Broken cards - responses and ideas wanted

It is a fact that in Jyhad/V:TES/DS/AH/Sabbat that there are broken cards which people tend to work against in their gaming group. It is also a fact that nothing is done officially about it so when you get a tournament you have the travesty that was this year's Origins - broken cards a plenty. However, what I want to do is see if we can get a proper list of broken cards. General thoughts I've seen on the group are things like Thoughts Betrayed (for its ability to completely jam your opponent's hand for the cost of one card), Tomb of Ramses (for its ability to complete unbalance a game because you can get huge numbers of Inner Circle out or get loads of pool off it), Return to Innocence (because it completely unbalances a game based on one bleed). Other cards I have seen mentioned, but less so, are things like Misdirection (can wipe out an opponent's carefully crafted defences with minimal pool problems for you) and a few other cards as well. What cards would people consider broken and what would you do about them? Would you just ban them outright or re-write them so they do more or less the same thing but get rid of some of the loopholes eg with Tomb I can put pool on and pull pool off till kingdom come so for a minimal pool outlay originally I can get free pool every turn, but if you prevented pulling pool off the vampire with the Tomb on it, it might help, or if you put the pool on the Tomb rather than on the vampire (including what you transfer to that vampire) then burning the Tomb (Arson, Rampage or whatever) or stealing it (Disputed Territory etc.) would have serious repurcussions meaning that though it is a little powerful, it has serious flaws. Return to Innocence could have a cost of X, rather than 4, where X is the capacity of the vampire playing it which means you can't play stuff like conditioning on it, or stealth requiring blood, which would mean you couldn't benefit by pulling 7 blood back of Leandro and then play Return to Innocence meaning you get +11 bleed (or whatever, can't remember the exact text) for the cost of a vampire and 4 blood. Or how about limiting Misdirection to X is no greater than three or you pay, say, X+2 pool to try and tone it down a little (admittedly, it's not a complete solution because in a Misdirection for tapping, Presence for bleeding (now unblocked because they're tapped) and also pool gain you have the pool for Misdirection - this also applies to other decks). Any more thoughts? -- James Coupe (remove .nospam to reply) Through the darkness of future past, the magician longs to see, one chants out between two worlds, `Fire walk with me`

James Coupe wrote: > > It is a fact that in Jyhad/V:TES/DS/AH/Sabbat that there are broken > cards which people tend to work against in their gaming group. It is > also a fact that nothing is done officially about it so when you get a > tournament you have the travesty that was this year's Origins - broken > cards a plenty. > I agree with you. But let me first try to make a proper definition to the term "broken card": A card is considered to be "broken" played alone or in combination with others if it severely alters game recources (pool, blood, minion actions, minions, ash heap,...) without corresponding recource costs. Examples for cards manipulating game resources: Return of Innocence: Pool loss 5th Tradition: Blood Tomb of Rameses III: Pool gain, Minion gain Archon Investigation: Minion loss The Sleeping Mind, Misdirection: Minion Reaction loss Ruthor's Hand: Minion Action gain and so on. (These examples are NOT (all) examples for broken cards!) > However, what I want to do is see if we can get a proper list of broken > cards. (snipsnap) > What cards would people consider broken and what would you do about > them? I consider the following cards broken: RTI: The sudden death card. It is possible to construct decks around it which negate the burn minion effect (The Etrius- Soul Gem of Etrius-Skill Card-Horrific Countenance-RTI-deck) ToR III The big pool gainer. It may be used to bring vamps to the active region without pool cost and even gain pool! Ruthor's Hand Unlimited Action recources for thaumaturgy-users Pulled Fangs Aggrevated Damage for free and without need of minion qualifications exept making more damage at close range Crimson Sentinel Potential for unlimited damage for only 2 pool! The pocket nuclear bomb. Soul Gem of Etrius A "resurrection" device for the undead. Even while now costing 2 pool it unbalances pool gain / pool loss in combination with Golconda or Return to Innocente Shadow Court Satyr In combination with Earth Meld a nearly invulnerable ally. (Vulnerable against: Fast Reaction, Hidden Lurker, Weather Control, Cryptic Mission, Immortal Grapple) Vampires: Carlotta Giovanni The inherent ability of library card recycling may completely ruin a game Jost Werner +1 stealth on each action as a vampire with a capacity of 6!!! + 2 clan disciplines at superior level!!! Compare to Lucretia (Nosferatu) Rebecca +1 stealth on each action as a vampire with a capacity of 8!!! 3 disciplines at superior level!!! Matches Disciplines with Jost!!!!!!!!! Thaumaturgy superior!!! Compare to Lucretia (Nosferatu) Muaziz +1 stealth on each action as a vampire with a capacity of 7!!! all three clan disciplines, Thaumaturgy superior!!! May diablerize unpunished!!!!!! Compare to Lucretia (Nosferatu) Dragos combat cards have NO cost on him. May unbalancing in combat especially when he gets skill cards. Example: Hidden Strength costs x blood to prevent x+1 damage: He prevents ALL damage (even that which wasn't a strike) for no cost!) Cailean Can set the range of combat for no cost. With long range weapons he gets virtually invulnerable against close range combat, abusive use of long range only cards possible. Sorry, but my group is focussed on official rulings. If a card is not officially banned, it may be used. So it is not entirely possible to do anything against abusive use of these cards. > Would you just ban them outright or re-write them so they do more > or less the same thing but get rid of some of the loopholes. That is dependant of the card. Some cards may be fixed with minimal changes to the card, others don't. Your idea to fix ToR is IMHO an example for the former, RTI is an example for the latter (just think of 5th tradition: you need only one card more) eg with Tomb > I can put pool on and pull pool off till kingdom come so for a minimal > pool outlay originally I can get free pool every turn, but if you > prevented pulling pool off the vampire with the Tomb on it, ... (snip) > Return to Innocence could have a cost > of X, rather than 4, where X is the capacity of the vampire playing it... -- Michael Beer, Dortmund, Germany, ICQ 1175389 http://www.noefs.ping.de/user/mike/index.html -------------------------------------------- Life is founded on Chaos. So if you find your living room became disordered: Don't panic! It's natural... :)

I am going to add "Using the Advantage" from the Sabbat Set. NOT UNIQUE????? A Nosferatu Anntribu specific card. Can you say "Night Moves"? This is one of Michael's "alteration of resources" not to mention just an easy way of gaining blood/pool with minimal amount of expense. -- Respectfully, Demos Ventrue Elder

I do agree with you that many cards are broken, but here's a few work- rounds until something better's done. In article <33DA39...@leila.ping.de>, Michael Beer <Mi...@leila.ping.de> writes >I consider the following cards broken: > >RTI: The sudden death card. It is possible to construct decks > around it which negate the burn minion effect (The Etrius- > Soul Gem of Etrius-Skill Card-Horrific Countenance-RTI-deck) What a bastard combination (unfortunately, I don't have a Soul Gem to pull it off). > >ToR III The big pool gainer. It may be used to bring vamps to the active > region without pool cost and even gain pool! When we play it (doesn't happen often - kind of an unspoken truce aainst it) we hardly ever use it to bring vampires out. Just put it on a fairly big vampire (say 6 capacity or so) and you can pull back as much pool as you want. > >Ruthor's Hand > Unlimited Action recources for thaumaturgy-users Hmm... I know what you mean, but the fact that you're taking agg damage kind of makes up for it (exception, Merrill Molitor who converts it to normal (aargh)). What you need, if it gets abusive, is to play an intercept deck (heavy on the Eagle Sight) to block the vampires coming out of torpor that turn. You need to start early otherwise you block a few rescues and then run out of minions to block with while they've got a few more untaps left. Try burning the vampires concerned - a few agg damage cards or something. > >Pulled Fangs > Aggrevated Damage for free and without need of minion > qualifications exept making more damage at close range > Well, it does mean you've got to have shelled out for some equipment (makes it a little expensive to get going) or likely have something like Potence (to get the extra damage) or something like that. It might be a good idea for it to just send the vampire to torpor rather than do agg damage. It can get abusive if combined with something like Decap or Amaranth, especially if used with a little vampire you don't care about the blood hunts on (a Caitiff with a Potence master, or Lupo or someone) which you avoid with Decap anyway (but it has a prohibitive cost). >Crimson Sentinel > Potential for unlimited damage for only 2 pool! The pocket > nuclear bomb. Burn, torporise, diablerise or whatever the vampire with it on. Steal it with Celerity, Chimerstry or Kostantin. Try and get it discarded with Dr. Jest. Call repeated Peace Treaty votes until it goes (just hope it isn't on Black Cat) > >Soul Gem of Etrius > A "resurrection" device for the undead. Even while now costing 2 pool > it unbalances pool gain / pool loss in combination with Golconda or > Return to Innocente Well, the undead do get resurrected. Set killed Osiris (as in the children of osiris) and his first follower (Isis) worked with the rest of his followers to get Osiris resurrected. He managed to do it through sheer force of will (not Force of Will) but lost the ability to create progeny so any childer he had created stopped doing so to honour him and any children of osiris nowadays are converts from other clans. Here endeth the lecture. Anyway, it's fine on it's own. Since Return to Innocence should be banned anyway, how about altering the Soul Gem to only work if the vampire is burned during the minion phase (so master cards like Golconda don't work) or just specifically ban it from interacting with Golconda. > >Shadow Court Satyr > In combination with Earth Meld a nearly invulnerable ally. (Vulnerable >against: Fast Reaction, > Hidden Lurker, Weather Control, Cryptic Mission, Immortal Grapple) > Agreed, but if you're being blocked by it repeatedly try putting the anti-ally cards in your deck - Sacre Cour Cathedral, Blood to Water (have to get to second round - awkward), Stanislava (commonly called Stansylvania), some of the serpentis cards, Sensory Deprivation and so on. Cryptic mission is the best way to get round it and, if your group has lots of allies, it's a staple part of any deck. > >Vampires: > >Carlotta Giovanni > The inherent ability of library card recycling may completely ruin a >game Requires seven pool spent on it, is vulnerable to being burned from combat or whatever, and to get her out you need to put loads in (which never come out) or Recruitments (which never come out and add 2 pool to her cost). Personally, I don't think she's broken. > >Jost Werner > +1 stealth on each action as a vampire with a capacity of 6!!! + 2 clan >disciplines at superior > level!!! Compare to Lucretia (Nosferatu) > It is a fact that most of the ten capacity vampires from V:TES are underpowered - they have a few too few discplines which should be made up for with the special ability but the special ability is too weak. Any ideas for how to beef up the Justicars for instance, who are generally a little underpowered, also Lucretia, Masika (untaps between turns isn't worth four points of disciplines) and so on? >Rebecca +1 stealth on each action as a vampire with a capacity of 8!!! 3 >disciplines at superior level!!! > Matches Disciplines with Jost!!!!!!!!! Thaumaturgy superior!!! Compare >to Lucretia (Nosferatu) > >Muaziz +1 stealth on each action as a vampire with a capacity of 7!!! >all three clan disciplines, Thaumaturgy > superior!!! May diablerize unpunished!!!!!! Compare to Lucretia >(Nosferatu) Agreed, but an Archon should be a little more powerful. Here's an idea, what about making Lucretia an Archon also - no bloodhunts. Would help balance it back, but the idea of no bloodhunts needs rethinking. > >Dragos combat cards have NO cost on him. May unbalancing in combat >especially when he gets skill cards. Example: Hidden Strength costs x >blood to prevent x+1 damage: He prevents ALL damage (even that which >wasn't a strike) for no cost!) Suddenly reverse the skill cards (in any deck that relies on skill cards a lot, suddenly reverse them - get everyone to put 500 in a deck). Any skill cards in a deck should be suddenly reversed if put on Dragos. Use the cards which burn master disciplines - Dauntain Black Magician (?), Mehemet, that Quietus card (just checking... weakness) > >Cailean Can set the range of combat for no cost. With long range weapons >he gets virtually invulnerable against close range combat, abusive use >of long range only cards possible. Most decks should have a little combat defence in either long range damage (Thrown Gate is a good one, doesn't need to be used at range but can be) or a little S:CE. > > >Sorry, but my group is focussed on official rulings. If a card is not >officially banned, it may be used. >So it is not entirely possible to do anything against abusive use of >these cards. What I'm after is some ideas for fixing cards which aren't official which can then be submitted so that they are official (okayed by the RT) and then, hopefully, published in Duelist or something like that so that people without net access can see them. > >> Would you just ban them outright or re-write them so they do more >> or less the same thing but get rid of some of the loopholes. > >That is dependant of the card. Some cards may be fixed with minimal >changes to the card, others don't. I did mean that, but didn't write it right. Some could be re-written, others just banned. I don't like banning cards that much (I personally like Stake and Rowan Ring - only Monocle is vaguely bannable as far as I'm concerned and in a game which isn't played for ante - as all games I play are - the ante cards are useless anyway). That's why I'm trying to think of a re-write for RtoI. How's about this one... No action modifiers may be played on this action - meaning that the action is at 0 stealth (1 with Lucretia and so on) and costs X. This means you have to tap out your opponent's defences and if they can wake then you lose the card and waking is now do-able because you can't play Horrific Coutenance, Day Operation and what have you. > >Your idea to fix ToR is IMHO an example for the former, RTI is an >example for the latter (just think of 5th >tradition: you need only one card more) Oh well, at least you do need one more card - you're less likely to have both close together - I only own two RtoI cards, I think and a few Fifth Traditions (five or six) so I'm not likely to get both together. Any more ideas. Like you say, most of the above cards are a bit broken - I don't agree with Carlotta though. However, if people do play the abusive cards (my group just doesn't as a rule) then the work-arounds above can discourage them. [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <01bc9a68$81947e00$5d73...@acs.ohio-state.edu>, Demos <tagg...@osu.edu> writes >I am going to add "Using the Advantage" from the Sabbat Set. NOT >UNIQUE????? A Nosferatu Anntribu specific card. Can you say "Night >Moves"? This is one of Michael's "alteration of resources" not to mention >just an easy way of gaining blood/pool with minimal amount of expense. > > I don't really think that it's broken. After all, you have to keep the edge until your next turn and in a Nos Antitribu deck, that's not always possible. Other bleed decks can get a bleed done at stealth (say, a Malk) and the Nos-Anti don't get that much intercept (it's possible with lots of disciplineless cards eg the Newspapers, Atonements, Guardian Angels, Bikes and so on). A political deck could use a few regaining the upper hands to get it (if you know that someone is going to use Using the Advantage, those Ventrue vampires who do better if they have the edge, Dreams of the Sphinx then you might put a few in). People in our gaming group have been known to let a little (ie 1 point) bleed through just so that the other person doesn't have the edge always. A few sudden reversals help to annoy the people concerned, since they can't get the pool gaining cards out anyway. Try and get the combat deck to rush every single Nos-Anti that's brought out so they never qualify as having a ready (or controlled, can't remember) Nos-Anti to play it. A few Increased Strengths, Undead Strength and a claw will get rid of most vampires. [ quoted text not captured ]

Michael Beer wrote: "RTI: The sudden death card. It is possible to construct decks around it which negate the burn minion effect (The Etrius- Soul Gem of Etrius-Skill Card-Horrific Countenance-RTI-deck)" While not completely unstopable, I entirely agree that RTI is just plain wrong. It is a single trump card that effectively says "Oust your prey if they are not holding a Deflection." No workable fix. Our group banned it. "ToR III The big pool gainer. It may be used to bring vamps to the active region without pool cost and even gain pool!" Another big loser. This card has _zero_ cost to play (as it pays back its initial investment the turn it comes out) and completely unhinges the limitations of the influence phase. Our group did something wacky to it (involving having to use influence actions to make it work), but a less extreme restriction is to say it comes into play tapped, and you need to tap it to use it, so it can theoretically be destroyed/stolen before it pays itself back. "Ruthor's Hand Unlimited Action recources for thaumaturgy-users" Haven't seen it as a problem around here, as the Tremere find it difficult to compete in the heavy Immortal Grapple/Rush deck enviornment we play in. I could see how it might be a problem, though. "Pulled Fangs Aggrevated Damage for free and without need of minion qualifications exept making more damage at close range" The biggest problem with PF is that it became infinitely more powerful with the change from Jyhad aggro to VTES aggro rules. Originally it just sent you to torpor. Now it burns you. Our group fixed it by saying it reads just like Disarm, so it does not do aggro damage, it just sends you directly to torpor. "Crimson Sentinel Potential for unlimited damage for only 2 pool! The pocket nuclear bomb." Must disagree here. First, it is a weapon, and weapons are expensive, difficult to get out (intercept the action), easy to get rid of (steal/destroy), and hard to use (can't be used while Immortally Grappled or having Beast Drawn Out, etc.), and second, if the Anti Brujah can't do close to infinite damage with just their hands (Pot+Cel), they they just aren't trying hard enough. Even if it does infinite damage, it is still completely foiled by a single Skin of Steel or Majesty. Simply not a problem card. "Soul Gem of Etrius A "resurrection" device for the undead. Even while now costing 2 pool it unbalances pool gain / pool loss in combination with Golconda or Return to Innocent" Heven't seen it as much of a problem. Has the same problems as all equipment, as well as possibly not working. It is not the problem in the "Etrius" deck. RTI is. "Shadow Court Satyr In combination with Earth Meld a nearly invulnerable ally. (Vulnerable against: Fast Reaction, Hidden Lurker, Weather Control, Cryptic Mission, Immortal Grapple)" Heven't seen it in action, but I am still yet to see an ally who is even close to being worth the cost to bring out. Allies are very fragile and expensive. To add to the (IMO) busted cards list is: Mind Rape: Allows for complete removal of an opponents vampire for comletely minimal cost. Sure it only lasts for 2 turns, but when was the last time you saw a Mind Raped vampire survive that long, either by diablerizing someone ("Oh no! I just consumed my pal Igo! I am outraged at my own actions! Burn me! Burn me!") or getting RTIed. We just banned it. Banishment: Similar to the above, but to a much lesser degree. Our group just stated that it can be only called on a younger vampire. This fixes it considerably. Peter D Bakija PD...@aol.com "It's the kind of wooly headed liberal thinking that leads to getting eaten." -Principal Snyder

Michael Beer wrote: (about broken Vampires) "Carlotta Giovanni" Her ability has a profound effect on games with an imposed card limit, but in a NL game (as it should be :-), her special is, well, nothing special. You should be able to play as many of whatever card you want anyway. She does help people with fewer rare card compete with suitcase players, though. "Jost Werner, Rebecca, Muaziz" All three of these are completely wrong in terms of vampire cost to ability (like _many_ of the post VTES vampires), and problematic in terms of vampire power precident, but in terms of actual play, they are really not that big of a deal, much like Ian Forrestal. "Dragos" Yeah, he is problematic, although I am yet to see him be used to any worthwhile effect, as it seems difficult to build a good Tscimizeee deck. Our group restricted him by saying that X=0 for his ability, so he gets combat cards with a set cost for free, but he still has to pay for "X" cards. "Cailean" But he is a ten, and his special abillity can easily be duplicated by Drawing out the Beast or Terror Frenzy. He is good, but hardly a game killer. [ quoted text not captured ]

On Sat, 26 Jul 1997 19:52:26 +0200, Michael Beer <Mi...@leila.ping.de> wrote: >Jost Werner > +1 stealth on each action as a vampire with a capacity of 6!!! + 2 clan >disciplines at superior > level!!! Compare to Lucretia (Nosferatu) > >Rebecca +1 stealth on each action as a vampire with a capacity of 8!!! 3 >disciplines at superior level!!! > Matches Disciplines with Jost!!!!!!!!! Thaumaturgy superior!!! Compare >to Lucretia (Nosferatu) > >Muaziz +1 stealth on each action as a vampire with a capacity of 7!!! >all three clan disciplines, Thaumaturgy > superior!!! May diablerize unpunished!!!!!! Compare to Lucretia >(Nosferatu) > Try Intercept, tends to kick those +1 Stealth people in the butt.

pd...@aol.com (PDB6) wrote: > > Michael Beer wrote: > "RTI: The sudden death card. It is possible to construct decks around it > which negate the burn minion effect (The Etrius- Soul Gem of Etrius-Skill > Card-Horrific Countenance-RTI-deck)" > > While not completely unstopable, I entirely agree that RTI is just plain > wrong. It is a single trump card that effectively says "Oust your prey if > they are not holding a Deflection." No workable fix. Our group banned > it. The best fix for this card is simple. Just convert blood cost to pool cost. No one will carelessly be using RTI if they have to pay 4 pool each time they use the card, plus the loss of the Vampire. Blood loss on this card is really immaterial, since the vampire is burned after its use. > "ToR III The big pool gainer. It may be used to bring vamps to the active > region without pool cost and even gain pool!" > > Another big loser. This card has _zero_ cost to play (as it pays back its > initial investment the turn it comes out) and completely unhinges the > limitations of the influence phase. Our group did something wacky to it > (involving having to use influence actions to make it work), but a less > extreme restriction is to say it comes into play tapped, and you need to > tap it to use it, so it can theoretically be destroyed/stolen before it > pays itself back. Try placing the blood transferred to the Tomb rather than the Vampire. This keeps the card balanced. Once the targetted Vampire reaches capacity, from both the Tomb and what is currently on the uncontrolled Vampire, bring it out. Gives others the chance to Burn/steal/etc the card. Can still be a small gain, and is still good, but this is a quick fix. > > "Crimson Sentinel Potential for unlimited damage for only 2 pool! The > pocket nuclear bomb." > > Must disagree here. First, it is a weapon, and weapons are expensive, > difficult to get out (intercept the action), easy to get rid of > (steal/destroy), and hard to use (can't be used while Immortally Grappled > or having Beast Drawn Out, etc.), and second, if the Anti Brujah can't do > close to infinite damage with just their hands (Pot+Cel), they they just > aren't trying hard enough. Even if it does infinite damage, it is still > completely foiled by a single Skin of Steel or Majesty. Simply not a > problem card. > Also the Strike: destroy equipment with first strike comes to mind. Just a few thought. Dave. > "Soul Gem of Etrius A "resurrection" device for the undead. Even while now > costing 2 pool it unbalances pool gain / pool loss in combination with > Golconda or Return to Innocent" > > Heven't seen it as much of a problem. Has the same problems as all > equipment, as well as possibly not working. It is not the problem in the > "Etrius" deck. RTI is. > > "Shadow Court Satyr In combination with Earth Meld a nearly invulnerable > ally. (Vulnerable against: Fast Reaction, Hidden Lurker, Weather Control, > Cryptic Mission, Immortal Grapple)" > > Heven't seen it in action, but I am still yet to see an ally who is even > close to being worth the cost to bring out. Allies are very fragile and > expensive. > > To add to the (IMO) busted cards list is: > > Mind Rape: Allows for complete removal of an opponents vampire for > comletely minimal cost. Sure it only lasts for 2 turns, but when was the > last time you saw a Mind Raped vampire survive that long, either by > diablerizing someone ("Oh no! I just consumed my pal Igo! I am outraged > at my own actions! Burn me! Burn me!") or getting RTIed. We just banned > it. > > Banishment: Similar to the above, but to a much lesser degree. Our group > just stated that it can be only called on a younger vampire. This fixes > it considerably. > > Peter D Bakija > PD...@aol.com > > "It's the kind of wooly headed liberal thinking > that leads to getting eaten." > -Principal Snyder -------------------==== Posted via Deja News ====----------------------- http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Post to Usenet

James Coupe wrote: > > It is a fact that in Jyhad/V:TES/DS/AH/Sabbat that there are broken > cards which people tend to work against in their gaming group. It is > also a fact that nothing is done officially about it so when you get a > tournament you have the travesty that was this year's Origins - broken > cards a plenty. > > However, what I want to do is see if we can get a proper list of broken > cards. A list to be banned or altered is just another "house rules list". Such an experiment has already been performed - check the Rulemonger page. You're welcomed to try it again, of course, but without a clear consensus (and perhaps even with a clear consensus), the list will not amount to much. And a clear consesnsus is a difficult proposition on the internet. > ... Other cards I have seen mentioned, but less > so, are things like Misdirection (can wipe out an opponent's carefully > crafted defences with minimal pool problems for you) and a few other > cards as well. In my opinion, Misdirection is only a problem with Mind Rape. And I believe that Misdirection is not the problem in that combo. There are enough untap and untap-like effects that (when taken with Misdirection's pool cost) balance the effect of Misdirection. > ... Return to Innocence could have a cost > of X, rather than 4, where X is the capacity of the vampire playing it > which means you can't play stuff like conditioning on it, or stealth > requiring blood, which would mean you couldn't benefit by pulling 7 > blood back of Leandro and then play Return to Innocence meaning you get > +11 bleed (or whatever, can't remember the exact text) for the cost of a > vampire and 4 blood. Just an observation, without addressing the suitability of this (or any other house rule): This "fix" only works if Mask of 1000 Faces is banned. With Mask, a young (cap=4) vampire could play RtI (paying 4 blood), then the already-tapped Leandro could mask the action (turning it into a +11 bleed from a +4 bleed), play Conditioning, etc. -- L. Scott Johnson (vte...@regency.wizards.com) Official VtES Net.Rep for Wizards of the Coast. (*) - Subject to review by Rules Team

Michael Beer wrote: > Ruthor's Hand > Unlimited Action recources for thaumaturgy-users It costs blood *and* deals aggravated damage. Hardly what I'd consider "unlimited". Compare to Freak Drive and Precognizant Mobility. > Crimson Sentinel > Potential for unlimited damage for only 2 pool! The pocket > nuclear bomb. "only 2 pool" is not an expression I hear often in association with equipment. Especially unique weapons. Equipment can be stolen, broken (burned), and weapons can be a liability (Peace Treaty), and can be made useless (Immortal Grapple, Blood Fury, Frenzy, etc.) too easily. > Soul Gem of Etrius > A "resurrection" device for the undead. Even while now costing 2 pool > it unbalances pool gain / pool loss in combination with Golconda or > Return to Innocente Soul Gem does not cost pool (errata to the VtES version) [RTR 960530]. > Shadow Court Satyr > In combination with Earth Meld a nearly invulnerable ally. (Vulnerable > against: Fast Reaction, > Hidden Lurker, Weather Control, Cryptic Mission, Immortal Grapple) An "invulnerable" Ally that cost 3 pool and can't go to stealth (his recruiters aren't known for their ability to play Cloak the Gathering or Psychic Veil at superior), and even if he does, only bleeds for 1. Or, you could use him to block. Three pool and an action to recuit means that he'll have to block 4 basic bleed actions to justify his cost (break even) - and he can't gain intercept very easily (except with costly options like Sport Bikes, or with costly, unique, tap options like KRCG). > Carlotta Giovanni > The inherent ability of library card recycling may completely ruin a > game I've never seen this pose any problem in a regulation (no card limit) environment. > Dragos combat cards have NO cost on him. May unbalancing in combat > especially when he gets skill cards. Example: Hidden Strength costs x > blood to prevent x+1 damage: He prevents ALL damage (even that which > wasn't a strike) for no cost!) Possibly broken, but Dragos cannot play Hidden Strength until you put a Fortitude skill card on him. [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <19970727175...@ladder01.news.aol.com>, PDB6 <pd...@aol.com> writes >Michael Beer wrote: (about broken Vampires) > >"Carlotta Giovanni" > >Her ability has a profound effect on games with an imposed card limit, but >in a NL game (as it should be :-), her special is, well, nothing special. >You should be able to play as many of whatever card you want anyway. She >does help people with fewer rare card compete with suitcase players, >though. Hmmm... I know what you mean but I'm the local suitcase player and I'm the one who plays her most (that doesn't mean gets her out, just puts her in decks most). Do agree with NL though (except for, of course, broken cards which should be restricted or banned or whatever - hopefully we'll be able to get something meaningful from this thread). > >"Jost Werner, Rebecca, Muaziz" > >All three of these are completely wrong in terms of vampire cost to >ability (like _many_ of the post VTES vampires), and problematic in terms >of vampire power precident, but in terms of actual play, they are really >not that big of a deal, much like Ian Forrestal. > It isn't that big a deal, true, but when he does come out, for the pool invested on him you have a permanent stealth at a bargain price. Can be tricky. Again, our group just doesn't play him for some reason. He might have the stealth, but he's not that good. Haven't seen him put in a presence bleed deck yet, though (he has sup PRE). >"Dragos" > >Yeah, he is problematic, although I am yet to see him be used to any >worthwhile effect, as it seems difficult to build a good Tscimizeee deck. >Our group restricted him by saying that X=0 for his ability, so he gets >combat cards with a set cost for free, but he still has to pay for "X" >cards. > I quite liked the fix offered by Jyhad On-Line (I think) - drop the cost of combat cards he plays by one. It isn't as powerful, but is pretty good. The thing is, though, his own disciplines are crap for combat (not mnay require *huge* payments) and if people start putting Discipline cards on him, you start playing sudden reversals. >"Cailean" > >But he is a ten, and his special abillity can easily be duplicated by >Drawing out the Beast or Terror Frenzy. He is good, but hardly a game >killer. Agree with this. He is good (and a lot less scary now it's only combat he's in) but not a game killer. If you've spent ten pool on him, weapons to use at range against a defenceless vampire could be costly. However, in conjunction with the Tomb, I can see he could be a bit powerful. That's the tomb's fault, though, not his. > >Peter D Bakija >PD...@aol.com > >"It's the kind of wooly headed liberal thinking >that leads to getting eaten." >-Principal Snyder -- [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <19970727175...@ladder02.news.aol.com>, PDB6 <pd...@aol.com> writes >Michael Beer wrote: >"RTI: The sudden death card. It is possible to construct decks around it >which negate the burn minion effect (The Etrius- Soul Gem of Etrius-Skill >Card-Horrific Countenance-RTI-deck)" > >While not completely unstopable, I entirely agree that RTI is just plain >wrong. It is a single trump card that effectively says "Oust your prey if >they are not holding a Deflection." No workable fix. Our group banned >it. One thing that someone who replied to me suggested a pool cost for yourself be institututed, presumably kind of like Archon Investigation where you stop the bleed but take it anyway (kind of). Anyone got any ideas for the cost. (I'm guessing somewhere between half X (rounded up) and X pool - yes, X still equals the capacity - getting a vampire, specifically a high capacity one (eg Arika) to return to Innocence eg give up their life or something like that, isn't going to be easy). > >"ToR III The big pool gainer. It may be used to bring vamps to the active >region without pool cost and even gain pool!" > >Another big loser. This card has _zero_ cost to play (as it pays back its >initial investment the turn it comes out) and completely unhinges the >limitations of the influence phase. Our group did something wacky to it >(involving having to use influence actions to make it work), but a less >extreme restriction is to say it comes into play tapped, and you need to >tap it to use it, so it can theoretically be destroyed/stolen before it >pays itself back. Here's another thought on this. How about it only counting for the first blood transferred to a vampire each turn so that it still works similarly but takes a lot longer. As I said in another posting, if all the blood (including what is already on the vampire and what is transferred to it aswell as the 'free blood') is put onto the Tomb then it means that it is a lot more risky since stealing or burning the tomb would cost you loads. Obviously, if too much ends up on the Tomb when a vampire is brought out or when it is transferred to a vampire (say, the Tomb has 8 blood on it and I steal it with disputed territory and put it on a 6 capacity vampire) then the excess is discarded. You'd have to do it over three turns to break even, four to make a profit and in that time, people empty their hands to find that Arson, Disputed Territory, Rampage or whatever. IMHO, along with Blood Doll, every deck should have a couple of Arsons (or Disupted Territory cards if political) just to stop locations if you can spare the slots. > >"Ruthor's Hand Unlimited Action recources for thaumaturgy-users" > >Haven't seen it as a problem around here, as the Tremere find it difficult >to compete in the heavy Immortal Grapple/Rush deck enviornment we play in. > I could see how it might be a problem, though. Never been a problem here either. If it did get a problem, the obvious thing is to burn the vampires. > >"Pulled Fangs Aggrevated Damage for free and without need of minion >qualifications exept making more damage at close range" > >The biggest problem with PF is that it became infinitely more powerful >with the change from Jyhad aggro to VTES aggro rules. Originally it just >sent you to torpor. Now it burns you. Our group fixed it by saying it >reads just like Disarm, so it does not do aggro damage, it just sends you >directly to torpor. Hmm, does seem a workable fix because I don't thing losing your fangs would hurt you that much - maybe a little and you would have problems hunting, but not burn you. However, like I said elsewhere, you have still got to get the extra damage which is going to require more cards on the vampire (equipment) or cards in your hand (blurs, Shadow of the Wolf, Potence etc) which isn't that hard but does limit it a little. > >"Crimson Sentinel Potential for unlimited damage for only 2 pool! The >pocket nuclear bomb." > >Must disagree here. First, it is a weapon, and weapons are expensive, >difficult to get out (intercept the action), easy to get rid of >(steal/destroy), and hard to use (can't be used while Immortally Grappled >or having Beast Drawn Out, etc.), and second, if the Anti Brujah can't do >close to infinite damage with just their hands (Pot+Cel), they they just >aren't trying hard enough. Even if it does infinite damage, it is still >completely foiled by a single Skin of Steel or Majesty. Simply not a >problem card. > The best thing is to nick it yourself - seeing a cool weapon on a vampire who can't use it (most anti-Brujah wouldn't be able to unless they had fast hands - it's more likely to be stolen by Ravnos) is likely to annoy most people. However, if it was put in a deck in our gaming group, it could turn out to be a killer because most of the time we don't play equipment (just what happens, not a rule or anything) so most of the time we don't put any equipment cards in decks. >"Soul Gem of Etrius A "resurrection" device for the undead. Even while now >costing 2 pool it unbalances pool gain / pool loss in combination with >Golconda or Return to Innocent" > >Heven't seen it as much of a problem. Has the same problems as all >equipment, as well as possibly not working. It is not the problem in the >"Etrius" deck. RTI is. > >"Shadow Court Satyr In combination with Earth Meld a nearly invulnerable >ally. (Vulnerable against: Fast Reaction, Hidden Lurker, Weather Control, >Cryptic Mission, Immortal Grapple)" > >Heven't seen it in action, but I am still yet to see an ally who is even >close to being worth the cost to bring out. Allies are very fragile and >expensive. > Hmm.. they are, but there are some who are really cool if you can get them out. An Order of Hermes is great, as are Escaped Mental Patients. I played a deck based mostly around Anti-Malks (to get out loads of Escaped Mental Patients), a few Malks (to get out Muddled Vampire Hunters which, as the deck went, didn't come out because of the shuffle) and a few little vampires. Get loads of pool back, get the allies out and you can really let rip through other people with aggro damage. If you can get Talaq out, or another ally with an optional maneuver (put an IR Goggles on if necessary), get a flame thrower on them. Rush vampires, block vampires, do what the hell you like and rip through them with the aggro damage. Great fun and beats Rotschreck. >To add to the (IMO) busted cards list is: > >Mind Rape: Allows for complete removal of an opponents vampire for >comletely minimal cost. Sure it only lasts for 2 turns, but when was the >last time you saw a Mind Raped vampire survive that long, either by >diablerizing someone ("Oh no! I just consumed my pal Igo! I am outraged >at my own actions! Burn me! Burn me!") or getting RTIed. We just banned >it. > Hmmm.. I can see what you mean, but when you say have you ever seen a Mind-Raped vampire last very long, I have to really, "I've never seen a vampire targetted by Mind Rape" It just hasn't come up. >Banishment: Similar to the above, but to a much lesser degree. Our group >just stated that it can be only called on a younger vampire. This fixes >it considerably. This doesn't happen much either. The last time I saw it was at the last game I played in (it was targetted at a 3 capacity Toreador Justicar and passed because the player calling it emptied his had with action modifiers and the like) but before that, I can't remember the last time I saw it. [ quoted text not captured ]

rai...@mich.com wrote: >Try placing the blood transferred to the Tomb rather than the Vampire. >This keeps the card balanced. Once the targetted Vampire reaches >capacity, from both the Tomb and what is currently on the uncontrolled >Vampire, bring it out. Gives others the chance to Burn/steal/etc the >card. Can still be a small gain, and is still good, but this is a quick >fix. I find this to be the preferred fix, as there is also no provision in the rules for two influence to remove one blood from a Tomb of Ramses III, thus this particular fix can also be interpreted to entirely eliminate the Tomb as a source of pool gain. The Tomb is good enough at getting big vamps out quickly at a reduced cost. I would also add that the blood on the tomb should be "counters" instead of "blood", just to make it suceptible to the Goth Band. Not that this is too much of an issue, but if there ever will be a thing like a template in this game, "blood" should only be alllowed on vamps, IMHO. Regards, R. David Zopf guenh...@mindspring.com Guenhwyvar->Guenivere->Genevive->Jennifer...got it??

The way the WOTC group ruled for Tomb of Ramses during the tournament at Origins (Alex, correct me if I'm wrong) was that blood transferred to the Tomb of Ramses went to the Tomb card, and transfers could not be used to pull blood off of the Tomb card. Personally, I thought it helped balance the card out somewhat. -- Bernie B. (Tied for #3).

rai...@mich.com wrote: > [re: Return to Innocence] >The best fix for this card is simple. Just convert blood cost to >pool cost. No one will carelessly be using RTI if they have to pay 4 >pool each time they use the card, plus the loss of the Vampire. >Blood loss on this card is really immaterial, since the vampire is >burned after its use. Sounds good except for one very important fact: In actual play, whenever someone uses RTI successfully, his/her prey WILL DIE, instantly. So you gain 6 pool back, making a 4 pool cost immaterial as well. No one carelessly tosses around RTIs ANYWAY; they play 4 or 5 of'em, and they've swept the table. IMNSHO, there is no way to fix RTI without changing it completely. Ban it! Ban it! Ban it! -- Steve "I Bled Someone for 14 Pool in One Turn Because of a Misdirection" Wampler, creator of the "Spend 29 Pool on Vampires and Get Bled for One and Die™" deck sjwa...@hotmail.com (ignore the above adress, its plain brown wrong)

>LSJ (VtES Rep) wrote: > > James Coupe wrote: > > It is a fact that in Jyhad/V:TES/DS/AH/Sabbat that there are broken > > cards which people tend to work against in their gaming group. It is > > also a fact that nothing is done officially about it so when you get a > > tournament you have the travesty that was this year's Origins - broken > > cards a plenty. > > However, what I want to do is see if we can get a proper list of broken > > cards. > A list to be banned or altered is just another "house rules list". > Such an experiment has already been performed - check the Rulemonger > page. You're welcomed to try it again, of course, but without a > clear consensus (and perhaps even with a clear consensus), the list > will not amount to much. And a clear consesnsus is a difficult > proposition on the internet. Very true. It's tough. However, cards which should merit ban/fixes IMHO are in the following categories: all cards which, by themselves, as either effect or penalty, cause the burning of an active vampire. These cards are extremely powerful, most unfairly so. These cards include-Golconda (burn your vampire for pool/force other player to spend 2 or lose vampire and gain pool), RtI (side effect burns acting vamp), Camarilla Segregation (to avoid constant pool loss, player with Non-Camarilla vampires must burn NC vampire over 4 cap.), AI (burn a vampire bleeding for four plus), Might of the Camarilla (burn a NC four cap. or under, IC members burn anyone), Society of Leopold (got blood?). cards which, by themselves, incapacitate an active vampire for relatively little in the way of cost. Pentex Subversion (may not act or block), Banishment (just disappear, already), Malkavian Derangement MPD. Views may differ on Sensory Deprivation, Seeds of Corruption, and Mind of a Child. cards which are obvious, blatant, unfair trumps. Thoughts Betrayed (denies the opportunity to play cards), Kiss of Ra (combat both avoided _and_ opponent sent to torpor), Divine Intervention. cards which allow the immediate and dramatic gain of blood or pool without sufficient cost. ToRIII, Giant's Blood. cards which allow the immediate theft of another vampire without sufficient cost. Mind Rape, Malkavian Dementia. vampires with inherent stealth or intercept. The ability to take actions which are not inherently stealthy at stealth, or to increase the stealth of those that are, is an incredible bonus. It saves cards. Preventing inherently stealthy actions grants the same card advantage. Granting such abilities to vampires under 9 capacity is problematic. -Nathan Harada Ever notice that the Wooden Stake is the poor man's Sengir Dagger, in the hands of Bianca or Lucia Pacciola?

In article <33DC9E...@regency.wizards.com>, "LSJ (VtES Rep)" <vte...@regency.wizards.com> writes >James Coupe wrote: >> >> It is a fact that in Jyhad/V:TES/DS/AH/Sabbat that there are broken >> cards which people tend to work against in their gaming group. It is >> also a fact that nothing is done officially about it so when you get a >> tournament you have the travesty that was this year's Origins - broken >> cards a plenty. >> >> However, what I want to do is see if we can get a proper list of broken >> cards. > >A list to be banned or altered is just another "house rules list". >Such an experiment has already been performed - check the Rulemonger >page. You're welcomed to try it again, of course, but without a >clear consensus (and perhaps even with a clear consensus), the list >will not amount to much. And a clear consesnsus is a difficult >proposition on the internet. Hmm... well, it's worth a try at least. To start with, I think everyone agrees that the Tomb and RTI need fixing to an extent. Even if we can't agree on a fix, I think we can all agree that in their current state they should shuffle off to the Banned List where they can keep the Monocle company. > >> ... Other cards I have seen mentioned, but less >> so, are things like Misdirection (can wipe out an opponent's carefully >> crafted defences with minimal pool problems for you) and a few other >> cards as well. > >In my opinion, Misdirection is only a problem with Mind Rape. And I believe >that Misdirection is not the problem in that combo. There are enough >untap and untap-like effects that (when taken with Misdirection's pool >cost) balance the effect of Misdirection. I've never had to put up with being Mind Raped - just the way it goes. Anyway, like I said, it wasn't one I'd seen people urgently want banning, I just thought I'd mention it anyway. > >> ... Return to Innocence could have a cost >> of X, rather than 4, where X is the capacity of the vampire playing it >> which means you can't play stuff like conditioning on it, or stealth >> requiring blood, which would mean you couldn't benefit by pulling 7 >> blood back of Leandro and then play Return to Innocence meaning you get >> +11 bleed (or whatever, can't remember the exact text) for the cost of a >> vampire and 4 blood. > >Just an observation, without addressing the suitability of this (or any other >house rule): > >This "fix" only works if Mask of 1000 Faces is banned. With Mask, a young >(cap=4) vampire could play RtI (paying 4 blood), then the already-tapped >Leandro could mask the action (turning it into a +11 bleed from a +4 bleed), >play Conditioning, etc. > On the subject of the cost, since the cost isn't paid until the action resolves successfully, surely Leandro would have to pay 11 blood for it which means you're losing a hefty amount of blood and a vampire there. I've seen no ruling to the contrary. Even if we can't agree on on rulings or a banned list, it should, at least, give you something to go to the Rules Team with to put a case forward for a rewording or banning at their discrection. [ quoted text not captured ]

Nathan Harada wrote: > >LSJ (VtES Rep) wrote: > > > James Coupe wrote: > > > It is a fact that in Jyhad/V:TES/DS/AH/Sabbat that there are broken > > > cards which people tend to work against in their gaming group. It is > > > also a fact that nothing is done officially about it so when you get a > > > tournament you have the travesty that was this year's Origins - broken > > > cards a plenty. > > > However, what I want to do is see if we can get a proper list of broken > > > cards. > > A list to be banned or altered is just another "house rules list". > > Such an experiment has already been performed - check the Rulemonger > > page. You're welcomed to try it again, of course, but without a > > clear consensus (and perhaps even with a clear consensus), the list > > will not amount to much. And a clear consesnsus is a difficult > > proposition on the internet. > > Very true. It's tough. However, cards which should merit > ban/fixes IMHO are in the following categories: > all cards which, by themselves, as either effect or penalty, > cause the burning of an active vampire. These cards are extremely > powerful, most unfairly so. These cards include-Golconda (burn your > vampire for pool/force other player to spend 2 or lose vampire and > gain pool), Golconda doesn't cause the burning of a vampire. It offers the controller or the vampire the option of allowing the vampire to be burned (with great reward) or pay a penalty. It is a master card, making it harder to use with "borrowed" vampires (Demented Malkavians). Some newer cards allow the borrowed vampires to remain borrowed through the Master phase. These new cards may increase the usefulness of Golconda. But that doesn't mean Golconda is the problem. > RtI (side effect burns acting vamp), Camarilla Segregation > (to avoid constant pool loss, player with Non-Camarilla vampires must > burn NC vampire over 4 cap.), AI (burn a vampire bleeding for four > plus), Might of the Camarilla (burn a NC four cap. or under, IC members > burn anyone), > Society of Leopold (got blood?). Empty vampires are vulnerable by nature. I don't think Society is Broken, especially since it is nullified by the ever-present Hunting Grounds. > cards which, by themselves, incapacitate an active vampire > for relatively little in the way of cost. Pentex Subversion (may not > act or block), Banishment (just disappear, already), Malkavian > Derangement MPD. Views may differ on Sensory Deprivation, Seeds > of Corruption, and Mind of a Child. Pentex, MalkDerang: 2 pool for temporary or variable (random) "incapacitation" is not "little cost". It's balanced cost. Banishment: incapacitation only until the next influence phase, and requires the vote to be successful. > cards which are obvious, blatant, unfair trumps. Thoughts > Betrayed (denies the opportunity to play cards), Kiss of Ra (combat > both avoided _and_ opponent sent to torpor), Kiss of Ra requires superior Fortitude, three blood, and that the target not have fortitude. Balance. > Divine Intervention. Costs a pool, a master phase action, and doesn't prohibit the Methuselah from playing the same card again in most cases (actmod/react excluded by the rules). > cards which allow the immediate and dramatic gain of blood or > pool without sufficient cost. ToRIII, Giant's Blood. Giant's Blood is duration-of-game unique, and therefore balanced. > cards which allow the immediate theft of another vampire > without sufficient cost. Mind Rape, Malkavian Dementia. Malk Demetia is clan-specific and short-lived. Balanced. > vampires with inherent stealth or intercept. The ability to > take actions which are not inherently stealthy at stealth, or to > increase the stealth of those that are, is an incredible bonus. It > saves cards. Preventing inherently stealthy actions grants the same > card advantage. Granting such abilities to vampires under 9 capacity > is problematic. Vampires with these skills pay for the skills in terms of capacity. [ quoted text not captured ]

James Coupe wrote: > > In article <33DC9E...@regency.wizards.com>, "LSJ (VtES Rep)" > <vte...@regency.wizards.com> writes > >> ... Return to Innocence could have a cost > >> of X, rather than 4, where X is the capacity of the vampire playing it > >> which means you can't play stuff like conditioning on it, or stealth > >> requiring blood, which would mean you couldn't benefit by pulling 7 > >> blood back of Leandro and then play Return to Innocence meaning you get > >> +11 bleed (or whatever, can't remember the exact text) for the cost of a > >> vampire and 4 blood. > > > >Just an observation, without addressing the suitability of this (or any other > >house rule): > > > >This "fix" only works if Mask of 1000 Faces is banned. With Mask, a young > >(cap=4) vampire could play RtI (paying 4 blood), then the already-tapped > >Leandro could mask the action (turning it into a +11 bleed from a +4 bleed), > >play Conditioning, etc. > > On the subject of the cost, since the cost isn't paid until the action > resolves successfully, surely Leandro would have to pay 11 blood for it > which means you're losing a hefty amount of blood and a vampire there. > I've seen no ruling to the contrary. Oop. Right you are. Scratch that objection. Humble apologies. [ quoted text not captured ]

LSJ wrote: "Banishment: incapacitation only until the next influence phase, and requires the vote to be successful. " Yeah, but then it costs its controller more pool to get it our. As per the last time we hashed out Banishment, yes, it is not completely out of control, but would be much more ballanced if it could only be used on a younger vampire. The fact that it has to be passed by a vote is hardly a balance point, as in general, vote decks either don't work (due to a nearby intercept deck or another strong vote deck), or they do (no intercept or no other vote deck. "Igo calls Banishment on Queen Anne. Hmm, I've got 12 votes, Queen Anne has 2, no one else has any. I guess it passes..."). "Kiss of Ra requires superior Fortitude, three blood, and that the target not have fortitude. Balance." Questionable. Yeah it has a cost, but its effect is fairly unprecidented (go directly to Torpor just for blocking) and exceptionally powerful. Blocking is effectively no longer an acceptable defense against the Ventrue, when originally the power of the Ventrue was buffered by their inabillity to get stealth, allowing you to block them. No longer the case. "(Direct Intervention)Costs a pool, a master phase action, and doesn't prohibit the Methuselah from playing the same card again in most cases (actmod/react excluded by the rules)." I think the biggest problem with this card is that most Jyhad players find the idea of a "Counterspell" distastefull. The card, in and of itself, is not that overpowered, if at all. "Vampires with these skills pay for the skills in terms of capacity." (regarding vamps with +1 stealth). But they don't. As has been beaten to death around here, most of the post Jyhad/VTES vampires pay _much_ less in terms of capacity for their skills than the original set vampires do. The only original set vamp with built in +1 Stealth is Lucretia, who is A) a 10 and B) has a bad set of Disciplines (a 10 point Nos with inferior potence?). The three new ones are smaller, have much better disciplines, and get much more for their capacity than Lucretia did. In effect, they get their +1 Stealth ability for free. Peter D Bakija PD...@aol.com "The one boy that's really liked me, and he's a Demon Robot. What does that say about me?" -Willow

On Wed, 30 Jul 1997 06:06:24 -0700, "LSJ (VtES Rep)" <vte...@regency.wizards.com> wrote: >Nathan Harada wrote: >> >LSJ (VtES Rep) wrote: >> > > James Coupe wrote: >> > > It is a fact that in Jyhad/V:TES/DS/AH/Sabbat that there are broken >> > > cards which people tend to work against in their gaming group. It is >> > > also a fact that nothing is done officially about it so when you get a >> > > tournament you have the travesty that was this year's Origins - broken >> > > cards a plenty. >> > > However, what I want to do is see if we can get a proper list of broken >> > > cards. >> > A list to be banned or altered is just another "house rules list". >> > Such an experiment has already been performed - check the Rulemonger >> > page. You're welcomed to try it again, of course, but without a >> > clear consensus (and perhaps even with a clear consensus), the list >> > will not amount to much. And a clear consesnsus is a difficult >> > proposition on the internet. Well, there are at least _some cards which I think we can all agree upon. Especially when the terms of the debate are laid out clearly. The list that I've seen going around has almost universally included Tomb of Ramses and Return to Innocence. I personally believe that the issue of miscosted vampires is more important than _most_ of the overpowered or broken cards that I complain about, but vampires are much harder to ban or restrict... >> Very true. It's tough. However, cards which should merit >> ban/fixes IMHO are in the following categories: >> all cards which, by themselves, as either effect or penalty, >> cause the burning of an active vampire. These cards are extremely >> powerful, most unfairly so. These cards include-Golconda (burn your >> vampire for pool/force other player to spend 2 or lose vampire and >> gain pool), > >Golconda doesn't cause the burning of a vampire. It offers the >controller or the vampire the option of allowing the vampire to >be burned (with great reward) or pay a penalty. > >It is a master card, making it harder to use with "borrowed" >vampires (Demented Malkavians). > >Some newer cards allow the borrowed vampires to remain borrowed >through the Master phase. These new cards may increase the usefulness >of Golconda. But that doesn't mean Golconda is the problem. If you're thinking of Mind Rape, well, I have to agree with you that Mind Rape is worse than Golconda. But Golconda used on your own vampires is a bit disgusting, especially in Etrius-style decks with the soul gem. >> RtI (side effect burns acting vamp), Camarilla Segregation >> (to avoid constant pool loss, player with Non-Camarilla vampires must >> burn NC vampire over 4 cap.), AI (burn a vampire bleeding for four >> plus), Might of the Camarilla (burn a NC four cap. or under, IC members >> burn anyone), > >> Society of Leopold (got blood?). > >Empty vampires are vulnerable by nature. I don't think Society is >Broken, especially since it is nullified by the ever-present >Hunting Grounds. Ack. I don't want to think about how a hunting ground or two can deal with a persistent Tremere deck laying about Seeds of Corruption and Cryptic Missions. The Society, I believe, burns vampires before they have an opportunity to get blood from hunting grounds; but I could be wrong. Even so, though, it allows the effective removal of a vampire from the game rather easily. To easily for my sense of fairness. Likewise, I find Decapitate and Disarm combined completely revolting. Pulled fangs is likewise a tad unfair. Basically, the unpreventable burning of vampires without a real cost is almost always an overpowered effect. Diablerie has risks and costs. Decapitation does not have similarly meaningful costs. >> cards which, by themselves, incapacitate an active vampire >> for relatively little in the way of cost. Pentex Subversion (may not >> act or block), Banishment (just disappear, already), Malkavian >> Derangement MPD. Views may differ on Sensory Deprivation, Seeds >> of Corruption, and Mind of a Child. > >Pentex, MalkDerang: 2 pool for temporary or variable (random) >"incapacitation" is not "little cost". It's balanced cost. > >Banishment: incapacitation only until the next influence phase, >and requires the vote to be successful. > >> cards which are obvious, blatant, unfair trumps. Thoughts >> Betrayed (denies the opportunity to play cards), Kiss of Ra (combat >> both avoided _and_ opponent sent to torpor), > >Kiss of Ra requires superior Fortitude, three blood, and that the >target not have fortitude. Balance. Balance? The opponent also burns 2 blood, LSJ. So, for one card and 3 blood, the opponent loses 2 blood and goes to torpor for merely attempting to block you. If it happened _after_ combat it might be fair. As it is, I cannot consider such an effect other than a trump. Hell, that even pre-empts thoughts betrayed. >> Divine Intervention. > >Costs a pool, a master phase action, and doesn't prohibit the >Methuselah from playing the same card again in most cases >(actmod/react excluded by the rules). It's still a counterspell. Just because it can be justified doesn't mean it's a fair or balanced card. Cards should not require justification for their existence; trumps, as a general rule, were not a part of Jyhad, and frankly, it should have stayed that way. >> cards which allow the immediate and dramatic gain of blood or >> pool without sufficient cost. ToRIII, Giant's Blood. > >Giant's Blood is duration-of-game unique, and therefore balanced. > >> cards which allow the immediate theft of another vampire >> without sufficient cost. Mind Rape, Malkavian Dementia. > >Malk Demetia is clan-specific and short-lived. Balanced. > >> vampires with inherent stealth or intercept. The ability to >> take actions which are not inherently stealthy at stealth, or to >> increase the stealth of those that are, is an incredible bonus. It >> saves cards. Preventing inherently stealthy actions grants the same >> card advantage. Granting such abilities to vampires under 9 capacity >> is problematic. > >Vampires with these skills pay for the skills in terms of capacity. One capacity for +1 stealth or intercept, permanently? Y'know, I'd like all of my vampires to have those abilities. 1 capacity is far too little for such powerful traits. I'd kill for an elder ventrue or Setite with inherent stealth, and if one capacity was the only cost I paid, I'd have gotten a bargain. Such powers are disproportionately powerful for their costs. Many examples of this have been given, but if you want to debate the point, I'm willing to bring them up again. >-- >L. Scott Johnson (vte...@regency.wizards.com) >Official VtES Net.Rep for Wizards of the Coast. >(*) - Subject to review by Rules Team Thanks for your time, LSJ. I hope that nothing I've said offends you; I merely speak my mind as honestly as I can. Alec Chang

Bernard M. Bresnahan (ber...@mich.com) wrote: : The way the WOTC group ruled for Tomb of Ramses during the tournament at [ quoted text not captured ] This seems a bit extreme. I think that one or the other fix is more than adequate. If the blood is on the card, it is too risky most of the time to turn it into an infinite pool factory. Furthermore, if blood cannot be removed from the tomb, the most it can gain you is an 8 pool savings over three turns, and it is unique and a location, stealable, burnable, and contestable. Eco Terrorists and the like are less balanced than the Tomb with either of these two fixes. -Dave Green

LSJ (VtES Rep) (vte...@regency.wizards.com) wrote: : Nathan Harada wrote: : > vampires with inherent stealth or intercept. The ability to : > take actions which are not inherently stealthy at stealth, or to : > increase the stealth of those that are, is an incredible bonus. It : > saves cards. Preventing inherently stealthy actions grants the same : > card advantage. Granting such abilities to vampires under 9 capacity : > is problematic. : Vampires with these skills pay for the skills in terms of capacity. About the only vamp that such abilities approach the abusive is Muaziz, and that because of her disciplines and clan more than capacity (though when you add the no-bloodhunt part, the capacity becomes a bit imbalanced). Of course, Muaziz is my favorite deck design, so she can do no wrong in my eyes, but as such I'll admit freely that she is a bit imbalanced. The other vampires with similar abilities are not. -Dave Green

I'll usually just sit back in the shadows and watch like a good Meth should, but I thought it was time I added my 2 cents to this discussion. While I believe that many cards are extremely powerful and can mess with the balance of power, I have never been one to support the banning of any card. Jyhad is a multi-player game and in the groups I've played with, any one who repeated uses "cheese cards" would ultimately end up with the rest of the table attacking them. That is the beauty of multi-player games, you can impose the group will without creating abusive rulings. No cards are broken enough to allow one player to take on three or more others and win. The fact that group action and intrigue are part of a multi-player game can easily control for "broken cards" or even "broken deck concepts." Just my opinion, Franz

LSJ (VtES Rep) (vte...@regency.wizards.com) wrote: : Michael Beer wrote: : > Ruthor's Hand : > Unlimited Action recources for thaumaturgy-users : It costs blood *and* deals aggravated damage. : Hardly what I'd consider "unlimited". : Compare to Freak Drive and Precognizant Mobility. You don't really have to worry until Muaziz gets a flak jacket (or has that been changed and preventing damage outside of combat with flak jackets is now a house rule?). Add a dominate master, and you have a very nice deck design which can border on the abusive (and has). -Dave Green

In article <19970730210...@ladder02.news.aol.com>, PDB6 <pd...@aol.com> writes >LSJ wrote: >"Banishment: incapacitation only until the next influence phase, and >requires the vote to be successful. " > >Yeah, but then it costs its controller more pool to get it our. As per >the last time we hashed out Banishment, yes, it is not completely out of >control, but would be much more ballanced if it could only be used on a >younger vampire. The fact that it has to be passed by a vote is hardly a >balance point, as in general, vote decks either don't work (due to a >nearby intercept deck or another strong vote deck), or they do (no >intercept or no other vote deck. "Igo calls Banishment on Queen Anne. >Hmm, I've got 12 votes, Queen Anne has 2, no one else has any. I guess it >passes..."). > It isn't really that much of a problem if you stamp soundly on the weenie vote deck to start with - Golden Tenets helps immensely (no vote pushing) and if necessary, use the rules about not refilling your hand with votes until the end of the minion phase. It should help to put the balance back. Banishment has never been much of a problem where I am - we don't have enough and political decks aren't that popular at the moment (if you even think about playing a vote when you've got a low capacity vampire out you're screamed at for playing a swarm vote deck). >"Kiss of Ra requires superior Fortitude, three blood, and that the target >not have fortitude. Balance." > >Questionable. Yeah it has a cost, but its effect is fairly unprecidented >(go directly to Torpor just for blocking) and exceptionally powerful. >Blocking is effectively no longer an acceptable defense against the >Ventrue, when originally the power of the Ventrue was buffered by their >inabillity to get stealth, allowing you to block them. No longer the >case. Hmm.. have to agree. Thinks like daring the dawn and dawn/day operation which revolve around the same manipulation of the sun as Kiss of Ra generally send you to torpor or do aggro damage or whatever. Kiss of Ra doesn't, and sends the opposing vampire to torpor at superior. Could do with doing you some unpreventable aggro damage aswell or something, to put it back on an equal footing with the previously mentioned cards. > >"(Direct Intervention)Costs a pool, a master phase action, and doesn't >prohibit the Methuselah from playing the same card again in most cases >(actmod/react excluded by the rules)." > >I think the biggest problem with this card is that most Jyhad players find >the idea of a "Counterspell" distastefull. The card, in and of itself, is >not that overpowered, if at all. > No, I don't think it is - it's a good card but like you say, it isn't really a 'Jyhad' card in the sense that it just doesn't feel right. >"Vampires with these skills pay for the skills in terms of capacity." >(regarding vamps with +1 stealth). > >But they don't. As has been beaten to death around here, most of the post >Jyhad/VTES vampires pay _much_ less in terms of capacity for their skills >than the original set vampires do. The only original set vamp with built >in +1 Stealth is Lucretia, who is A) a 10 and B) has a bad set of >Disciplines (a 10 point Nos with inferior potence?). The three new ones >are smaller, have much better disciplines, and get much more for their >capacity than Lucretia did. In effect, they get their +1 Stealth ability >for free. I do agree with the fact that they are underpriced, but do these vampires dominate your game? Does everyone always build a deck based around one of these vampires? The last time I did it was ages ago, and then I used Muaziz in a Gangrel deck. Hardly ever used Lucretia or Jost Werner and can't remember for certain the last time they were played against me. > >Peter D Bakija >PD...@aol.com > >"The one boy that's really liked me, >and he's a Demon Robot. >What does that say about me?" >-Willow -- [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <33dfa9db.17519096@news>, Alec Chang <te...@lava.net> writes >One capacity for +1 stealth or intercept, permanently? Y'know, I'd >like all of my vampires to have those abilities. 1 capacity is far >too little for such powerful traits. I'd kill for an elder ventrue or >Setite with inherent stealth, and if one capacity was the only cost I >paid, I'd have gotten a bargain. Such powers are disproportionately >powerful for their costs. Many examples of this have been given, but >if you want to debate the point, I'm willing to bring them up again. > Completely agree with that. Is there any chance of bumping up the ten capacities from Jyhad/V:TES so that they get a little bit more use. It might be good if the Justicars had a little bit of power over the rest of the vampires in their clan (say, extra votes if bloodhunt called or something like that - can't think of a good idea). As we've pointed out, some of the tens are ludicrously underpowered compared with other vampires. Democritus (ventrue Justicar) has inferior fortitude, for example (I think) and Angus, well: Angus the Unruled 10 capacity cel for pot ANI PRO Gangrel Gangrel Justicar: 2 hand damage Richard Kane Ferguson Vampire He has 7 points of disciplines, not even superior fortitude (!), is the Gangrel Justicar and has +1 hand damage (2 in the texts I was copying from). Talk about rubbish. But I can't think of a simple fix to beef him up a bit, and it would be murder trying to get Rebekka, Muaziz and Jost weakened. [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <33dfa9db.17519096@news>, Alec Chang <te...@lava.net> writes >Likewise, I find Decapitate and Disarm combined completely revolting. >Pulled fangs is likewise a tad unfair. Basically, the unpreventable >burning of vampires without a real cost is almost always an >overpowered effect. Diablerie has risks and costs. Decapitation does >not have similarly meaningful costs. The last time I had Decap in a deck, it took me forever to get it out and use it properly. It was a deck based around obtenebration-potence (for Entombment-Decaps) with a little bit of card recycling with Necromancy/Carlotta. It took me forever to get to play the Decap because I first had to get Stefano Giovanni (with various skill cards on him) up to enough blood to use the decap. I probably only used it once in the entire game (for it's superior ability) and the deck fell over in a heap anyway. Decap, for me, is not a problem because, unlike Amaranth, it requires Superior Potence and a lot of blood. Anyone who thinks you're going to hit them with it is going to hit you back as hard as possible so you haven't the blood to play it. [ quoted text not captured ]

Alec Chang wrote: > If you're thinking of Mind Rape, well, I have to agree with you that > Mind Rape is worse than Golconda. But Golconda used on your own > vampires is a bit disgusting, especially in Etrius-style decks with > the soul gem. This is not a Golconda problem, it is a Soul Gem problem (if it's a problem at all) > It's still a counterspell. Just because it can be justified doesn't > mean it's a fair or balanced card. Cards should not require > justification for their existence; trumps, as a general rule, were not > a part of Jyhad, and frankly, it should have stayed that way. Jyhad and VtES have always had "counterspell". Sudden Reversal. Moreover, Sudden Reversal trumps Divine Intervention. > Thanks for your time, LSJ. I hope that nothing I've said offends you; > I merely speak my mind as honestly as I can. No problem. My arguments are presented more to illustrate the debatable points of these "self-evident" broken cards. As for debating the cost/capacity/skill s of the old vampires vs. the new (and new vs. new), I'm sure we've all heard all the point in that argument enough already. --- Anyone wishing to review my non-devil's-advocate arguments/opinions (back before I was Net.Rep) is invited to peruse the DejaNews archives and the vtes-l archives. [ quoted text not captured ]

Franz A. Foltz wrote: "Jyhad is a multi-player game and in the groups I've played with, any one who repeated uses "cheese cards" would ultimately end up with the rest of the table attacking them. That is the beauty of multi-player games, you can impose the group will without creating abusive rulings. No cards are broken enough to allow one player to take on three or more others and win. The fact that group action and intrigue are part of a multi-player game can easily control for "broken cards" or even "broken deck concepts."" One of the main factors behind the brilliance of Jyhad as a multi player game is the Predator/Prey relationship of the game. Jyhad is not designed to be a "Free for All" or "Kingmaker" style multi player game, in the way that say, Shadow Fist of Legends of the Five Rings are. In Jyhad, the very basis of the game is the direction of the action and that 90% of the time, you can only affect either your Predator or Prey. As a result, anything that encourages the dissolution of this relationship eats away at the very basis of the game, and can only be damaging to the game as a whole. The fact that players at a table may be forced to completely ignore the standard table dynamic just to battle a degenerate deck built around some busted cards only points out that these are busted cards. The "Kingmaker" aspect of multi player gaming should not and is not a justification for overpowered or broken cards. Plus, the imposition of group will does nothing to buffer the effect such broken cards have on tournament games, or any games you play involving people you don't know. Sure, in your group for instance, whenever anyone plays the Tomb of Ramses III, everyone at the table goes out of their way to destroy it before it becomes useful, so the Tomb isn't that big of a deal around your parts. What is to say that this is going to happen at a tournament or in a game with new people? Without the entire table rushing to destroy the Tomb, the player using it will gain a _huge_ advantage, far greater than the cost of the card justifies. All in all, it would have been better to A) not to have made such a card at all or B) officially eratta the card to not be so good. [ quoted text not captured ]

Fixing Direct Intervention, This is one of the lesser members of the 'Broken Card Brotherhood', and while I don't see it as a big problem personally it does do two things that seem to irritate a lot of people: 1) It is a counterspell. 2) It seriously damages exotic combo-decks. One of the beauties of Jyhad is that the odd fanatic (i.e. most of us) can put together this weird deck that relies on combo's of 20 or more cards all used in sequence during one minion phase using a minimum of 5 minions that phase.....While this approach rarely works:) we should at least give it a fighting chance. So how about this: Direct Intervention Master: Out of Turn 1 pool Cancel a minion card as it is played. The affected Methuselah will shuffle that card into his/her deck before replacing it in his/her hand. Any blood or pool cost burned for that card is retreived from the blood bank by the vampire or Methuselah who played it. If the cancelled card was an action card, the acting minion remains untapped. If the card was a strike card, the minion chooses another strike. Remember that any card or action cancelled by DI is simply treated as having never been played or attempted. i.e. "You cancel my GtU. Fine, I have another right here."

Fixing Tomb of Ramses III, The best idea that I've seen is the one that simply keeps the blood on the one vamp. This allows a single big vamp to be brought out at a lower total cost and not two. i.e. there will be no overall blood gain for a TOR III on a six or seven cap vamp, while the true blood gain is relatively modest for 8+ cap. vamps. Oddly enough this is how I thought the card actually worked when I first got it. Until that fateful day when I read the card over again and said "Oh my God! Do you know what this means!" Tomb of Ramses III Master: Unique Location 3 pool Put this card on a vampire in your uncontrolled region. For each blood counter you transfer to this uncontrolled vampire during your influence phase, move one counter from the blood bank to this uncontrolled vampire. Burn this card when this vampire comes into play. Note that this makes the card a big Info Highway with some blood gain attributes. It will also nicely set off against the pro-weenie aspects of the game. "You brought out two little guys with minor Dom, fine I brought out one big guy."

Fixing Thoughts Betrayed, My first inclination is that you can't, ban the damn thing and be done with it. My second inclination is to upgrade the inferior part of the card a little, and change the superior part to a Dom version of Terror Frenzy. It is truly unfortunate that this card requires total reworking and not a line of errata. Which only indicates by just how much the boat was missed on this one. So here goes: Thoughts Betrayed Combat Card Dominate 2 blood Only useable as combat is entered. Inferior Opposing minion takes an additional 2 damage in the first round of combat during strike resolution. Superior Opposing minion pays an additional blood when playing combat cards during this combat. Note that you could also turn the superior of this into an Aura Reading combo: Thoughts Betrayed Combat Card Dominate 2 blood Only useable as combat is entered. Inferior Opposing minion takes an additional 2 damage in the first round of combat during strike resolution. Superior Your hand size is increased by one for the remainder of this combat, and your opponent plays with an open hand for the remainder of this combat. Discard back to your maximum hand size at the end of this combat. Either one of these should be acceptable.

Franz A. Foltz wrote: > > I'll usually just sit back in the shadows and watch like a good Meth > should, but I thought it was time I added my 2 cents to this > discussion. While I believe that many cards are extremely powerful > and can mess with the balance of power, I have never been one to > support the banning of any card. Jyhad is a multi-player game and > in the groups I've played with, any one who repeated uses "cheese > cards" would ultimately end up with the rest of the table attacking > them. That is the beauty of multi-player games, you can impose the > group will without creating abusive rulings. No cards are broken > enough to allow one player to take on three or more others and win. > The fact that group action and intrigue are part of a multi-player > game can easily control for "broken cards" or even "broken deck > concepts." > > Just my opinion, > > Franz This is true of every single multi-player CCG I've ever seen, EXCEPT Jyhad. WHile there are multiple players at the table, you are rarely affected by the actions of anyone other than your predator or prey. There are exceptions, but they tend to be few and far between, and rarely much more than the 1 pool/ turn from an AR or Fame. In multi-player games of INWO, L5R, or Shadowfist, "Get him, he's winning!" works. But in Jyhad's structured enivronment, this rarely works, because only one person CAN "get" the guy who's winning. It is possible, for some decks, to rush vampires across the table, or to inflict some pool loss, but in both cases, wither the actions are largely ineffectual, or they get the guy killed, which means 6 pool and, more importantly, a VP, for the guy's predator. By attacking across the table you are only screwing yourself, because it means you are fighting 3 decks instead of 2, and your giving someone else free VPs. [ quoted text not captured ]

James Coup wrote: "Banishment has never been much of a problem where I am - we don't have enough and political decks aren't that popular at the moment (if you even think about playing a vote when you've got a low capacity vampire out you're screamed at for playing a swarm vote deck)." Yeah, our group just generally finds any card that easily removes a vampire from play to be very distasteful. Vampires are _way_ to important of a resource to get willy nilly removed/stollen with the likes of Banishment or Mind Rape or Archon Investigation. Sure, we can (and do) abuse our freinds who play degenerate decks, but we like to keep them from doing it officialy too. We play GT rules, and also locally fixed a bunch of cards, including Banishment (we play that it can only be played on a younger vampire). "Hmm.. have to agree. Thinks like daring the dawn and dawn/day operation which revolve around the same manipulation of the sun as Kiss of Ra generally send you to torpor or do aggro damage or whatever. Kiss of Ra doesn't, and sends the opposing vampire to torpor at superior. Could do with doing you some unpreventable aggro damage aswell or something, to put it back on an equal footing with the previously mentioned cards." Precisely. The cost of Ra is completely negligible, and there is _no_ out clause (except for having a particular discipline, which is an unprecidented card ability, and kind of wack at that). Perhaps if it worked like Dawn Opps, and you could chose to let the vamp through after they play Ra, then it would be ok, as well as any of the other ideas you mentioned (acting vamp goes to torpor also, or whatever). "No, I don't think it is - it's a good card but like you say, it isn't really a 'Jyhad' card in the sense that it just doesn't feel right." It is just an ugly card. Sudden Reversal does the same sort of thing, and I've never liked that either, but SR is sort of needed cause Master cards tend to be very difficult to get rid of/deal with. Minion cards already all have workable defenses, regardless of the particular card. DI is an example of unneded escelation. It seems like they added AI, so they felt they had to make bleeding more dangerous, so they added RTI, which turned out to be too powerful, so they added DI to whack the RTI, etc. "I do agree with the fact that they are underpriced, but do these vampires dominate your game? Does everyone always build a deck based around one of these vampires? The last time I did it was ages ago, and then I used Muaziz in a Gangrel deck." Nah. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I find these (+1 stealth) vampires offensive in terms of game design and precident, not in terms of actual play effect (much like Ian Forrestal). Our group tends to be extremely Rush heavy, so these little softy +1 stealth vamps tend to die before they have too much effect on play. [ quoted text not captured ]

James Coupe <ja...@obeah.demon.co.uk.nospam> wrote: >In article <33dfa9db.17519096@news>, Alec Chang <te...@lava.net> writes >>One capacity for +1 stealth or intercept, permanently? Y'know, I'd >>like all of my vampires to have those abilities. 1 capacity is far >>too little for such powerful traits. I'd kill for an elder ventrue or >>Setite with inherent stealth, and if one capacity was the only cost I >>paid, I'd have gotten a bargain. Such powers are disproportionately >>powerful for their costs. Many examples of this have been given, but >>if you want to debate the point, I'm willing to bring them up again. >> > >Completely agree with that. Is there any chance of bumping up the ten >capacities from Jyhad/V:TES so that they get a little bit more use. It >might be good if the Justicars had a little bit of power over the rest >of the vampires in their clan (say, extra votes if bloodhunt called or >something like that - can't think of a good idea). > >As we've pointed out, some of the tens are ludicrously underpowered >compared with other vampires. Democritus (ventrue Justicar) has >inferior fortitude, for example (I think) and Angus, well: > Actually, no Justicar in the game has superior fortitude! Certainly, vampires like Muazis are overpowered, but some of the powerful Sabbat vampires are more understandable. When they have to put up with cards like Judgement: Camarilla Segregation, they need more powerful vampires to compensate. Dallas Card

Steve Wampler wrote: > > In multi-player games of INWO, L5R, or Shadowfist, "Get him, he's > winning!" works. But in Jyhad's structured enivronment, this rarely > works, because only one person CAN "get" the guy who's winning. It is > possible, for some decks, to rush vampires across the table, or to > inflict some pool loss, but in both cases, wither the actions are > largely ineffectual, or they get the guy killed, which means 6 pool > and, more importantly, a VP, for the guy's predator. By attacking > across the table you are only screwing yourself, because it means you > are fighting 3 decks instead of 2, and your giving someone else free > VPs. Hi everybody! I'm temporarily able to read newsgroups again, but I'll be going off-line in a week or two when I move to Wisconsin. Hopefully there I'll have an account which allows me to read Usenet. Anyway... I'm agreeing with you here, Steve. I'm just going to add fuel to the fire by giving substantive evidence of what you're saying. As most of us know, there are a large number of possible deck types, but relatively few successful deck component. The components combine into tactics. While a deck might use more than one tactic, there are rarely any successful decks which don't use any. IMO, the basic components are Combat, Rush, Flee, Bleed, Pool Gain, Intercept, Stealth, Vote, Equipment. I'm using these terms a little bit differently from the way we normally see them: Combat: Simply means the deck uses combat. Rush: This component is always combined with others, and means something like "actively directing against other players." So Rush-Combat is obvious, but Rush-Vote would mean directing votes against other players. Rush-Vote-Bleed would mean directing damaging votes against other players. Flee: Kind of like the opposite of Rush; this component means the tactic is used defensively. Combat-Flee would mean the deck uses combat cards like damage prevention or S:CE. Bleed: This component means the deck causes pool loss (above and beyond the basic one bleed per vampire). Pool Gain: This component means the deck tries to gain pool. Intercept: This component means the deck uses intercept. Stealth: " " " " " " stealth. Vote: " " " " " " votes. Equipment: " " " " " " equipment. ------------------------------------------------------------- So a deck like my "Hey, hey, We're the Lasombra", which votes to gain pool, bleeds heavy, and uses defensive combat, would be a three-tactic deck: Vote-Pool Gain / Bleed-Rush-Stealth / Combat-Flee Each tactic has three components: the goal of the tactic (Vote/Bleed/Pool Gain/Combat), the "style" of the tactic (Rush/Flee), and the way the tactic is executed (Stealth/Intercept/Equipment). Another example: Steve Wampler's "Illusionary Flamethrower" deck (intercept-y Ravnos nightmare) would simply be: Combat-Rush-Intercept since it is a primarily one-tactic deck. ----------------------------------------------------------------- So, how does this relate? Well my point is that, as you say, only a deck which uses a Rush strategy would be able to "gang up" on the guys with the broken cards. And only Rush strategies which are _not_ also Intercept tactics will work, since you can't necessarily intercept from across the table. Clearly not all decks use a Rush, non-Intercept tactic. And even if a deck does have one, there are usually one of two problems with going out and beating up on the guy who is winning: 1. Lack of effectiveness. Sure, it might feel good to go bleed the Malkavian chainsaw guy for 5, but is it really going to help? Oh, no! You've given the guy with the Tomb of Ramses a Sabbat Threat counter! Whatever shall he do? 2. Lack of interest. Why should I go beat up Arika, who's across the table, and not Emerson Bridges of Madison County, who keeps bleeding me for 4? Besides, if I choose _not_ to beat up Arika, I can persuade her controller to send those votes my way... In fact, since these "strong arm" tactics tend not to work in tournament situations, since once everyone realizes that someone is winning, they've pretty much already won. So the best way to deal with cheese in the local setting is to brow-beat the offender into changing, or adopting house rules. To fix the situation overall, brow-beating won't work, and some sort of modification to the rules is necessary. The addition of modified Golden Tenets to the DCI rules is a start, but with horribly broken cards like ToRIII and RtI, more is needed. James -- James Hamblin je...@cornell.edu soon to be: James Hamblin Grad. Student, Department of Mathematics University of Wisconsin ham...@math.wisc.edu

In article <33E2B8...@mail.compusmart.ab.ca>, Jaysen <jay...@mail.compusmart.ab.ca> writes >Fixing Thoughts Betrayed, > >My first inclination is that you can't, ban the damn thing and be >done with it. My second inclination is to upgrade the inferior >part of the card a little, and change the superior part to a Dom >version of Terror Frenzy. It is truly unfortunate that this card >requires total reworking and not a line of errata. Which only >indicates by just how much the boat was missed on this one. > >So here goes: > >Thoughts Betrayed >Combat Card >Dominate >2 blood >Only useable as combat is entered. > Inferior >Opposing minion takes an additional 2 damage in the first round of >combat during strike resolution. > Superior >Opposing minion pays an additional blood when playing combat cards >during this combat. > I quite like this one because it's fairly simple and elegant and still does the same sort of thing as the original card (because I'm unlikely to play a claw card if I'm having to pay two blood for it, for instance). > >Note that you could also turn the superior of this into an Aura >Reading combo: > >Thoughts Betrayed >Combat Card >Dominate >2 blood >Only useable as combat is entered. > Inferior >Opposing minion takes an additional 2 damage in the first round of >combat during strike resolution. > Superior >Your hand size is increased by one for the remainder of this combat, >and your opponent plays with an open hand for the remainder of this >combat. Discard back to your maximum hand size at the end of >this combat. > I think the previous one is better than this because Dominate is more of a commanding discipline - "Don't hit me", so they can't (the original intention of the card) or rather, they can but half to exert a lot of effort to do it (your first fix). Auspex is a discipline of precognition (intercept) and also sense perception and mind reading and the like (things like Aura Reading). Giving Dominate the ability to give someone an open hand takes some of Auspex's power away from it (and Auspex is, to my mind, a bit of a boring discipline once you get past the intercept so anything that keeps it unique is fine by me - I know that Animalism has the Owl Retainer BTW, but that's only one card and is fine for it's purposes). > >Either one of these should be acceptable. -- [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <33E0AE...@vt.edu>, "Franz A. Foltz" <ffo...@vt.edu> writes >I'll usually just sit back in the shadows and watch like a good Meth >should, No, please, contribute. It's always good to get new perspectives on Jyhad - commonplace things in your gaming group might never happen in ours. > but I thought it was time I added my 2 cents to this discussion. > While I believe that many cards are extremely powerful and can mess with >the balance of power, I have never been one to support the banning of any >card. I personally prefer the rewording of cards to prevent them being banned, but some cards can't be reworded easily. >Jyhad is a multi-player game and in the groups I've played with, >any one who repeated uses "cheese cards" would ultimately end up with the >rest of the table attacking them. Been there, done that. The rest of the table in our group rarely has an easy way to get at the player playing "cheese cards" (just as an aside, why "cheese cards"). Also, when you gang up on one person, they can really get annoyed (to put it mildly). > That is the beauty of multi-player >games, you can impose the group will without creating abusive rulings. No >cards are broken enough to allow one player to take on three or more >others and win. The fact that group action and intrigue are part of a >multi-player game can easily control for "broken cards" or even "broken >deck concepts." Hmmm... just how would your group get around the "I mind rape all of your vampires, and diablerize all of his with them" deck concept (with, presumably, your own vampires having a little obfuscate-dominate (to get the vamps over to your side at stealth) playing Cloak the Gatherings to make the diablerie attempts pass - even if you don't, it's not your vamp so you don't care). Or how about the Etrius-Soul Gem-Skill Card combo followed by Golconda or Return to Innocence (at stealth, of course because of his OBF)? If all of the players have to tune their decks against one specific deck type, games get boring. If one person plays a Stealth RtoI deck, everyone else has to find ways of stopping them (likely, intercept- combat which can only be accomplished in so many ways - tremere- thaumaturgy, gangrel-claw, malkavian-disguised weapon-grenade-IR goggles/Fake Out or Toreador-celerity) which means everyone else has a boring time. If RtoI wasn't so powerful, then people wouldn't be so worried about it coming up and would be able to play other decks without the fear or getting their but kicked in a single turn. > >Just my opinion, > >Franz [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <EE74s...@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>, Dave Green <dcg3k@fara day.clas.Virginia.EDU> writes >LSJ (VtES Rep) (vte...@regency.wizards.com) wrote: [ quoted text not captured ] As you, I do like Muaziz - plenty of her in Gangrel decks for +1 stealth diablerie attempts. However, when you say that there are no other abusive vamps with similar abilities, people like Jost Werner (who shouldn't be getting stealth on bleeds really with his clan and disciplines) can get really annoying when they're getting stealth permanently on huge bleeds (a Legal Manipulations followed by an Aire of Elation). You'll run out of intercept at one point but he won't run out of minor stealth so eventually you won't be able to block. And whilst you'll get either intercept or combat hand jam, he won't have that problem because the only cards he'll be playing are bleed cards or bleed modifiers (which I wouldn't care about hand jam on ie if I only had bleed actions or whatever) because he doesn't have to put stealth in (possibly a few Alacrity's, but thats about it). I'd say Rebekka isn't broken (a minor bleed modifier and stealth modifier, the former is conditional). Lucretia isn't broken (a little under-powered, maybe). Muaziz wouldn't be broken if she could have blood hunts called, or that ability was toned down a little (say, you also had to control a ready Prince or the Tremere Justicar or something for it to work - could be got around - a cheap vampire and a vote, but still, it's a possibility). In my opinion, Jost Werner is broken because he gets it so cheaply and is a small vampire (Rebekka might not pay much for the stealth, but you have to pay a bit more for her). [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <EE74G...@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>, Dave Green <dcg3k@fara day.clas.Virginia.EDU> writes >LSJ (VtES Rep) (vte...@regency.wizards.com) wrote: [ quoted text not captured ] No, flak jackets still prevent damage in combat, it's just that now cards with preventable damage (specifically Rutor's hand, but probably the other cards, I think) start up a combat damage prevention phase so you are in combat to prevent the damage (oops). Anyway, I'd be more likely to do something similar with Merill Molitor and a Hunting Ground (because you're now in combat, he changes the damage to normal - oww). [ quoted text not captured ]

PDB6 wrote: > >> Franz A. Foltz wrote: >> "Jyhad is a multi-player game and in the groups I've played with, any one >> who repeated uses "cheese cards" would ultimately end up with the rest of >> the table attacking them. That is the beauty of multi-player games, you >> can impose the group will without creating abusive rulings. No cards are >> broken enough to allow one player to take on three or more others and win. >> The fact that group action and intrigue are part of a multi-player game >> can easily control for "broken cards" or even "broken deck concepts."" > > One of the main factors behind the brilliance of Jyhad as a multi player > game is the Predator/Prey relationship of the game. Jyhad is not designed > to be a "Free for All" or "Kingmaker" style multi player game, in the way > that say, Shadow Fist of Legends of the Five Rings are. In Jyhad, the > very basis of the game is the direction of the action and that 90% of the > time, you can only affect either your Predator or Prey. As a result, > anything that encourages the dissolution of this relationship eats away at > the very basis of the game, and can only be damaging to the game as a > whole. The predator-prey dynamic is important in the game but if you ignore what's happening around the table, then you are missing what really makes the game exciting. Not to meantion the fact that while you are busy on your side of the table, a random sitting arrangement might have given another player a great advantage, that your inattentiveness allows her to easily overpower her prey. (I think you will agree that some decks work better next to specific decks than others. A stealth-bleed deck that ends up next to a intercept-less vote deck has a big advantage.) In my group at least, people think enough ahead to realize that you need to help your predator's predator keep up the pressure on your predator, while not gaining a position to eliminate him. As you also start to set up those who will soon be your prey. I've seen too many people womp on their prey to the point that he does little if no damage to his own prey, giving their prey's prey a big advantage in the game. The fun of the game is controlling what is going on all around you. It is also the best way to win. At least with the people I play with, ignoring everybody but you prey and predator will guarantee you quickly losing. > The fact that players at a table may be forced to completely ignore the > standard table dynamic just to battle a degenerate deck built around some > busted cards only points out that these are busted cards. The "Kingmaker" > aspect of multi player gaming should not and is not a justification for > overpowered or broken cards. I am not claiming it as a justification, but simply as the easiest way to enforce group norms. I personally hate too many eratas and rule changes. Mainly because they start to snowball and create new problems. I've seen the "broken card" list grow and include numerous cards, that I think, given your sensibility in the newsgroup, you would agree are hardly broken. The players I play with will rarely put up with degenerate decks for more than a single game -- usually as a look at how cheesy I can be moment, now back to real play. Winning with cheesy cards and combinations take little if any skill, so who really cares if you win. You are not winning the game simply utilizing a loophole that puts you at an unfair advantage over others. I know this does not work with tournaments. But what really is the point of tournaments. Do you all enter to win a starter deck and a few boosters or do you play to have fun, meet others who you would not normally play against, and see different ideas in action? I've seen many tournaments where the most skills players don't win. But we all knew that she or he was the best there. My suggestion to those who play in tournaments is simply to not use cheesy cards and combinations and when somebody wins due to cheesy cards (and not to skill) just tell them so what. Who cares?

James Coupe wrote: > > In article <33E0AE...@vt.edu>, "Franz A. Foltz" <ffo...@vt.edu> > writes > >Jyhad is a multi-player game and in the groups I've played with, > >any one who repeated uses "cheese cards" would ultimately end up with the > >rest of the table attacking them. > > Been there, done that. The rest of the table in our group rarely has an > easy way to get at the player playing "cheese cards" (just as an aside, > why "cheese cards"). It's the slang that the person who first introduced me to Jyhad used and I perfer it to broken. Of course I use it also for card combos (e.g. fame/Talbot Chainsaw/Chantry combo) and for complete deck designs (like the Soul gem/etc. deck). > Also, when you gang up on one person, they can > really get annoyed (to put it mildly). But that's the point. Few people will continue using such cards/combos, decks because its no fun to play with them. (also it takes little skill as the cards win and not the player). > > > That is the beauty of multi-player > >games, you can impose the group will without creating abusive rulings. No > >cards are broken enough to allow one player to take on three or more > >others and win. The fact that group action and intrigue are part of a > >multi-player game can easily control for "broken cards" or even "broken > >deck concepts." > > Hmmm... just how would your group get around the "I mind rape all of > your vampires, and diablerize all of his with them" deck concept (with, > presumably, your own vampires having a little obfuscate-dominate (to get > the vamps over to your side at stealth) playing Cloak the Gatherings to > make the diablerie attempts pass - even if you don't, it's not your vamp > so you don't care). Like above the group simple rags on the person for using cheese and not really playing the game. I guess we deal with "broken" problems through group dynamics and the meta-environment we play in. we play for fun and try to win through igenuity and skill and not because a single card or two gives us the victory. Winning for the sake of winning is boring in itself. We are all constantly trying out new ideas and fine tuning old favorites, but rarely we will do something that is outside of the flavor or the game more than once. There was one person who use to always play quasi-weenie decks of one sort or another, never the same idea more than once, and another who repeatedly tried (over the span of a few weeks)to see how much aggro damage he could do in one turn, but always within the spirit of the game. > If all of the players have to tune their decks against one specific deck > type, games get boring. If one person plays a Stealth RtoI deck, > everyone else has to find ways of stopping them (likely, intercept- > combat which can only be accomplished in so many ways - tremere- > thaumaturgy, gangrel-claw, malkavian-disguised weapon-grenade-IR > goggles/Fake Out or Toreador-celerity) which means everyone else has a > boring time. If RtoI wasn't so powerful, then people wouldn't be so > worried about it coming up and would be able to play other decks without > the fear or getting their but kicked in a single turn. As I said above, playing a Stealth RtoI deck is as boring as trying to create decks solely to beat it. So no one I play with would use such a deck more than possibly once in a blue moon. And then the rest of us would jeer him or her for the audacity. Many of us do keep a few Sudden Reversals, directed bleeds, or Arsons on hand just to deal with surprises like Tombs, etc., but as I said elsewhere, we tend to interact across the table more than apparently most groups. (see other responses on this thread) Just my opinion, Franz

Franz A. Foltz wrote: "The predator-prey dynamic is important in the game but if you ignore what's happening around the table, then you are missing what really makes the game exciting." My point was not that you should ignore what is going on with everyone but your prey, but that table dynamic should not be used to fix holes in the game. Very clearly, in a five player game, what every single player does has a (potentialy) direct effect upon you (by way of your prey or predator). Granted, the bigger game you get, the less important what happens to guy 7 across the table is (which is why I dislike games bigger than 5...), but yes, table dynamic is one of the most important aspects of the game. Once busted cards are introduced into the game, the table dynamic gets screwed up completely. In a regular game, while you try to whack your prey, you are also trying to help your grand-prey (to impede your prey) as well as your grand-predator (to impede your predator), and while you are trying to help other players, you are also carefully trying to balance out how much help you give them, lest they get too powerful by the time they are right next to you. When busted cards are introduced, the guy with the degenerate Unblockable/RTI/Mind Rape deck across the table gets flogged by everyone (out of sheer desperation) until the appropriate table action no longer exists. He also wrote: "I am not claiming it as a justification, but simply as the easiest way to enforce group norms. I personally hate too many eratas and rule changes. Mainly because they start to snowball and create new problems. I've seen the "broken card" list grow and include numerous cards, that I think, given your sensibility in the newsgroup, you would agree are hardly broken." But enforcing group norms does you no good when you are playing with people from outside of your group. Whether it be a tournament, or just some new players in town, the "peer pressure" angle of fixing holes won't work with strangers. I suppose it is just personal preference, but our (long standing and large) Jyhad group was falling apart due to the "peer pressure" balancing tactic, as guy "A" would develop an evil deck using some new evil card, and win until everyone brow beat him with "Yeah, you're cool. You killed us all with RTI (or whatever). Make a new deck now..." until he did. Then, the next week, player "B" would come up with a similarly evil deck, and start winning, at which point player "A" would get pissed off because player "B" was catching far less flack for his evil deck than player "A" did. And so on. This was killing our group. No one was allowed to play S+B decks, because they were "Cheesey". No one was allowed to play KRC decks, because they were "Cheesey", etc. Eventually, after everyone was pissed off at everyone else, we decided to fix all the busted cards we could think of, so no one would have to be brow beaten into anything. This works with our group, but sadly, also has no effect when we play with strangers, which is why we rally for offical fixes to the particularly broken cards. and finally: "I know this does not work with tournaments. But what really is the point of tournaments. Do you all enter to win a starter deck and a few boosters or do you play to have fun, meet others who you would not normally play against, and see different ideas in action?" The point of tournaments is to meet new people and play Jyhad with a bunch of folks you have never met before. I can say with fair certanty that there is not a single Jyhad player who plays in a tourney for promises of wealth and prizes. Sadly, the best place to find new Jyhad players is at Tournaments, which is also most likely to bring out the wackest tendencies in many players (due to, well, the promise of wealth and prize...). If all the busted cards were offically fixed, then this would no longer be a problem. [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <33E2B3...@mail.compusmart.ab.ca>, Jaysen <jay...@mail.compusmart.ab.ca> writes >Fixing Direct Intervention, > >This is one of the lesser members of the 'Broken Card Brotherhood', >and while I don't see it as a big problem personally it does do two >things that seem to irritate a lot of people: > >1) It is a counterspell. > That, in and of itself is not bad, as LSJ has said already, we already had Sudden Reversal and no-one ever complained about that card. However, I kind of understand since many Jyhad players don't like 'proper' counterspells. >2) It seriously damages exotic combo-decks. One of the beauties > of Jyhad is that the odd fanatic (i.e. most of us) can put > together this weird deck that relies on combo's of 20 or > more cards all used in sequence during one minion phase > using a minimum of 5 minions that phase.....While this approach > rarely works:) we should at least give it a fighting chance. I think the point about Jyhad is that it doesn't rely on this sort of approach. How often do people post to the newsgroup saying: "If I use my Helm of Googlesplotch then, because of the timing rules, I can activate the Toilet of Flushing which lets me activate the Broom Cupboard of Janitoria" and so on. Jyhad doesn't rely on combos. I rarely put a deck together thinking that if I can get several cards out then I can win. I do put cards in thinking that if I can get them out I'll do better (eg a Ghoul Retainer and an RPG Launcher) but either of them will help me on their own, but I prefer to have the two together since my opponents tend to play a lot of Fortitude so they have to cycle at least three cards to prevent the RPG damage (can't use Skin of Steel - hehe) which means that, hopefully, they quickly run out. However, I can use either on their own and they don't fall over in a heap if I don't get the other out. That was probably one of the aims of the Jyhad Design Team - create a game which doesn't rely on huge combos to win (as Magic tends to). > >So how about this: > >Direct Intervention >Master: Out of Turn >1 pool >Cancel a minion card as it is played. The affected Methuselah will >shuffle that card into his/her deck before replacing it in his/her >hand. Any blood or pool cost burned for that card is retreived from >the blood bank by the vampire or Methuselah who played it. If the >cancelled card was an action card, the acting minion remains untapped. >If the card was a strike card, the minion chooses another strike. > Hmmm... if you've gone to the trouble of spending an OOT action and a pool, should they really have the chance to get it back. If you're playing a vote deck with few defences, DI helps you have a few defences against things like Order of Hermes (the aggro damage) by getting rid of them when they play it. Personally, I don't think DI is broken - it costs pool to get rid of a minion card (and master cards can hurt more - Anarch Revolt, Antediluvian Awakening (not burn a pool to get rid of - burn a vampire), Smiling Jack (which your opponent can block the burning of and in doing so, burn your vampires)), and prevents you from playing any more OOT (remember, only one OOT master card regardless of how many master phase actions you have ie rumors of gehenna, Anson, Parthenon etc don't allow you to play two or three DI's before your next turn). > >Remember that any card or action cancelled by DI is simply treated >as having never been played or attempted. i.e. "You cancel my >GtU. Fine, I have another right here." -- [ quoted text not captured ]

Okay, you convinced me a little, that some semi-official changes would make the game more workable in situations where you interact with new people. Also I realize now that my group may be unique in that we enjoy the ability to manipulate around the table more than is normal and that most of us use mainly old Jyhad cards, which limits some of the abusive cards. (We do have a few booster boxes of DS and maybe a box or 2 of AH and Sabbat between us, but prefer using the basic cards with a few additions. As I think most people will agree, one of the strengths of this game is that very competitive decks can be constructed using mainly commons and a handful of uncommon cards.) I started to think of how I would construct a tournament deck and realized that the conditions would totally change how I would play the game (if I wanted to win and not just have fun). In this light I will even suggest 2 possible fixes for Tomb of the Ram. 1) would be to simply use it as it was intended to get out 1 large vamp cheaply but not as a pool machine. Add something like: No blood can be removed from this vamp until it becomes active. 2) Instead you could make it clan specific. Both Setites and Assamites are limited, due to being part of only 1 expansion. Make the Tomb only usable by them and only on one of them. (maybe with (1) above included) It may give someone the incentive to use the Setites more. (the weekest clan in my opinion, due to the limited number of serpentis cards and choice of vamps). Franz

LSJ (VtES Rep) wrote(among other things): > Jyhad and VtES have always had "counterspell". Sudden Reversal. > Moreover, Sudden Reversal trumps Divine Intervention. Yeah, and guess what? We (my playgroup) don't like SR, either. Haven't seen one used in months... I can't remember whether we actually banned it, but there's a big stigma attached to it. Counterspells are just plain brown wrong. Nobody ever liked blue anyway. [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <kn26HCAa...@obeah.demon.co.uk>, James Coupe <james@obea h.demon.co.uk.nospam> writes >It is a fact that in Jyhad/V:TES/DS/AH/Sabbat that there are broken >cards which people tend to work against in their gaming group. It is >also a fact that nothing is done officially about it so when you get a >tournament you have the travesty that was this year's Origins - broken >cards a plenty. [useless banter snipped, because I can't be bothered reading something James has already dictated to me on the phone at least seventeen thousand times this last month] >Any more thoughts? Yes - one. This is either some big open argument about the number of cards that are too powerful and those not powerful enough (Wallpaper, a term that does NOT apply to the background on the card - James), or it is an immensely obvious Troll. By Troll, I mean a posting that is intended to get angry and anoyed responses (eg. posting an article "Batman's a F*ckin' Loser" to alt.fan.batman). You decide. James is a pinnickety, sarcastic person with a fanatical attention to detail. He will argue with you for hours about anything and is incredibly annoying in general. He will probably flame me forever, just because I posted this, and frankly I don't care. He has something of a spoiled brat complex (perhaps something is too mild - he is a fully fledged spoiled brat at times), and has to get what he wants. It doesn't help that he usually knows exactly everything at the time Some examples: He recently slammed my brother for writing 'of' instead of 'off' on a ROUGH Vampire: The Masquerade character sheet. He said he despised Giovanni because they were all identical (he was implying the V:TM Giovanni, not really the V:TES cards), because they're all members of one big (happy?) family. He complained because he couldn't choose varied Disciplines in V:TM, and so we suggested he be Caitiff (no restrictions as to starting Disciplines), and he moaned at us that he wanted to actually play someone with a clan. He moaned at my brother again for taking the 'colour blind' flaw. It happens James. He can be really annoying, and if you even so much as hint at anything that he might have got wrong he will argue until the wee hours of the morning if given half the chance (which is never, thankfully). He is rapidly becoming the annoying twat of the gaming group. He perpetually slams Graeme whenever he gets anything wrong in Jyhad (Graeme is my brother), and expects that everyone knows the rules and rulings as perfectly as his bloody eidetic memory allows. Oh, James, before you flame me (like I care), you shouted at Graeme because he missed out the Establish Range step in combat. And consequently you didn't maneuver in the combat. So what was the point? I know I shouted too, but I thought it was the first round of combat, so Graeme couldn't have used Riposte, a mistake he had made twice before on the same day. AND, he doesn't know what "wallpaper" means when applied to V:TES. He thought it was the background artwork on the new V:TES cards (like the keys on the border of the equipment cards, etc), and refused to believe me even when I explained it to him. Now, some responses to James' original article (finally). No, I do not agree that there are any broken cards in V:TES. James, you specifically point out that Jyhad cards (of which Misdirection is one) are not broken but some of the other cards are. Personally, I don't think Tomb of Ramses III, Return To Innocence, or Protected Resources are any more broken than Sudden Reversals (which would get rid of two out of three of those 'broken' cards), Smiling Jack the Anarch, Succubus Club, Monocle of Clarity (and I'm not just being bitchy because I haven't got one either - it should never have been included in the Jyhad card set at all. Or if it had, maybe it should have actually done what it does in V:TM - i.e. give the bearer Superior Auspex and do one other minor thing like a Pulse of the Canaille at inferior) However, none of this changes the fact that all of these cards have been released. Perhaps you are underestimating the power of the playtesters at WotC. They purposefully did NOT release "Vial of Methuselah Vitae" with Dark Sovereigns, which is a good thing. All card sets were extensively tested, and abuse was not found to be a problem. The point is, most of the powerful cards are Rares. OK, you say, but why then doesn't everyone go out and buy millions of boosters? Well, we don't all like to spend all our money on V:TES. Some of us don't even have that much money to spare. If you're complaining about cards being broken, perhaps you haven't been paying attention in our gaming group recently. No-one except you has Alamut three times. In fact, no-one else has Alamut at all. Admittedly it's not a powerful card, but you don't need to shove it under my nose every time you speak to me. I don't want to trade with you for it you smarmy spoiled bratty sarcastic b*stard. (Sorry, got a bit carried away). Perhaps you should form your own Gaming group if you're worried about someone building a deck with 65 Corruptions (something only you would attempt and could accomplish). I'm perfectly happy with the way we play Jyhad at the moment. The only person who is not happy is you. Everyone else doesn't pick up on little niggly imperfections and everyone is no longer afraid of making mistakes. You might want to remember that we played Jyhad for a number of months before we realised that you couldn't hunt when you were uncontrolled. And it took longer for us to realise that Gird Minions could not be used on uncontrolled vampires. I don't think there should be any fixes to Jyhad, because it is a perfect game with all its imperfections. Even if you can name me one ridiculously powerful Common card, I would always fight against it being banned. And naming a ridiculously powerful Uncommon card ("Oh, Direct Intervention is soooooooooooooooooo powerful" - another card to which only you have access), then I'll not even consider banning that. There are lots of powerful cards, but their rarity is not common. All of the Traditions, a Soul Gem of Etrius, Golconda Inner Peace, etc, are not broken because they're powerful. They're broken because people like you who have seventeen of each abuse them. Perhaps we should enforce a Four Card Limit of which you seem to be so afraid. Perhaps then that would give the rest of us a chance. And you wouldn't be able to play bloody annoying swarm vote decks (I know you haven't played one recently, but you do and it does annoy everyone). In my opinion, the following cards are powerful. However, they are not broken: Card Name James owns* I Own Graeme Owns Rarity Alamut 3 0 0 R Succubus Club 3? 1 0 R Monocle of Clarity 1 0 0 R Return To Innocence 2? 0 0 R Direct Intervention 2+ 0 0 U Tomb of Ramses III 4+ 2 0 R Disarm 2+ 1 0 R Art Scam 2+ 0 0 R * To the best of my knowledge. I think what I'm trying to say is that the cards aren't broken in our group because they are not overused or abused too much (except, on occasion, by you). However, there are a number of cards that ARE broken in our group. These would include: Conservative Agitation, Kine Resources Contested, Parity Shift, Conditioning, Foreshadowing Destruction, Threats, Cloak The Gathering (perhaps not, but James took LSJ's word as gospel saying that Stealth dumping was allowed (depiste the presence of (*) after the ruling on LSJ's post, indicating that it was not to be taken as law), and played at least one game in the period between LSJ's posting and the Rules Teams Ruling, where the basis of the deck was stealth, and James emptied his hand after each action). Hell, I've even played games where Vote Dumping was allowed (the premise of the deck was based on the incorrect rule that you could empty and replace votes immediately during an action, so I emptied my hand and deck of 100 political actions to make one vote pass and I withdrew in the next turn. To my knowledge I did all of this with Smudge.) However, I have something of an excuse - I did not know the correct rule at the time. Needless to say, James corrected me with his usual lack of tact or diplomacy. Speaking of which, I know there are probably mistakes in this Email James, but don't go on about it or it'll be I that lamps you one...). Oh well, that's about it. James - if you phone me I'll explain all of this to you (as long as you don't sit there in a brattish huff all night). And making judgement about people without proof IS slanderous if you do not say 'these are my opinions' (you didn't). The only place you can say that without being sued for slander (or libel) in this country is the House of Commons. I checked with my uncle, a partner in the Edge & Ellison solicitor's firm. And slamming my sister because she actually has a shred of understanding of the British legal system and is playing devil's advocate really IS showing how immature you are. Sorry to those of you who get caught up in this personal hate mail vendetta, which is how I'm sure it'll seem, but I don't care, frankly. James, you are almost as bad as Guy. I just hope you are not naive enough to take our friendship for granted. Guy did, and just expected 100% from us but gave nothing in return. -- Justin Grace (Note Spam-proof Email address) *---------------------------------------------------------* | "Slowly, gently, night unfurls its splendour... | | Grasp it, sense it - tremulous and tender... | | Turn your face away from the garish light of day... | | Turn your thoughts away from cold, unfeeling light..." | *---------------------------------------------------------*

Jaysen wrote: > > Fixing Thoughts Betrayed, > > My first inclination is that you can't, ban the damn thing and be > done with it. My second inclination is to upgrade the inferior > part of the card a little, and change the superior part to a Dom > version of Terror Frenzy. It is truly unfortunate that this card > requires total reworking and not a line of errata. Which only > indicates by just how much the boat was missed on this one. > I disagree on most of your points here. First, I don't think we should change cards to make them better. This was discussed in our group, and we decided that there are just to many useless cards to deal with. (Regaining the Upper Hand, anyone?) THe general consensus seems to be that the less card modification the better, so I really don't think that we should upgrade the inferior of TB just 'cuz it blows monkey chunks. I also don't think that TB needs to be totally reworked to be OK. In our group we left the inferior alone, and changed the superior to: use at the beginning of combat, opposing minion does not get a strike during the first round. This keeps quite a bit of the original intent of the card, but it doesn't use an unpredecented power. Hidden lurker (and the reaction version of it, the name of which eludes me at the moment) does much the same, but only under limited circumstances. TB works on any combat, but costs 2 blood and a superior. Seems balanced to me. <fix ideas snipped> [ quoted text not captured ]

[ quoted text not captured ] Hmmm... This sounds like a good way to make it sane without totally changing the premise of the card. Only thing, though, is that it lets you play an 8 cap on the first turn for a net pool GAIN. I'd like to see the cost raised to stop that, but doing so would destroy the elegant simplicity of the fix, so I'm not sure its worth it. Our group changed TOR3 so that you had to spend a trandfer to use its ability. Whenever you trans a blood to a vamp you can spend a trans to move one from the bank to this vamp. This keeps the effect the same, but slows it down immensely. The main problem is that its kind of confusing. These two fixes are the best I've seen. Any others lurking out there? [ quoted text not captured ]

I agree, the first option was adopted by our playgroup. Jaysen James Coupe wrote: > > In article <33E2B8...@mail.compusmart.ab.ca>, Jaysen > <jay...@mail.compusmart.ab.ca> writes > >Fixing Thoughts Betrayed, > > > >My first inclination is that you can't, ban the damn thing and be > >done with it. My second inclination is to upgrade the inferior > >part of the card a little, and change the superior part to a Dom > >version of Terror Frenzy. It is truly unfortunate that this card > >requires total reworking and not a line of errata. Which only > >indicates by just how much the boat was missed on this one. > > [ quoted text not captured ]

Hi again, During a game session the other day I was talking to my playgroup and the subject of this thread came up. I mentioned that I had submitted some fixes and they looked at me a little funny. 'What needs fixing', they said. I mentioned DI (among other things), and the puzzled frowns grew. 'What is wrong with DI'....blah, blah, blah. Some explanation here. Our group is roughly 5 to 8+ people strong on any given night. Of those, three of us would probably qualify as suitcase players, and two others would be almost there. Innocently said, we have roughly 9 or 10 Tombs in our playgroup and loads of pretty much everything else (except Dog Pack oddly enough). The only card we all agree on as broken is Thoughts Betrayed. We all play for fun, which is nice. If a new player comes in that is too competitive we let them have their fun for a few games before we ratchet up our decks to the point where we crush. The point being: We can all degenerate, we just choose not to. Anyways, I blither. The point is that my group thought the fix for DI was too liberal. (I agree) Putting the card back in the library is nice - putting it back in before its spot is replaced in your hand is too nice. So.......the new fix is: Direct Intervention Master: Out of Turn 1 pool Cancel a minion card as it is played. The affected Methuselah will shuffle that card into his/her deck after replacing it in his/her hand. Any blood or pool cost burned for that card is retreived from the blood bank by the vampire or Methuselah who played it. If the cancelled card was an action card, the acting minion remains untapped. If the card was a strike card, the minion chooses another strike. I hope this fix still works for most people, I guess it all depends on how important exotic combo's are to your enjoyment of the game. Thanks for reading, Jaysen Jaysen wrote: > > Fixing Direct Intervention, > > This is one of the lesser members of the 'Broken Card Brotherhood', > and while I don't see it as a big problem personally it does do two > things that seem to irritate a lot of people: > > 1) It is a counterspell. > > 2) It seriously damages exotic combo-decks. One of the beauties > of Jyhad is that the odd fanatic (i.e. most of us) can put > together this weird deck that relies on combo's of 20 or > more cards all used in sequence during one minion phase > using a minimum of 5 minions that phase.....While this approach > rarely works:) we should at least give it a fighting chance. > > So how about this: > > Direct Intervention > Master: Out of Turn > 1 pool > Cancel a minion card as it is played. The affected Methuselah will > shuffle that card into his/her deck before replacing it in his/her > hand. Any blood or pool cost burned for that card is retreived from > the blood bank by the vampire or Methuselah who played it. If the > cancelled card was an action card, the acting minion remains untapped. > If the card was a strike card, the minion chooses another strike. > [ quoted text not captured ]

On Mon, 4 Aug 1997, Franz A. Foltz wrote: > that some decks work better next to specific decks than others. A stealth-bleed > deck that ends up next to a intercept-less vote deck has a big advantage.) In my group Well, only if the vote deck has no blead bounce in it. (Unusual, because unless it's weeny vote push, you're dealing with presence-carrying vamps, either Toreador or Ventrue, which have either Dominate or Auspec) A little bit of bleed bounce will slow down your predator enough to annoy them into being a little bit more careful about bleeding you out. (Especially if you try to block when you have the bounc in your hand, to get him to cycle out a little stealth and up the danger of it going to your prey... ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Ryan Anderson - <Pug Majere> "Who knows, even the horse might sing" Wayne State University - CULMA "May you live in interesting times.." rand...@ece.eng.wayne.edu Ohio = VYI of the USA PGP Fingerprint - 7E 8E C6 54 96 AC D9 57 E4 F8 AE 9C 10 7E 78 C9 -----------------------------------------------------------------------

Justin Grace wrote: "Sorry to those of you who get caught up in this personal hate mail vendetta, which is how I'm sure it'll seem, but I don't care, frankly. James, you are almost as bad as Guy. I just hope you are not naive enough to take our friendship for granted. Guy did, and just expected 100% from us but gave nothing in return." Umm, yeah. While you are clearly entitled to your opinion regarding James Coupe and all, I fail to see how this has any relevance to this group. James's post that you are refering to as a "Troll" was pretty clearly just a standard "Here are broken cards" post, that show up every few weeks or so, and usually leads to pretty strong and interesting threads. One of the wonders of Usenet is that (for the most part) I only know you people in the context of this group, and am perfectly happy with that. If you have problems with the way James treats your brother, feel free to deal with it in any mature manner you wish, but please leave us out of it. In the past two or so years I have been active on this group, it has been almost entirely and mercifully free of flame wars (even the ubiquitious NL/CL threads have been generally civil). Please help to keep it that way. Peter D Bakija PD...@aol.com "To read. Makes our speaking english good." -Xander

PDB6 (pd...@aol.com) wrote> > LSJ wrote: > "Jyhad and VtES have always had "counterspell". Sudden Reversal. Moreover, > Sudden Reversal trumps Divine Intervention." > How does SR trump DI? Are they not both Out of Turn Masters? If this is > the case, then how do I use my SR to stop you playing DI on my Immortal > Grapple when I rush you on my turn? How do I use SR at all on my turn > (which is most likely when my opponent will use DI against me). One player plays DI, another plays SR. Trump. SR will trump SR, as well. Sure, SR cannot be played on your own turn. It will still trump DI if it is played. -- L. Scott Johnson (vte...@regency.wizards.com) Official VtES Net.Rep for Wizards of the Coast. (*) - Subject to review by Rules Team

LSJ wrote: "Sure, SR cannot be played on your own turn. It will still trump DI if it is played." Sure that will work, but is completely up to the whims of the table. DI will consistently work against any actions taken against you (combat defense, bleed defense, vote defense, anything defense), but SR will only work against DI if someone else decides to whack it out of pure niceness (or manipulitiveness...). Hardly a balancing point in DI's favor. [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <19970813000...@ladder01.news.aol.com>, pd...@aol.com (PDB6) writes: > In >the past two or so years I have been active on this group, it has been >almost entirely and mercifully free of flame wars (even the ubiquitious >NL/CL threads have been generally civil). Please help to keep it that >way. > >Peter D Bakija >PD...@aol.com Ah, shut up, Peter, you big jerk! What a dope! Go back to playing L5R, you boob! Sorry, just a little levity to lighten up the sitch ... BTW, hi, Peter ... Nicholas Cascone You want clever? Send money. I don't work for free.