1CL uniques

There has been a lot of talk about the 1CL uniques on the group and I felt that I should write in in an attempt to justify it. 1CL uniques is just how we like to play Jyhad because we find that there are a lot of high powered masters that tend to spoil the games; not in a really big way, but we just found it frustrating when certain cards came out. It was then decided that it would probably be best if we added an extra limitation on uniques. We also decided that it was unrealistic that when you burn a "Unique" it can come straight back out again. So we started playing it as a fix and as a narrative tool (although, admittedly the "once burned", forever burned rule is probably slightly better) but it allowed us to consider both problems as we saw them. We started playing it at first as a test and decided that we liked it as it took the game away from having master card dominance, which also meant that the game flowed a lot better as master cards were the greatest cause of hand jam, in our experience. The only defence that I can truely offer on this subject is that it makes our games, with experience, both more fun and challenging and therfore enjoyable. As a side note; I wonder if the 1CL uniques is a secondary fix to 4CL, which makes master cards more powerful... possibly. any comments? Ben

GEN...@leeds.ac.uk (B.D. Redmond) writes: >There has been a lot of talk about the 1CL uniques on the group and I felt >that I should write in in an attempt to justify it. What group would that be? >1CL uniques is just how we like to play Jyhad because we find that there are >a lot of high powered masters that tend to spoil the games; not in a really >big way, but we just found it frustrating when certain cards came out. It >was then decided that it would probably be best if we added an extra >limitation on uniques. We also decided that it was unrealistic that when you >burn a "Unique" it can come straight back out again. >So we started playing it as a fix and as a narrative tool (although, >admittedly the "once burned", forever burned rule is probably slightly >better) but it allowed us to consider both problems as we saw them. Yes, the "Once burned, always burned" is better. See David Pontes' dialog on "unique repeats" and his house rules for adding this level of realism (with the subset of the ash-heap: the destroyed heap). Using a 1CL to handle this realism adds an unrealistic difficulty in having the opportunity to control the "Unique" in the first place. >We started playing it at first as a test and decided that we liked it as it >took the game away from having master card dominance, which also meant that >the game flowed a lot better as master cards were the greatest cause of hand >jam, in our experience. 1CL on uniques won't force you to build a deck with the appropriate ration of master cards. Either your deck is built to flow properly (and it will work under "uniques" or otherwise), or it isn't (and it will jam, again regardless of the "unique" rules). >The only defence that I can truely offer on this subject is that it makes >our games, with experience, both more fun and challenging and therfore >enjoyable. Experience should enable you to build decks that don't have master-jam. This should make for a more enjoyable game (than one in which every deck is jammed). 1CL seems to just be an external restriction to attempt to get everyone to build decks with a reasonable ratio of master cards - at the expense of the flexibility of which Master cards they should double up on. VtES is a game of balances. Let it work freely, and it should reach an equilibrium of its own accord. Imposing an external force to generate equilibrium usually results in an unstable state. -- L. Scott Johnson (sjoh...@math.sc.edu) | * <-- Tribble http://www.math.sc.edu/cgi-bin/sjohnson/home | o <-- Jean-Luc Tribble Graphics Specialist and V:tES Rulemonger. |

GEN...@leeds.ac.uk (B.D. Redmond) writes: >As a side note; I wonder if the 1CL uniques is a secondary fix to 4CL, which >makes master cards more powerful... possibly. Certainly card limits make permanents more powerful, including masters. I find I should not have more that 15% Masters in a NL deck (excluding certain high-master specialty decks). So in a 80 card deck, that's only 12 Masters. 6 of these (roughly) will be Blood Dolls or Minion Taps. So there are only 6 Masters to play with. Duplication of uniques just isn't a problem. Curt Adams (curt...@aol.com)

CurtAdams (curt...@aol.com) wrote: [1CL on uniques deleted] : Certainly card limits make permanents more powerful, including masters. I : find I should not have more that 15% Masters in a NL deck (excluding : certain high-master specialty decks). So in a 80 card deck, that's only : 12 Masters. 6 of these (roughly) will be Blood Dolls or Minion Taps. So : there are only 6 Masters to play with. Duplication of uniques just isn't : a problem. Wow. I've been playing NL for a while, but your no-more-thank 15% rule is the lowest I've ever seen advocated. Back when we played 4CL, my group thought 25% was a reasonable number for masters, but now in NL, I think 20% is far more typical. Personally, I usually have something like 20%, usually around 16-17 masters in an 80-card deck. I have occasionally had fewer (a Brujah rush deck I had, for example, had only 12 or 13 masters in 80), but I pretty rarely get hand- jammed on 20%, though I admit 25% seems nearly unthinkable now, short of using the Parthenon times a couple, or Rumors of Gehenna and Anson. I do agree, though, on duplication of uniques not being a problem. (Not that I disagree with your masters-% ideas as such, I'm just interested to see that your experience is so different from mine.) Josh

In article <58jsde$9...@redwood.cs.sc.edu>, >>There has been a lot of talk about the 1CL uniques on the group and I felt >>that I should write in in an attempt to justify it. > >What group would that be? well, okay, may be I exaggerate.... but is that really cause for such a cheap pedantic jab? >>So we started playing it as a fix and as a narrative tool (although, >>admittedly the "once burned", forever burned rule is probably slightly >>better) but it allowed us to consider both problems as we saw them. > >Using a 1CL to handle this realism adds an unrealistic difficulty >in having the opportunity to control the "Unique" in the first place. fair enough. I accepted that. Why haven't you responded to the "fix" point though? Do you think it a fair point? >1CL on uniques won't force you to build a deck with the appropriate >ration of master cards. No, but it reduced the effectiveness of Master card strategies which therefore meant that decks would not stock up on masters (this is probably a gaming style point, and probably signifies some significant stage in the development of deck building skills in the group). >1CL seems to just be an external restriction to attempt to get everyone >to build decks with a reasonable ratio of master cards - at the expense >of the flexibility of which Master cards they should double up on. well, maybe it was at first, but now it allows for more variety from each deck individually (as many people in our group only have one or two decks, this makes our games more fun). I don't want to force people to play 1CL uniques if they don't want to, I'd just like a bit of respect for what is a practiced and workable house rule. cheerio, Ben

du...@newton.ruph.cornell.edu (Joshua Duffin) writes: >Wow. I've been playing NL for a while, but your no-more-thank 15% rule >is the lowest I've ever seen advocated. Back when we played 4CL, my >group thought 25% was a reasonable number for masters, In most pre-Sabbat 4CL decks 25% is reasonable. That would be appropriate for playing 3 non-masters a turn, and that's fairly accurate for a lot of old 4CL decks. >but now in >NL, I think 20% is far more typical. Personally, I usually have >something like 20%, usually around 16-17 masters in an 80-card deck. >I have occasionally had fewer (a Brujah rush deck I had, for example, >had only 12 or 13 masters in 80), but I pretty rarely get hand- >jammed on 20% 20% - for 4 non-masters/turn 15% - for 5 non-masters/turn I do play very transient-intensive decks, so I probably need to be a bit short. 4 non-masters per turn isn't unreasonable. You won't jam, per se, on 20%. I find, though, that at 20% many of my discards end up being Masters - they accumulate in my hand faster than I play them. So I find the deck works better if I take out a few of those masters I'm not going to get to play anyway. Curt Adams (curt...@aol.com)

In article <58pndc$q...@newsstand.cit.cornell.edu> du...@newton.ruph.cornell.edu (Joshua Duffin) writes: >CurtAdams (curt...@aol.com) wrote: >[1CL on uniques deleted] > >: Certainly card limits make permanents more powerful, including masters. I >: find I should not have more that 15% Masters in a NL deck (excluding >: certain high-master specialty decks). So in a 80 card deck, that's only >: 12 Masters. 6 of these (roughly) will be Blood Dolls or Minion Taps. So [snip] > >Wow. I've been playing NL for a while, but your no-more-thank 15% rule >is the lowest I've ever seen advocated. Back when we played 4CL, my >group thought 25% was a reasonable number for masters, but now in >NL, I think 20% is far more typical. Personally, I usually have >something like 20%, usually around 16-17 masters in an 80-card deck. [another snip] I like to play rush combat decks (NL). It's important to keep the number of masters low -- les than 1/8 is what I aim for. When I don't , I get hand jams way too often. So put me down for under 12%. Guidelines: Figure out how many minion cards you will go through in a turn. Add one master card to that number, and divide your target deck size by the result to get the number of master cards to put in your deck. Yes, you run through cards fast, but you don't jam up (at least not on master cards). -- Tom Doehne doe...@cse.ogi.edu

In article <58t2n8$j...@reuter.cse.ogi.edu>, doe...@church.cse.ogi.edu (Thomas Doehne) wrote: [comments from previous writers skipped for brevity] >I like to play rush combat decks (NL). It's important to keep the >number of masters low -- les than 1/8 is what I aim for. When >I don't , I get hand jams way too often. So put me down >for under 12%. > >Guidelines: Figure out how many minion cards you will go through >in a turn. Add one master card to that number, and divide your >target deck size by the result to get the number of master cards >to put in your deck. > >Yes, you run through cards fast, but you don't jam up (at >least not on master cards). My argument goes a little different. I start with the following assumptions. 1. master cards (usually) are more valueable than the average action/etc, which implies "Don't waste a master phase" 2. a game goes for 10+ rounds giving at least 10 master phases. 3. some cards are so important that I want to make sure I get them in time 4. I can always discard a master card during discard Based on these assumptions I don't go directly for a percentage in master cards but try to figure how many master phase actions I will come to play. Anson will double that number as will Rumors of Gehenna. Short Term and Protracted Investment will reduce it. If I go for torporizing vamps I may need some extra skill cards. If I go for a "Gem of Etrius/burn my own vamps" deck I definitely will need skill cards for my deck to work. And finally there is the problem with jamming my hand with masters which lead to a certain maximum percentage. In my experience this is about 20 to 25% in a deck without Anson/Rumors of Gehenna/Investments. Don't get me wrong: I don't mean that you always should go for 20% masters. There certainly are decks that work better with just 10% masters. My current Toreador intercept combat deck sporting Anson has about 33% masters and I'm contemplating wether I should increase that number (but which other cards should I drop ? :-) For me this results in the conclusion that any percentage can at most be a rule of thumb that has to be adjusted according to your deckidea. And one last idea regarding "low percentage master card decks": include a few investments that you draw from when you have no other master card to play. That way you don't waste master phase actions. BTW: The same argument goes for percentage in action/combat/reaction/ modifier/etc. cards as well. There is no use in having 50% combat cards if all you intend to do with combat is S:CE (degenerate Majesty etc. decks not included :-) Michael -- Michael Gerdau email: m.ge...@elmshorn.netsurf.de 2b or not 2b that's ff (or ger...@ifm.uni-hamburg.de) WWW-Homepage http://elmshorn.netsurf.de/~m.gerdau PGP-key available on request or at public keyserver Key fingerprint = 1FA5AEC97D4EF476 E964D42685B60B4E

Never actually thought about this too much , i put between 14 and 18 master cards for 80 cards deck ( all my decks are 80 cards ) In article <bv4wyo7y...@elmshorn.netsurf.de>, m.ge...@elmshorn.netsurf.de says... [ quoted text not captured ]