Next Nerfs?

So, what are folks' predictions for what cards get nerfed or significantly changed with the Jan 1 2009 rulings? best - chris -- Super Fun Cards www.superfuncards.com *NEW Website!* auct...@superfuncards.com

On Oct 23, 8:41 pm, librarian <aucti...@superfuncards.com> wrote: > So, what are folks' predictions for what cards get nerfed or > significantly changed with the Jan 1 2009 rulings? > > best - > > chris > > -- > Super Fun Cardswww.superfuncards.com*NEW Website!* > aucti...@superfuncards.com Voter Cap Freak Drive (1 per turn? more blood?) The Unmasking (do not replace while in play clause) Should be but won't, Direct Intervention

> So, what are folks' predictions for what cards get nerfed or > significantly changed with the Jan 1 2009 rulings? > > best - > > chris The 2 that need it ? Direct Intervention and Anthelios. ---------- Orpheus

"Orpheus" <orphe...@NOSPAMfree.fr> wrote in message news:49014b2d$0$28062$426a...@news.free.fr... [ quoted text not captured ] We've already beaten the DI dog to death. But why on Earth would any sane person argue about Anthelios? Doesn't the two-MPA-to-play- one-master-card cost seem like more than enough to cover whatever mileage you can get out of regenerating your master card? If that alone doesn't convince you, how about the fact that your DPA play grants the advantage to all the players? This latter point is why I'm told by many players they think NRA PAC is total dreck, even though it seems a lot easier to take advantage of (that is, it's easy to build a deck with a bunch of equipment so you'll get much more use out of NRA PAC; most all players have master cards). The same point is probably why no one ever uses Inconnu Tutelage even though it makes drawing combos much more likely. I have a hard time thinking many people are going to back you on Anthelios. These two downsides always make me throw the card back in the box every time I think of using it. I ban it from my decks without any silly rulings! Fred

On Oct 23, 11:41 pm, librarian <aucti...@superfuncards.com> wrote: > So, what are folks' predictions for what cards get nerfed or > significantly changed with the Jan 1 2009 rulings? > > best - > > chris > > -- > Super Fun Cardswww.superfuncards.com*NEW Website!* > aucti...@superfuncards.com How about nothing.

On Oct 23, 9:01 pm, Obtenebration <obtenebrat...@obtenebration.org> wrote: [ quoted text not captured ] None of these are really horrible any more. Voter Cap requires significant table domination to be useful. Freak Drive isn't so much the problem as Una is. The Unmasking is still strong, but I don't see any errata forthcoming because it will just cause confusion. Banning is really the cleanest way to go and none of those will be banned. Voter Cap and Freak Drive will become relatively much more powerful if Direct Intervention is banned. Anthelios is not so much a problem I think. Thirteen TWDs have used it and that's a pretty good indication that The Uncoiling is serving a purpose (though I've never seen anyone play it myself, just discarded). I'd like to see Conditioning banned personally. Dominate keeps getting more toys and they don't need that one. Jeff

On Oct 23, 8:41 pm, librarian <aucti...@superfuncards.com> wrote: > So, what are folks' predictions for what cards get nerfed or > significantly changed with the Jan 1 2009 rulings? With card errata, rules changes, and the like? Let me digress first. KoT will see reprints of numerous cards, some of which could be changed for power level reasons or whatever. And, we've already gotten a spoiler for a card that hose other cards. Taking the latter first, while my opinion doesn't mean jack as I don't die on CCGs, they die on me, it's quite annoying to see V:TES going down the hose specific plays path. Vessel's Blood Doll annihilating effect is awful. Then, we get Mary Anne Blaire. It's hard for me to imagine that there won't be more either in KoT or later. I'd guess the most likely nerfs in likely reprints would be the likes of Freak Drive, Voter Cap, Parity Shift. Of those, the third seems the least likely. If Heart of Nizchetus were reprinted in KoT, I could see that. I tend to doubt seeing The Unmasking getting reprinted, though there are various Cam allies that a precon could be chock full of to where you could get Charisma and The Unmasking, which should make for a highly valued precon. Just to tweak all of those people who bitched about how gross the CE Ventrue precon was in comparison to the others in terms of value, you could run Charisma, Jake, and The Unmasking in the new Ventrue precon (along with the obligatory "better than everyone else" stuff) for that one copy of Political Ally and that one copy of Carlton Van Wyk while not putting any of those cards in the Brujah Arms Dealer precon or the Tremere Outcast Mage precon. That would be such a mindblowing FU that I'd have to respect it. The only reason to nerf something reprinted in KoT is if you decided after KoT was ready for printing that something should be nerfed. That seems kind of unlikely. So, I'd eliminate anything likely to see reprinting. Leaving ... 1. Anthelios - Fred, the reason to nerf (actually, ban) Anthelios is because recursion is often breakable in CCGs and because we've already seen results that suggest Anthelios abuse. It's ridiculous to talk about it being a symmetrical effect; throughout CCG history, players have been breaking symmetrical effects. I have my doubts, though, that anything will happen because there just aren't enough results showing abuse. In 2008, there's only wins for (numbers are attendance numbers): 21, 125, 144, 159, 12, 16, 12, 60, 15, 12, 18, 10, 32, 12, 10, 23, 12, 41, 19, 24, 11, 24, 14, 16, 22. 2. Heart of Nizchetus - Just as cheating doesn't always cause someone to win, the official cheating phase doesn't always cause someone to win either. My mind boggles at the existence of this card. In theory, it could have added a built in steal effect a la The Erciyes Fragments in an effort to make it less ridiculous. I wouldn't be enthused as that's not likely to make it any less unfun. A more desirable errata would be something like reducing it from 3 cards to 1. I give this an outside shot as it has shown up a lot in its short existence. 3. The Unmasking - It's really good and all and ally decks are very possibly stronger than they should be in a game about vampires even ignoring the Imbued. But, it's not the end of the world when it comes down. I'd give this a pretty low chance. 4. Direct Intervention - It might get reprinted in KoT, even more likely if there's an intended nerf for the card, which would mean no errata (barring misprintage). As I don't give a high chance of it being reprinted in KoT, but I can imagine that something happening at the NAC may be enough to push things over the edge, I'd give it an outside chance. I still don't know, however, if the game improves by nerfing it. Maybe it becomes more fun, which is a good enough reason, but, as I said before, it theoretically serves a balancing purpose. 5. *shrug* - I'm sure there is some obvious card I'm forgetting that either should get nerfed or has some significant probability.

On Oct 24, 2:41 pm, librarian <aucti...@superfuncards.com> wrote: > So, what are folks' predictions for what cards get nerfed or > significantly changed with the Jan 1 2009 rulings? > I don't know about nerfing but Pentex Subversion has become prevalent. It appears in 25 of the last 50 TWDs whereas a random sample of 50 TWDs from 2004 show only 5. That tallies with my personal experience, I hardly ever used to see it and now it's in half of all decks I play against. It's taken a long time for people to appreciate a card that was first printed in 1995. As for nerfing: Parity Shift DI Chris.

In message <FtbMk.3260$Rx2....@nwrddc01.gnilink.net>, librarian <auct...@superfuncards.com> writes: >So, what are folks' predictions for what cards get nerfed or >significantly changed with the Jan 1 2009 rulings? Precedent suggests that revisions of the Tournament Rules would result in cards being banned, not changed. Keepers of Tradition might well include updated reprints, however. -- James Coupe PGP Key: 0x5D623D5D YOU ARE IN ERROR. EBD690ECD7A1FB457CA2 NO-ONE IS SCREAMING. 13D7E668C3695D623D5D THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION.

<sul...@aol.com> wrote in message news:015e51b1-1673-4c84...@1g2000prd.googlegroups.com... > Taking the latter first, while my opinion doesn't mean jack as I don't > die on CCGs, they die on me, it's quite annoying to see V:TES going > down the hose specific plays path. Vessel's Blood Doll annihilating > effect is awful. Oh, it's not that bad. And it doesn't happen much. I'm not sure what you're paranoid about here or what is causing you to worry about this. > Then, we get Mary Anne Blaire. It's hard for me to > imagine that there won't be more either in KoT or later. Eh? Did I miss a meeting? What is this "Mary Anne Blair" thing? > Just to tweak all of those > people who bitched about how gross the CE Ventrue precon was in > comparison to the others in terms of value, you could run Charisma, > Jake, and The Unmasking in the new Ventrue precon (along with the > obligatory "better than everyone else" stuff) for that one copy of > Political Ally and that one copy of Carlton Van Wyk while not putting > any of those cards in the Brujah Arms Dealer precon or the Tremere > Outcast Mage precon. That would be such a mindblowing FU that I'd > have to respect it. Seriously, though, why not spread that stuff out in different precons? It's cute to joke about it, but the skewed precon thing causes real problems - to White Wolf, to retailers, and to players. > 1. Anthelios - Fred, the reason to nerf (actually, ban) Anthelios is > because recursion is often breakable in CCGs and because we've already > seen results that suggest Anthelios abuse. And what results are those? I haven't seen much *use* of the card, let alone abuse. If someone somewhere is getting some actual good out of the card, I say "Great!" It's good to see that cardboard actually has some purpose in the world, at least for someone. > It's ridiculous to talk > about it being a symmetrical effect; throughout CCG history, players > have been breaking symmetrical effects. Sure it can - if you can arrange your deck to take much better advantage of the global effect than your opponent. In all of those examples, that's basically what happened. But that's mighty hard to do with Anthelios given its cost. > I have my doubts, though, > that anything will happen because there just aren't enough results > showing abuse. In a word, yes. > In 2008, there's only wins for (numbers are attendance numbers): 21, > 125, 144, 159, 12, 16, 12, 60, 15, 12, 18, 10, 32, 12, 10, 23, 12, 41, > 19, 24, 11, 24, 14, 16, 22. One or two copies in 25 decks out of around 180? Yea, I think it's fair to say we can find better things to worry about. Especially when many of those examples were master-heavy decks with multiple copies of The Parthenon. If anyone was worried about what that meant, it would make a lot more sense to me to begin looking at The Parthenon first: a card that actually has tremendous value to the guy who played it. > 2. Heart of Nizchetus - Just as cheating doesn't always cause someone > to win, the official cheating phase doesn't always cause someone to > win either. My mind boggles at the existence of this card. In > theory, it could have added a built in steal effect a la The Erciyes > Fragments in an effort to make it less ridiculous. I wouldn't be > enthused as that's not likely to make it any less unfun. A more > desirable errata would be something like reducing it from 3 cards to > 1. I give this an outside shot as it has shown up a lot in its short > existence. Agreed on that one; it's strength is undeniable. I've found having to actually to the equip action to use it does tone it down a bit. But only a bit. If it got reprinted to pass you only two cards rather than three, it'd be a lot more reasonable. > 4. Direct Intervention - It might get reprinted in KoT, even more > likely if there's an intended nerf for the card, which would mean no > errata (barring misprintage). As I don't give a high chance of it > being reprinted in KoT, I've commented enough about the need, or lack thereof, to ban it or nerf it. Assuming it's not about to be banned, however, why wouldn't they reprint it? If you're suggesting that they would keep the card yet deliberately be trying to keep it overly rare for its demand, I haven't observed that White Wolf deliberately does things like that. And a good thing, too - because that's been shown time and again to be a terrible approach to dealing with an overpowered card. When there is one. Or maybe you meant, just because DI was never printed in a Camarilla main set. I suppose that's possible. [ quoted text not captured ]

On Oct 24, 4:19 am, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > > > 1. Anthelios - Fred, the reason to nerf (actually, ban) Anthelios is > > because recursion is often breakable in CCGs and because we've already > > seen results that suggest Anthelios abuse. > > And what results are those? I haven't seen much *use* of the card, let > alone abuse. If someone somewhere is getting some actual good out of > the card, I say "Great!" It's good to see that cardboard actually has > some purpose in the world, at least for someone. > Seriously, Fred? You never see *Anthelios* used? Are we talking about the same card here? Not that I agree it should be nerfed or banned. Everyone uses master cards, and even if you don't use that many, it just means you have the extra MPA to waste on using someone else's Anthelios. I think Anthelios is powerful in decks that take full advantage of it, but hardly on a level with Voter Cap and Parity Shift. (Not that I think Parity Shift should be nerfed - it's the one really great vote that Camarilla has now. VC, on the other hand... I wouldn't mind it being "either or" instead of gain pool *and* blood at the same time.) But seriously... no Anthelios? Anson decks are the obvious one that should have at least 2 of them, and possibly a Fortshritt if you have any other Events in the deck. But any Gehenna deck can use them because it's an extra Gehenna card with no requirements and no handsize reduction. And many other master-heavy decks. I think I have 2 decks with Anthelios in them. Which isn't that many, but in the decks it's in - it's good.

On 24 Out, 09:24, James Coupe <ja...@zephyr.org.uk> wrote: > In message <FtbMk.3260$Rx2.1...@nwrddc01.gnilink.net>, librarian > > <aucti...@superfuncards.com> writes: > >So, what are folks' predictions for what cards get nerfed or > >significantly changed with the Jan 1 2009 rulings? > > Precedent suggests that revisions of the Tournament Rules would result > in cards being banned, not changed. > > Keepers of Tradition might well include updated reprints, however. > > -- > James Coupe > PGP Key: 0x5D623D5D YOU ARE IN ERROR. > EBD690ECD7A1FB457CA2 NO-ONE IS SCREAMING. > 13D7E668C3695D623D5D THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION. Some of these cards have been around for ages. If they need ban now, then the game grew into unbalance. I give the example of PTO. Ban only came true after the made it extremly rare AND filled the environment with non-Camarilla vampires. These 2 things could have been prevented. About these lists. I don't agree to ban or nerf cards that are permanently in efect after they are played. 1. Most require a whole set up. Destroying the cards, destroys the decks = less strategy = bad for the game. Do you like to play in an environment with only wall / stealth bleed / politics / rush ? 2. Players need to learn to play well. This is a game where we are paranoid old vamps. Someone is getting strong in the table - we gang up for self perservation. Thats why I never undersood all the fuss about imbued. For me its simple: one VP for their Predator. DI is not a problem IMHO. Not more then Daring the Dawn, Horrific Countenance, Rotchreck, etc. Heart of Nitchzetus is a very good. Old school like good. Does not need a nerf. It puts a target sign on the forehead of the vampire equiping it. Ban Conditioning? I see nothing new that gives it added strength. I prefer to deal with big bleeds with Archon or deflection. Again, you see malk94 or Stanislava on your table, you deal with it. Tiago

"Orpheus" <orphe...@NOSPAMfree.fr> writes: [ quoted text not captured ] But if Direct Intervention is nerfed, what need is there to nerf Anthelios? HG

On Oct 24, 11:11 pm, h...@iki.fi (Janne Hägglund) wrote: [ quoted text not captured ] Anthelios is the engine. If DI gets nerfed there may be some other card that recursion will make very strong. For the record, I don't think either cards should be banned changed. You can still only DI once per turn. simcof

"Chris Berger" <ark...@ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote in message news:0633b233-f774-4661...@a70g2000hsh.googlegroups.com... On Oct 24, 4:19 am, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > > > 1. Anthelios - Fred, the reason to nerf (actually, ban) Anthelios is > > > because recursion is often breakable in CCGs and because we've already > > > seen results that suggest Anthelios abuse. > > > > And what results are those? I haven't seen much *use* of the card, let > > alone abuse. If someone somewhere is getting some actual good out of > > the card, I say "Great!" It's good to see that cardboard actually has > > some purpose in the world, at least for someone. > > > Seriously, Fred? You never see *Anthelios* used? Are we talking > about the same card here? I think I see it once in a blue moon but not often, no. After the DI debate, I'm getting pretty sensitive to the fact that different metagames in the world are vastly different, though. It should never surprise anyone if the guy down the road has never seen your group's 'god card' and vice versa, I guess. > Not that I agree it should be nerfed or banned. Everyone uses master > cards, and even if you don't use that many, it just means you have the > extra MPA to waste on using someone else's Anthelios. I think > Anthelios is powerful in decks that take full advantage of it, but > hardly on a level with Voter Cap and Parity Shift. So what does that mean, "take full advantage of it"? The decks I was looking at in the TWDA had large numbers of varied master cards and some number of Parthenons so they could use their discarded masters like a toolbox kit and would have twice the number of MPAs so could better pay the cost. I can see the utility - as long as you don't mind giving it to your opponents as well - but I think the suspicious card in set is The Parthenon, not Anthelios. > But any Gehenna deck can use them > because it's an extra Gehenna card with no requirements and no > handsize reduction. Sure - for what it's worth. Such a need is pretty corner case, though. Since the original claim was that Anthelios should be banned, I think we're getting pretty far afield to be talking about how useful it is an a no-cost Gehenna card. Fred

On Oct 24, 10:43 am, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > "Chris Berger" <ark...@ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote in message > > > Not that I agree it should be nerfed or banned. Everyone uses master > > cards, and even if you don't use that many, it just means you have the > > extra MPA to waste on using someone else's Anthelios. I think > > Anthelios is powerful in decks that take full advantage of it, but > > hardly on a level with Voter Cap and Parity Shift. > > So what does that mean, "take full advantage of it"? The decks I was > looking at in the TWDA had large numbers of varied master cards and > some number of Parthenons so they could use their discarded masters > like a toolbox kit and would have twice the number of MPAs so could > better pay the cost. I can see the utility - as long as you don't > mind giving it to your opponents as well - but I think the suspicious > card in set is The Parthenon, not Anthelios. > Well, if there's a suspicious card in the decks that make the "best" use of Anthelios, I would say it's Anson. Or Brother's Grimm, which is actually awesome for ditching master cards quickly (you can discard 2 masters per MPA, oh and you get 5 pool eventually too). The "problem", if there is one with Anethlios, is that you can effectively use your ash heap as your hand, having access to anything there at any point, without the chance of an action being blocked. In addition, you can recurse any master card you want. There are a number of master cards which get really good when you can recurse them as needed without having to put a zillion of them in the deck. Vampiric Disease is decent, IMHO. DI is good. Minion Taps, obviously. Stuff that can be burned like Anarch Revolts and Smiling Jack. I know there are several more that are really good with Anthelios, but I'm blanking right now. Now, I don't think it's a "problem", I just think it's good deckbuilding when you take a strategy like the "mostly master card" Anson deck, which is good but perhaps not great, and add a card like Anthelios that just makes it better. You have to be set up to take advantage of it, otherwise it is, like you say, just a no-cost Gehenna card. But even a deck that isn't truly set up to take advantage of it can still get some use out of someone else's Anthelios. There is recursion in the game now, for better or worse (I think it's better, but that's just me). Complaining about Anthelios *just* because it allows recursion is not enough. Now saying that the type or amount of recursion that it allows is too strong - well, I don't agree, but it might be a valid argument, at least.

On Oct 24, 12:56 am, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > We've already beaten the DI dog to death. But why on Earth would > any sane person argue about Anthelios? Since the NDA has long since expired, I can tell you that I begged and pleaded during its playtest for it to never see the light of day. I'm generally wary of recursion, period, as it can inflate a small, theoretical problem into a looming, practical one. That's just a general feeling, not so much a proof that Anthelios needs the nerf, but I think recursion outside of minion actions should generally be avoided. But since it *did* see the light of day, I can say that it's never risen to my list of "cards to get on the internet and start humping your keyboard to get banned." If DI were banned, I'd have even less of a problem with Anthelios as a practical matter. But that's a problem with DI, not Anthelios. > I have a hard time thinking many people are going to back you on > Anthelios. Well I hope I made it a little easier for you to imagine, because I back him. ;) -- David Cherryholmes

In message <2f0c292b-a958-4ddb...@p59g2000hsd.googlegroup s.com>, Brum <tiago...@gmail.com> writes: >I give the example of PTO. Ban only came true after the made it >extremly rare AND filled the environment with non-Camarilla vampires. >These 2 things could have been prevented. The environment already had many non-Camarilla vampires in it, long before White Wolf got involved - the Indy clans in DH/AS, and the entire Sabbat expansion. Your answer to PTO's power was, essentially, "Stop printing non- Camarilla vampires"? That's likely to put you in a tiny minority of players supporting that. No Laibon? No Anarchs? No help for the Independents vampires who were a bit weak coming out of DH/AS? No help for the crappier Sabbat clans? Particularly for the last two, *lots* of players asked for help with those. For the first expansion from White Wolf, players generally asked for Independent help - the reason it turned out to be Sabbat War before Final Nights was that Steve Wieck and co decided that Sabbat War would be a firmer bet to market as the product 'relaunch'. Losing all those really great possibilities? Not cool. [ quoted text not captured ]

In message <5a827917-dfe2-4be8...@h2g2000hsg.googlegroups .com>, Chris Berger <ark...@ugcs.caltech.edu> writes: >Vampiric Disease >is decent, IMHO. DI is good. Minion Taps, obviously. Stuff that can >be burned like Anarch Revolts and Smiling Jack. I know there are >several more that are really good with Anthelios, but I'm blanking >right now. For any deck that can generate a reasonable stream of pool, Pentex Subversion is pretty good here too. There's probably a good angle for that in an Anson/Anneke deck - good blocking potential, reasonable pool gain potential (the odd Parity Shift here or there), lock down someone you don't like, and bring the Pentex back if it'll help you. [ quoted text not captured ]

"bluedevil" <david.che...@gmail.com> wrote in message news:3ad9f6e8-7af1-48e0...@2g2000hsn.googlegroups.com... On Oct 24, 12:56 am, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > > We've already beaten the DI dog to death. But why on Earth would > > any sane person argue about Anthelios? .... > but I think recursion outside of minion actions should generally be > avoided. > > But since it *did* see the light of day, I can say that it's never > risen to my list of "cards to get on the internet and start humping > your keyboard to get banned." ... > > I have a hard time thinking many people are going to back you on > > Anthelios. > > Well I hope I made it a little easier for you to imagine, because I > back him. ;) Well, OK. I'd have to say that struck me as a pretty darn lukewarm way of jumping on the "Ban-Anthelios" bandwagon but if you say so. And therefore...the next guy who wants to ban, say, Waste Management Operation can expect solid backing from you as well, huh? OK - so noted. Fred

On Oct 24, 12:10 pm, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > > Well, OK. I'd have to say that struck me as a pretty darn lukewarm > way of jumping on the "Ban-Anthelios" bandwagon but if you say so. > And therefore...the next guy who wants to ban, say, Waste Management > Operation can expect solid backing from you as well, huh? > Waste Management is fine. I think we should ban Amusement Park Hunting Ground. Not the other ones, though - those ones are alright.

[ quoted text not captured ] recursion is in the game in so many ways I dont see why Anthelios needs to be hit. It works for everyone the same way. People only play with so many manster cards in their deck and if your not going to play with DI, Wash or Sudden in your deck because of some silly belife system then thats your problem and don't try to change the mechanics of the game to suite yourself and punish others. As for the more resent use of Pentex Subversion.... you seem more of it now than in the past due to more "star" and core vampire crypts than there use to be.

On 24 Out, 18:00, James Coupe <ja...@zephyr.org.uk> wrote: > In message <2f0c292b-a958-4ddb-91f5-7f8d943d0...@p59g2000hsd.googlegroup > > The environment already had many non-Camarilla vampires in it, long > before White Wolf got involved - the Indy clans in DH/AS, and the entire > Sabbat expansion. Agreed. Some of those had to wait all the way to KMW to see good improvement, like Assamites. > Your answer to PTO's power was, essentially, "Stop printing non- > Camarilla vampires"? No. I probably did't made myself clear. My answer would be exactly the oposite: print more Camarilla. DS, AH and FN all had loads of Camarilla Vampires. Camarilla edition got Sabbat vampires, as well as FN. Why did third edition have only Sabbat? My point is: from some time on, Camarilla crypt was totally unavailable to new players, save for the Alastors deck. You needed more then what came in Gehenna and KMW. That made PTO strong in places where only the old guys had access to it, and at the same time they were the ones more imune. >That's likely to put you in a tiny minority of > players supporting that. No Laibon? No Anarchs? No help for the > Independents vampires who were a bit weak coming out of DH/AS? No help > for the crappier Sabbat clans? Particularly for the last two, *lots* of > players asked for help with those. For the first expansion from White > Wolf, players generally asked for Independent help - the reason it > turned out to be Sabbat War before Final Nights was that Steve Wieck and > co decided that Sabbat War would be a firmer bet to market as the > product 'relaunch'. I agree with all the new stuff, but the imbued. But that's another story. They play with diferent rules and that will always be unfair. > Losing all those really great possibilities? Not cool. Agree 100%. Save for LoB, all others could have brought what they did and more. (except SoC) BTW, can we expect a mini expantion for archons and alastors? > -- > James Coupe > PGP Key: 0x5D623D5D YOU ARE IN ERROR. > EBD690ECD7A1FB457CA2 NO-ONE IS SCREAMING. > 13D7E668C3695D623D5D THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION. Tiago

simcof <sim...@gmail.com> writes: > On Oct 24, 11:11 pm, h...@iki.fi (Janne Hägglund) wrote: > > "Orpheus" <orpheus...@NOSPAMfree.fr> writes: > > > > So, what are folks' predictions for what cards get nerfed or > > > > significantly changed with the Jan 1 2009 rulings? > > > > > > best - > > > > > > chris > > > > > The 2 that need it ? Direct Intervention and Anthelios. > > > > But if Direct Intervention is nerfed, what need is there to nerf Anthelios? > > > > HG > > Anthelios is the engine. If DI gets nerfed there may be some other > card that recursion will make very strong. But we already have cards like Sudario Refraction, Gear Up, Sargon Fragment, Gramle, etc. And twister decks with Pochtli and/or Waste Management Operation. Any of which can be used to fetch that DI. [ quoted text not captured ]

On Oct 23, 11:41 pm, librarian <aucti...@superfuncards.com> wrote: > So, what are folks' predictions for what cards get nerfed or > significantly changed with the Jan 1 2009 rulings? I'd really like to see DI get wangled one way or the other. I don't think Anthelios needs any tweaking if DI gets hosed. And someone mentioned the Unmaskening? Really? -Peter

[ quoted text not captured ] Well, it sure is ruining my day on JOL. ;) But yeah, hardly worth a nerfing over. -- salem (replace 'hotmail' with 'gmail' to email) "In *my* Assamite deck, this would pwn you in teh FAEC, so shut up." "Thats only cos u've never sene mi Gionavvi PUNCHnMUCNH u asshat." - James Coupe

I hope nothing gets banned/errata this year. Part of the reason I like V:tES is because the banned card list is very small. I don't know how Magic players deal with their gargantuan banned card lists in tournaments. Why all the hate against DI? It's a master-out-of-turn and it costs 1 pool. Even if you can recycle it with Anthelios, it's not that powerful. Besides, if you've got a good deck, you can usually pull off your winning card (KRC, Conditioning, Lost in Crowds, Bum's Rush, Khazar's Diary, etc...) two or three times a turn. "librarian" <auct...@superfuncards.com> wrote in message news:FtbMk.3260$Rx2....@nwrddc01.gnilink.net... > So, what are folks' predictions for what cards get nerfed or significantly > changed with the Jan 1 2009 rulings? > > best - > > chris > > -- > Super Fun Cards > www.superfuncards.com *NEW Website!* > auct...@superfuncards.com

> > > So, what are folks' predictions for what cards get nerfed or > > > significantly changed with the Jan 1 2009 rulings? > > > > best - > > > > chris > > > The 2 that need it ? Direct Intervention and Anthelios. > > But if Direct Intervention is nerfed, what need is there to nerf > Anthelios? > > HG > Anthelios is the engine. If DI gets nerfed there may be some other > card that recursion will make very strong. Yes. > For the record, I don't think either cards should be banned changed. > You can still only DI once per turn. I'm not for banning Anthelios either ! I think it should just be errated to "remove from game" and it would be fine for me. DI should be either banned or severly nerfed, but that has been beaten to death in other topics. ----------- Orpheus

On Fri, 24 Oct 2008 03:41:25 GMT, librarian <auct...@superfuncards.com> wrote: > So, what are folks' predictions for what cards get nerfed or > significantly changed with the Jan 1 2009 rulings? As of the banning of PTO and Edge Explosion, I don't see any card as broken enough to warrant definite nerfing. I would like to see a ban on DI, though, because I see the card as anti-diversity, anti-climactic and anti-fun (according to my definition of fun). I'm also not happy about the Heart of Cheating. If Blood Doll was nerfed because it was good in any deck, then Heart should be doubly nerfed. Whether to change the text to include (D) steal or (D) burn, or just ban it - that's a matter of preference. I'd also like to remove the "burn a Blood Doll" clause from Vessel, because it plainly sucks for the game. Yes, Blood Doll would still be better in most decks. No big deal. It's a good card. Not broken. Unmasking is quite strong, giving it the lengthy DNR as suggested in another post would be quite ok. Anthelios - using it should eat up all your MPAs (maybe you would need to use at the beginning of your master phase, if you have at least one MPA, and forego all other MPAs for the turn). Has no effect if you don't pack multiple MPAs (in which case the card isn't broken at all), but a definite nerf if you do. However, I don't think any of these have a real chance at nerfing, if something gets nerfed, it would probably be Voter Captivation, because it's a pain in the ass from designer point of view (making it hard to properly cost political actions). -- Regards, Daneel

On Oct 24, 1:10 pm, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > Well, OK. I'd have to say that struck me as a pretty darn lukewarm > way of jumping on the "Ban-Anthelios" bandwagon but if you say so. Well, yeah. As I said, I think it's a card that should never have been printed in the first place, so I am pre-disposed to support the position that it deserves banning. However, I think banning is bad in its own right, too, and since Anthelios got printed anyway, I'm not sure the badness of Anthelios outweighs the badness of banning of yet another card. But I'm certainly sympathetic to the POV that says it needs nerfing/banning. > And therefore...the next guy who wants to ban, say, Waste Management > Operation can expect solid backing from you as well, huh? I didn't identify WMO as a problem card before it ever saw the light of day, so I don't see how the two situations are similar. -- David Cherryholmes

On Oct 24, 2:35 pm, h...@iki.fi (Janne Hägglund) wrote: > But we already have cards like Sudario Refraction, Gear Up, Sargon Fragment, > Gramle, etc. And twister decks with Pochtli and/or Waste Management > Operation. Any of which can be used to fetch that DI. But those are all minion-action based. I can't speak for anybody else, but I specified that *non-action based* recursion raises red flags with me. -- David Cherryholmes

bluedevil <david.che...@gmail.com> writes: [ quoted text not captured ] Except for Waste Management Operation. No actions whatsoever. Needs a minion only when put into play. HG

> How about nothing. 110% agree. --> J grail_pbem "at" hotmail.com http://www.geocities.com/grail_j

"Daneel" <dan...@eposta.hu> wrote in message news:opujkvw3...@news.chello.hu... > On Fri, 24 Oct 2008 03:41:25 GMT, librarian <auct...@superfuncards.com> > wrote: > >> So, what are folks' predictions for what cards get nerfed or >> significantly changed with the Jan 1 2009 rulings? > <snip> > I would like to see a ban on DI, though, because I see the card as > anti-diversity, anti-climactic and anti-fun (according to my definition > of fun). What about Power of One? Determination? Rewind Time? Lhoui's card text? Khalu's card text? Vox Domini? Army of Apparitions? Unseen Hibernation? These have similar cancellation effects. <snip> > Regards, > > Daneel Once people start banning cards, it's hard to stop. I don't think we'd even be having these discussions if PTO, Edge Explosion, and Memories of Mortality weren't banned last year. Besides, DI is the best defense against cards other people want to see banned, such as Voter Cap and Parity Shift. Not every deck has bleed redirection or intercept. OBF/SER/PRE FoS decks come to mind. DI is good bleed defense for these decks (stop a Conditioning), when combined with Dummy Corporation and AI. Banning DI won't kill the game, but it will make playing decks without AUS or DOM/dom less fun (ie: get stuck behind a stealth bleeder and get ousted fast every time).

Daneel wrote: > I'd also like to remove the "burn a Blood Doll" clause from Vessel, because > it plainly sucks for the game. Ooh. And then I guess we'd have to remove the "burn a location" clause from Unnatural Disaster, since it must also plainly suck for the game.

[ quoted text not captured ] Really, you should remove the "burn pool" part of getting bled from the game. That really sucks.

[ quoted text not captured ] Read "in my definition of sucks" in the above. I thought I was wasting keystrokes when I put "my definition of fun" for the anti-fun in DI, but it seems I could've saved some more keystrokes by being anal repetitive about a disclaimer in my opinion post... ;P Anyway, I imagine your post isn't serious, Scott, otherwise I'd go on and elaborate the differences between Vessel and Unnatural Disaster, and how their effect is vastly different for the game, etc. - and you don't want that... ;) -- Regards, Daneel

[ quoted text not captured ] It is serious in drawing the parallel (while not serious in advocating errata). The effect Burn a Blood Doll and the effect Burn a Location are directly comparable and suck for the game or not in much the same way. That was the reason for pointing out the parallel in the first place.

On Sat, 25 Oct 2008 10:10:18 -0400, Vincent Crisafulli <vac...@netcarrier.com> wrote: > > "Daneel" <dan...@eposta.hu> wrote in message > news:opujkvw3...@news.chello.hu... >> On Fri, 24 Oct 2008 03:41:25 GMT, librarian <auct...@superfuncards.com> >> wrote: >> >>> So, what are folks' predictions for what cards get nerfed or >>> significantly changed with the Jan 1 2009 rulings? >> > <snip> >> I would like to see a ban on DI, though, because I see the card as >> anti-diversity, anti-climactic and anti-fun (according to my definition >> of fun). > > What about Power of One? Determination? Rewind Time? Lhoui's card text? > Khalu's card text? Vox Domini? Army of Apparitions? Unseen Hibernation? > These have similar cancellation effects. Determine (and possibly Power of One, we'll need to see) is the only one of these that has an effect/cost ratio good enough to be worthwhile inclusions in serious decks. Yes, Determine would be on my long list, but nowhere as high up as DI. DI is in many tournament decks. It can be played cross-table. The cost of playing DI is high - but the effect can be so huge that most successful decks include it. > <snip> >> Regards, >> >> Daneel > > Once people start banning cards, it's hard to stop. I don't think we'd > even > be having these discussions if PTO, Edge Explosion, and Memories of > Mortality weren't banned last year. True. That's why I wrote, that I don't see any card so problematic that I would seriously lobby for a definite ban or nerf. With PTO and Edge Explosion gone (I didn't find Memories broken) my top candidates for banning were removed. That said, if something does get banned or nerfed, I hope it's DI. I don't see it as broken as I saw PTO, for example, but I still see it as kind of broken. > Besides, DI is the best defense against > cards other people want to see banned, such as Voter Cap and Parity > Shift. I most respectfully disagree. Delaying Tactics is the best defence against those cards. There is always a better, specific counter to many of the basic threats in the game. DI is so good because it is a generic counter. There are only 2 valid reasons I see for the existance of a generic counter like DI: 1) to have a safeguard against overpowered cards printed in future expansions until their power level is addressed once the problem becomes visible, and 2) to give decks without access to a good specific counter to one of the basic attack types a generic counter. I see the game is complex enough to be able to handle 1) more-or-less effectively even without DI, and I see many good specific counters being printed, e.g. Disengage, Lost in Translation, that can be used in any deck. However, DI is used by many decks and in practice it serves 4 purposes: 1) to stop other people from getting VPs long enough to move in for the kill (this is somewhat similar to the seat-switching votes, although it allows VP-sniping to a lesser degree); 2) to allow long "what-if-I-DI- this" debates, effectively spending the game time, getting closer to the time-out; 3) to hose high-yield, high opportunity cost cards, and 4) to stop block fails cards in wall decks. > Not every deck has bleed redirection or intercept. OBF/SER/PRE FoS decks > come to mind. DI is good bleed defense for these decks (stop a > Conditioning), when combined with Dummy Corporation and AI. I have to disagree on this point. In every version of the OBF/SER/PRE decks I played, I used DI to either prevent my prey from scoring a VP or to prevent a card that would've killed one of my minions e.g. an Immortal Grapple (I could've used Disengage for this but I'm anyway playing DI to stop my prey from scoring a VP, so I might as well save some overhead by exploiting its generic nature). As bleed defence I used Dummy Corporation and Archon Investigation. It makes no sense to use DI as a bleed defence. If you get bled for 2, use Dummy Corporation; it is free. If you get bled for 3, which is probably 1 base + 2 modifier, you are better off taking the bleed and burning Dummy Corporation than DIing. If you get bled for 4+, you are almost always better off paying 3 pool for the permanent bleed reduction than 1 pool for the partial temporary one. :) It does make sense to DI a bounce, but you have Narrow Minds now, which is a very good card if you can play it early - it really wears down the bouncers. > Banning DI won't > kill the game, but it will make playing decks without AUS or DOM/dom less > fun (ie: get stuck behind a stealth bleeder and get ousted fast every > time). DI is no defence against a stealth bleeder unless you are a wall to begin with. If you DI the bleed action, your predator will just play another one. If you DI the stealth, your predator will just play another stealth. If you DI the bleed modifier, you spent 1 MPA and 1 blood to save yourself from losing 2-3 pool. Not bad, but Dummy Corporation or Archon Investigation is better. In fact, if your grand predator is also a fast deck, HE will DI the bleed mod that would oust you, so he can get 2 VPs in a row. -- Regards, Daneel

On Sat, 25 Oct 2008 12:57:38 +0200, "Orpheus" <orphe...@NOSPAMfree.fr> wrote: >> For the record, I don't think either cards should be banned changed. >> You can still only DI once per turn. > >I'm not for banning Anthelios either ! I think it should just be errated to >"remove from game" and it would be fine for me. DI should be either banned >or severly nerfed, but that has been beaten to death in other topics. I'm curious how this gets done, without it being horribly worded, or poorly organized mechanically. Anthelios, The Red Star Type: Event Gehenna. Once each master phase, a Methuselah can use a master phase action to exchange a master card in his or her hand for one in his or her ash heap. Removing from play the card originating in the hand is mostly pointless, and trying to word it for the card originating in the ash heap would cause all sorts of issues about when it would go to the ash heap. Would you have it kept in play and playable "as if in hand"? Because once it's back in hand, how does the game remember? Is there precedence for this in the rules? I was pretty sure that things that weren't in play, torpor, or uncontrolled retained no memory (it's how 'Turbo' decks work, no?). Morgan Vening

[ quoted text not captured ] In my definition of sucks, it sucks for the game to have a specific counter against one specific card. If the counter is needed because the card in question is broken, then it should simply be banned or nerfed through direct card text. If the card in question is not broken, then it should simply be left alone. Hardly comparable to locations, which were designed to begin with as permanents with an extra liability. I don't beleive seeing lots of Blood Dolls around was an issue. I was seldom using Blood Dolls because I usually like to go other ways with my Masters, but I had no problem with some people putting 4x or 5x Blood Doll in every deck they build. It was a good card, flexible, not overpowered, safe and reliable. I'm actually using Vessel a lot because it is Trifle (I end up putting in Vessels in many of my decks that originally didn't have any Blood Dolls). I didn't really use Blood Doll to begin with. Still I think it sucks to have the burn-a-Doll clause on Vessel. In my definition of sucks, as outlined above. -- Regards, Daneel

Daneel wrote: > In my definition of sucks, it sucks for the game to have a specific > counter against one specific card. If the counter is needed because the > card in question is broken, then it should simply be banned or nerfed > through direct card text. If the card in question is not broken, then > it should simply be left alone. A counter wasn't "needed", it's true. Making new cards to avoid interacting at all with old non-broken cards is a hard position to defend, however. > Hardly comparable to locations, which were designed to begin with as > permanents with an extra liability. Most assuredly comparable. "Designed to begin with" is no argument for comparison of effects. "Expansion", when done correctly, doesn't occur in a vacuum. New cards should have some affect on or ability to interact with previously existing cards.

chr...@comcen.com.au wrote: > On Oct 24, 2:41 pm, librarian <aucti...@superfuncards.com> wrote: >> So, what are folks' predictions for what cards get nerfed or >> significantly changed with the Jan 1 2009 rulings? >> > > I don't know about nerfing but Pentex Subversion has become prevalent. > It appears in 25 of the last 50 TWDs whereas a random sample of 50 > TWDs from 2004 show only 5. That tallies with my personal experience, > I hardly ever used to see it and now it's in half of all decks I play > against. It's taken a long time for people to appreciate a card that > was first printed in 1995. > > As for nerfing: > Parity Shift > DI > > Chris. > Actually, in some small part, I think it may be because superstar decks have become more prevalent. Why are there more superstar decks? Maybe because the game has skewed slightly away from weenie decks. I think banning PS would be bad, because intercept has become very very prevalent. While it's great and all, this should be an active game, not a reactive one. [ quoted text not captured ]

[ quoted text not captured ] And also I'd then have trouble for using it for non-abuse uses. My main use for anthelios is in big vampire decks. Pack a large handful of Zillah's Valley, 2 Info Highways, a small handful of Minion Taps, and some parthenons. oh and a fortschritt. You want the Zillah's early, and the Minion Taps later. Anthelios lets you dump the late game Zillah's or fortschritt for Minion taps or other useful masters. Or, let's you re-get the Zillah's if you've done an oust or two and want another minion. mind you, I'm doing this with vamps like Demedemeh, rather than Arika, so it's not looking as rude as it could be I guess. [ quoted text not captured ]

On Sat, 25 Oct 2008 17:38:38 -0400, LSJ <vte...@white-wolf.com> wrote: > Daneel wrote: >> In my definition of sucks, it sucks for the game to have a specific >> counter against one specific card. If the counter is needed because the >> card in question is broken, then it should simply be banned or nerfed >> through direct card text. If the card in question is not broken, then >> it should simply be left alone. > > A counter wasn't "needed", it's true. > > Making new cards to avoid interacting at all with old non-broken cards > is a hard position to defend, however. As a very broad and general statement, true. Luckily, nobody ever said that new cards should not interact with old non-broken cards at all. ;) Burning a specific other card is a very different kind of interaction than, say, providing a different alternative to an existing, prevalent card (and thus offering deck building alternatives while preserving the variety by allowing the previous, not broken decks to continue functioning as they were). >> Hardly comparable to locations, which were designed to begin with as >> permanents with an extra liability. > > Most assuredly comparable. ...and to be inevitably found fundamentally different in the comparison process. > "Designed to begin with" is no argument for comparison of effects. It is, I beleive, if you look at the context. Location: was designed with the extra liability that they can be burned or stolen by some other cards. They were designed to offer stronger effects than non-removable masters. Having an array of new effects to burn or steal them simply add to the existing array of effects. As a result you are equipped to defend your locations by multiple options. Unless a new card is way out of line with existing anti-location tech, it simply adds variety. Blood Doll: wasn't removable till Vessel. Wasn't designed to need a hose. Wasn't broken to warrant a hose. Now Vessel has a specific hose against it. Furthermore, it also serves as the replacement option. Might be a good idea to promote the starter-only Vessel to anyone who wants a Doll-type effect at a tournament; might also be a good idea to wallpaper about 100 non-broken cards from each player's collection. Doesn't add variety, doesn't give real alternatives. > "Expansion", when done correctly, doesn't occur in a vacuum. New cards > should have some affect on or ability to interact with previously > existing cards. Cards don't need specific hosers. Especially cards that have been around since day 1, and never were broken to need a hoser to begin with. Furthermore, in my definition of sucks, it most definitely sucks to print hosers to specific non-broken prevalent and abundant cards that have been around from day 1. -- Regards, Daneel

librarian wrote: > So, what are folks' predictions for what cards get nerfed or > significantly changed with the Jan 1 2009 rulings? > > best - > > chris No nerfs at all i hope. Game is balanced as it is right now. just my 2 cents Emiliano, NC Italy www.italybynight.org

chr...@comcen.com.au wrote: > On Oct 24, 2:41 pm, librarian <aucti...@superfuncards.com> wrote: >> So, what are folks' predictions for what cards get nerfed or >> significantly changed with the Jan 1 2009 rulings? >> > > I don't know about nerfing but Pentex Subversion has become prevalent. > It appears in 25 of the last 50 TWDs whereas a random sample of 50 > TWDs from 2004 show only 5. That tallies with my personal experience, > I hardly ever used to see it and now it's in half of all decks I play > against. It's taken a long time for people to appreciate a card that > was first printed in 1995. > > As for nerfing: > Parity Shift > DI > > Chris. I can't see how the argument "appears X times in TWDS" can be taken as serious motivation to nerf/ban a given card. Basically, that way, any card appearing more or less on a regular basis in TWDS should worth to be banned Let's ban blood doll, deflection or vessel at this point. That would make no sense, as i find the motivation senseless. Parity shift it's political action, it's not so easy to have it to pass these days (after third edition we got so many more titled vampires around: vote lock at table are uncommon at this point) and has almost a specific common card wrecking it: confusion of the eye. Old cards should be left as they're now. After the big-bans of 2008 new bans/nerf rewords would suck at this point. my 2 cents Emiliano

In message <39c03b79-923c-4ec9...@l64g2000hse.googlegroup s.com>, Brum <tiago...@gmail.com> writes: >Camarilla edition got Sabbat vampires, as well as FN. >Why did third edition have only Sabbat? Camarilla Edition got 10 Sabbat vampires - 1 for each major clan, and a Pander. There are substantially more clans in the Sabbat base sets than the Camarilla sets. The Camarilla now only has 6 major clans - Brujah, Malkavian, Nosferatu, Toreador, Tremere, Ventrue - and a scattering of Caitiff. The Caitiff have never had a full allocation of vampires - only 7 in Group 1, including Dan Murdock, and 6 in Group 3 (all of whom came in Anarchs). The Sabbat have the anti-clans of all those, and the Pander (who often do a little better than the Caitiff), and the Gangrel Antitribu (who are a pain in the ass, because of the City/Country thing), and the Lasombra and Tzimisce. Because you've got so much more to do, diluting the set further isn't terribly helpful. >> -- >> James Coupe Please delete people's sig files when replying. [ quoted text not captured ]

On 24 Okt, 05:01, Obtenebration <obtenebrat...@obtenebration.org> wrote: > On Oct 23, 8:41 pm, librarian <aucti...@superfuncards.com> wrote: > > > So, what are folks' predictions for what cards get nerfed or > > significantly changed with the Jan 1 2009 rulings? > Voter Cap > Freak Drive (1 per turn? more blood?) > The Unmasking (do not replace while in play clause) > > Should be but won't, Direct Intervention The reason why Voter Cap is so good is Minion Tap. I think it would be far more interesting to restrict Minion Tap (say, a max moving of 5 blood from your vampire to the blood bank). But since it would make playing with high caps so much riskier I'm still not sure it's a good idea. Grooming the Protege and other cards aren't fast enough. I don't think any cards will be nerfed this year, but my wish to Santa would be Earth Meld. It should cost a blood at superior (alternatively, reword Becoming of Ennoia to make it playable ;)

"Tetragrammaton" <no...@usa.com> wrote in message news:aRWMk.1890$8%.505@tornado.fastwebnet.it... > I can't see how the argument "appears X times in TWDS" can be taken > as serious motivation to nerf/ban a given card. > Basically, that way, any card appearing more or less on a regular basis > in TWDS should worth to be banned > Let's ban blood doll, deflection or vessel at this point. > That would make no sense, as i find the motivation senseless. You make some good points and, in general, I agree with you. Shear numbers of appearances in the TWDA should not be considered evidence of undesirable abuse/overuse of a card absent any other context. The question of whether allowing a card to continue to be legal is a lot more complicated than just looking at how often successful decks use it. Different kinds of cards are intended for different roles, some rare, corner case, toolboxy in nature where others are "staples", intended for and should be used in relatively large numbers. Even amongst the former class, the one-or-two per deck kinds of cards can be those which drop into any deck vs. those which only qualify for a certain kind of deck archetype or are only usable with a given clan or discipline. So you can't take anything from numbers alone. On the other hand, I still think the TWDA can often be critical to sorting out whether claims of abuse/overuse are valid or not. Too many times in this newsgroup I see people making charges that a card is abusive without any kind of evidence that its level of use in real life winning decks is inappropriate for its intended role. Without such evidence, their claims rest purely on their reckoning about the suspected card's upside without really taking into account whether the same cards's various downsides are, in fact, ultimately effective in preventing overuse or over-dependence on the card to actually win. Without such evidence, they don't seem to realize that it's impossible to prove that their hated bete noire is overpowered; in fact, they've only demonstrated that they personally don't care for the card's role. That's not the same thing as showing that a card is overused in comparison to its intended role. I suppose there could be other ways of proving the latter. I'm just not sure what they are. Antecdotal evidence is pretty dicey. Fred

"bluedevil" <david.che...@gmail.com> wrote in message news:88b9d793-2645-4447...@m74g2000hsh.googlegroups.com... [ quoted text not captured ] I was stepping back one level of reasoning from whether you identified a card as a problem before print and concentrated on why it was you said you'd cited Anthelios: that it was a card that allowed recursion outside of minion actions. It seems illogical to assume that your "support" for someone's call to ban a card hinges on whether you had originally urged the card not be printed in playtest or not since this has no effect on whether the card is, in fact, abusive or not or needs to be banned right now. So you'll forgive me if WMO and Anthelios look identical to me (and ought to look identical to you) in that respect. Fred

[ quoted text not captured ] Apart the reasoning behind the ban/nerfs debate's motivations, i think there's no actual card (after the 2008 bans) in the sets that needs a ban or a nerf reword. There's no "i win" card/deck right now, after that the imbued got the edge explosion+memories bans. So i really do hope there will be no ban or nerfs at all for 2009. best Emiliano

On Oct 24, 2:19 am, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > > 2. Heart of Nizchetus - Just as cheating doesn't always cause someone > > to win, the official cheating phase doesn't always cause someone to > > win either. My mind boggles at the existence of this card. In > > theory, it could have added a built in steal effect a la The Erciyes > > Fragments in an effort to make it less ridiculous. I wouldn't be > > enthused as that's not likely to make it any less unfun. A more > > desirable errata would be something like reducing it from 3 cards to > > 1. I give this an outside shot as it has shown up a lot in its short > > existence. > > Agreed on that one; it's strength is undeniable. I've found having to > actually to the equip action to use it does tone it down a bit. But only > a bit. If it got reprinted to pass you only two cards rather than three, > it'd be a lot more reasonable. Rumor has it has been reprinted, so we will know whether it has been changed or not and the likelihood of banning seems rather low. I was telling someone what it did and he thought, at first, I was saying it cost 1 pool to use each turn. That's actually fairly interesting. To make the card much more interesting tactically, to pay a pool to use it would be a good change. To make it more interesting strategically, being forced to pay 1 pool each turn would be a good change.

In message <9b670fe4-a375-44ec...@75g2000hso.googlegroups .com>, Hyllan <caroli...@yahoo.com> writes: >The reason why Voter Cap is so good is Minion Tap. I think it would be >far more interesting to restrict Minion Tap (say, a max moving of 5 >blood from your vampire to the blood bank). But since it would make >playing with high caps so much riskier I'm still not sure it's a good >idea. Grooming the Protege and other cards aren't fast enough. If[0] there is a problem with Voter Cap + Minion Tap, but there aren't problems with other fat vampire decks + Minion Tap, nerfing Minion Tap is a curious place to look. You restrict the Voter Cap decks, sure, but then you make the other decks worse too - not just risky, worse. But you can create massive amounts of blood in other ways. Concert Tour and Renewed Vigor both allow you to fill up a vampire, in different ways, and both of them are available to vampires with Fortitude - meaning you never have to waste an action, because you Freak Drive. Breed Boon also shows the possibility to create massive amounts of pool while, at the same time, creating a weenie army. After some setup, all of which is helping you win, the ability to gain 6-10 pool from a single action dwarfs Voter Captivation, for my money. I mean, it's not like creating weenies and/or influencing out other vampires is bad for you - they help you win by creating a swarming army. [0] This is the most important word in this post. [ quoted text not captured ]

On Oct 25, 9:00 am, h...@iki.fi (Janne Hägglund) wrote: > Except for Waste Management Operation. No actions whatsoever. Needs a > minion only when put into play. I would draw the distinction between recursion which puts a card in your hand (or perhaps on top of your library), from one which puts cards at the bottom. While both are technically recursion, the former seems problematic to me while the latter does not. -- David Cherryholmes

On Oct 25, 4:37 am, Daneel <dan...@eposta.hu> wrote: > On Fri, 24 Oct 2008 03:41:25 GMT, librarian <aucti...@superfuncards.com> > wrote: > > > So, what are folks' predictions for what cards get nerfed or > > significantly changed with the Jan 1 2009 rulings? > > As of the banning of PTO and Edge Explosion, I don't see any card as broken > enough to warrant definite nerfing. I will remember you said that. > I would like to see a ban on DI, though, because I see the card as > anti-diversity, anti-climactic and anti-fun (according to my definition > of fun). Remember what you said a second ago(see above)? I would prefer a once per game clause. Think of it like Giant's blood; really powerful and therefore in need of some limitation (other than the MPA and cost to play). Power of All is somewhat stronger, but has serious limitations on it. > I'm also not happy about the Heart of Cheating. If Blood Doll was nerfed > because it was good in any deck, then Heart should be doubly nerfed. > Whether to change the text to include (D) steal or (D) burn, or just ban > it - that's a matter of preference. again, see above. > I'd also like to remove the "burn a Blood Doll" clause from Vessel, because > it plainly sucks for the game. Yes, Blood Doll would still be better in > most decks. No big deal. It's a good card. Not broken. That the card Vessel exists provides another limitation on Blood Doll, but it doesn't nerf it. Someone *can* blow up your blood doll, but at the cost of a trifle, a card, 1 pool and they can't retrieve the cost until their next turn. They may or may not want to destroy your blood doll (i.e. the only one on the table is on their pred/xtable ally, maybe they have the only one). Vessel was just put into print and I haven't heard anything about people saying it is broken until now. If it wasn't for the blow up blood doll ability, there would be almost no reason for it to exist. > Unmasking is quite strong, giving it the lengthy DNR as suggested in > another post would be quite ok. > > Anthelios - using it should eat up all your MPAs (maybe you would need to > use at the beginning of your master phase, if you have at least one MPA, > and forego all other MPAs for the turn). Has no effect if you don't pack > multiple MPAs (in which case the card isn't broken at all), but a definite > nerf if you do. Just because a card has an effect or works with a strategy doesn't mean that it is broken. > However, I don't think any of these have a real chance at nerfing, if > something gets nerfed, it would probably be Voter Captivation, because > it's a pain in the ass from designer point of view (making it hard to > properly cost political actions). I don't understand wanting to ban/nerf Voter Cap. It's pretty core to presence vote and there are multiple ways to foil it already, most of which prevent it's even seeing play.

Tetragrammaton wrote: > librarian wrote: >> So, what are folks' predictions for what cards get nerfed or >> significantly changed with the Jan 1 2009 rulings? >> >> best - >> >> chris > > No nerfs at all i hope. > Game is balanced as it is right now. > > just my 2 cents > I'll lean in at this point and agree with Emiliano's concise answer here. I hope for no nerfs at all. [ quoted text not captured ]

On Oct 25, 1:21 pm, LSJ <vtes...@white-wolf.com> wrote: > Daneel wrote: > >> Ooh. And then I guess we'd have to remove the "burn a location" clause > >> from Unnatural Disaster, since it must also plainly suck for the game. > > > Read "in my definition of sucks" in the above. I thought I was wasting > > keystrokes when I put "my definition of fun" for the anti-fun in DI, > > but it seems I could've saved some more keystrokes by being anal > > repetitive about a disclaimer in my opinion post... ;P > > > Anyway, I imagine your post isn't serious, Scott, otherwise I'd go on > > and elaborate the differences between Vessel and Unnatural Disaster, > > and how their effect is vastly different for the game, etc. - and you > > don't want that... ;) > > It is serious in drawing the parallel (while not serious in advocating errata). > The effect Burn a Blood Doll and the effect Burn a Location are directly > comparable and suck for the game or not in much the same way. That was the > reason for pointing out the parallel in the first place. It's simply not true that they are directly comparable. There is a line that separates being a counter and being a hoser. It should be obvious to everyone that Vessel and Unnatural Disaster fall on different sides of that line, just as Vessel and Sudden Reversal or Archon Investigation and Deflection fall clearly on opposite sides of the line. In some cases, I can see where it's hard to judge where a card fits and it may cross based on different metagames or changing cardpools. Vessel isn't reducing the effectiveness of master pool gain, it's directly trying to attack the effectiveness of one card. From extensive experience with a CCG that tried to fix its problems through hosers, I have all sorts of problems with the "Vessel approach". If BD is too good, fix BD. If master pool gain is too good, then address it generally.

<sul...@aol.com> wrote in message news:a3b3cdc2-ed84-4cd3...@s9g2000prm.googlegroups.com... > Vessel isn't reducing the effectiveness of master pool gain, it's > directly trying to attack the effectiveness of one card. From > extensive experience with a CCG that tried to fix its problems through > hosers, I have all sorts of problems with the "Vessel approach". If > BD is too good, fix BD. If master pool gain is too good, then address > it generally. Once again, I would challenge you to actually name your problems with Vessel. Your 'line' is pretty straightforward: Vessel attacks a single card where some of the other things you mention cancel a class of card. Appropriately, Vessel provides more reward to the person playing it (unlike, say, Unnatural Disaster which merely removes an opponents resource, Vessel both removes one and provides the person playing with a resource) and a certain sort of flexibility (you can play Vessel even if a target Blood Doll isn't present) in exchange for attacking a much narrower target. But what is actually wrong with this? You have a real distinct tendency to allude to complaints about the practice without actually stating them. For my part, I personally wouldn't want to play a CCG that was full of Blood Dolls and Vessels because it turns too much into Rock-Paper- Scissors. Still, I don't see isolated cases as a problem - especially given an advantage staple that's a ubiquitous as Blood Doll and given that Vessel isn't really all that attractive of a card in general. On the other hand, "fixing Blood Doll" is problematic. There's millions of copies in existence so errata or reprinting with changed text causes problems. When Wake With Evening's Freshness was "fixed" in this manner, the fallout from players owning cards that don't do what they said is still with us. New players or players absent since before WotC gave up control of the game still surface who have to learn WwEF and similarly modified cards the hard way. On balance, I still agree that it's been a good thing but such a move shouldn't be undertaken lightly, as if there were no drawbacks. Anyway, it doesn't matter now - we already have Vessel and I very much doubt it's going away. And I very much doubt that both Vessel AND Blood Doll will get text alterations because they're simply not needed. Fred

On Oct 24, 3:19 am, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > > Vessel's Blood Doll annihilating effect is awful. > > Oh, it's not that bad. And it doesn't happen much. I'm not sure what > you're paranoid about here or what is causing you to worry about this. I run a lot of Dolls still as I continue to believe that there are many decks in which Blood Doll is greatly superior. My recent experience is showing DECREASING reliability in long-term Blood Dolling. At the NAC this year, when I was playing Dolls, I lost AT LEAST 1 in every game and lost multiple Dolls in 2 of the 8 games. I was targeted by crosstable Vessel effects twice that I remember. I started mixing Vessels in with Dolls after Tuesday (n=3 games) to mitigate some of that risk, or the numbers may have been even higher. I agree with you that not all Vessels result in a burned Blood Doll. And when everyone is playing Vessel, you don't burn see Blood Dolls burned at all. But recent experience suggests that if you play Dolls in the broad enviroment, you should expect at least some of them to be lost. Regards, Darby

"Darby Keeney" <darby....@gmail.com> wrote in message news:72632a00-7f47-474e...@d70g2000hsc.googlegroups.com... On Oct 24, 3:19 am, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: [ quoted text not captured ] That all sounds plausible enough. I'm a little confused about the reply to my comment, above, as I was not suggesting Blood Dolls wouldn't get burned with Vessel around. To the contrary, I was commenting that I didn't understand why the previous poster was so disturbed by "Blood Dolls being removed". Unless Blood Dolls laid out on a table somehow gives one an inexplicable sense of satisfaction, I'm failing to see what's so awful about the occasional Vessel-burns-Blood-Doll play. Fred

[ quoted text not captured ] I can't agree any more.

> No. I probably did't made myself clear. My answer would be exactly the > oposite: print more Camarilla. DS, AH and FN all had loads of > Camarilla Vampires. Which consequently hamstrung the Independent clans for over half a DECADE because they had a small selection of vampires and the Camarilla got better and better at their expense in every set. Keepers of Tradition is coming out. They released some cards at the NAC. They were good. You should be pleased.

I wrote in message news:35sNk.2328$o57...@newsfe02.iad... > "Darby Keeney" <darby....@gmail.com> wrote in message > news:72632a00-7f47-474e...@d70g2000hsc.googlegroups.com... > On Oct 24, 3:19 am, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: >> > sul...@aol.com wrote: >> > > Vessel's Blood Doll annihilating effect is awful. >> > >> > Oh, it's not that bad. And it doesn't happen much. I'm not sure what >> > you're paranoid about here or what is causing you to worry about this. >> >> I run a lot of Dolls still as I continue to believe that there are >> many decks in which Blood Doll is greatly superior. My recent >> experience is showing DECREASING reliability in long-term Blood >> Dolling. >> >> At the NAC this year, when I was playing Dolls, I lost AT LEAST 1 in >> every game and lost multiple Dolls in 2 of the 8 games. I was >> targeted by crosstable Vessel effects twice that I remember. I >> started mixing Vessels in with Dolls after Tuesday (n=3 games) to >> mitigate some of that risk, or the numbers may have been even higher. >> >> I agree with you that not all Vessels result in a burned Blood Doll. >> And when everyone is playing Vessel, you don't burn see Blood Dolls >> burned at all. But recent experience suggests that if you play Dolls >> in the broad enviroment, you should expect at least some of them to be >> lost. > > That all sounds plausible enough. I'm a little confused about the reply > to my comment, above, as I was not suggesting Blood Dolls wouldn't get > burned with Vessel around. Oops - my apologies. I did say "it doesn't happen much". And actually I haven't seen it much in my play, that was true. But I stand corrected on that point in the more general sense; apparently it is happening. (Albeit, I still don't see this causing a problem.) Fred

On Oct 26, 10:22 am, Hyllan <caroline_h...@yahoo.com> wrote: > > The reason why Voter Cap is so good is Minion Tap. > Well, that's partially true. But I think the real reason that Voter Cap is so good is that it's essentially Taste of Vitae and Street Cred rolled into one card. Of course, Street Cred didn't exist at the time. But take combat - as a strategy, it is much harder to oust your prey with combat than it is with voting. You can build decks to take advantage of either, but I still think that voting is more time-tested as an ousting mechanism than anything having to do with combat. But just assume they are equal in "power", whatever that means. Then, for voting, you've got Voter Cap which gives you nearly unlimited blood, plus up to 2 pool. Or, for combat, you've got Taste of Vitae which can give you blood (though in practice, it seems easier to Voter Cap for a ton of blood than it is to Taste for a ton of blood), and you've got Street Cred that can give you up to 2 pool. (I tend to discount the transfer acceleration because it also serves as pool gain deceleration if you play it later in the game - for cards like Public Trust and Street Cred, I feel like it mostly balances out - if there's an advantage over "gain 2 pool", it's a situational one, and slight in the general case.) IMHO, Taste has proven to be a good card, and I think Street Cred is on its way toward being proven good. And combat as a deck strategy is certainly no *better*, or not *much* better at the very least, than voting, right? That's why I think Voter Cap should at best be an "either/or" situation. It's just that causing (possibly massive) pool damage, gaining (possibly massive) blood, *and* gaining pool all in one action is incredibly strong. It's nearly at the point where a vote deck *must* pack presence, because there is just no close alternative to Voter Cap. It might be a solution to print a disciplineless alternative to VC (maybe, "only usable when a vote passes, gain 2 blood"? 3 blood? is that too weak?), but it seems clear to me that Voter Cap has always been too strong, from the beginning. A slight nerf to superior to make it simply "gain 2 pool" on a successful vote, means you have to make a choice (although it could allow you to gain 2 pool on a vote that only passes by 1), and would be ideal to me. Leaving it as is and offering an alternative would be good, though not quite as good IMHO, because it still leaves Voter Cap as clearly overpowered, but perhaps you leave an overpowered VC and a slightly weaker disciplineless alternative as cards that just happen to be really good in voting decks and meanwhile continue to power up combat decks through other means, like Dragonbound and Tension in the Ranks have... It would at least power up non-presence voting decks (which I still think are weak - I'm sure people can come up with a few contrary examples, but in general, weak... I've seen the Amaravati Breed/Boon decks, but I don't understand how those decks refill the 4 blood/turn that Amaravati spends - I use Voter Cap in my version of the deck, using Deviki Prasanta to get the skill cards...), without making Presence voting any better.

Read some, and skipped some. But somehow, all I get from this topic is: "Let's look for card(s) and talk about nerfing/banning them just for the sake of nerfing/banning cards" This holds true, especially due to banning of PTO/EE/MoM.

In message <72632a00-7f47-474e...@d70g2000hsc.googlegroup s.com>, Darby Keeney <darby....@gmail.com> writes: >I agree with you that not all Vessels result in a burned Blood Doll. >And when everyone is playing Vessel, you don't burn see Blood Dolls >burned at all. But recent experience suggests that if you play Dolls >in the broad enviroment, you should expect at least some of them to be >lost. To me, that seems a good happy medium to strive for. One of the problems with Blood Doll was that for so many decks, it was a card that just went in and always went in. If there's a bit more thought to playing - for example - Minion Tap, Tribute, Vessel, or whatever else you might be using for pool gain, that seems good. I absolutely positively don't want Blood Doll removed from the scene, but if Vessel is making it more of a considered choice and not just automatically played in vast numbers of decks, that's a good thing. If people have to judge their metagame to decide if Blood Doll is worth it, that's a good thing. [ quoted text not captured ]

On Oct 26, 11:48 am, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > I was stepping back one level of reasoning from whether you identified > a card as a problem before print and concentrated on why it was you > said you'd cited Anthelios: that it was a card that allowed recursion > outside of minion actions. It seems illogical to assume that your > "support" for someone's call to ban a card hinges on whether you had > originally urged the card not be printed in playtest or not since > this has no effect on whether the card is, in fact, abusive or not > or needs to be banned right now. So you'll forgive me if WMO and > Anthelios look identical to me (and ought to look identical to you) > in that respect. To the extent that a card at the bottom of your library and a card in your hand are equivelant, you are correct. All that stuff about "I would never have printed it, and said so" wasn't any form of argument, just an expression of my feelings about the card. When you can make the argument for equivalency I stated above, get back to me. If you want to score a point for insisting "but you just said *recursion*, not what kind!" then have a cookie. To me it's obvious I was talking about being able to effectively choose and play cards out of your ash heap, which WMO hardly does. -- David Cherryholmes

> So, what are folks' predictions for what cards get nerfed or > significantly changed with the Jan 1 2009 rulings? > > best - > > chris Hi Chris, Since I have no time over to get involved in the endless discussion ill just post my nerf-requests: Jake washington: This is the base of a lot of very powerfull ally based decks. Direct intervention: The only decks that have room for this card already is too bloody strong in perspective. Target vitals: cost vs effect seems to be out of balance. anthelious the red star: the decks that were already strong because of masters were already winning tournaments, they didnt need any more power. Now its time for you guys to burn my comment down. Good luck. I dont mind, its just my oppinion. Oortje

"bluedevil" <david.che...@gmail.com> wrote in message news:0d3b9218-4664-4193...@f77g2000hsf.googlegroups.com... > If you want to score a point for insisting "but you just said *recursion*, > not what kind!" then have a cookie. To me it's obvious I was talking > about being able to effectively choose and play cards out of your ash > heap, which WMO hardly does. OK. Thanks for the cookie! :-) Fred

[ quoted text not captured ] num num num... http://www.ebaumsworld.com/pictures/view/966269/ best - chris (I think I posted this here before, but it may have been on JOL...) [ quoted text not captured ]

"librarian" <auct...@superfuncards.com> wrote in message news:JKGNk.944$Jv2...@nwrddc01.gnilink.net... > Frederick Scott wrote: >> "bluedevil" <david.che...@gmail.com> wrote in message >> news:0d3b9218-4664-4193...@f77g2000hsf.googlegroups.com... >>> If you want to score a point for insisting "but you just said *recursion*, >>> not what kind!" then have a cookie. To me it's obvious I was talking >>> about being able to effectively choose and play cards out of your ash >>> heap, which WMO hardly does. >> >> OK. Thanks for the cookie! :-) >> >> Fred > > num num num... > > http://www.ebaumsworld.com/pictures/view/966269/ Heh! That's TERRIBLE!!! I am simultaneously repulsed and titillated! (At least it's nice to see a beautiful, sexy lady who enjoys head! ;-) ) Fred

[ quoted text not captured ] /nitpick Except in end game, where your hand size > number of cards in hand. There it is awesomest recursion in game. ./nitpick sorry...

On Oct 28, 1:35 pm, Oortje <internetoor...@hotmail.com> wrote: ... > Oortje Pop. Poppy poppedity pop... Yummy!

On Oct 27, 2:21 pm, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > Once again, I would challenge you to actually name your problems with > Vessel. Your 'line' is pretty straightforward: Vessel attacks a single > card where some of the other things you mention cancel a class of card. > Appropriately, Vessel provides more reward to the person playing > it (unlike, say, Unnatural Disaster which merely removes an opponents > resource, Vessel both removes one and provides the person playing with > a resource) and a certain sort of flexibility (you can play Vessel even > if a target Blood Doll isn't present) in exchange for attacking a much > narrower target. > > But what is actually wrong with this? You have a real distinct > tendency to allude to complaints about the practice without actually > stating them. Randomizing card effects/game results: Let's say you believe Blood Doll is a better card than Vessel, so you only want to play BDs. In one game, you face other like-minded players and no one's BDs explode. In another game, you run into the Vessel crowd and your blood management is toast. As long as you continue to play BDs, you run into (everything else being equal in terms of how often you get Suddened, Washed, et aled) extreme variance in card effectiveness. So, since the point of good deck building is to weed out variance, what are the answers? You can increase the number of Blood Dolls, depend less on them, or stop playing them. The last can be ignored for argument since done en masse means that BD is effectively banned and somehow I doubt the playerbase is in favor of that. The other two bring up whether it's fair and fun to punish someone who relies on Blood Doll versus those who don't. In terms of fairness, either the card deserves attacking or it doesn't. If it does, then it's still going to be too good when the hoser doesn't appear or, for whatever reason, doesn't work, which means it's the card that should be fixed to avoid excessively swingy results. If it doesn't deserve attacking, then there's a random "punish someone for playing one specific balanced card" effect in the game. Somehow, in terms of making CCGs more balanced, I don't subscribe to the theory that going after fair cards is better than, say, going after unfair cards. In terms of fun, the "problem with counterspells" argument can be brought up, only instead of generic counterspells that equally make the game less fun, you have, essentially, a counterspell that unevenly affects card choice. If you'd like a different comparison, then I often compare the effect of having hosers in a game with the effect of having combo decks in a game; either a combo deck does its thing and the game suffers from its overpoweredness (if going off isn't overpowered, then why bother playing a combo deck) or it falls flat and the game suffers from having a nonfunctional deck at the table. Hosers that have any impact - most don't - have a similar impact where they either disproportionately nerf a card or strategy or fail to have any meaningful effect, neither of which adds value to games I want to play. There's already plenty of randomness in V:TES. You have player ability, deck choices, crypt draws for each player, library draws for each player, mistakes, deals. Adding to these with having narrow hosers only further randomizes play*, punishing the better deckbuilder and/or the better player. It also punishes the segment of the CCG playing audience who don't enjoy random effects, whether that's a concern to others is debatable since it's hard to say how big that segment is versus the segment who enjoy chaos. * Or, the hoser is strong enough relative to what it hoses that what it hoses ceases to see play. I believe that Vessel is good enough to squeeze out BD in various places at various times as people decide it isn't worth the risk of playing BD anymore. Then, when you see more and more use of the hoser philosophy, you see more and more randomness creep into the game to where it just becomes painful to play. V:TES is nowhere near that and I don't hate Vessel, in part because it becomes hard to care about how much CCGs get screwed up, in part because I consider BD overpowered and even the extreme case of effective banning only affects people who don't buy new cards. However, I do fail to see how the BD killing effect makes the game more enjoyable and I do worry that the hoser mentality will expand until the game is as unpleasant to play as another one I can think of.

On Oct 28, 7:35 am, Oortje <internetoor...@hotmail.com> wrote: > > Now its time for you guys to burn my comment down. Good luck. I dont > mind, its just my oppinion. > Umm... Not sure exactly what you're saying here, but why post on USENET if not for discussion? Are you saying you don't want anyone to discuss your comments? > Jake washington: This is the base of a lot of very powerfull ally > based decks. > This is the only one that I can't fathom. Jake Washington? Overpowered? Really? Maybe I just haven't seen the deck that does it. I mean, I use him. He's a decent ally, but I generally use him for the 4 blood. > Direct intervention: The only decks that have room for this card > already is too bloody strong in perspective. > Been discussed enough. See Dark Influences in the new set - an interesting sort-of-counter to DI, and it's *also* abbreviated DI, which is funny. I doubt DI2 will be seen as doing "enough" about DI1, but I think it puts to rest the question of whether or not DI will be banned. I can understand the call to ban it, though. Not that I agree, but it's mostly a matter of degree (is it nasty *enough* to ban? yes in some opinions, no in my opinion). > Target vitals: cost vs effect seems to be out of balance. > Very strong. Again, a question of degree. There are plenty of ways to counter it. It's in no way as crazy as, for instance, the original Pulled Fangs, which wasn't banned, but was certainly nerfed (I still think it's a pretty good card for the right circumstances, but you hardly see it anymore). I just don't see T:V as being "broken". Stronger than average, yes. > anthelious the red star: the decks that were already strong because of > masters were already winning tournaments, they didnt need any more > power. > Discussed at length in the thread above. It takes a decent deck archetype and makes it better. By itself, not ban material, IMHO, it just combos well with some other stuff. Good combos are what make this game fun.

On Mon, 27 Oct 2008 09:40:36 -0700 (PDT), <brandons...@yahoo.com> wrote: > On Oct 25, 4:37 am, Daneel <dan...@eposta.hu> wrote: >> On Fri, 24 Oct 2008 03:41:25 GMT, librarian <aucti...@superfuncards.com> >> wrote: >> >> > So, what are folks' predictions for what cards get nerfed or >> > significantly changed with the Jan 1 2009 rulings? >> >> As of the banning of PTO and Edge Explosion, I don't see any card as >> broken >> enough to warrant definite nerfing. > > I will remember you said that. > >> I would like to see a ban on DI, though, because I see the card as >> anti-diversity, anti-climactic and anti-fun (according to my >> definition >> of fun). > > Remember what you said a second ago(see above)? [snip] > again, see above. Sure - if nothing gets nerfed, I'm cool with that. The game is pretty balanced as is now. I can rant about DI for quite some time, but not with the ferocity or conviction that PTO triggered. Similar with the other "candidates". -- Regards, Daneel

[ quoted text not captured ] Maybe LSJ decided that Blood Doll was too good of a card when it remained in play for many turns of the game. Blood Dolls with a short shelf life are just fine. One way to accomplish this could have been errata to say they come into play with 5 counters and you remove a counter every time you use a Blood Doll to move blood. But then you have to deal with errata and invisible card text. Alternatively you come up with a card that burns Blood Dolls. Then because you are a math genius like LSJ you accurately predict the average number of appearances of Vessel in all game of Vtes and then use statistics to figure out how long a Blood Doll will last in play before a Vessel toasts it. You make Vessel an attractive enough of a card to have it show up enough to nuke Blood Dolls with an appropriate amount of frequency. > In terms of fun, the "problem with counterspells" argument can be > brought up, only instead of generic counterspells that equally make > the game less fun, you have, essentially, a counterspell that unevenly > affects card choice. If you'd like a different comparison, then I > often compare the effect of having hosers in a game with the effect of > having combo decks in a game; either a combo deck does its thing and > the game suffers from its overpoweredness (if going off isn't > overpowered, then why bother playing a combo deck) or it falls flat > and the game suffers from having a nonfunctional deck at the table. > Hosers that have any impact - most don't - have a similar impact where > they either disproportionately nerf a card or strategy or fail to have > any meaningful effect, neither of which adds value to games I want to > play. > > There's already plenty of randomness in V:TES. You have player > ability, deck choices, crypt draws for each player, library draws for > each player, mistakes, deals. Adding to these with having narrow > hosers only further randomizes play*, punishing the better deckbuilder > and/or the better player. It also punishes the segment of the CCG > playing audience who don't enjoy random effects, whether that's a > concern to others is debatable since it's hard to say how big that > segment is versus the segment who enjoy chaos. > Good players learn to expect the unexpected and how to deal with randomness. Why do you enjoy a 5 player game if randomness is such a big deal to you? 4 opponents is much more random than 1. > * Or, the hoser is strong enough relative to what it hoses that what > it hoses ceases to see play. I believe that Vessel is good enough to > squeeze out BD in various places at various times as people decide it > isn't worth the risk of playing BD anymore. > > Then, when you see more and more use of the hoser philosophy, you see > more and more randomness creep into the game to where it just becomes > painful to play. V:TES is nowhere near that and I don't hate Vessel, > in part because it becomes hard to care about how much CCGs get > screwed up, in part because I consider BD overpowered and even the > extreme case of effective banning only affects people who don't buy > new cards. However, I do fail to see how the BD killing effect makes > the game more enjoyable and I do worry that the hoser mentality will > expand until the game is as unpleasant to play as another one I can > think of. I don't think you are going to be happy with Keepers of Tradition. The spoiler threads already are talking about the new hosers for DI and Minion Tap. :( Later, ~Rehlow

On Oct 23, 10:41 pm, librarian <aucti...@superfuncards.com> wrote: > So, what are folks' predictions for what cards get nerfed or > significantly changed with the Jan 1 2009 rulings? > I guess its not a prediction because I don't see it happening, but I'd like to see a cap placed on Consanguineous Boon. I think gaining more than 5 pool from this card is overpowered. It promotes Breed and Boon archetypes and since those are mostly weenie based (or half weenie, lots of Embraces) and I'm not a big fan of weenie decks I don't mind them taking a power hit. I recently started playing more Breed and Boon type decks and they can be really strong and you can undo multiple turns of your predator trying to oust you with a single vote. A cap on the card would mean its still playable, but get rid of the times its overpowered. I would expect the card to be banned and rewritten as a new card before errata, but that probably won't happen either. Later, ~Rehlow

<sul...@aol.com> wrote in message news:767e7af1-5e08-47ce...@e1g2000pra.googlegroups.com... > On Oct 27, 2:21 pm, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > > Once again, I would challenge you to actually name your problems with > > Vessel. Your 'line' is pretty straightforward: Vessel attacks a single > > card where some of the other things you mention cancel a class of card. > > Appropriately, Vessel provides more reward to the person playing > > it (unlike, say, Unnatural Disaster which merely removes an opponents > > resource, Vessel both removes one and provides the person playing with > > a resource) and a certain sort of flexibility (you can play Vessel even > > if a target Blood Doll isn't present) in exchange for attacking a much > > narrower target. > > > > But what is actually wrong with this? You have a real distinct > > tendency to allude to complaints about the practice without actually > > stating them. > > Randomizing card effects/game results: Let's say you believe Blood > Doll is a better card than Vessel, so you only want to play BDs. In > one game, you face other like-minded players and no one's BDs > explode. In another game, you run into the Vessel crowd and your > blood management is toast. As long as you continue to play BDs, you > run into (everything else being equal in terms of how often you get > Suddened, Washed, et aled) extreme variance in card effectiveness. Sure. But I don't see where the overall effect of the massive variance in BD effective is all that terrible in terms of the overall game. Your Blood Dolls work well or they die horribly and don't do too much. I frequently experience that much variance just from what part of the deck they're located: near the top or near the bottom, clumped or spread out. So while I agree with your conclusion about this, I don't agree that it has some massively bad effect on the game by itself. Granted, I haven't experienced what Darby reported: lots of opponents packing lots of Vessels. I wouldn't suggest it makes no difference. I'm just saying that in comparison to all the current randomness, this amount lumped on top of everything else isn't all that significant - especially if you take it into account in your deck building. And in that sense, I think you're certainly missing something: > So, since the point of good deck building is to weed out variance, > what are the answers? You can increase the number of Blood Dolls, > depend less on them, or stop playing them. How about changing some of your Blood Dolls to Vessels and increasing the overall number of blood gain masters modestly? Given that Vessels are trifles, this shouldn't be a problem in terms of your overall master population. It will adversely affect your minion card flow a bit and cost you a couple extra pool each game spent on Vessels but on the whole, I would think that would smooth out much of the new variance. By contrast, if I have rush combat deck and you have a stealth bleed deck as my predator, the effect on the game is far different than, say, I've got the stealth bleed deck - which moves totally forward - and you (again, my predator) have an animalism intercept deck. The variance between those two situation is massive and will affect the table far more than whether someone loses a few Blood Dolls or not. Again, I'm not saying the Blood Dolls don't matter; only that your complaint about the variance doesn't strike me as much to worry about, on balance. Those kinds of metagame relationships between neighboring deck archetypes are so much more important than this little sub-game, why is this worth caring about? > In terms of fairness, either the card deserves attacking or it > doesn't. If it does, then it's still going to be too good when the > hoser doesn't appear or, for whatever reason, doesn't work, which > means it's the card that should be fixed to avoid excessively swingy > results. Well, OK, if everything was so "excessively swingy" than I'd agree with you. It doesn't seem that way to me. (Although granted, I'd want to experience what Darby reported to make up my mind.) From my perspective, your estimation of the importance of this is overstated. To date, I've found the Blood Doll/Vessel sub-game to be an enjoyable diversion, affecting the results around the margins - not critical and swingy as you seem to think. > In terms of fun, the "problem with counterspells" argument can be > brought up, only instead of generic counterspells that equally make > the game less fun, you have, essentially, a counterspell that unevenly > affects card choice. I'm not sure I know what you mean by the "problem with counterspells" argument. I know that counterspells can cause certain kinds of problems depending on the CCG and how it plays. For instance, a game like Magic where cards in hand are a critical resource differs profoundly from the draw-and-replace-to-maintain-hand-size kind of game that Jyhad is, for which the flexibility of a card is by comparison far more critical. Of the two, a card like The Barrens only makes sense in Jyhad, for instance. So you'd have to explain what you perceive is the "problem with counterspells" argument and how it applies to Jyhad to be understood, here. > If you'd like a different comparison, then I > often compare the effect of having hosers in a game with the effect of > having combo decks in a game; either a combo deck does its thing and > the game suffers from its overpoweredness (if going off isn't > overpowered, then why bother playing a combo deck) or it falls flat > and the game suffers from having a nonfunctional deck at the table. > Hosers that have any impact - most don't I'd dispute that - depending on what define as being a "hoser" and what you'd define as "impact". If your definition of "hoser" is something that clearly targets a specific card or very small group of cards, then perhaps I'd agree with that. But there's a lot of fuzziness in this area - like the color hosers in Magic which, by contrast, affect many cards in the game and, while often too narrow to make impact in a random pick-up game or the first game of a match, can become critical sideboard cards. In Jyhad, we have no sideboard and hence have never found a use for, say, Letter From Vienna - if that's what you mean. But I see no reason to take any overall conclusions about that situation which would apply to Vessel. If that's what you're doing; I can't tell because you speak in such generalized terms. > - have a similar impact where > they either disproportionately nerf a card or strategy or fail to have > any meaningful effect, neither of which adds value to games I want to > play. I think you're getting caught up in semantic traps: 1) Create a class of card in your mind - e.g. "hosers". 2) Make general conclusions about "hosers" based on what you've seen them do in the past in Jyhad or in other card games. 3) Classify a new card, e.g. "Vessel" as a "hoser" based on certain simlarities it shares with the class you've created. 4) Assume what's true for the class of card "hosers" is going to be generally true of "Vessel". I see people do this all too much. Such an approach to predicting the effect of a new thing often tends to miss critical differences between the new situation and former observations. I reject the assertion that you can describe how Vessel affects Jyhad from observations about prior hosers - in Jyhad or elsewhere. > * Or, the hoser is strong enough relative to what it hoses that what > it hoses ceases to see play. I believe that Vessel is good enough to > squeeze out BD in various places at various times as people decide it > isn't worth the risk of playing BD anymore. Maybe. In that case the game will have converted from Blood Dolls to Vessels - a card that's clearly inferior to its purpose in comparison to Blood Doll. That, to me, is actually a good result. Since Vessel doesn't work as well as Blood Doll, the third alternative of using less or none of either will - by comparison - begin to perform better. Since Blood Dolls are so overrepresented in good decks, this will only increase further variation in paths to victory - a good thing! I'm not seeing the problem, here. > Then, when you see more and more use of the hoser philosophy, you see > more and more randomness creep into the game to where it just becomes > painful to play. I didn't hear anyone say that there'd be more need for more hosers in the future. It's just something that happened to Blood Doll. I don't think there's much else the designers _can_ hose that's so specific, since nothing much else is so ubitquitous. Wakes, maybe. But it looks like the approach to WwEF has been to craft alternative forms that are interesting to consider plugging in where WwEF used to be the main choice. I suppose it's possible that one or more cards will come along to hose the whole tactic of waking - but that's not the same thing at all as creating a Vessel to hose a Blood Doll. And it would hardly be unprecedented, I think. > V:TES is nowhere near that and I don't hate Vessel, > in part because it becomes hard to care about how much CCGs get > screwed up, in part because I consider BD overpowered and even the > extreme case of effective banning only affects people who don't buy > new cards. However, I do fail to see how the BD killing effect makes > the game more enjoyable and I do worry that the hoser mentality will > expand until the game is as unpleasant to play as another one I can > think of. Well, as I said above, I enjoy it as a minor sub-game within the overall game. I'm not sure why you think that part of the game is so critical that it introduces problem randomness (in comparison to the extant randomness prior to Vessel). It has to be _somewhat_ important or Vessel would be a total waste of cardboard - like too many other Jyhad cards in the past have been. Fred

On Oct 28, 6:55 pm, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > I think you're getting caught up in semantic traps: > 1) Create a class of card in your mind - e.g. "hosers". > 2) Make general conclusions about "hosers" based on what you've seen > them do in the past in Jyhad or in other card games. > 3) Classify a new card, e.g. "Vessel" as a "hoser" based on certain > simlarities it shares with the class you've created. > 4) Assume what's true for the class of card "hosers" is going to be > generally true of "Vessel". > > I see people do this all too much. Such an approach to predicting > the effect of a new thing often tends to miss critical differences > between the new situation and former observations. I reject the > assertion that you can describe how Vessel affects Jyhad from > observations about prior hosers - in Jyhad or elsewhere. Whereas I don't see people do this often enough. I consider it fundamental to analysis to draw upon everything learned from prior experience and observation and what can be gleaned from other people's experiences and observations and try to formulate some sort of general rule or philosophy. And, then, look for the flaws or exceptions as further evidence comes in, not just take everything as unrelated to everything else, where everything has a blank slate and the only way to learn anything about something is to see what happens. Fred, often you argue from the standpoint that you haven't seen something that someone considers a problem, whether in games in LA or wherever, and therefore, it's hard for you to believe there's a problem. Up to a point, that's valid. But, no one player (or group) is going to see or experience everything, which, BTW, is why there are so many metagame differences. I don't believe that the entirety of play is what I have firsthand knowledge of. To draw upon theory as a starting point and then to try to draw upon every bit of thought that can be found gives some hope of trying to understand everything about a game. Further, due to the complexity of CCGs, I believe it's essential to make connections that involve theory in a way that I don't think you find valid. To explain every underpinning for a belief is not practically possible and would bore everybody to tears even if it were, so you'll never get what you are looking for to question your position. Now, it's interesting when someone's experiences and observations directly contradict my theory. It's certainly far more interesting when the statistical evidence or the experiences and observations of players at the higher competitive levels contradict my theory (when it's a question of balance and not a question of fun). Theory is only good so far as it holds up to testing. Anyway, I'd be interested in which hosers you thought were good additions to the game, but then, you'd argue that there shouldn't be a class of cards termed hosers and we'd get as nowhere as we've gotten so far.

[ quoted text not captured ] Just because I find it sort of amusing, I'd throw out that I believe openended effects are undesirable in CCGs. Fifth Tradition was a good example of something that has already been changed from openended to capped. Voter Cap has this feature. Palla Grande, Foundation Exhibit, Power Structure, Week of Nightmares, The Eldest Are Kholo, a host of votes, and quite a few other cards likewise. It's not always a problem to have an openended effect, of course. Why do I find this amusing? I'm sure Fred will question the validity of this generalization, and I won't have the energy or interest to argue about it.

<sul...@aol.com> wrote in message news:793b1954-63cc-48af...@e38g2000prn.googlegroups.com... On Oct 28, 6:55 pm, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > > I think you're getting caught up in semantic traps: > > 1) Create a class of card in your mind - e.g. "hosers". > > 2) Make general conclusions about "hosers" based on what you've seen > > them do in the past in Jyhad or in other card games. > > 3) Classify a new card, e.g. "Vessel" as a "hoser" based on certain > > simlarities it shares with the class you've created. > > 4) Assume what's true for the class of card "hosers" is going to be > > generally true of "Vessel". > > > > I see people do this all too much. Such an approach to predicting > > the effect of a new thing often tends to miss critical differences > > between the new situation and former observations. I reject the > > assertion that you can describe how Vessel affects Jyhad from > > observations about prior hosers - in Jyhad or elsewhere. > > Whereas I don't see people do this often enough. I consider it > fundamental to analysis to draw upon everything learned from prior > experience and observation and what can be gleaned from other people's > experiences and observations and try to formulate some sort of general > rule or philosophy. The problem is, there's all sorts of directions you can go as you "generalize". If the generalization is pretty obvious as matter of common sense given all the information one has at hand ("animals cannot breathe without air"), then fine - let's use that information. In this case, I think the problem is that there's a dispute about what generalities to draw from things one could call "hosers" and I don't get the sense that I'd accept or agree with many of the ones you're drawing. > And, then, look for the flaws or exceptions as > further evidence comes in, not just take everything as unrelated to > everything else, where everything has a blank slate and the only way > to learn anything about something is to see what happens. Until you can draw generalities that people agree on, I'm afraid the "blank slate" is where you're at. There was a time people didn't know what air was; hence could not agree on something that looks obvious to us now, with hindsight. In the interim, I'm sure a lot of bad generalities were proposed which would have been very poor notions to accept until further evidence came in. > Fred, often you argue from the standpoint that you haven't seen > something that someone considers a problem, whether in games in LA or > wherever, and therefore, it's hard for you to believe there's a > problem. Up to a point, that's valid. But, no one player (or group) > is going to see or experience everything, which, BTW, is why there are > so many metagame differences. I don't believe that the entirety of > play is what I have firsthand knowledge of. To draw upon theory as a > starting point and then to try to draw upon every bit of thought that > can be found gives some hope of trying to understand everything about > a game. Sure. That's fair enough. But are you going to ask WW to change the card text of existing cards on that basis? I got the impression you were. If you just want to discuss ideas about the nature of hosers, then I'm fine listening to your theories. Of course, what I'd think was interesting was how they related to Vessel and what evidence do have that Vessel demonstrates what you're saying? Just me, I guess. I like to pick apart details before I can really start believing in theories. > Further, due to the complexity of CCGs, I believe it's essential to > make connections that involve theory in a way that I don't think you > find valid. To explain every underpinning for a belief is not > practically possible and would bore everybody to tears even if it > were, so you'll never get what you are looking for to question your > position. Your first sentence is a fair statement about me, indeed. The complexity of CCGs is exactly why you can get into a ton of trouble trying to make generalizations, in my opinion. And you can wring your hands about how hard it is to communicate this but that doesn't alter the fact: details matter! They matter a lot! (Well, at least some do...) > Now, it's interesting when someone's experiences and observations > directly contradict my theory. It's certainly far more interesting > when the statistical evidence or the experiences and observations of > players at the higher competitive levels contradict my theory (when > it's a question of balance and not a question of fun). Theory is only > good so far as it holds up to testing. > > Anyway, I'd be interested in which hosers you thought were good > additions to the game, but then, you'd argue that there shouldn't be a > class of cards termed hosers and we'd get as nowhere as we've gotten > so far. It's not so much that there shouldn't be a class of cards termed hosers. It's just that you have to define what you're talking about. Semantics are meaningless. You can define a class of cards and call them anything you want, "hosers" or "blognoids" or "dkxrlk78bls" or whatever the hell you want. Just as long as you give as much information about what you're talking about as is needed for purposes of the discussion and it's a useful definition for those purposes. I kind of think you didn't do that. (But maybe I missed something. I often miss shit.) As for what hosers I thought were good additions to the game, it depends on the definition. If you meant things like clan hosers (Letter From Vienna), very few if any at all. Clan hosers in this game have inevitably been too narrow for the amount of good one gets from playing them. That's not a necessary state of affairs. You could design one that was worthwhile with the right technique. But it's always been true in the past. But Vessel isn't a clan hoser so I don't think that can be what you meant. We can talk about functional hosers (Unnatural Disaster, which hoses any deck function that depends on a location) which can be quite good. But the number of cards that can be seen as a "hoser", in that light, can be much of the card population. Intercept "hoses" stealth; stealth "hoses" intercept. Intercept "hoses" bleed. Bleed and combat "hose" pool gain. Pool gain "hoses" bleed. I can go on and on. Direct Intervention and Sudden Reversal hose damn near anything in the right situation. I honestly didn't (and don't) know what borders you place around the concept of hosers. The term tends to connote a card that applies to a very narrow situation and, to balance its narrowness, either greatly rewards the player who uses it or greatly punishes the player who was engaging in the function that got "hosed" or both. (In a two-player game, of course, the punishment of one player and the reward of his opponent are usually synonymous. In a multiplayer game, they are distinct and the distinction can matter a great deal.) But how narrow is narrow, exactly? The definition fuzzes and mutates, depending on the context - a bad recipe for discussion, IMHO. Fred

<sul...@aol.com> wrote in message news:089a465d-1479-4ab1...@i20g2000prf.googlegroups.com... On Oct 28, 2:45 pm, Rehlow <newsgr...@rehlow.com> wrote: > > I guess its not a prediction because I don't see it happening, but I'd > > like to see a cap placed on Consanguineous Boon. I think gaining more > > than 5 pool from this card is overpowered. ... > > A cap on the card would mean its still playable, but get rid of the > > times its overpowered.. > > Just because I find it sort of amusing, I'd throw out that I believe > openended effects are undesirable in CCGs. Fifth Tradition was a good > example of something that has already been changed from openended to > capped. Voter Cap has this feature. Palla Grande, Foundation > Exhibit, Power Structure, Week of Nightmares, The Eldest Are Kholo, a > host of votes, and quite a few other cards likewise. It's not always > a problem to have an openended effect, of course. > > Why do I find this amusing? I'm sure Fred will question the validity > of this generalization, Nonsense. Not the way you completed it: with a _non_-generalization as a caveat ("...not always a problem..."). Excellent! Of course, as it happens I don't really agree with such a generalization just because I don't, as a matter of experience. They can be problems at times. Legacy of Pander was one I once thought was OK but have now been convinced was probably reasonable to nerf, in retrospect. (Now that people have won CQs with the nerfed version...) I was in lukewarm agreement with the nerfing of Fifth Tradition when it happened. So I understand the potential complaint with such cards. But most of those things above seem reasonable enough to me. The exploitation of cards that offer open-ended rewards takes precious time; the greater the reward sought, the more time it takes. A well-designed card should make the cost in time balance the reward it can potentially yield. As far as I know, the ones above seem to do that pretty well. (Eldest Are Kholo, maybe, excepted. I haven't seen it used to know.) Fred

On Oct 28, 3:45 am, James Coupe <ja...@zephyr.org.uk> wrote: > I absolutely positively don't want Blood Doll removed from the scene, > but if Vessel is making it more of a considered choice and not just > automatically played in vast numbers of decks, that's a good thing. If > people have to judge their metagame to decide if Blood Doll is worth it, > that's a good thing. Please make no mistake, I agree with you completely. I just wanted to point out that the comment above about "it doesn't happen much" is in error.

On Oct 28, 2:24 pm, Blooded Sand <sandm...@gmail.com> wrote: > /nitpick > Except in end game, where your hand size > number of cards in hand. > There it is awesomest recursion in game. > ./nitpick I figured somebody would bring that up..... *sigh*. Sure, after your library is exhausted, then WMO becomes comparable to Anthelios. That still does not make them the same kind of card, nor does it mean that objecting to one puts you in a logical head lock, forcing objection to the other. Not to mention only being open to !Brujah. The Internet: best use of time, evar. -- David Cherryholmes

On Oct 29, 12:25 pm, bluedevil <david.cherryhol...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Oct 28, 2:24 pm, Blooded Sand <sandm...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > /nitpick > > Except in end game, where your hand size > number of cards in hand. > > There it is awesomest recursion in game. > > ./nitpick > > I figured somebody would bring that up..... *sigh*. Sure, after your > library is exhausted, then WMO becomes comparable to Anthelios. /Hairsplit No, then it actually becomes better, as it is the card of your choice, every time, without tossing something... ./Hairsplit > That > still does not make them the same kind of card, nor does it mean that > objecting to one puts you in a logical head lock, forcing objection to > the other. Not to mention only being open to !Brujah. > > The Internet: best use of time, evar. Raaawr.. ;) > > -- > > David Cherryholmes