >-gets better. this is exactly the situation that i am talking about >-when promoting a CL for rares. That would produce a much weaker deck, however. The pool gain in Presence bleed decks is not to be underestimated - those 6 Entrancements are 6 pool you WON'T be getting. I could see putting one Entrancement in. Two if you knew you were in a heavy-ally environment. But frankly, with a weenie Social Charm deck, you don't need to worry about allies - just run them over. [ quoted text not captured ]

Jens Niemann gets to the point in message <37398138...@ike.uni-stuttgart.de>... I'm going to number your claims here for simplicity and clarity... >i claim that: >1. "a deck with rare cards will beat the same deck without rare cards more than 50% of >time" >this equals to: >1. a. "a deck with rare cards is better than the same deck without rare cards" >and just to be not misunderstand, i don't mean: >1. b. "each and every deck with rare cards is better than the same deck without rare >cards" >i just mean there are decks, and not a negligible number, to which the above >applies. >and i am talking about cases in where both players have equal skill. otherwise the >effects would possibly be not measurable because one could not calculate the skill >out of the statistic. the goal of this measurement would be to obtain the quality of >the deck, not the player. Yet you want to incorporate this rule on the grounds that it will attract new, inexperienced players? If the effect of rare 2CL is only measurable in the above circumstances, wouldn't it's impact will be all but invisible to the inexperienced player...? > >> >> Answer to Q1: They aren't. I don't know who told you that, but he is wrong. >> You should sit around and watch to get some ideas and see if you like it. >> Answer to Q2: Your chances are determined by skill and luck. They have nothing >> to do with the resources you've spent. I don't know who told you that, but he >> is wrong. You should sit around and watch to get some ideas and see if you like >> it. > >thanks for you opinion. i won't comment on that, except that there are people with >other opinions (it has to do with the resources spent as well as it has to do with >skill and luck). and i will not decide who of you is wrong or right (after all i >neither make the rules nor know better). an experiment could prove both theories, >but sadly we cannot attempt such. > This cuts to it as well. You've stated that the outcome of debate on the questions posed will determine whether the rare 2CL should be implemented, but here you state that the ground for decision is a matter of opinion. You'd have WotC change the base rules of competitive play based on your (unpopular) opinion? As to whether it can be demonstrated, Iets see what information we can gather about that. Tournament winning decks have been posted to the newsgroup for some time. A compilation of the rarity breakdown of those decks would go far to showing exactly where deck construction trends stand. Note, this would merely be raw data. I would expect an even split, with heavy commons decks and rare intensive decks taking an even number of victories. We'd need a way to quantify a deck's reliance on rares (number per card type, number of rares overall, etc.) An experiment could also be set up on JOL. (another neglected resource for new players who don't want to invest $$$. It's FREE Jens, and gives everyone access to unlimited quantities of EVERY card...) It would take a while to work out, but similar deck types with and without rares could be agreed upon, and pitted against each other in glorious conflict ;-) >> > i would like to see more people playing jyhad. on the last tourney i attended >> > were 7 participants. that's frustrating... >> >> That is frustrating, yes. Hell, I don't even have tournaments at all here. But >> I don't think the lack of distribution or interest has anything to do with card >> rarities or the lack of card limits. > >i can assure you that in Stuttgart, it _has_ to do. This could be a consequence of your own opinions tainting how others view V:TES in your area. Where I live, new players are ecstatic at the low cost of Jyhad, and how playable their small investments are. >but i admit that i don't know of >other places, and people have different opinions otherwhere. >thank you all for your interest and contributions to this thread. >my resume so far is the following: Return to my numbering; >2. some people like NL, some not > Agreed. Typically, players who came from other CCG's prefer CL in some form. I don't know of any CL groups which, after switching to NL for at least 10 games, ever went back to their original format. Are there any out there? Lurkers? Hello?....<tumbleweed rolls by>.... >i would like to point out that i in no way want to force people into having to play >in a tournament environment that they don't like (maybe this is why the rebuttals >have been quite overwhelming, and not always factual). Responders are posting based on personal experience and results of past debate on the newsgroup. There's nothing that could be more factual. > >if anybody (except me) favors a CL of any kind (oh btw. i thought my 'rare CL' was a >rather soft limit, not toppling the whole tournament scene) i would like to make >another proposal: > >officially offer two different formats. one with a CL and one without. >is diversity that bad? This is an old discussion, as well. With the limited amount of resouces available to the Jyhad gaming community at this time, diversity can be bad. If V:TES were as large as M:tG, it could support additional formats, but at this time, there is enough trouble getting recognition for _any_ V:TES tournament. CL tournaments occur, they merely aren't sanctioned by DCI (and thus lower the visibility of the game). I'd personally like to see a sanctioned sealed deck format added, before a CL format, due to it's _higher_ ability to level the playing field for new players (when compared to _both_ NL and CL environments). [ quoted text not captured ]

Patrick Harris wrote in message <3739B26B...@alpinetaxi.com>... >It does have to do with all of those, true. But skill and luck have so much more of an >effect than do rare cards. <grin...>:-) That's it!! I've changed my mind. I'm now all in favor of a rare 2CL. My only provision is that there also be a skill and luck limit placed on every player in rare 2CL tournaments. That's what we really need!!! No player may play with more skill, or attain a greater level of luck, that the mean weighted average of all other players in the tournament. Ahh!!! A perfectly level competitive field. Nirvana is attained.... R. David Zopf announces his R2C/SLL (rare 2 card/skill & luck limited)V:TES tournament format. Who's signing up for the first World Nationals??? Come one come all to the great state of North Carolina (yeah, right), and be a part of history... [ quoted text not captured ]

mbohlman wrote in message ... >So let's limit the commons! After all, you have to have rares >to counter them, so let's limit the commons so people don't >need as many rares. Then we can make the maximum deck size 0 >and go play euchre. > Yay, euchre!! There's a cost saver! About half a regular playing card deck, and you're set!! [ quoted text not captured ]

Jens Niemann wrote: >that comes close. let me be more particular. i claim that: >"a deck with rare cards will beat the same deck without rare cards more than 50% of >time" >this equals to: >"a deck with rare cards is better than the same deck without rare cards" >and just to be not misunderstand, i don't mean: >"each and every deck with rare cards is better than the same deck without rare >cards" >i just mean there are decks, and not a negligible number, to which the above >applies. >and i am talking about cases in where both players have equal skill. All right, if I understand you correctly, you are saying: For all decks without rare cards, there exists a similar deck with rare cards that is better. If that is the case, I challenge your assumption. Here is a weenie dom bleed deck, posted by Martin Ralya: [ Crypt ] 2x Royce--1 dom 1x Christine Boscacci--2 dom 2x Mustafa Rahman--2 dom 2x Ohanna--2 dom 2x Samson--2 dom 1x Brooke--3 dom 1x Cameron--3 dom 1x Jing Wei--3 dom 12 vampires (average 2.08, worst 11) [ Library ] 14x Misdirection 2x Information Highway 14x Scouting Mission 8x Govern the Unaligned 13x Bonding 13x Threats 8x Conditioning 7x Dodge 7x Deflection 4x Delaying Tactics 90 cards (16 master, 22 action, 34 action mod., 7 combat, 11 reaction) This deck contains no rare cards. It can be improved upon, but without rare cards. I challenge you to create a similar deck that is better because of the inclusion of rare cards. Post the entire deck. John Baker

Jens Niemann wrote in message <373854B3...@ike.uni-stuttgart.de>... > >mboh...@shout.net wrote: > >> In article <3737EB87...@ike.uni-stuttgart.de>, >> Jens Niemann <nie...@ike.uni-stuttgart.de> wrote: >> > now i wouldn't call that niche effects. for instance, many powerful >> > pool-gaining cards are rares. now while you can count on non-rare >> > pool-gaining, it would definitely enhance your deck by using rares. >> >> Many? I can think of one: Slave Auction. And I certainly feel >> that there are better alternatives like Blood Doll and STI. > >one is even enough. but i's add eco terrorists and similar stuff to the >list. I think Jens has a point here. Eco-terrorists and its cousins are Rare cards that enhance decks and cannot be replaced by a common. Unfortunately for his overall argument, a 2-CL limit on Eco-terrorists would be totally ineffectual, because almost no one puts more than 2 Eco-terrorists in their deck anyway. It just isn't that useful a card, since it's unique. I really don't like the 2-CL on Rares, since it either hampers valid deck designs (IG) or fails to change the environment at all (most other rares). -Mark Langsdorf Former Jyhad Archivist http://www.io.com/~mlangsdo/RPGs/Jyhad/

In article <37394B6A...@ike.uni-stuttgart.de>, Jens Niemann <nie...@ike.uni-stuttgart.de> writes >i think this is example enough. who would be able to field 12 IGs? I can field nine, which is enough for my tastes, and the last two I got cost 50p each.... about 35 US cents each. Then there're always the people who *swap* cards. I have a friend who used to play *exclusively* Gangrel decks (he had a particular penchant for the Garou). So he swapped his cards so that that was what he had. He had a damn sight less cards than I had (probably about 8000 in my collection at the time), but he could have decks with quite a few Renegade Garou, or such, in simply because he'd swapped his cards. -- James Coupe (Prince of Mercia, England) Vampire: Elder Kindred Network http://madnessnetwork.hexagon.net http://www.obeah.demon.co.uk

Jens Niemann <nie...@ike.uni-stuttgart.de> wrote: > i want to attract more people by showing them that you can play > jyhad without having to spend your last bucks on it. That's the case now. What you propose was already tried by DCI. ...and as I pointed out a couple of days ago, it leads down the road to the CCG graveyard. > i think this is example enough. who would be able to field 12 IGs? > only very few. the rest of us is limited to other deck building startegies. As was I pointed out, I could easily field 12. In fact, I can field 15 IG's and I've given some away. Granted about a third of those are Sabbat versions, but the cards still play the same. On the other hand, I can prolly only field about 3 ToRIII's. > maybe it's different in other places. up here the people say: > "why should i play jyhad?" My answer is because it's a better game. Most important to me, however, is that the quality of people that play Jyhad is higher than the quality of people that play Magic. I know this sounds elitist, but how many Jyhad players have you seen sit in a circle on the pavement outside a con like a bunch of crack babies? Most Jyhad players are a little old for such nonsense. > here are so many other games to spend money into, and how will > i compete against players that have all rares available in numbers > to enhance theior tourney decks?" This is the case with _all_ CCG's. However, with Jyhad, rares won't always win the game. The most scary decks are built using commons and uncommons. That's not the case with most other CCG's. You're trying to equate the evils of cocaine to chocolate. Noal [ quoted text not captured ]

On Sun, 9 May 1999, Vince Johnson wrote: > What I want to propose is the possibility that future (if they do come) > expansions to be single rarity sets or a level that's close to that (Vamps > and Library cards being distinctly different like they are is what I mean). > Does this not eliminate all argument over the game as the availability as > I've seen it has brewed down to the pro NL people stating you can make decks > out of commons? And since everything would basically be common, would this > not mean your argument is satisfied as well as the primary argument that > some rares are "inherently powerful" because there would be no rares? > Also an argument that has been posed is that Jyhad was designed as a truly > even game. If it was truly designed as a level playing field type of game, > why did they opt to not follow this line of rarity from the beginning? OK Dude. There are plenty of good reasons why Jyhad has and *should* have cards of different levels of rarity. To keep things simple, I will discuss the Jyhad set only in my comments below Let me start with the most obvious: Some cards are Unique. You can only have one of them in play at a time. It makes no sense to put any more than one or two of them in a single deck. With a card like Blood Doll, you can easily make use of 10 of them in a single deck, but not so with Elder Library. You do not *need* as many Unique cards as you need non-Unique cards. To have these cards at the same level of rarity would be a waste. In Jyhad, this rule is followed almost without exception: All unique cards are uncommon or rare...never common. The only exception to this is The Barrens. I presume that the main reason The Barrens is common is that it is the perfect card top help make a poorly focussed starter deck playable. Now heres another consideration: Some cards are "general-use" cards, which will be playable in just about any deck. Others, however, require specialized decks in order to be playable. Obviously, you will need alot more of something like Wake, usab6le in just about any deck and which you therefore might put in multiple decks, than you will need something only playable in some narrowly focussed Nosferatu Political deck (which the typical player will not have more than one of at a given time). Take, for example, Art Museum. It is a pretty good card, but that is *not* why it is rare. It is rare because in order to make it useful, you need a Toreador in your Active region AND in your inactive region. In order to make maximum use of it, you have to have enough cards to construct an all-Toreador crypt -- which practically requires that you have a full set of vampires. A beginning player, who does not even have all the vampires yet, simply does not need to have this card at all, much less have it in multiples. Similarly, it is only right that KRC, which has no requirement and can be used in any political deck, should be more common than Parity Shift, which can only be used by one's princes, assuming one has one in play. The above playability factor is extremely important for enabling people to make playable (though not necessarily competitive) decks from a limited card supply. Different rarities is the only thing that has enabled the Sabbat set to do so well as a stand-alone game. The Sealed Deck Sabbat tournament format with is becoming popular, works as well as it does only because most of the cards received are commons, which have far less playability requirements than uncommon or rare cards. If one were to receive equal proportions of rares and uncommons in each booster, then it would be far more difficult to construct playable decks from just a few boosters. This is not merely important for tournaments. It is also essential for recruiting new players to the game, allowing them to get hooked on the fun after a minimal initial investment. The playability factor discussed above, as it relates to rarity, is present in all the sets. It is particularly prevalent in the Sabbat set, which must juggle 10 different clans, 13 different disciplines, and 4 different titles, and provide cards specific to all of them. The result is that almost every uncommon or rare has some sort of play requirement that would make it very hard to constuct a deck from a limited set. Fortunately, what you mostly get are commons, which have no extraordinary play requirements. Other cards are rare for obvious reasons that do not directly relate to anything above. Take Praxis Siezures, for instance. These relate to the uniqueness issue above, but even if their effects did not lead to contestation one would hardly need for all 9 of these cards to be common. While it is conceivable that one might need 18 Praxis Siezures for your various decks, this would only come to 2 of each. One is hardly going to need 20 copies of Praxis Siezure: Washington DC the way you might need 20 copies of Conservative Agitation for your various decks. It is only proper that these cards should be rare. Another need that is served by the traditional rarity scheme is that of juggling card *variety* with the need for *multiple* cards in reasonably focussed decks. Strategy in Jyhad depends on combos, and even in a 40-card deck, you cannot rely on pulling your planned combo unless you put at least 3 or 4 or each needed card. There are about 430 cards total in the original set. If all were of equal rarity, you would have to purchase 1200 to 1600 cards before you could count on having 3 or 4 an *any* cards you needed to make a focussed deck. With the rarity scheme, however, you do obtain multiples of the *common* cards after a much smaller total card investment. The price paid, of course, is that the new player has a much smaller *variety* of cards -- but at least he has *enough* of those cards he has to make playable decks. WOTC expects, of course, that the new player will eventually get bored of playing the same decks, and invest in a greater card collection in pursuit of greater variety. Which brings me to another aspect of Jyhad's rarity scheme: the tendency for rare cards, within specific disciplines, to represent atypical abilities within that discipline. Most of the disciplines in Jyhad seem to have a basic focus that is well represented by the common cards. For instance: Auspex has intercept; Obfuscate has stealth; Fortitude has damage prevention; Potence inflicts increased damage; Celerity is best at maneuvers, presses, and additional strikes; Dominate is great for bleeding; and Presence for Voting and Combat avoidance. Once the new player has gotten used to (and perhaps a bit bored by) these trends, he may, by expanding his card collection, explore some more esoteric possibilities of the discipline he chooses too play with. Thus we have rare Obfuscate combat cards like Behind You; rare celerity bleed cards like Cat Burglary; rare dominate cards like Far Mastery; rare Fortitude crds like Freak Drive and Day Operation; Auspex vote cards like Telepathic Vote Counting; Another consideration in determining if cards are rare is ease of use. Take Burst of Sunlight, for instance. While this card is certainly *playable" by a newbie, he is likely, while playing it, to do as much damage to himself as to his opponent. The card makes sense only as part of some combo that includes damage prevention, or get out of torpor free actions. You have to have the right cards in the right combinations to play this card *effectively*, and you are likely to need to have a considerable card collection before you can put together a reasonably focussed deck. In the meantime, a new player woule do better putting the much more common thaumaturgy cards, like Theft of Vitae, in his beginning Tremere decks. I could probably go on. The short of it is that the traditional rarity scheme is a good idea for a whole host of reasons that you have neglected to consider, and perhaps for a few more that I have not thought of either. You clearly have not thought this through well enought o level any sweeping criticisms. Lupus Australis ____ ____ \ \----/ / |()__()| __\ __ /__ / __\()/__ \ |/ \==/ \| | || |

Richard Zopf wrote: > That's it!! I've changed my mind. I'm now all in favor of a rare 2CL. My > only provision is that there also be a skill and luck limit placed on every > player in rare 2CL tournaments. That's what we really need!!! No player > may play with more skill, or attain a greater level of luck, that the mean > weighted average of all other players in the tournament. Ahh!!! A > perfectly level competitive field. Nirvana is attained.... i love that. tournaments used to be events to measure one's skills, not one's luck or wealth. if anything would limit the luck in a game without limiting its attractiveness, i would gladly agree. just the skill limit somehow adversely affects my understanding of a real tournament. would you change your new format to allow for more skill competition? [ quoted text not captured ]

Richard Zopf wrote: > Jens Niemann gets to the point in message > < > An experiment could also be set up on JOL. (another neglected resource for > new players who don't want to invest $$$. It's FREE Jens, and gives > everyone access to unlimited quantities of EVERY card...) It would take a > while to work out, but similar deck types with and without rares could be > agreed upon, and pitted against each other in glorious conflict ;-) short comment: i like JOL as an idea. just let me say that not everybody has access to the internet or even is skilled with computers. it takes a real long time to play even for those who have access... > This could be a consequence of your own opinions tainting how others view > V:TES in your area. Where I live, new players are ecstatic at the low cost > of Jyhad, and how playable their small investments are. yep, they used to here, too. but when the issue was about tournament play, it looked entirely different. > > Agreed. Typically, players who came from other CCG's prefer CL in some > form. I don't know of any CL groups which, after switching to NL for at > least 10 games, ever went back to their original format. Are there any out > there? Lurkers? Hello?....<tumbleweed rolls by>.... i will take that point and bring it to my local players. > >officially offer two different formats. one with a CL and one without. > >is diversity that bad? > > This is an old discussion, as well. With the limited amount of resouces > available to the Jyhad gaming community at this time, diversity can be bad. > If V:TES were as large as M:tG, it could support additional formats, but at > this time, there is enough trouble getting recognition for _any_ V:TES > tournament. CL tournaments occur, they merely aren't sanctioned by DCI (and > thus lower the visibility of the game). I'd personally like to see a > sanctioned sealed deck format added, before a CL format, due to it's > _higher_ ability to level the playing field for new players (when compared > to _both_ NL and CL environments). i'd like to see that, too. if people are willing to participate in non-sanctioned tourneys, they would surely participate, too, if it was sanctioned. (so i think that 2 or 3 different formats would not result in weakening recognition for V:TES). [ quoted text not captured ]

mbohlman wrote: > You seem to agree that this is not the case, and that the > advantage gained by a person with a larger collection isn't > that large. But then you say stuff like replacing 6 Social > Charm with 6 Entrancement is a no brainer or that 12 IG > automatically makes a deck win. heck, you got me wrong again! i don't know how else i can depict my views in plain english (being a german). i say: mr. suitcase has the choice of replacing 6 SCs with 6 entrancements, if he thinks the environment is better suited for the latter, thereby enhancing his chances. i said: being able to field 12 IGs allow you to be more competitive in certain environments. if you actually succeed or fail is of lesser importance. in M:TG we have seen the very same deck rampage over a tournament and got smacked down the very next, when everybody else expected just this deck style and built/tuned their decks to counteract it. i never said anything, in any of my postings, that xyz rare cards automatically make a deck win or any similar stuff (surely not, because i'm not at all a radical person). i am talking about tiny chances for each card that sum up to, perhaps still small, but non-negligible, chances with more cards inside a 60-90 card tournament deck; that the unlimited availability of cards _can_ (hope i did it right this time) give advantages to the ones who can afford so and are doing so (and in the long run, accumulated over many events, it eventually _will_ give the one, the other, or all of them advantages). i can't hear anymore you saying i said something like 'the rares always win'. why don't you try to understand what i am saying? is it really so much kisuaheli and so little english? (your arguments would be much more comprehensive if you commented on what i really said, and not on what i did not, or differently, said.) honestly, mike, i'd like to know if my words really were to be interpreted as "12 IG automatically makes a deck win". if so i take it on my head but otherwise i just wonder why you keep on distorting my words. it seems so unnecessary, as if you needed to twist my sentences into a form that too obviously does look wrong. i accept that at some point my words were poorly worded and prone to misunderstanding but when i look at the above i just don't realize it. i'm already on the way to assuming the common standpoint, i.e. that the effects of unlimited rares are marginal compared to the most frequently played tourney cards (well, i'm not convinced, but would be inclined into believing so), and that limitation dampens sales of cards, thereby draining the company support from the game. see you don't need to twist my words. i will consider your arguments even better if you don't, becasue i then know that you understood me, and i want to understand you. i personally can perfectly live with NL, as probably the rest of the internet jyhad players. i just don't want to discuss on the basis of misinterpretation. i want that others understand my explanations and why i came up with this idea of a rare CL. if what i say is constantly twisted then how will you and others really understand it? jesus, this thread is costing me so much time, i think i'm against my own proposal just to get my work done! [ quoted text not captured ]

"Derek S. Ray" wrote: > No, one is NOT enough, Jens. You are asking that sweeping, MAJOR > rules changes be made that will completely restructure the entire > game. Just because you can find two or three rare cards that are > eminently worth using multiples (lots) of is not sufficient > justification to overturn four years' worth of play. I have trouble > finding more than Freak Drive and IG. the question is here: can we call it a sweeping rules change if we can just find X (2 or 3 you say, i'd bet on up to 10, still few) cards that are truly affected by the rule? recalling my argument: players with 10 IGs wouldn't be much affected, players without 10 IGs would no longer think that they just can't build a better combat deck because they don't have the resources, and all players in general would now reckon that IG is no threat to their deck. > > That would produce a much weaker deck, however. The pool gain in > Presence bleed decks is not to be underestimated - those 6 > Entrancements are 6 pool you WON'T be getting. I could see putting when i play weenie-bleed, 6 social charms would rather deliver 2 pool (inferior, blocked, not drawn at all) than 6. > > one Entrancement in. Two if you knew you were in a heavy-ally > environment. But frankly, with a weenie Social Charm deck, you don't > need to worry about allies - just run them over. that's true. it's not that i get an ally instead of 1 pool - this is always a good deal. it's that i get an ally and do _not_ bleed my prey for 2 and gain a pool. of course, if my prey owns the ally, it's always a good deal. a word about allies. i can't remember having played any game at all where no allies were on the table. i myself almost never play with allies but others do (and maybe they play it just because they think nobody steals them away). if they do, it's usually a cool ally such as a succubus or thadius zho, no street gang rubbish. stealing such an ally is particularly tempting. [ quoted text not captured ]

dhar...@my-dejanews.com wrote: > This shows me that your strategic thinking lacks depth. > > If you are playing weenies with Presence, that blood gets expensive. > If they run out of blood from Legal Manip (and the Aire of Elation > you stack on it) they will have to hunt. Meanwhile, the weenie using > Social Charm will continue to bleed more frequently. the case isn't as easy as you make it seem. an example: if i get all my bleeds through, i agree that SC has advantages over LM. but if only part get through (too many wakes, too little misdirections, whatever...) it might be better to hunt one turn then bleed stronger the next turn. so much about the depths of strategy... > > i said: there are powerful cards in all rarities. but rares are much > > harder to come by, and without a CL impossible for most players to > > obtain in numbers. > > How does imposing a CL for rares translate into players getting more > of them? I must not be up on my "new math". Perhaps you can clarify > this line of thought better. CL math: 1) it is easier to obtain small numbers than large numbers 2) a CL limits the number of cards of one type you can play in a deck to a small number 3) a CL limits the number of cards you need to obtain to construct decks 4) with a CL, more people will be able to obtain the small numbers legal in tournament decks (as opposed to large numbers in NL formats) perhaps it was clearer from the start if i extended 'numbers' to 'necessary numbers' (even without explicitly stating what 'necessary' means, but i thought it would complicate, rather than simplify it). was that so difficult to conclude? did i really have to draw the calculator? are we debating seriously about rules and its impact about the game or are we just doing syntax analysis? honestly, does anybody truly contest the assumption that playing under a CL is less costly than playing NL? (hint: it can be proven with math, and quite easily, so better prove it yourself) [ quoted text not captured ]

Lupus Australis wrote: > [snap] i agree to what you say. if wotc keeps on that strategy, a rare CL as proposed by me would be truly unnecessary (as i already pointed out with my statement that 'if all rares were unique i would never has the idea of a rare CL'). it is a very good design to make rares powerful but 'iherently limited' use cards. cards that just don't make sense to put 6,8 or even 12 times into your deck. still, there are _some_ cards remaining that are rare (and if i remember right some uncommon cards are actually no more common than some rares) _and_ are not inherently limited. these are just few cards, as discussed, such as immortal grapple or freak drive. i would definitely prefer if such cards were common and some other card of limited usage were rare instead but this is not the case. i would recommend wotc designers to stick to the scheme you outlined, and perhaps reprint generally useful rares as commons. this will rather increase sales than turning people away from V:TES. and with such an expansion, any monetary arguments about CL will fade away. i think everybody will be content with such an expansion. [ quoted text not captured ]

Jens Niemann wrote: > i never said anything, in any of my postings, that xyz rare cards > automatically make a deck win or any similar stuff (surely not, because > i'm not at all a radical person). i am talking about tiny chances for > each card that sum up to, perhaps still small, but non-negligible, > chances with more cards inside a 60-90 card tournament deck; that the > unlimited availability of cards _can_ (hope i did it right this time) > give advantages to the ones who can afford so and are doing so (and in > the long run, accumulated over many events, it eventually _will_ give the > one, the other, or all of them advantages). > [snip] > i want > that others understand my explanations and why i came up with this idea > of a rare CL. if what i say is constantly twisted then how will you and > others really understand it? I understand the reasons for your proposal: some people are penalized (in a way) because they don't have access to the same cards (useful rares, in particular) that other players do. That is inherent in CCGs. But the solution (a 2CL on rares) doesn't really work well for several reasons: *) Not everyone even has 2 of every useful rare. Someone without *any* Protected Resources or Tomb of Ramses (for examples) will not be able to put 2 of those cards into her deck even if her deck would benefit from them. Therefore her decks that would benefit from them (by just a tiny, non-negligible bit) will be at a (tiny non-negligible) disadvantage to other decks that a built by players who _can_ put those cards into their decks. A card limit (2CL on rares, 4CL in general, etc.) chooses an arbitrary "spending level" - typically based on someone's personal experience. If everyone has 10 of every rare, then a 10CL on rares is adequate. If *any*one has *no* rares, then they would obviously benefit from a 0CL (ban) on rares. This arbitrary sort of rule is "Not a good thing". *) A CL on rares is problematic for cards like Immortal Grapple which are simultaneously rare and uncommon. *) A CL on rares is a logistical nightmare for tournament judges who have to go through each deck checking for violations. -- LSJ (vte...@wizards.com) VTES Net.Rep for Wizards of the Coast. Links to revised rulebook, rulings, errata, and tournament rules: http://www.wizards.com/VTES/VTES_Rules.html

Jens wrote: >>recalling my argument: players with 10 IGs wouldn't be much affected, players without 10 IGs would no longer think that they just can't build a better combat deck because they don't have the resources, and all players in general would now reckon that IG is no threat to their deck.>> Ok. You are completely losing me here. Does this passage mean that with a 2CL on Rares (assuming IG is Rare) would have a beneficial effect on game balance? If this is what you are saying, I must respectfully disagree. Without access to IG, S:CE becomes _way_ too powerful, and combat as a whole becomes painfully ineffective (in a situation where you can play with only 2 IG in a deck but your opponent can have15 Majesties, because they are common). Again, as I pointed out in a previous post, a 2CL on Rares accomplishes nothing but making some fringe strategies unplayable, makes S:CE too powerful, and does nothing to keep highly effective all common decks from eating the newbies (which is apparently your main concern). Thus, it is pointless. Peter D Bakija PD...@aol.com "I dunno, Marge. Trying is the first step towards failure." -Homer

Jens wrote: >>why allow an increased flexibility and more chances (of either winning or losing) to just selected persons when the rules for a game should be equal for all?>> The rules are equal for all. Only the resources are not. However, as Jyhad is probably one of the cheapest CCGs on the market currently (a box of boosters goes for about $10.00 US), this is a fairly moot point. As many people have pointed out, Jyhad is a CCG, and as such, availability of recources is always going to be an issue. If this is a huge problem for a player, they should reconsider their choice of entertainment. Again, there are countless games on the market that do not have any collectible aspect whatsoever, and as such, provides all the players invloved complete access to all recources from the get go--Titan, Star Fleet Battles, Diplomacy, Bridge. >>if i compare to games like bridge or skat, none of these gives mr. suitcase any extra opportunities.>> That is correct. Because they are not CCGs, where access to resources is a built in factor. As opposed to most other CCGs, however, Jyhad did a very good job of insuring that Commons were more useful than Rares, meaning that a player with limited resources (i.e. mostly commons) could compete against a guy with all the Rares in the world, simply because the rares aren't that important--it is the commons. >>with NL there is no limit, with a CL every player will soon have reached a point where he has all the cards to make any imaginable deck. and thus, equality of conditions is achieved among players. this way, tournament play is now _only_ determined by skill and luck. i like this idea. if others don't like it, i accept that.>> What you seem to be ignoring here is that the game was designed to be played NL, and when you introduce a CL, the game environment becomes skewed. Under a CL, Stealth and Bleed decks are *way* too effective and combat decks are way useless. By imposing a CL on this game, regardless of the reason, the end result is that certain deck designs become far more effective than they should be, and the entire balance of the game goes out the window. You honestly see mangling game balance in the name of getting two or three extra players (who were really offended by the NL...) in to the game? I fail to see how this is a good thing. [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <37411FF9...@ike.uni-stuttgart.de>, Jens Niemann <nie...@ike.uni-stuttgart.de> writes >why allow an increased flexibility and more chances (of either winning or >losing) to just selected persons when the rules for a game should be equal >for all? But it will never be equal to all. Luck, card shuffle, card cycling, diplomacy, actually owning even *one* copy of a card and such all play a part. [ quoted text not captured ]

On Mon, 17 May 1999 21:09:23 +0200 Jens Niemann <nie...@ike.uni-stuttgart.de> wrote: > dhar...@my-dejanews.com wrote: > NM> This shows me that your strategic thinking lacks depth. NM> If you are playing weenies with Presence, that blood gets NM> expensive. If they run out of blood from Legal Manip (and NM> the Aire of Elation you stack on it) they will have to hunt. NM> Meanwhile, the weenie using Social Charm will continue to NM> bleed more frequently. > the case isn't as easy as you make it seem. an example: if i get > all my bleeds through, i agree that SC has advantages over LM. but > if only part get through (too many wakes, too little misdirections, > whatever...) it might be better to hunt one turn then bleed > stronger the next turn. so much about the depths of strategy... But you're the one that said that LM was simply better than SC without any clarifications. Everyone else just pointed out that some situations indicate the opposite is true. It all depends entirely on your deck, and you can never make a blanket statement when you've got two similar cards like this. For example, Rat's Warning vs. Guard Dogs, Undead Strength vs. Pushing the Limit, Spirit's Touch vs. Precognition, Wake vs. Forced Awakening. NM> How does imposing a CL for rares translate into players getting NM> more of them? I must not be up on my "new math". Perhaps you NM> can clarify this line of thought better. > CL math: > 1) it is easier to obtain small numbers than large numbers True. However, bad luck (or good luck depending on the card) can give you large numbers of some rares while none of others. > 2) a CL limits the number of cards of one type you can play in a > deck to a small number 4 or 6 is hardly small. Your proposed 2 for rares is definitely small though. So much so that your odds of drawing either of your two copies becomes quite small. > 3) a CL limits the number of cards you need to obtain to construct > decks Yes, and no. I hate taking apart good decks to build other ones simply for the fact that the good decks have a few cards I don't have many copies of. > 4) with a CL, more people will be able to obtain the small numbers > legal in tournament decks (as opposed to large numbers in NL > formats) Not necessarily. If you have X amount of rares and as many commons as you could want, you will have to generally trade on a one to one ratio of rares with someone who has a similar size of collection. When you trade one of a card away, you are losing the potential of using that card in a future deck. The total number of rares does not change, only their distribution. Mr. Suitcase will still generally hold on to those "good" rares that he has so he can make multiple decks that utilize them. The only time this doesn't hold up is in a group that shares their cards in a pseudo-pool of all their cards. > honestly, does anybody truly contest the assumption that > playing under a CL is less costly than playing NL? (hint: Yes, I do. I don't have more than 2 of many Dark Sovereigns and Sabbat rares, and I play with NL. Under a CL, I wouldn't have bought any fewer cards, spending just as much money as I already have. It is only when you reach the point of having at least X of each card in your XCL that you would stop buying cards. > it can be proven with math, and quite easily, so better > prove it yourself) When one makes a hypothesis, it is up to you to prove it, not someone who holds your hypothesis to be false. [ quoted text not captured ]

On Mon, 17 May 1999 19:11:40 +0200 Jens Niemann <nie...@ike.uni-stuttgart.de> wrote: > heck, you got me wrong again! i don't know how else i can depict my > views in plain english (being a german). i say: mr. suitcase has the > choice of replacing 6 SCs with 6 entrancements, if he thinks the > environment is better suited for the latter, thereby enhancing his > chances. i said: being able to field 12 IGs allow you to be more > competitive in certain environments. if you actually succeed or fail > is of lesser importance. I guess that's the problem I'm having. Why institute something to try to limit Mr. Suitcase when he may not have an advantage at all? That makes absolutely no sense to me, so I didn't think that was what you were saying. [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <37404DCC...@ike.uni-stuttgart.de>, Jens Niemann <nie...@ike.uni-stuttgart.de> writes >in >M:TG we have seen the very same deck rampage over a tournament and got >smacked down the very next, when everybody else expected just this deck >style and built/tuned their decks to counteract it. Actually, currently what we're seeing is one deck rampaging a tournament (Necropotence) and lots of other people making the same deck, and it killing everyone and then killing everyone some more. And some more. Necro-potence is too good by itself, and the cards they keep introducing with the new sets (when things like Cadaverous Bloom drop out of play) are hideous. I mean, Wizards do, of course, *know* exactly what they're doing - but they can hide behind the 4CL and the DCI (who control banned lists etc. though they are WotC wearing another hat). It's not hard to see that Necropotence is a highly popular card and that, as such, all new cards would have to be weighed against it. [ quoted text not captured ]

mbohlman wrote: > I guess that's the problem I'm having. Why institute something > to try to limit Mr. Suitcase when he may not have an advantage at > all? That makes absolutely no sense to me, so I didn't think that > was what you were saying. why allow an increased flexibility and more chances (of either winning or losing) to just selected persons when the rules for a game should be equal for all? if i compare to games like bridge or skat, none of these gives mr. suitcase any extra opportunities. with NL there is no limit, with a CL every player will soon have reached a point where he has all the cards to make any imaginable deck. and thus, equality of conditions is achieved among players. this way, tournament play is now _only_ determined by skill and luck. i like this idea. if others don't like it, i accept that. -- [ quoted text not captured ]

mbohlman wrote: > When one makes a hypothesis, it is up to you to prove it, not > someone who holds your hypothesis to be false. ok then 1) imposed XCL, X>0 2) assumption of X=1 3) => requirement to build all possible decks: 1 complete set 4) increase X:=X+1 5) => requirement to build all possible decks: 2 complete sets and so forth. this is completely independent upon the fact that you might, at some point, not wish to buy more cards although the CL (or NL) would allow this. result: cost_CL <= cost_NL it may be equal at best, but rarely somebody would just stop at the point of a given CL when NL is the game format. so the average player will always spend more money on cards in a NL format. the magnitude of X is still undetermined but should be related to the average funds available for buying cards. this is of course open to discussion, but there can be no discussion that playing under a CL is less costly. note: this little evidence of course is not reason enough to actually impose a CL. it is just one argument of the 'pro CL' side that cannot be disproved. now if you argument against a CL, you can legally say "it's not that important" or you can say "other arguments speaking against it weigh more" but you can _not_ say "it's not true". and this is the problem that i was having with the responses i got. [ quoted text not captured ]

On Tue, 18 May 1999 10:08:25 +0200 Jens Niemann <nie...@ike.uni-stuttgart.de> wrote: > mbohlman wrote: > > > I guess that's the problem I'm having. Why institute something > > to try to limit Mr. Suitcase when he may not have an advantage at > > all? That makes absolutely no sense to me, so I didn't think that > > was what you were saying. > why allow an increased flexibility and more chances (of either > winning or losing) to just selected persons when the rules for a > game should be equal for all? if i compare to games like bridge or > skat, none of these gives mr. suitcase any extra opportunities. with > NL there is no limit, with a CL every player will soon have reached > a point where he has all the cards to make any imaginable deck. and Not necessarily will it be "soon" or ever. People with whom you trade have to continue to by cards to bring more rares into the mix. If no one is buying more cards, no more rares will be becoming available. And hence, not everyone will have a full X set of every rare. At one point, your stated goal was bringing new players into the game. These new players don't magically get X of every rare in a XCL system. No matter what, some people are always going to have more cards than others. And you more or less agree with the fact that having more rares does not necessarily give you an advantage. > thus, equality of conditions is achieved among players. this way, > tournament play is now _only_ determined by skill and luck. i like > this idea. if others don't like it, i accept that. If people say they want equality of conditions, they shouldn't be playing a collectible card game. It's as simple as that. Everyone has the same opportunity to make a tournament competitive deck under NL whether they have boxes upon boxes of cards or a stack of commons for a very common-based, competitive deck. [ quoted text not captured ]

On Tue, 18 May 1999 10:31:09 +0200 Jens Niemann <nie...@ike.uni-stuttgart.de> wrote: JN> i said: there are powerful cards in all rarities. but rares are JN> much harder to come by, and without a CL impossible for most JN> players to obtain in numbers. NM> How does imposing a CL for rares translate into players getting NM> more of them? I must not be up on my "new math". Perhaps you NM> can clarify this line of thought better. JN> CL math: JN> 1) it is easier to obtain small numbers than large numbers JN> 2) a CL limits the number of cards of one type you can play in a JN> deck to a small number JN> 3) a CL limits the number of cards you need to obtain to JN> construct decks JN> 4) with a CL, more people will be able to obtain the small JN> numbers legal in tournament decks (as opposed to large numbers JN> in NL formats) Further clarification: > 1) imposed XCL, X>0 > 2) assumption of X=1 > 3) => requirement to build all possible decks: 1 complete set > 4) increase X:=X+1 > 5) => requirement to build all possible decks: 2 complete sets > and so forth. this is completely independent upon the fact that you > might, at some point, not wish to buy more cards although the CL (or > NL) would allow this. > result: cost_CL <= cost_NL You are still assuming that people will buy until they have X of every rare under an XCL. This isn't the case. People will either buy until they do have X of every rare or until they wish to spend no more on the game. I think that most people will stop spending more money on the game before they reach X of all their rares. Why? It follows closely with why people stop buying cards under a NL. The odds continue to decrease that they will get rares that they want and can use with the more cards that they buy. > it may be equal at best, but rarely somebody would just stop at the > point of a given CL when NL is the game format. so the average > player will always spend more money on cards in a NL format. > the magnitude of X is still undetermined but should be related to > the average funds available for buying cards. this is of course open > to discussion, but there can be no discussion that playing under a > CL is less costly. Determining the average amount of money spent aside (which is an impossibility), there can be a discussion that playing under a CL is less costly. You cannot automatically assume that every person will buy cards until they have reached X under an XCL. And what about the time between when they have zero cards and they might possibly reach X? > note: this little evidence of course is not reason enough to > actually impose a CL. it is just one argument of the 'pro CL' side > that cannot be disproved. Sure it can. Because you cannot assume people will buy cards until they reach X. There will always be disparity because people will not have X for various reasons: 1) They have not spent enough money yet to reach X, but plan to try. 2) They will never spend enough money to reach X because they will never have the money to do so. 3) They do not wish to purchase that many cards because they don't want to spend the money to collect X. 4) Card distribution is not equal. It is just as likely that a person will get 1 of rare X while getting 5 of rare Y in 12 booster packs from various places with 1 rare each. And if the trading pool is not available to get that second copy, he will not get it until he buys more cards. This can roughly paraphrased as: Player A may buy 2 boxes of Expansion Z and have 2 copies of every rare while Player B has to buy 3 or 4 boxes to complete his two sets. You've already admitted that the argument that rares provide an advantage isn't that great if not negligible. You've also stated above that your theory about getting complete X sets isn't that big a deal. So why argue for a CL at all if your two of your arguments aren't so great? [ quoted text not captured ]

<lurk mode off> Jens Niemann wrote: > > mbohlman wrote: > > > I guess that's the problem I'm having. Why institute something > > to try to limit Mr. Suitcase when he may not have an advantage at > > all? That makes absolutely no sense to me, so I didn't think that > > was what you were saying. > > why allow an increased flexibility and more chances (of either winning or > losing) to just selected persons when the rules for a game should be equal > for all? if i compare to games like bridge or skat, none of these gives Wherever did you come up with that idea? Games should be equal for all? It certainly does not pertain to CCG:s and in my opinion to very few games. What about having time to practice playing the game once you have the necessary resources? What about some people having a knack for certain things? Everything is _not_ fair and equal, live with it. As several persons have pointed out, Jyhad is one of the cheapest CCG:s out there - money is not _that_ big of an issue and if it is to someone they should probably switch to another game. > mr. suitcase any extra opportunities. with NL there is no limit, with a CL > every player will soon have reached a point where he has all the cards to > make any imaginable deck. and thus, equality of conditions is achieved > among players. this way, tournament play is now _only_ determined by skill > and luck. i like this idea. if others don't like it, i accept that. Do you realize how many cards you need to buy and trade "to reach a point where one has all the cards to make any imaginable deck"? I certainly have not reached that point and my collection contains 4-5000 cards. /Kristofer <lurk mode on> -- Home address: Kristofer Wårell E-mail: kriw...@student.luth.se Vänortsvägen 4/22 977 54 LULEÅ Phone: 0920/23 27 14 Cellphone: 0705/23 69 97

mbohlman wrote: > I think part of the problem, Jens, is that you aren't quite > using the right words to express your thoughts in English. > That's not to say your English is very good (it appears to be > quite good, and definitely better than my German these days), > but there seem to still be learning some of the intracacies > and connotations of different words. point taken. being a non-native speaker, i have other feelings for nuances (and intricacies, different connotations)... i really tried not to build up any of my arguments on nuances but on firm facts or hypotheses. yet i had the impression that, whenever i was going to be even more specific, i got misunderstood even more.). but this reply of yours really brings light... > As far as playgroups go, once people give NL a real chance to > work, they never go back to CL. In my group, I've got probably i'd like to comment on our playgroup. i always preach that NL isn't that bad and say: why don't you try it? i played it with others, i played it in tournaments. it's playable in a playgroup even better than in tournament, because in the playgroup most people have equally large collections (myself being the exception, of course). nobody here wants to play NL. perhaps this geographical difference is the reason why my proposal seems to strange to the most of you. > It takes just as much skill to make an effective deck around > Social Charm as it does around Entrancment. agreed (and never claimed otherwise). but: depending on the environment, one deck will be better than the other., are retainers played by people, yes or no? if no, then no problem. SC will be the favourite choice. if yes, then mr. handbag must either decide on an entirely different deck, or live with the second-best. this is the point where my proposal steps forward. > > so the only ones who could possibly counter S:CE in a heave S:CE > > environment (however effectively) are mr. suitcases... in full > > compliance with everything that i have said before. > > So let's limit the commons! After all, you have to have rares > to counter them, so let's limit the commons so people don't > need as many rares. Then we can make the maximum deck size 0 > and go play euchre. well, a CL of zero would be rather stupid, but you are now arguing in favour of a general CL and i can only say: well, it serves the purpose. i would rather favour the rare CL but it works as well with a general CL. mike, this really does nothing else than speaking pro CL, where you thought it would show that CL is stupid. while a general CL seems to me a bit carried too far, it remains a valid option. the notion of deck size 0 is just a bit too rhetorical for me. > Here's an example of where your English doesn't quite match > what you are trying to say. When you say "A deck with rare cards > is" you can replace "a" with "any." It's a generalization. > Your two sentences don't mean the same thing. If the first > sentence said, "A deck with rares can be better than the same > deck without rare cards," you would be saying what you mean. accepted the point that my expression was actually poor. i meant just that (and not what i "said" in first place). sorry for the confusion. i claim that: "A deck with rares can be better than the same deck without rare cards." This enables mr. suitcase of exploiting that strategy, while mr. handbag cannot, and his options of successfully playing in tournament are somewhat limited (by a small or large amount, but who can say that for sure?) > Do you have examples of this? A deck with Freak Drives is > not inherently better than a similar deck without. A deck > with Slave Auctions is not inherently better than a deck > with Short Term Investments instead. i don't know if this side road brings us further but let me discuss it. STI played early: pool gain of 2 SA played early: pool gain of 3 or 4 - STI played intermediate: pool gain of 2 SA played intermediate: pool gain of ~2 - STI played late: no pay-off (4 turns to pay off completely if no master card played) SA played late: no pay-off (inherently) summary: SA is favourable becasue of its early-game advantage, whereas in mid- or late-game teh cards are about the same. for weaker players, i'd even see advantages in the late game, because it is even for them obvious that the card doesn't pay off, while some would play the STI late although it was a bad idea. > There's no need for an experiment. Lots and lots of people have > experience with both situations. The best players will always > come out on top. People with large collections who suck will > never be any good no matter how many cards they buy. again, this is a useless paragraph because i have never said that a mr. stupido-suitcase will beat a mr. witty-handbag. and i keep on being puzzled why you always come up with these screwed agruments... > > > i just wish to underline that this question must be answered by > > everybody himself/herself. > > Have you played NL extensively? I doubt it. So how can you > answer the question for yourself without being fully informed > with your own experience? i have played both NL and CL and i like both formats. the former makes more thrilling games but the latter show more variety and are just as much fun (uiiih that car was really well-aimed *bash* /torpor/) i also have played M:TG extensively and must say that a 4CL requires more skill than a highlander (1CL) game, so that's the reason why i created the idea of NL-for-commons,CL-for-rares. something like the best of both worlds. > > > officially offer two different formats. one with a CL and one > > without. is diversity that bad? > > This has been brought up before and has been shot down before. > If there were people lining up at the door to play in V:TES > tournaments, it might be possible. But there just aren't, > so only one format is officially supported. well, that's just the way it is. i think another format wouldn't hurt the game but if the majority (or the ones who make the decisions) thinks differently, one must accept that. it's still legal to publicly question this opinion. I want to close with a remark from Patrick Harris: "There is no requirement of rare cards [in tournament play]" I did not think so nor did the local players i have talked to. Actually i didn't even try out in real Jyhad simply because i myself have quite a lot of rares. I am however inclined to believing that this is true. This would make a rare CL unnecessary. I just didn't find the right arguments to convince others. It was still an interesting discussion. [ quoted text not captured ]

(TO REPLY VIA E-MAIL, STRIP 'XYXYX' FROM THE ADDRESS) >In article <37394B6A...@ike.uni-stuttgart.de>, Jens Niemann ><nie...@ike.uni-stuttgart.de> writes >>i think this is example enough. who would be able to field 12 IGs? Actually, IGs appear in Sabbat as uncommons and so are not that hard to find. You may want to choose a different example. By the way, on the issue of rarities, I notice every card list I've ever seen lists 9 or 10 "V" rarity cards in the V:tES set, apparently held over from that rarity level in Jyhad. Still, I don't think there is any such thing in V:tES or if there is, someone explain it to me. I've never seen anything but a vampire in the vampire slots in V:tES packs. If not...if it *is* just a WoTC typo from having modified the Jyhad card list rather than starting from scratch as I suspect, can anyone tell me what the real rarities of the cards listed as "V" rarity level in V:tES? Fred

(TO REPLY VIA E-MAIL, STRIP 'XYXYX' FROM THE ADDRESS) dhar...@my-dejanews.com writes: >A CCG is the ultimate lesson in how capitalism works. If you >want X, you need to invest the resources needed to get it. If >you don't have the resources, you work to get them. If you >sit around and whine about how the government or society owes >X to you, you deserve to have to beg for your next meal. Oh, man, I don't like card limits in Jyhad but I absolutely *hate* bad arguments. A single CCG player who inherited a billion dollars or got all his cards bought by his or her rich daddy just totally pierces this overblown pretension that the advantages of wealth in CCGs is somehow "deserved". I think I'll go barf now. Fred

Jens Niemann <nie...@ike.uni-stuttgart.de> wrote: > it may be equal at best, but rarely somebody would just stop at the > point of a given CL when NL is the game format. so the average player > will always spend more money on cards in a NL format. Look at that last sentence again. "...so the average player will always spend more money on cards in a NL format." Currently, the biggest problem facing VTES is not a card limit, but poor sales. Imposing a rule that will impede further sales, which will ultimately lead to a lack of game support, is not in the best interest of the game. Noal McDonald National Jyhad League -- "You can't imagine the extra work I had when I was a god." -Hirohito, Emperor of Japan (1901-1989) [ quoted text not captured ]

fred_...@netcom.com (Frederick Scott) wrote: > Oh, man, I don't like card limits in Jyhad but I absolutely *hate* > bad arguments. A single CCG player who inherited a billion dollars or > got all his cards bought by his or her rich daddy just totally > pierces this overblown pretension that the advantages of wealth in > CCGs is somehow "deserved". It never fails to amaze me when somebody reads something into a passage that isn't there. First off, it was not a "bad argument." It was completely accurate. Secondly, nowhere did I say that the advantages of wealth in CCG's are "deserved" but rather that, like in real life, those with more money get more stuff. Take another look: >> If you want X, you need to invest the resources needed to get it. If you start out with a lot of money and you want 25 IG's, you go out and buy the boxes or singles to get them. >> If you don't have the resources, you work to get them. If you don't have the money, you punch a timeclock like the rest of us and save money for them. >> If you sit around and whine about how the government or society owes >> X to you, you deserve to have to beg for your next meal. If you believe that you are owed 25 IG's, rarther than working and saving the money to buy them, than you deserve to wallow in your own misery...preferrably keeping the whining to a sufficiently low volume so the rest of us can ignore you. Besides, if you can't afford Jyhad cards, you certainly can't afford CCG's at all and prolly should spend your money on more practical things. > I think I'll go barf now. Maybe you should lay off the heavy drinking. Noal [ quoted text not captured ]

(TO REPLY VIA E-MAIL, STRIP 'XYXYX' FROM THE ADDRESS) dhar...@my-dejanews.com writes: > fred_...@netcom.com (Frederick Scott) wrote: >> Oh, man, I don't like card limits in Jyhad but I absolutely *hate* >> bad arguments. A single CCG player who inherited a billion dollars or >> got all his cards bought by his or her rich daddy just totally >> pierces this overblown pretension that the advantages of wealth in >> CCGs is somehow "deserved". > >It never fails to amaze me when somebody reads something into a passage >that isn't there. First off, it was not a "bad argument." It was >completely accurate. Secondly, nowhere did I say that the advantages of >wealth in CCG's are "deserved" but rather that, like in real life, those >with more money get more stuff. Take another look: You should take another look at the passage of yours. >>> If you sit around and whine about how the government or society owes >>> X to you, you deserve to have to beg for your next meal. > >If you believe that you are owed 25 IG's, rarther than working and >saving the money to buy them, than you deserve to wallow in your own >misery...preferrably keeping the whining to a sufficiently low volume so >the rest of us can ignore you. That certainly *IS* a statement which implies that the advantages of wealth in CCGs are deserved and, IMHO, it is a bad argument. A rich person will never whine about being owed 25 IGs - though he might be concerned that none of his less fortunate friends can afford them and hence, the level of his competition is affected adversely if his CCG of choice is subject to the "good rares" problem. And you have nothing to tell *him* about modulating his volume. OBDISCLAIMER: This argument is branching out a bit. Please understand I do not support the claim that CL are necessary or desirable to keep Jyhad from suffering from the good rares problem. Fred

>>>> If you sit around and whine about how the government or society >>>> owes X to you, you deserve to have to beg for your next meal. > That certainly *IS* a statement which implies that the advantages of > wealth in CCGs are deserved and, IMHO, it is a bad argument. Why? If someone isn't willing to work for what they want, then I say "fuck them" and let 'em starve. Nobody owes you a goddamn thing, much less rare cards in a _game_. > A rich person will never whine about being owed 25 IGs ...and neither will a person who works to buy the cards. My point is that those with more expendable money can buy more stuff. Period. That's life in a capitalistic society, and that's life in a CCG. Don't like it? Well, tough shit. (As an aside, I am _not_ a supporter of welfare as it creates a dependency on government money and discourages a proper work ethic.) [ quoted text not captured ]

(TO REPLY VIA E-MAIL, STRIP 'XYXYX' FROM THE ADDRESS) dhar...@my-dejanews.com writes: > >>>>> If you sit around and whine about how the government or society >>>>> owes X to you, you deserve to have to beg for your next meal. > >> That certainly *IS* a statement which implies that the advantages of >> wealth in CCGs are deserved and, IMHO, it is a bad argument. > >Why? If someone isn't willing to work for what they want, then I say >"fuck them" and let 'em starve. Nobody owes you a goddamn thing, much >less rare cards in a _game_. Because this isn't _like_ trying to survive and thrive in real life, that's why. If a large number of people are significantly disadvantaged by the printing policy of a CCG manufacturer that makes the game subject to money advantages, everyone suffers - not just the poor. As a well-to-do player, all the IGs in the world are not going to find me a challenging and clever opponent who makes the game fun to play. What you're completely missing here is that the intellectual merits of arguments about the benefits of avoiding the "good rares" problem in a CCG are pretty much orthagonal to who's making them. Making cracks about "deadbeat players whining about the world owing them rare cards" may seem satisfying on an emotional level but they don't answer the points the previous poster had been making. To answer those reasonably, stick to what the majority are saying: that Jyhad is in fact a reasonbly priced CCG influenced far more by skill and by the use of a relatively large number of inexpensive commons and not by $10 and $20 rares. >> A rich person will never whine about being owed 25 IGs > >...and neither will a person who works to buy the cards. My point is >that those with more expendable money can buy more stuff. Period. >That's life in a capitalistic society, and that's life in a CCG. You're being overly simplistic. This could also be life in a CCG where the manufacturer prints a couple dozen "win game" cards, the play of which enables the bearer to immediately oust all of his opponents and win the game. Such a card would be worth hundreds or thousands of dollars and get purchased by rich people and those willing to work to buy them. Or that is, they would if you could get people to play such a ridiculous game whose outcome depended greatly on who owns what valuable card. *That* is what the argument is really about: whether or not Jyhad needs CL to avoid that kind of influence (and whether CL would actually be much of a benifit in that sense). Your smug little tirade about the CCG equivalent of welfare loafers whining that they can't afford the cards just misses the point. Fred

Noal wrote: >>(As an aside, I am _not_ a supporter of welfare as it creates a dependency on government money and discourages a proper work ethic.)>> Ahh, yes. Because teenage mothers of young children who are abandoned by their wife beating alcaholic partners deserve to die like dogs on the street because of their lack of respect for a proper work ethic. I see. ...unless they are *vampiric* mothers (obligitory vampire reference so as not to be completely off topic :-) Peter D Bakija PD...@aol.com "Sigfreid?" "Roy?" "One of the tigers?" -Willow