Fixing Anarch Revolt

Let's assume (JUST ASSUME) that Anarch Revolt needs fixing. Let's not enter the "does it need fixing or not" debate. How would it be best fixed? There have been a few suggestions of late. Take your pick and say your piece. Might even be worth doing a vote... Solution No 1 Change the damage timing. Make the damage payable in the Discard phase, giving almost a turn of grace to sort it, and also means the "Revolter" has to pay in the same turn. Solution No 2 Stop them stacking. Make it Unique or Make it like Army of Rats (i.e. max of 1 pool damage regardless of numbers in play). Solution No 3 Make them easier to get rid of. E.g. Like National Guard Support. OR change the vote to remove one Anarch Revolt to "call a referendum to remove all Anarch Revolts from play". Solution No 4 Give an "easy out" solution. E.g. Make it so if you control a ready Anarch you are immune to the pool damage. Solution No 5 Change the terms. Change it from a vote to remove the revolts to a straight action to remove the revolt (maybe with some extra kick - e.g. "Any vampire with a capacity above 5 may take an Action to remove this Anarch Revolt from play", or maybe add a blood cost). Solution No 6 Get rid of it! Ban the card from Tournaments I think these are the main, sensible ones. Thoughts? Dave P.S. My favourite solution is in no. 3 - one vote to kill ALL Anarch Revolts in play.

Maybe I missed something, but whats wrong with Anarch Revolt that you feel it needs changing? ------------------------- Cambridge by Night. http://www.geocities.com/eryx_uk/Cambridge_by_night.html

On 04 Sep 2003 10:53:03 GMT, colind...@aol.com (Colin Goodman) scrawled: >Maybe I missed something, but whats wrong with Anarch Revolt that you feel it >needs changing? we're playing make-beleive here. he wants us to pretend it does need changing, and go on from there. of course, it's hard to offer opinions on changing it when one doesn't actually think it needs changing, because one would assume the changes one would prefer would be to fix what one thinks is wrong with the card, and if one doesn't think there is anything wrong with the card, how does one think which way to fix that lack of a problem? salem domain:canberra http://www.geocities.com/salem_christ.geo/vtes.htm

On 4 Sep 2003 02:57:22 -0700, dave...@hotmail.com (hamdamcwa) scrawled: [snip] >I think these are the main, sensible ones. > >Thoughts? i thought just giving it a 1 pool cost was a fairly sensible change, presuming it does need changing. >Dave > >P.S. My favourite solution is in no. 3 - one vote to kill ALL Anarch >Revolts in play. makes delaying tactics an even better defense for AR decks. unless each AR's text is considered a different political action, which it probably would be (card in play), even though they'd all do the exact same thing all the time. (unlike, say, conservative ag and KRC, which CAN do the exact same thing, but won't _always_ do the exact same thing..) [ quoted text not captured ]

Colin Goodman wrote: > Maybe I missed something, but whats wrong with Anarch Revolt that you feel it > needs changing? Looks like the part you missed was the first paragraph: >> Let's assume (JUST ASSUME) that Anarch Revolt needs fixing. Let's not >> enter the "does it need fixing or not" debate. How would it be best >> fixed? -- LSJ (vte...@white-wolf.com) V:TES Net.Rep for White Wolf, Inc. Links to V:TES news, rules, cards, utilities, and tournament calendar: http://www.white-wolf.com/vtes/

salem wrote: > On 4 Sep 2003 02:57:22 -0700, dave...@hotmail.com (hamdamcwa) > scrawled: >>P.S. My favourite solution is in no. 3 - one vote to kill ALL Anarch >>Revolts in play. > > makes delaying tactics an even better defense for AR decks. unless > each AR's text is considered a different political action, which it > probably would be (card in play), even though they'd all do the exact > same thing all the time. > (unlike, say, conservative ag and KRC, which CAN do the exact same > thing, but won't _always_ do the exact same thing..) To clarify: The number of different ways terms can be set isn't a criterion for determining if a the referendum can be called again after Delaying Tactics. Even if every Anarch Revolt had the same referendum (e.g. "burn all Anarch Revolts in play") with no choices to be made, they'd still be different actions. So after DT, the acting minion couldn't call any referendum this turn (per the usual rules on political actions, not because of any special effect of DT), but other vampires would be free to call the referendum given on other Anarch Revolts in play; they would only be prohibited from calling the referendum offered by the Anarch Revolt whose referendum was Delayed. [ quoted text not captured ]

[ quoted text not captured ] What about Solution No 7: Change the cost. Either make it cost 1 pool, flat-out, or make it cost X = number of Revolts in play. In this case, I prefer the "X" solution, because it weakens the overpowered focused Anarch Revolt decks, but still allows one or two of them to be used casually in a deck, no worse than Smiling Jack or Antediluvian Awakening. Or maybe a variation on #4: "During each Methuselah's untap phase, he or she burns 1 pool or taps a ready untapped Anarch he or she controls." Or something like that. Since Going Anarch is a cardless action, it helps slow the steamroller down.

dave...@hotmail.com (hamdamcwa) wrote in message news:<9e10847c.03090...@posting.google.com>... > Let's assume (JUST ASSUME) that Anarch Revolt needs fixing. Let's not > enter the "does it need fixing or not" debate. How would it be best > fixed? > OK, I'll assume, altough i don't agree. Only problem with this kind of deck is that there should be a "minimum number of games played before attempting this" clause on it :) > There have been a few suggestions of late. Take your pick and say your > piece. Might even be worth doing a vote... > > Solution No 1 > Change the damage timing. Make the damage payable in the Discard > phase, giving almost a turn of grace to sort it, and also means the > "Revolter" has to pay in the same turn. a bit too harsh, IMO. that 'll walpaper it. > > Solution No 2 > Stop them stacking. Make it Unique or Make it like Army of Rats (i.e. > max of 1 pool damage regardless of numbers in play). maybe, but a max of 1 pool is a bit low. maybe a max of 3? > > Solution No 3 > Make them easier to get rid of. E.g. Like National Guard Support. OR > change the vote to remove one Anarch Revolt to "call a referendum to > remove all Anarch Revolts from play". you're favourite? downside: one delaying tactics is enough to prevent this vote. At it stands, a delaying tactics will only protect 1 AR en the same minion can call a new referendum to destroy a second AR. > > Solution No 4 > Give an "easy out" solution. E.g. Make it so if you control a ready > Anarch you are immune to the pool damage. Or -like Smiling Jack- an optional way of paying for the AR. (eg, burning blood of an Anarch) > > Solution No 5 > Change the terms. Change it from a vote to remove the revolts to a > straight action to remove the revolt (maybe with some extra kick - > e.g. "Any vampire with a capacity above 5 may take an Action to remove > this Anarch Revolt from play", or maybe add a blood cost). is IMO the best here. But maybe restrict this option to Anarch vampires. the rest still needs to vote it away. > > Solution No 6 > Get rid of it! Ban the card from Tournaments Why? Most players I've seen playing this deck end up shooting themself in the foot more than 50% of the time. Against skillful players an AR deck is 'just another decktype'. Keep the suddens for the life boons, mess up his pool gain, contest Anson, don't vote the ARs away (either jams his hand with reaction cards or prevents damage to the AR deck player) The big problem with this deck is of course its impact on a table, and the reactions of less experienced players to this decktype.... Jeroen

anarch revolt is a balanced card everyone takes the pool loss, including the meth who played it there is no need to change it why are you so fixated on this card? did you get cut by it at some point? then why not recomend that all of the edges on AR be rounded off? -Prince of Harrisburg

colind...@aol.com (Colin Goodman) wrote in message news:<20030904065303...@mb-m12.aol.com>... > Maybe I missed something, but whats wrong with Anarch Revolt that you feel it > needs changing? Read my original post again. Read the first line. Digest it. If after that you really want an explaination, mail me privately. However, there have been plenty enough posts lately to merit the proposed discussion of this thread. Sorry to sound sharp, but the main purpose of this post is to avoid the whole debate of "is it broken" and focus on the "bext fix". Cheers Dave

Dave wrote: > Let's assume (JUST ASSUME) that Anarch Revolt needs fixing. Let's not > enter the "does it need fixing or not" debate. Colin wrote: > Maybe I missed something, but whats wrong with Anarch Revolt that you feel it > needs changing? LMAO :))

On 4 Sep 2003 06:44:22 -0700, id77...@yahoo.com (isaphrael) wrote: >anarch revolt is a balanced card No it isn't. But before anyone goes on ranting about this card, it has been brought up in a number of threads over the past year or two. Rather than "reinventing the wheel", please take the time to read through the old threads. >everyone takes the pool loss, including the meth who played it >there is no need to change it Most often the person playing the AR will not take the damage, as a smart table will do it's best to remove the AR as soon as possible. Unfortunately, the players that have never been up against an AR deck tend to dismiss them as relatively unimportant until it's too late. >why are you so fixated on this card? Because it's a card that disrupts the entire table and negates the predator/prey relationship at any table they are played on. Quite frankly, I was really suprised that AR didn't receive an adjustment in The Anarch set. >did you get cut by it at some point? >then why not recomend that all of the edges on AR be rounded off? Don't be silly, you can't play with marked cards! ;-) >-Prince of Harrisburg BernieTime Lansing, Michigan

Anarch Revolt is the ONE game detroyer. I would love to see it's power limited, not fun to play 15 minute games and only be able to pick up one vamp. I seen enough of decks with only 1 caps and computer hacking and/or votes and dodge/manouver, with Parthenons and AR en masse. > Solution No 1 > Change the damage timing. Make the damage payable in the Discard > phase, giving almost a turn of grace to sort it, and also means the > "Revolter" has to pay in the same turn. not enough > Solution No 2 > Stop them stacking. Make it Unique or Make it like Army of Rats (i.e. > max of 1 pool damage regardless of numbers in play). nice > Solution No 3 > Make them easier to get rid of. E.g. Like National Guard Support. OR > change the vote to remove one Anarch Revolt to "call a referendum to > remove all Anarch Revolts from play". the latter ok > Solution No 4 > Give an "easy out" solution. E.g. Make it so if you control a ready > Anarch you are immune to the pool damage. nahh > Solution No 5 > Change the terms. Change it from a vote to remove the revolts to a > straight action to remove the revolt (maybe with some extra kick - > e.g. "Any vampire with a capacity above 5 may take an Action to remove > this Anarch Revolt from play", or maybe add a blood cost). not enough > Solution No 6 > Get rid of it! Ban the card from Tournaments nice Solution No 7: Add text on AR. Pay one extra pool for each AR already in play. Robert

On Thu, 04 Sep 2003 07:54:34 -0400, LSJ <vte...@white-wolf.com> wrote: >salem wrote: >> On 4 Sep 2003 02:57:22 -0700, dave...@hotmail.com (hamdamcwa) >> scrawled: >>>P.S. My favourite solution is in no. 3 - one vote to kill ALL Anarch >>>Revolts in play. >> >> makes delaying tactics an even better defense for AR decks. unless >> each AR's text is considered a different political action, which it >> probably would be (card in play), even though they'd all do the exact >> same thing all the time. >> (unlike, say, conservative ag and KRC, which CAN do the exact same >> thing, but won't _always_ do the exact same thing..) > >To clarify: > >The number of different ways terms can be set isn't a criterion for >determining if a the referendum can be called again after Delaying >Tactics. > >Even if every Anarch Revolt had the same referendum (e.g. "burn all >Anarch Revolts in play") with no choices to be made, they'd still be >different actions. So after DT, the acting minion couldn't call any >referendum this turn (per the usual rules on political actions, not >because of any special effect of DT), but other vampires would be >free to call the referendum given on other Anarch Revolts in play; >they would only be prohibited from calling the referendum offered >by the Anarch Revolt whose referendum was Delayed. So if I have 2 Meddling of Semsith in play, and a vampire calls a vote to burn a MoS and I play a DT, another of that Methuselah's vampires could still call a vote to remove the other MoS. Correct? How is that different from my Vampire attempting to play a KRC which gets hit by DT. If I have a 2nd copy of MoS in hand, shouldn't another of my vampires be able to play the 2nd copy of MoS as it's a different PA card which happens to share the same name? Is there differentiation on referendums called from your hand as opposed to a referendum called against cards in play? >LSJ (vte...@white-wolf.com) V:TES Net.Rep for White Wolf, Inc. BernieTime Lansing, Michigan

<Snip> Sorry Scott, I found a few critical typos in my previous example (whoops!). The following fixes my query. ====================================== So if I have 2 Meddling of Semsith in play, and a vampire calls a vote to burn a MoS and I play a DT, another of that Methuselah's vampires could still call a vote to remove the other MoS. Correct? How is that different from my Vampire attempting to play a KRC which gets hit by DT. If I have a 2nd copy of KRC in hand, shouldn't another of my vampires be able to play the 2nd copy of KRC as it's a different [ quoted text not captured ]

colind...@aol.com (Colin Goodman) wrote in message news:<20030904065303...@mb-m12.aol.com>... > Maybe I missed something, but whats wrong with Anarch Revolt that you feel it > needs changing? Well, a lot of folks feel that Anarch Revolt is simply too disruptive to play and too easy to use. Anarch Revolt decks (i.e. decks that generally put 1 or 2 Anarch Revolts into play every turn)tend to completely destroy any game they are in. And while Anarch Revolt decks tend to lose more often than not (and tend to make some random player across the table win, just by luck), people keep playing them as there is little disincentive to do so (other than losing). Most other deck strategies that don't win manage to do so without completely demolishing the table. Anarch Revolt decks, however, simply make *everyone* suck, and tend to end games very quickly and randomly. Many people think than Anarch Revolt should have been (or be) adjusted to make it less attractive to play--perhaps changing when the damage happens to the end of the turn rather than the beginning (so the guy playing it takes the damage before anyone else); or making it cost a pool to put into play; or making it cost X pool, where X is the number of Anarch Revolts already in play. Something to make people consider building decks out of them. As it currently stand, Anarch Revolt seems viable enough to justify making a deck around them, which, generally speaking, they aren't, and just make you lose. But if the card had some higher cost, people would probably realize this sooner than later. -Peter

berni...@attbi.comHOLDLeSPAM wrote: > <Snip> > > Sorry Scott, I found a few critical typos in my previous example > (whoops!). The following fixes my query. > ====================================== OK. I saw this self-reply early enough so that I haven't even read the original reply. If there's anything else in the original reply, LMK. > So if I have 2 Meddling of Semsith in play, and a vampire calls a vote > to burn a MoS and I play a DT, another of that Methuselah's vampires > could still call a vote to remove the other MoS. Correct? Correct. > How is that different from my Vampire attempting to play a KRC which > gets hit by DT. If I have a 2nd copy of KRC in hand, shouldn't another > of my vampires be able to play the 2nd copy of KRC as it's a different > PA card which happens to share the same name? No. Cards aren't tracked in hand. A KRC from hand is a KRC from hand. They are the same. You can track the copies in play. > Is there differentiation on referendums called from your hand as > opposed to a referendum called against cards in play? The difference is between referendums called via playing a PA from your hand and referendums called *via* cards in play, yes. The target of the referendum doesn't factor in. http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=3D3D43EC.F6F48150%40white-wolf.com http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=3973571C.A57107A8%40white-wolf.com -- LSJ (vte...@white-wolf.com) V:TES Net.Rep for White Wolf, Inc. [ quoted text not captured ]

hamdamcwa expounded: > Let's assume (JUST ASSUME) that Anarch Revolt needs fixing. Let's not > enter the "does it need fixing or not" debate. How would it be best > fixed? I don't feel strongly but I certainly don't think it would hurt to change it. > Solution No 1 > Change the damage timing. Make the damage payable in the Discard > phase, giving almost a turn of grace to sort it, and also means the > "Revolter" has to pay in the same turn. Probably too strong as this takes away the "it's already hit me so why should I remove it?" dimlemna. Better to just add cost so the player still takes the loss but the dilemna remains. > Solution No 2 > Stop them stacking. Make it Unique or Make it like Army of Rats (i.e. > max of 1 pool damage regardless of numbers in play). ok. > Solution No 3 > Make them easier to get rid of. E.g. Like National Guard Support. OR > change the vote to remove one Anarch Revolt to "call a referendum to > remove all Anarch Revolts from play". I like this -with the clarification from LSJ that it wouldn't make them more delayable. > Solution No 4 > Give an "easy out" solution. E.g. Make it so if you control a ready > Anarch you are immune to the pool damage. You could make it give pool to anarch ;-D THEN people would play them! Atually blood to anarch vampires might be quite interesting... > Solution No 5 > Change the terms. Change it from a vote to remove the revolts to a > straight action to remove the revolt (maybe with some extra kick - > e.g. "Any vampire with a capacity above 5 may take an Action to remove > this Anarch Revolt from play", or maybe add a blood cost). Don't like this much but I suppose it would work. > Solution No 6 > Get rid of it! Ban the card from Tournaments Obviously effective but rather extreme. I quite like the idea of ARs but they are too easy to pile out. I liked number 7 too (costs X/X+y where X is the number of ARs in play). I think this might be the best but 3 would be good too.

Robert, my previous attempt to reply got lost, so here is the abbreviated version. Try changing the cost to 1 pool, and delaying the timing, this effectively kills the weenie deck version and makes the card still useful in other decks. The delaying of timing alone does help the game last longer, and helps players get more out of the game, effectively making it a 45 minute game :) M.

In message <9e10847c.03090...@posting.google.com>, dave...@hotmail.com (hamdamcwa) mumbled something about: >Let's assume (JUST ASSUME) that Anarch Revolt needs fixing. Let's not >enter the "does it need fixing or not" debate. How would it be best >fixed? Solution No. 8: Rewrite card text as follows: Anarch Revolt Master. Put this card in play. Each Methuselah {who controls a ready non-Anarch vampire} burns 1 pool during his or her untap phase. Any {Anarch} can call a referendum to burn this card as a +1 stealth political action. Now it matches with Judgement: Camarilla Segregation, though note the restrictions on 'ready' and who may remove the card. Also makes for excellent "join the Mob or die" decks; turn all your own minions to Anarchs, have them Revolt, and either people join up to avoid the damage or get their guys sent to torpor or burned. In desperation to avoid pool damage, you can always send all your own minions Anarch; if you're a Cammie titles deck, well, it wouldn't be so easy for a Prince to change sides, now would it? Does make it sort of difficult to influence out new minions after a few of these hit the table, admittedly, so possibly not the best fix. -- Derek "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge." - C. Darwin, 1871

dave...@hotmail.com (hamdamcwa) wrote in message news:<9e10847c.03090...@posting.google.com>... [ quoted text not captured ] Another solution is to change card text to force the METH to pay an additional pool for every anarch already in play when playing an anarch revolt. I do wonder about the whining though - i KNOW from TONS of experience playing anarch decks that they seriously inhibit a lot of games/deck archetypes - but what i haven't seen often enough is a TABLE'S concerted effort in (each other Methuselah) deciding to do whatever is in their power to OUST the offending AR player immediately and then continue with the game as usual after the oust. How hard is that? YOU'RE DEAD IF YOU DON'T. it's usually 4 on 1 anyway - most decks can't deal with pressure from 2 sources. eh? i remember a tournament where i was playing in the finals with an Anson / Huitzo AR deck... i would have won OUTRIGHT (and i mean JUST with the ARs currently out not including the 3 i had in hand waiting to play my next untap) in 2 turns were it not for my grand prey deciding on a whim to attack anson with beast and torporize him... even if the AR's were granting him a VP his very next turn. it destroyed my chances of playing more than 2 masters that turn, and i was ousted. jds another player from Toronto that quit because the playgroup disbanded (among other reasons) and is anxiously awaiting the CCGWORKSHOP version to start development!

Jozxyqk <jfeu...@eecs.tufts.edu> wrote in message news:<UFG5b.351294$Ho3.52663@sccrnsc03>... > hamdamcwa <dave...@hotmail.com> wrote: > > > Solution No 1 > > Change the damage timing. Make the damage payable in the Discard > > phase, giving almost a turn of grace to sort it, and also means the > > "Revolter" has to pay in the same turn. I don't have a real problem with the Meths playing AR getting a free shot at 1 pool loss to the other Meths. If the damage were done during the Master phase it wouldn't be nearly as lethal either. Edge blood could be gained. Hunting Grounds would trigger. Blood Dolls and Minion Taps could be used. But would this help the table or the AR player more? > > Solution No 2 > > Stop them stacking. Make it Unique or Make it like Army of Rats (i.e. > > max of 1 pool damage regardless of numbers in play). This makes the card almost unplayable. > > Solution No 3 > > Make them easier to get rid of. E.g. Like National Guard Support. OR > > change the vote to remove one Anarch Revolt to "call a referendum to > > remove all Anarch Revolts from play". Not a bad solution actually. But again, this might make the card unplayable, except in 1s or 2s. > > Solution No 4 > > Give an "easy out" solution. E.g. Make it so if you control a ready > > Anarch you are immune to the pool damage. While I don't necessarily think this is the best solution, it certainly would be the most entertaining. > > Solution No 5 > > Change the terms. Change it from a vote to remove the revolts to a > > straight action to remove the revolt (maybe with some extra kick - > > e.g. "Any vampire with a capacity above 5 may take an Action to remove > > this Anarch Revolt from play", or maybe add a blood cost). Depending on your deck construction, you might like seeing an Anarch Revolt deck hit the table (Malk S&B Princes for example). The Anarchy the Revolts are causing among the other Meths is actually an interesting side-effect of this card--everyone has to come to a consensus course of action AND QUICK! > > Solution No 6 > > Get rid of it! Ban the card from Tournaments Nah. > What about Solution No 7: > Change the cost. > Either make it cost 1 pool, flat-out, or make it cost X = number of > Revolts in play. I like this one of course (since I proposed it elsewhere). For those addicted to Anarch Revolt decks, "The first hit is always free." ;) > In this case, I prefer the "X" solution, because it weakens the > overpowered focused Anarch Revolt decks, but still allows one or two > of them to be used casually in a deck, no worse than Smiling Jack or > Antediluvian Awakening. Exactly. And if the table actually bothers to remove the Anarch Revolts, the cost reverts back to zero so an AR deck player can keep playing them for free (or maybe 1). > Or maybe a variation on #4: > "During each Methuselah's untap phase, he or she burns 1 pool or taps a > ready untapped Anarch he or she controls." Or something like that. > Since Going Anarch is a cardless action, it helps slow the steamroller > down. Or burns 1 less pool for each ready Anarch he or she controls. Eventually the AR player could have more ARs in play than the # of Anarchs any Meth controls. Here's another possibility: Solution No 8: Add text: Only 1 Anarch Revolt may be played each turn. This way someone can't get Anson and Huitzi in play and drop 3 Anarchs in a single turn. The table will have time to react, but if they don't deal with them soon, there'll be Gehenna to pay.

What is the goal? Make decks built around AR not viable? Make them weaker? Have it never see play? Have it only see play under certain circumstances? See people try to have one in play at a time in decks that use them at all? >Solution No 1 >Change the damage timing. Make the damage payable in the Discard >phase, giving almost a turn of grace to sort it, and also means the >"Revolter" has to pay in the same turn. Kills any use besides not building around it, right? May be an effective ban as it becomes just weak enough in a deck built around it to make the deck too weak to play. >Solution No 2 >Stop them stacking. Make it Unique or Make it like Army of Rats (i.e. >max of 1 pool damage regardless of numbers in play). Doesn't effect playing a small number. Kills decks that oust primarily or entirely via them. This seems to be what people who want to fix it would prefer. >Solution No 3 >Make them easier to get rid of. E.g. Like National Guard Support. OR >change the vote to remove one Anarch Revolt to "call a referendum to >remove all Anarch Revolts from play". Easier to get rid of still means the player's prey eats the greater percentage of the damage. Not necessarily bad as AR decks don't necessarily put pressure on any other way, so it ends up being much like a normal deck bleeding, voting, Faming. Sweeping them all in one shot does attack the AR deck conceptually. However, it seems to me that it may not work. If you can mass nuke them, do you allow multiples to be put into play before nuking them? If so, who gets rid of them all? The prey of the AR player? Then, the prey eats an even higher percentage of the pain than if the table cooperated to pick them off. There is the possibility, though, that the deck becomes worthless if your prey's answer to being screwed is to throw the game to the prey's prey by sweeping the ARs and giving up on going forward. AR deck likely gains a VP but lacks the table pool loss aspect of AR to go through more than one player. >Solution No 4 >Give an "easy out" solution. E.g. Make it so if you control a ready >Anarch you are immune to the pool damage. This concept may work with minor things, e.g. gaining pool from Anarch Salon. It's really bad with anything important (yes, I don't like J:CS either). Essentially what you end up with is a hoser versus any deck incapable of producing anarchs or screwed by doing so. Like other hosers, probably won't see play, but if it does, it just screws games up. Though there's some flying under the radar of playing one at a time, the random uselessness of it will likely cause people to play superior masters. >Solution No 5 >Change the terms. Change it from a vote to remove the revolts to a >straight action to remove the revolt (maybe with some extra kick - >e.g. "Any vampire with a capacity above 5 may take an Action to remove >this Anarch Revolt from play", or maybe add a blood cost). So, a wall deck prevents its prey from ever removing them and ignores it when anyone else does? All this does is change how you protect them. And, it seems clear to me that protecting ARs isn't important to heavy AR decks anyway. >Solution No 6 >Get rid of it! Ban the card from Tournaments Is it bad if a deck puts out one AR? I've played against someone's tournament deck that did this sort of thing. People hated it, but then, they didn't make much effort to counter it. >I think these are the main, sensible ones. I think this might comprise about a third of the realistic fixes, but I couldn't name more than a couple others off the top of my head. Some probably have never been posted or haven't been any time recently.

>Solution No. 8: > >Rewrite card text as follows: > >Anarch Revolt >Master. >Put this card in play. Each Methuselah {who controls a ready non-Anarch >vampire} burns 1 pool during his or her untap phase. Any {Anarch} can >call a referendum to burn this card as a +1 stealth political action. So, take old AR (essentially) and make it harder to get rid of? This is a fix? >Now it matches with Judgement: Camarilla Segregation, though note the >restrictions on 'ready' and who may remove the card. Another bad card. >Also makes for excellent "join the Mob or die" decks; turn all your own >minions to Anarchs, have them Revolt, and either people join up to avoid >the damage or get their guys sent to torpor or burned. > >In desperation to avoid pool damage, you can always send all your own >minions Anarch; if you're a Cammie titles deck, well, it wouldn't be so >easy for a Prince to change sides, now would it? Does make it sort of >difficult to influence out new minions after a few of these hit the >table, admittedly, so possibly not the best fix. Not seeing how it makes the game better to "force" people to play anarch decks. Lots of people seem to want to tie the card to anarchdom, likely on thematic grounds. I don't really care. However, here are a couple of ideas that do so: Add - "Requires a ready anarch." Add - "Each player may only control a number of Anarch Revolts equal to X+1 where X is the number of ready anarchs you control. (Burn excess copies.)" The former adds a complication to Anson & friends AR decks. They can change their crypt to add weenies and put in Galaric's or whatever, but it might weaken them enough. The latter interests me a bit more now that I think about it as it gives another possibly viable anarch archetype where I see very few currently viable.

> >anarch revolt is a balanced card > > No it isn't. in theory[of the game], yes it is > But before anyone goes on ranting about this card, it has been brought > up in a number of threads over the past year or two. and here's another one, and people are ranting so are you > Most often the person playing the AR will not take the damage, as a > smart table will do it's best to remove the AR as soon as possible. > Unfortunately, the players that have never been up against an AR deck > tend to dismiss them as relatively unimportant until it's too late. yes, and a smart table will remove a heavy stealth bleeder from it as well, before everyone dies to it, but that is just part of the game, right? trying to stay alive while killing your prey? > >why are you so fixated on this card? > > Because it's a card that disrupts the entire table and negates the > predator/prey relationship at any table they are played on. i think that dramatic upheaval [sp] and that other one to change seats, what about the vote to change play order, what about political flux, whatabout the madness network, etc? all of those cards change the predator prey dynamic of the game, and i dont hear you bitching about them because they are balanced for the game, and so is anarch revolt > Quite frankly, I was really suprised that AR didn't receive an > adjustment in The Anarch set. > > >did you get cut by it at some point? > >then why not recomend that all of the edges on AR be rounded off? > > Don't be silly, you can't play with marked cards! ;-) i am well aware of that, and was using sarcasm because, if all of the ARs in your play group are marked, no one can play with them *cough*sarcasmandwit*cough* [ quoted text not captured ]

"Jeff Kuta" <jeff...@hotmail.com> wrote in message > Here's another possibility: > > Solution No 8: > Add text: Only 1 Anarch Revolt may be played each turn. > > This way someone can't get Anson and Huitzi in play and drop 3 Anarchs > in a single turn. The table will have time to react, but if they don't > deal with them soon, there'll be Gehenna to pay. Better Yet with the same spirit : Make Anarch Revolt a Trifle =)

Jeff Kuta <jeff...@hotmail.com> wrote: > Solution No 8: > Add text: Only 1 Anarch Revolt may be played each turn. > This way someone can't get Anson and Huitzi in play and drop 3 Anarchs > in a single turn. The table will have time to react, but if they don't > deal with them soon, there'll be Gehenna to pay. You could always achieve this effect by making it a Trifle. Sure you would gain an extra MPA, but only one Trifle is playable per turn, regardless of how many MPAs you have.

"Bobby_Doc" <robert_...@hotmail.com> wrote > Anarch Revolt is the ONE game detroyer. Yeah. Right. And if we ban/errata/wallpaperize Anarch Revolt, which other card will be the ONE game destroyer ? Baltimore purge ? Personnaly i had my games destroyed 1% of the time by Anarch Revolt and 99% of the time by Direct Intervention, Kiss of Ra, Graverobbing, Arika, Pentex subversion. And even, sometimes, all those cards in a single session ;) So i just don't know what you are doing by trying to remove AR from the game. Where will you draw the line between harmless and strong cards ? Are we condemned to play with harmless, gentle cards with your policy ? I'm asking that because i'm a fucking millenary methuselah who really wants to trample his ennemies, and it would be annoying if you remove all my nice toys from the game.

"hamdamcwa" <dave...@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:9e10847c.03090...@posting.google.com... > Let's assume (JUST ASSUME) that Anarch Revolt needs fixing. Let's not > enter the "does it need fixing or not" debate. How would it be best > fixed? > > There have been a few suggestions of late. Take your pick and say your > piece. Might even be worth doing a vote... My preferences, sort of in order, are: Solution 2 (no stacking) Solution 1 (damage comes during discard phase) Solution 7 (cost to play = X), probably combined with... Solution 8 (make it a Trifle - hey Reyda, that's a really funny way to make it play-one-per-turn, I like it. ;-) I do think the card's effect is strong enough that it would remain playable even if unstackable like Army of Rats is. Army of Rats still gets played, doesn't it, eh, eh? You wouldn't be able to build decks around ousting everybody with it in thirty minutes, no. But I don't see that as a bad thing. To me, those decks are not really in the spirit of the game. (You can sort of see the spirit of the game, in my opinion, by looking at the actions defined in the rulebook: bleed, hunt, equip, employ retainer, recruit ally, action card, political action. Yeah, "rush" is only a subset of "action card" and that implies a rather smaller role for "combat decks" than that of a full partner in the "bleed, vote, fight" tripod, but honestly I suspect that it actually was intended by the creators to not be a primary aspect of the game. But I'm sliding off on tangents now...) What I don't like as much about solutions 3 and 5 is that they don't seem to me to reduce the impact of the card enough to really make enough difference. 4 might do it, but it's "weird" enough that a simpler fix appeals more to me. 6 would certainly do it but we're well down the road of fixing every fixable "broken" card rather than banning them, so why stop now? :-) Josh yo put ya number on this paper cause i would love to date ya

dave...@hotmail.com (hamdamcwa) wrote in message news:<9e10847c.03090...@posting.google.com>... > Let's assume (JUST ASSUME) that Anarch Revolt needs fixing. Let's not > enter the "does it need fixing or not" debate. How would it be best > fixed? The best way to fix it would be to increase the amount of pool that each methuselah starts with. Instead of every methuselah only having one pool to start, why don't we raise it to thirty pool, so that other players have time to react to and plan for Anarch Revolts as they hit the table? Another way to fix it would be to make the play of master cards a limited resource. We should change the game so that instead of playing as many master cards as you want, you are limited to playing only one in your master phase, unless you have some special advantage, such as a location (which should cost pool), a special ability from a unique (and large!) minion, or maybe a vote could give you extra master phase actions. That way, building a deck around AR would force you to make compromises between it and your pool gain, and other players could target your assets with rushes and arsons if they want to slow everyone's pool loss. This is a fun mental exercise. Next up: "Assume that Blood Doll needs fixing. How do you fix it?" Should we make it cost a pool to play, should it be a single-use card, or should your minion lose all blood to the blood bank when it is played?

Jeff Kuta expounded: > > > Solution No 1 > > > Change the damage timing. Make the damage payable in the Discard > > > phase, giving almost a turn of grace to sort it, and also means the > > > "Revolter" has to pay in the same turn. > I don't have a real problem with the Meths playing AR getting a free > shot at 1 pool loss to the other Meths. If the damage were done during > the Master phase it wouldn't be nearly as lethal either. Edge blood > could be gained. Hunting Grounds would trigger. Blood Dolls and Minion > Taps could be used. But would this help the table or the AR player > more? Edge Pool can already be gained. The B-Dolls would certainly weaken the ARs but not by much > > > Solution No 2 > > > Stop them stacking. Make it Unique or Make it like Army of Rats (i.e. > > > max of 1 pool damage regardless of numbers in play). > > This makes the card almost unplayable. Hurrah! ;-P > > > Solution No 3 > > > Make them easier to get rid of. E.g. Like National Guard Support. OR > > > change the vote to remove one Anarch Revolt to "call a referendum to > > > remove all Anarch Revolts from play". > > Not a bad solution actually. But again, this might make the card > unplayable, except in 1s or 2s. Isn't that the point? I don't think they should be Trifles.

>i think that dramatic upheaval [sp] and that other one to change >seats, what about the vote to change play order, what about political >flux, whatabout the madness network, etc? >all of those cards change the predator prey dynamic of the game, and i >dont hear you bitching about them >because they are balanced for the game, and so is anarch revolt I'm all for killing the seat switching votes. Just because people bitch about one thing doesn't mean they don't care about something else.

>So i just don't know what you are doing by trying to remove AR from the >game. Where will you draw the line between harmless and strong cards ? Are >we condemned to play with harmless, gentle cards with your policy ? Ideally, there are no strong or weak cards, only different ones.

do...@umich.edu (Metropolis) wrote in message news:<e9ad0229.03090...@posting.google.com>... > Robert, > > my previous attempt to reply got lost, so here is the abbreviated > version. > > Try changing the cost to 1 pool, and delaying the timing, this > effectively kills the weenie deck version and makes the card still > useful in other decks. explain how it is then useful it becomes more useful to your predator than to you at that point, since it would have burned 2 pool off of you, and only 1 off of everyone else that, in effect, makes it an unbalanced card [in terms of master cards, judge vs. ascendance] > The delaying of timing alone does help the game last longer, and helps > players get more out of the game, effectively making it a 45 minute > game :) do you think that all of those revolting anarchs will just sit around and only revolt when it's convenient for you? personally, i dont enjoy having to play against someone using ARs, but i am not enflamed about them in fact, all of this talk is just making me want to use them more > M.

"Curevei" <cur...@aol.commetal> wrote in message news:20030904174606...@mb-m04.aol.com... [ quoted text not captured ] you wrote this statement, but were knowing it is wrong. you are not a robot. you can always have a judgment value on a card. example of strong card : blood doll. example of weak card : command. do i need to say more ?

"Emmit Svenson" <emmits...@hotmail.com> wrote > > Let's assume (JUST ASSUME) that Anarch Revolt needs fixing. Let's not > > enter the "does it need fixing or not" debate. How would it be best > > fixed? > > The best way to fix it would be to increase the amount of pool that > each methuselah starts with. Instead of every methuselah only having > one pool to start, why don't we raise it to thirty pool, so that other > players have time to react to and plan for Anarch Revolts as they hit > the table? *rolling on the floor* > Another way to fix it would be to make the play of master cards a > limited resource. We should change the game so that instead of playing > as many master cards as you want, you are limited to playing only one > in your master phase, unless you have some special advantage, such as > a location (which should cost pool), a special ability from a unique > (and large!) minion, or maybe a vote could give you extra master phase > actions. *collapsing under the desk* > That way, building a deck around AR would force you to make > compromises between it and your pool gain, and other players could > target your assets with rushes and arsons if they want to slow > everyone's pool loss. *wiping the beverage spillt on the floor* > This is a fun mental exercise. Next up: "Assume that Blood Doll needs > fixing. How do you fix it?" Should we make it cost a pool to play, > should it be a single-use card, or should your minion lose all blood > to the blood bank when it is played? *archiving the post* =)

id77...@yahoo.com (isaphrael) wrote in message > in theory[of the game], yes it is Balance isn't really the issue in this particular case--Anarch Revolt is simply too easy to completely destroy all sembalance of standard table dynamic with. > yes, and a smart table will remove a heavy stealth bleeder from it as > well, before everyone dies to it, but that is just part of the game, > right? trying to stay alive while killing your prey? The problem with Anarch Revolt is not that it kills your prey. The problem with Anarch Revolt is that usually is destroys someone else's prey before it kills yours. At completely demolishes the standard table dynamic, and usually doesn't make you lose in doing so. A heavy stealth bleeder does exactly what it is supposed to do--kill its prey. If you are across the table from a heavy stealth bleeder, you are in a fine position, and are just as likely to sweep as they are. If you are across the table from an Anarch revolt deck, you are just as hosed as everyone else at the table. > i think that dramatic upheaval [sp] and that other one to change > seats, what about the vote to change play order, what about political > flux, whatabout the madness network, etc? > all of those cards change the predator prey dynamic of the game, and i > dont hear you bitching about them They don't change the fundemental dynamic of thegame. They simply change who is prey of who. Anarch Revolt tends to make a given game a completely random, incredibly quick, pointless excercise. Have you really never sat at a table in a game with a deck that played 1 or 2 ARs a turn? And not seen how it completely makes the game pointless? How would it be bad, say, if Anarch Revolt did its damage during the Discard Phase. Or cost X to put into play, where X is the number of Anarch Revolts in play? -Peter

On Thu, 4 Sep 2003 21:39:06 +0200, "Reyda" <true_...@hotmail.com> scrawled: >we condemned to play with harmless, gentle cards with your policy ? I'm >asking that because i'm a fucking millenary methuselah who really wants to You make hats for the undead? :) salem domain:canberra http://www.geocities.com/salem_christ.geo/vtes.htm

On Fri, 5 Sep 2003 00:45:31 +0200, "Reyda" <true_...@hotmail.com> scrawled: [ quoted text not captured ] IDEALLY, Command would be playable without there needing to be a block attempt, so at the least you could cycle it when there are not allies. IDEALLY, there are no strong or weak cards, only diferent ones. He's not saying that at the moment there are no strong or weak cards, he's saying that it'd be nice if the game was perfectly balanced with respect to card power. However, Ideals are very rarely perfectly attainable. We accept this, but still try our best regardless, as some progress is better than none. [ quoted text not captured ]

On 4 Sep 2003 11:54:09 -0700, id77...@yahoo.com (isaphrael) wrote: >> >anarch revolt is a balanced card >> >> No it isn't. > >in theory[of the game], yes it is > >> But before anyone goes on ranting about this card, it has been brought >> up in a number of threads over the past year or two. > >and here's another one, and people are ranting >so are you If you can't tell discussion from ranting, then perhaps you need to step away from the keyboard for a few minutes before responding. <Snip: remainder> If you wish to discuss why Anarch Revolt is perceived as a problem card, we'll discuss it with you. Of course that would assume that you would be openminded enough to listen to the arguements objectively, and I'm not getting that kind of vibe from your postings. Peter {PDB] has given a better elaboration on your concerns in the thread, and if you wish to provide a counterpoint to his observations I and others would like to hear them. Perhaps you can offer a fresh perspective that hasn't been considered? Regards, BernieTime Lansing, Michigan

"salem" <salem_ch...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:23tflv8191jfg8u25...@4ax.com... > On Thu, 4 Sep 2003 21:39:06 +0200, "Reyda" <true_...@hotmail.com> > scrawled: > > > >we condemned to play with harmless, gentle cards with your policy ? I'm > >asking that because i'm a fucking millenary methuselah who really wants to > > You make hats for the undead? :) hehe :) english is not my first language... anyway you understand the point. The world of darkness is no place for carebears, all equal policy and mildly powerful cards =)

Reyda expounded: > english is not my first language... anyway you understand the point. The > world of darkness is no place for carebears, all equal policy and mildly > powerful cards =) Hell no the Carebears are FAR to scary for WoD!

"Timlagor" <Timlagor...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:MPG.19c284258...@news.freeserve.com... [ quoted text not captured ] especially the pink one :)

"Reyda" <true_...@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:<3f57c1af$0$26358$79c1...@nan-newsreader-03.noos.net>... [ quoted text not captured ] I will pay you a beer, the next time you will come to Paris, for the laugh i had. Ridiculous doesnt' kill you. It just make you ridiculous...and it's worse. Just ASSUME that Minion tap need to be fixed. Afterall ALL the blood on a vampire... A lot of player have had some discussions ont that point and (the five guys who have a bad experience with that card on a determined tournament, let's say, won by rob treasure, with sten during in final round, playings anarchs revolt alltogether; don't imagine that these two dudes, probably the best players of theirs respectives countries, will not be in a final of a 28 players tournaments, with any deck, even baali (your next challenge, rob : won a tournament with a baali deck lol!!!) they all agree on that point. There is so many ways to turn the AR against the guy who put it in play, that all the discussion, in fact, turns on : how to explain that people have to be smart enough not to die with their own cards. The best way is : White Wolf pays another brains to players all around the world. I'm quite sure that with Time of judgement, they will make enough money to such an idea. (it's a joke: it will cost too many, more than the debt of the third world. Let's ask Pentex Holdings !!lol). Kamel SENNI.

emmits...@hotmail.com (Emmit Svenson) wrote in message news:<75bdf7ed.03090...@posting.google.com>... > dave...@hotmail.com (hamdamcwa) wrote in message news:<9e10847c.03090...@posting.google.com>... > > Let's assume (JUST ASSUME) that Anarch Revolt needs fixing. Let's not > > enter the "does it need fixing or not" debate. How would it be best > > fixed? > > The best way to fix it would be to increase the amount of pool that > each methuselah starts with. Instead of every methuselah only having > one pool to start, why don't we raise it to thirty pool, so that other > players have time to react to and plan for Anarch Revolts as they hit > the table? > > Another way to fix it would be to make the play of master cards a > limited resource. We should change the game so that instead of playing > as many master cards as you want, you are limited to playing only one > in your master phase, unless you have some special advantage, such as > a location (which should cost pool), a special ability from a unique > (and large!) minion, or maybe a vote could give you extra master phase > actions. That way, building a deck around AR would force you to make > compromises between it and your pool gain, and other players could > target your assets with rushes and arsons if they want to slow > everyone's pool loss. > LMAO, hilarious post. I appreciate it. However, in the last part of this paragraph, you've hit upon the reason so many people want to tweak Anarch Revolt: since your pool gain/defense is compromised by building around AR, you player can get completely hosed at the expense of cross-table methuselahs. The card is simply too far-reaching for a lot of people, and I understand the sentiment. > This is a fun mental exercise. Next up: "Assume that Blood Doll needs > fixing. How do you fix it?" Should we make it cost a pool to play, > should it be a single-use card, or should your minion lose all blood > to the blood bank when it is played? Very entertaining post :D Dorrinal

On Thu, 4 Sep 2003, Reyda wrote: > Personnaly i had my games destroyed 1% of the time by Anarch Revolt and 99% > of the time by Direct Intervention, Kiss of Ra, Graverobbing, Arika, Pentex > subversion. And even, sometimes, all those cards in a single session ;) You're missing the point. We've all had out individual games foiled by any number of cards. This card foils the game as a whole. For everyone. You may disagree, you may even be correct, but let's get the assertion straight. David Cherryholmes Still haven't taken that head shot....

kamel...@yvelines.pref.gouv.fr (Kamel SENNI) wrote in message > Just ASSUME that Minion tap need to be fixed. Afterall ALL the blood > on a vampire... I fully realize you are just trying to make a point, but it is an incorrect point. Minion Tap, unlike Anarch Revolt, doesn't completely destroy the standard table dynamic. Minion Tap helps one player (the guy who plays it) and impedes one player (his predator). This is as it should be. Anarch Revolts, when played en-mass, destroy all relationships at the table, turns the game into a random crap shoot, and just as often makes the guy playing them lose as not. This is not the case with Minion Tap. Or most cards. Anarch Revolt, when played in multiples, tends to destroy the game, and does so in a random absurd fashion. If there was an added cost to the card (it cost a pool; it made you lose pool at the end of the turn so the guy playing it took damage the turn he played it; something) it would be much less attractive to play, and as such, would still show up occasionally when warranted in decks, but wouldn't be seen all the time in game destroying Anarch Revolt decks that lose just as often as (if not moreoften than) they win. And destroy the game in the process. > There is so many ways to turn the AR against the guy who put it in > play, that all the discussion, in fact, turns on : how to explain that > people have to be smart enough not to die with their own cards. That is the whole point. The Anarch Revolt deck usually kills the guy playing the Anarch Revolts--but manages to completely demolish the rest of the table in the process. You can't make playing bad decks illegal. But it is always a good idea to limit the effect they have on the rest of the table. If I sit down with a "mundane" bad deck (say, an "All Werewolf Pack" deck), I die, and my effect on the rest of the table is fairly minimal--yeah, my predator and prey have an easier time, but that is always a possibility. My bad deck, however, does not throw the whole game into a tailspin. Anarch Revolt decks do just that. They suck, and make everyone else suck too. -Peter

pd...@lightlink.com (Peter D Bakija) wrote in message news:<aadbb36b.03090...@posting.google.com>... > > There is so many ways to turn the AR against the guy who put it in > > play, that all the discussion, in fact, turns on : how to explain that > > people have to be smart enough not to die with their own cards. > > That is the whole point. The Anarch Revolt deck usually kills the guy > playing the Anarch Revolts--but manages to completely demolish the > rest of the table in the process. You can't make playing bad decks > illegal. But it is always a good idea to limit the effect they have on > the rest of the table. If I sit down with a "mundane" bad deck (say, > an "All Werewolf Pack" deck), I die, and my effect on the rest of the > table is fairly minimal--yeah, my predator and prey have an easier > time, but that is always a possibility. My bad deck, however, does not > throw the whole game into a tailspin. Anarch Revolt decks do just > that. They suck, and make everyone else suck too. > > -Peter And yet, I've seen perfectly straightforward irresponsible stealth-bleed decks upset table balance exactly the same way in a tournament environment. (I assume we're most concerned about tournaments here. In a casual game, everyone just transfers out and says, "Let's not play that deck again, hmm?") I think the key is, how do you make Anarch Revolt unattractive enough that people stop building BAD decks around it. A really good AR deck doesn't destroy table balance, it sweeps. And quickly. When I see someone play it well, I salute them, because picking up a game win with an Anarch Revolt deck I think is one of the hardest things to do in this game. You need to have life boons, dramatic upheavals/kindred restructures and enough pool gain to stay ahead of not only your own revolts but whatever your prey (and sometimes the table) is throwing your way, on top of actually having the ability to continuously play the ARs. So yes, I get irritated when I see a revolt hit the table, but I like to see it as a challenge. It's sort of the "can I handle this?" moment for my deck. But nothing about the card itself needs to change. We just need to convince people that it's a card that makes you lose unless you're very very good. Just like Baltimore Purge. Eric Simon Prince of Chicago

vol...@yahoo.com (Eric Simon) wrote in message > And yet, I've seen perfectly straightforward irresponsible > stealth-bleed decks upset table balance exactly the same way in a > tournament environment. (I assume we're most concerned about > tournaments here. In a casual game, everyone just transfers out and > says, "Let's not play that deck again, hmm?") But they don't necessarily upset the table balance--they just make themselves lose and their prey win (by virtue of blindly bleeding forward into Deflections). This is much less destructive than making, like, every deck at the table unable to play the game, all at the same time. > > I think the key is, how do you make Anarch Revolt unattractive enough > that people stop building BAD decks around it. Well, that is the whole point of this discussion, now isn't it? > A really good AR deck > doesn't destroy table balance, it sweeps. And quickly. It has no control over that. Sure, it can throw down AR's quickly, and protect them, and bleed forward with momentum, but what if there is another deck at the table is just as quick, but isn't hindered by the need to play the Anarch Revolts and protect them? That deck is simply going to win the game. And the Anarch revolt deck is what is insuring this. Regardless of their relative table positions. Anarch Revolt is simply too random to be reliable. I have an all AUS Anarch Revolt deck that I like playing in 3 player games (which I playa lot around here). In three player games, it does very well. In 4 or 5 player games, it sucks, and generally does nothing but get someone across the table ousted quickly. So I don't play it in 4 or 5 player games. But that is 'cause I realize it is a bad idea. A lot of otherpeople don't seem to realize this. > When I see > someone play it well, I salute them, because picking up a game win > with an Anarch Revolt deck I think is one of the hardest things to do > in this game. Yes, it is. But on the otherhand, picking up a game win because *someone else* is playing an Anarch Revolt deck is one of the easiest thing to do in this game. > So yes, I get irritated when I see a revolt hit the table, but I like > to see it as a challenge. It's sort of the "can I handle this?" > moment for my deck. But nothing about the card itself needs to > change. We just need to convince people that it's a card that makes > you lose unless you're very very good. Just like Baltimore Purge. And in the mean time, people will regularly use it to inadvertently demolish games left and right. How, really, would it be bad if Anarch Revolt was powered down some? Really? Say, make it cost X pool, where X is the number of Anarch Revolts in play--it is completely untouched for decks that want to put 1 into play. You can manage to put a few in play if you want to pay for it. Putting 5 or 6 in play is completely out of the question. Which is only good. Really? How would this be bad? What would it *hurt*? You could still use the card. You could still build it into your deck strategy. But the days of facing decks that absurdly throw 2 into play per turn would be over. Which would only be good. -Peter

pd...@lightlink.com (Peter D Bakija) wrote in message news:<aadbb36b.03090...@posting.google.com>... > vol...@yahoo.com (Eric Simon) wrote in message > > And yet, I've seen perfectly straightforward irresponsible > > stealth-bleed decks upset table balance exactly the same way in a > > tournament environment. (I assume we're most concerned about > > tournaments here. In a casual game, everyone just transfers out and > > says, "Let's not play that deck again, hmm?") > > But they don't necessarily upset the table balance--they just make > themselves lose and their prey win (by virtue of blindly bleeding > forward into Deflections). This is much less destructive than making, > like, every deck at the table unable to play the game, all at the same > time. Actually, what I'm saying is that irresponsible bleed DOES upset table balance, sometimes as much as an AR deck. A common complaint about the game is that you can't play a tournament deck without bounce, and while that is not necessarily true, it's an exaggeration with some basis in fact. I have been in tournament rounds in which the irresonsible bleeder turned the game into a test of who was out of bounce. So no, the bleeder is not just helping their prey win. S/he might in fact be helping their grand-predator win, or even their predator. If you want to look straight at the effects, irresponsible bleed is more of an unbalancing factor than ARs partially because of the fact that revolts do hit everyone in a consistent and predictable manner. If you are unable or unwilling to block a bleed there are exactly four cards that allow you to send it somewhere else, combined with a small smattering of cards that allow you to reduce the amount of that bleed. Compare that to the number of cards and strategies that allow you to gain pool. I would never call a deck a losing deck because it had no bounce, as long as it had some hope of dealing with stealth-bleed that maybe just didn't pan out. I WOULD call a deck a losing deck if it has no pool gain. Anarch Revolt does nothing on its own but make this factor more urgent for everyone equally. I guess what I'm saying is that I don't buy the "random king-maker" factor as much, because I think irresponsible bleed is a worse random king-maker. > > A really good AR deck > > doesn't destroy table balance, it sweeps. And quickly. > > It has no control over that. Sure it does. That's what distinguishes a "really good" AR deck. And I mentioned how later in my paragraph, but you snipped that part, so I'll go ahead and quote myself: > You need to have life boons, dramatic upheavals/kindred > restructures and enough pool gain to stay ahead of not only your own > revolts but whatever your prey (and sometimes the table) is throwing > your way, on top of actually having the ability to continuously play > the ARs. It's those OTHER cards and strategies that make a "good" AR deck. I have seen AR decks played by very good players that sweep or at least game-win nearly every time they're played. The card by itself is not random. It's just that it creates a much larger set of partially-controllable factors than most people are able to handle. Essentially it condenses the problems of table-management into a much smaller timespace while turning the table against you, making it harder to create deals. Which is why it is not a strategy for the faint of heart. (I'll go ahead and give credit where credit is due. The most consistent winning with AR decks I personally have seen was done by Stu Pieloch, Prince of Portland, my former playgroup.) In essence, a bad AR deck does what many bad decks do - it hurts its prey with no thought to what's happening to the rest of the table. The essence of V:TES is this - Forward motion wins a point, table management wins the game. > > When I see > > someone play it well, I salute them, because picking up a game win > > with an Anarch Revolt deck I think is one of the hardest things to do > > in this game. > > Yes, it is. But on the otherhand, picking up a game win because > *someone else* is playing an Anarch Revolt deck is one of the easiest > thing to do in this game. Unless it's a good Anarch Revolt deck. I swear they exist. :) > > We just need to convince people that it's a card that makes > > you lose unless you're very very good. Just like Baltimore Purge. > > And in the mean time, people will regularly use it to inadvertently > demolish games left and right. Just like so many other things. There's a lot of bad play out there, and a lot of it affects the whole table. Bad play doesn't make the card broken. Someone can oust themselves on their second turn with Gird Minions. Does that mean we have to put a limit on Gird Minions? > How, really, would it be bad if Anarch Revolt was powered down some? > Really? Say, make it cost X pool, where X is the number of Anarch > Revolts in play--it is completely untouched for decks that want to put > 1 into play. You can manage to put a few in play if you want to pay > for it. Putting 5 or 6 in play is completely out of the question. > Which is only good. Really? How would this be bad? What would it > *hurt*? You could still use the card. You could still build it into > your deck strategy. But the days of facing decks that absurdly throw 2 > into play per turn would be over. Which would only be good. And now I suppose I will toss in my answer to the hypothetical question that started all this. Even if Anarch Revolt is not broken, could it be improved by "fixing?" I generally don't assume that things are fine as is, so I'm willing to look at this possibility. First of all, I don't think we need to add a mechanic to limit the number of Revolts in play. Doing so renders it useless as a game-winning strategy, which would utterly marginalize the card. (We already have a rarely-used card like that. It's called Antediluvian Awakening.) Also, whereas AA has a cancel cost that many are unwilling to pay, anyone with spare actions will call a vote to get rid of an AR. Limiting the number in play makes it all the more useless because its cancel cost is minimal. Because of this, I also think that making it not stack (like Army of Rats) would marginalize the card as well. People frequently have spare minions with animalism to put Rats into play, but who would be willing to spare the master phase action for no more than one per turn when, again, the card is so fragile? Because the card is so fragile, I also think the last thing that needs to be done is make it more fragile. Getting rid of all Revolts in play with a single vote is definitely unnecessary considering the amount of table cooperation they normally engender. So then we get to the ideas of making it hurt the person who played it a little more. Either making it cost a pool or perhaps take effect during the discard phase (thus costing the owner and allowing his/her prey a chance to get rid of it before being affected). This has more of an Army of Rats feel, and I think it could still be playable. The difficulty with this is it is largely unprecedented. Things happen during untap in V:TES, they don't happen during discard. Most of all, though, I get the impression that you, Peter, just don't like seeing quite so many at a time. I can understand that, so I think I go with the idea of making it a Trifle. Yes, I know people think this actually powers it up, but it builds in a desired detriment while keeping it very playable. Combine it with a timing change if you want. Any more than that and it becomes wallpaper. And as to the question of what it would hurt to make it cost-prohibitive or even to eliminate entirely? That one I can definitely answer. Anarch Revolt is about the only card that can motivate some wall decks to move forward. Harbingers/Slaughterhouse decks HATE Anarch Revolt because it makes them move before they want to. If your prey is an intercept-heavy Harbingers deck that just wants to sit there and block everything your minions do until everyone is out of cards, how else can you damage their pool? You would need some sort of master card that could hurt them. And you'd probably need a stack of several of them. So yes, I think Anarch Revolt needs to be in the game (and kept effective) because it can be one of the few ways to break a wall. So look at it this way - the more Anarch Revolt gets hurt, the more likely I am to play Brinksmanship. :) [ quoted text not captured ]

Eric Simon expounded: > Most of all, though, I get the impression that you, Peter, just don't > like seeing quite so many at a time. I can understand that, so I > think I go with the idea of making it a Trifle. Yes, I know people > think this actually powers it up, but it builds in a desired detriment > while keeping it very playable. Combine it with a timing change if > you want. Any more than that and it becomes wallpaper. Adding a cost to AR is MUCH better than changing the timing IMOSHO. Hits the player just the same but without removing the "it's already hit me" effect on everyone else. Changing the timing to the Master phase might work though.. The problem with trifling is that it majkes it even easier for the AR deck to get extra Masters out (pool gain presumably). Do you view this as just reasonable compensation for being unable to play so many ARs? > to. If your prey is an intercept-heavy Harbingers deck that just > wants to sit there and block everything your minions do until everyone > is out of cards, how else can you damage their pool? You would need > some sort of master card that could hurt them. And you'd probably > need a stack of several of them. Alternatively you could let them block you then smash them into little pieces! ;D [ quoted text not captured ]

Timlagor <Timlagor...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<MPG.19c518ed4...@news.freeserve.com>... > Eric Simon expounded: > > Most of all, though, I get the impression that you, Peter, just don't > > like seeing quite so many at a time. I can understand that, so I > > think I go with the idea of making it a Trifle. Yes, I know people > > think this actually powers it up, but it builds in a desired detriment > > while keeping it very playable. Combine it with a timing change if > > you want. Any more than that and it becomes wallpaper. > > Adding a cost to AR is MUCH better than changing the timing IMOSHO. Hits > the player just the same but without removing the "it's already hit me" > effect on everyone else. > Changing the timing to the Master phase might work though.. Agreed. If you want to hit the owner first turn, either make it a cost or a master phase effect. As I mentioned, I don't like the idea of creating one card whose effects happen during discard, since nothing else does so. I do think, however, that if the card affects its owner, the cancel cost should be increased. If I'm paying a pool and a master phase action to cost my prey one pool and a minion action, I'm losing. > The problem with trifling is that it majkes it even easier for the AR > deck to get extra Masters out (pool gain presumably). Do you view this > as just reasonable compensation for being unable to play so many ARs? I do. Basically, my thought is that no matter how you reduce it to one per turn, anything that builds slowly like that (Smiling Jack, for instance) needs a lot of support. If you can only play one per turn, then you NEED to play one per turn every turn. If you can play multiples per turn, it's okay to skip a turn in favor of pool gain. Trifling keeps it viable and also balances well with the cancel cost. I don't feel so bad about it going away each turn if it only costs me a trifle action rather than a full MPA. > > to. If your prey is an intercept-heavy Harbingers deck that just > > wants to sit there and block everything your minions do until everyone > > is out of cards, how else can you damage their pool? You would need > > some sort of master card that could hurt them. And you'd probably > > need a stack of several of them. > > Alternatively you could let them block you then smash them into little > pieces! ;D You haven't been playing against the same Harbingers I've been playing against. Either that, or you play more Thaum and Quietus unpreventable strikes than I do. The Harbingers have a really great wall combo: AUS for intercept and bleed redirect, FOR for damage prevention, and NEC for free S:CE. There are only a few combat strategies that can get through that if it's well-built. [ quoted text not captured ]

vol...@yahoo.com (Eric Simon) wrote: > Actually, what I'm saying is that irresponsible bleed DOES upset table > balance, sometimes as much as an AR deck. Sometimes it does. But only in situations where its prey is playing, like, 20 deflections. Most of the time, not so much. Most of the time, the irresponsible stealth bleeder either ousts his prey (which is what he is supposed to be doing in the first place), or gets ousted (which is how the game works). Occasionally, yeah, someone with stealth bleed indisciminantly forward, getting bounced to their grand prey, and bleeding them for 7 over and over again. Yes. This is a possibility. But most of the time this isn't really an issue. Anarch Revolt decks, however, simply by virtue of their existance, affects *everyone* badly. Your prey. Your grand prey. The guy across the table. Your grand predator. Your predator. Everyone has a very significant clock placed on them. That they are, in all likelyhood, unprepared to deal with. Which demolishes the game. > A common complaint about > the game is that you can't play a tournament deck without bounce, and > while that is not necessarily true, it's an exaggeration with some > basis in fact. Not really. It is very easy to play a tournament deck without bounce. And do very well. >I guess > what I'm saying is that I don't buy the "random king-maker" factor as > much, because I think irresponsible bleed is a worse random > king-maker. Not so much seeing that. AR decks, by their very existance, make the game fall apart. S+B deck, by their very existance, either tend to win or get killed. And if they get killed a lot, they don't get played that often. > Sure it does. That's what distinguishes a "really good" AR deck. And > I mentioned how later in my paragraph, but you snipped that part, so > I'll go ahead and quote myself: Oh, I'm very familiar with the theory behind making a "good" Anarch revolt deck. There are only so many Life Boons you can use to keep the guy across the table alive. So he dies to the ARs anyway. And his predator starts to sweep the table. And the "very good" Anarch Revolt deck, once again, does little more than demolish the table. > It's those OTHER cards and strategies that make a "good" AR deck. I > have seen AR decks played by very good players that sweep or at least > game-win nearly every time they're played. The card by itself is not > random. It's just that it creates a much larger set of > partially-controllable factors than most people are able to handle. And in doing so, completely demolishes the basic game dynamic. Again, I'm not here saying that Anarch Revolt is too powerful. It isn't. It is just too random, and as such, bad for the game. > In essence, a bad AR deck does what many bad decks do - it hurts its > prey with no thought to what's happening to the rest of the table. > The essence of V:TES is this - Forward motion wins a point, table > management wins the game. It hurts *everyone* with no thought of what is happening to the rest of the table. It colapses the game to a point of absurdity. It is just as bad idea. > Unless it's a good Anarch Revolt deck. I swear they exist. :) Oh, I've seen them all. I have one that is pretty good. And it wins 3 player games all the time. Add 1 or 2 extra players, and the Life Boons and pool gain and Eagle's Sights and whatever just aren't enough. So, like, 90% of the time, in a game larger than 3 players, it just makes someone else random win. > Just like so many other things. There's a lot of bad play out there, > and a lot of it affects the whole table. Bad play doesn't make the > card broken. Someone can oust themselves on their second turn with > Gird Minions. Does that mean we have to put a limit on Gird Minions? As I mentioned elswhere in this thread, you can't legislate against bad play. You can, however, make it less attratctive. > First of all, I don't think we need to add a mechanic to limit the > number of Revolts in play. Doing so renders it useless as a > game-winning strategy, which would utterly marginalize the card. Hardly. The card works just fine as a limited use accelerator. Like Army of Rats. Limiting the number that can be put into play means that you'll use 1 or 2 when it makes you deck work better. Which is perfectly reasonable. Removing the possibility of Anarch Revolt as a "game winning" strategy is probably the the whole purpose of this exercise, as the "game winning" strategy that is Anarch Revolt is questionable, atbest, and horribly destructive to the game at worst. It doesn't *need* to be a "game winning" strategy. > (We > already have a rarely-used card like that. It's called Antediluvian > Awakening.) Antedeluvian Awakening sees play as often as it needs to. And if Anarch Revolt became limited in its ability to hit play, AA would raise in stock value considerably. > Most of all, though, I get the impression that you, Peter, just don't > like seeing quite so many at a time. I can understand that, so I > think I go with the idea of making it a Trifle. Yes, I know people > think this actually powers it up, but it builds in a desired detriment > while keeping it very playable. Combine it with a timing change if > you want. Any more than that and it becomes wallpaper. I think it is perfectly reasonable to make Anarch Revolt wallpaper. It is unecessary to have such a randomly destructive card as the key to a "viable strategy". The card does very little positive for the game. And mostly wreaks havoc. > And as to the question of what it would hurt to make it > cost-prohibitive or even to eliminate entirely? That one I can > definitely answer. Anarch Revolt is about the only card that can > motivate some wall decks to move forward. And if there was only one in play at a time, it would still do the same thing. > Harbingers/Slaughterhouse > decks HATE Anarch Revolt because it makes them move before they want > to. So you feel that the existance of the also incredibly marginal and mostly useless Harbingers/Slaughterhouse deck makes Anarch Revolt necessary? It strikes me as a very reasonable price to pay to marginalize AR. >If your prey is an intercept-heavy Harbingers deck that just > wants to sit there and block everything your minions do until everyone > is out of cards, how else can you damage their pool? Beat them up. Play an Anarch Revolt and an Antedeluvian Awakening, costing them 2 pool per turn. Use more stealth. The existance of another non winning strategy (i.e. Harbingers Slaughterhaouse) does not so much justify the necessary existance of a counter non winning strategy (Anarch Revolt). > So yes, I think Anarch Revolt needs to be in the game (and kept > effective) because it can be one of the few ways to break a wall. If Anarch Revolt showed up on a regualr basis as the key to "breaking a wall", then I might see that your argument holds water. But it doesn't. It isn't used for that. It might have that effect, but rarely does it have that implimentation. The vast majority of the time, AR simply kills everyone and picks a random winner. > So > look at it this way - the more Anarch Revolt gets hurt, the more > likely I am to play Brinksmanship. :) More power to you. Such decks (Harbingers/Slaughterhouse) are unlikely to win in any case, Anarch Revolt or no. -Peter

Eric Simon expounded: > Agreed. If you want to hit the owner first turn, either make it a > cost or a master phase effect. As I mentioned, I don't like the idea > of creating one card whose effects happen during discard, since I don't see this as the problem. Are you sure that nothing else does? Either way I like the "I've already been hit so why should I get rid of it?" effect. Hmm I think I may have said that enough now ;-) > nothing else does so. I do think, however, that if the card affects > its owner, the cancel cost should be increased. If I'm paying a pool > and a master phase action to cost my prey one pool and a minion > action, I'm losing. Bear in mind that they do have to pass the referendum with that action - not be blocked and THEN ALSO have the votes. Most people will vote with them to get rid of the ARs but it still gives you some options to defend them. > You haven't been playing against the same Harbingers I've been playing > against. Either that, or you play more Thaum and Quietus > unpreventable strikes than I do. The Harbingers have a really great > wall combo: AUS for intercept and bleed redirect, FOR for damage > prevention, and NEC for free S:CE. There are only a few combat > strategies that can get through that if it's well-built. I haven't been playing them at all ;-D Seems to me that you should be able to either outstealth their intercept (pack em with combat) or smash 'em lots at 0 stealth and fill em up with intercept cards. Of course you would need some cooperation from their prey. If you can't manage either of those: well your're out of luck ;-P Does anyone advocate moving the timing to Discard Phase over adding a pool cost to playing AR?

Peter D Bakija expounded: > vol...@yahoo.com (Eric Simon) wrote: > > Actually, what I'm saying is that irresponsible bleed DOES upset table > > balance, sometimes as much as an AR deck. SOMETIMES. AR decks always mangle the table. > > Sure it does. That's what distinguishes a "really good" AR deck. And > > I mentioned how later in my paragraph, but you snipped that part, so > > I'll go ahead and quote myself: > > Oh, I'm very familiar with the theory behind making a "good" Anarch > revolt deck. There are only so many Life Boons you can use to keep the > guy across the table alive. So he dies to the ARs anyway. And his > predator starts to sweep the table. And the "very good" Anarch Revolt > deck, once again, does little more than demolish the table. I've never been tempted to play one but: Surely the trick here is to play your dramatic upheaval or Kindred Restructure BEFORE you run out of Life Boons so that when "the guy across the table dies anyway" he's your prey. > > Unless it's a good Anarch Revolt deck. I swear they exist. :) > Oh, I've seen them all. I have one that is pretty good. And it wins 3 > player games all the time. Add 1 or 2 extra players, and the Life > Boons and pool gain and Eagle's Sights and whatever just aren't > enough. So, like, 90% of the time, in a game larger than 3 players, it > just makes someone else random win. The obvious answer is that you aren't playing your DUs and KRs well enough though I don't know how much control you can get with those. Either way I don't think that the posited existence of "good AR decks" (very rare) is sufficient compensation for the number of bad ones.

> > The problem with trifling is that it majkes it even easier for the AR > > deck to get extra Masters out (pool gain presumably). Do you view this > > as just reasonable compensation for being unable to play so many ARs? > > I do. Basically, my thought is that no matter how you reduce it to > one per turn, anything that builds slowly like that (Smiling Jack, for > instance) needs a lot of support. If you can only play one per turn, > then you NEED to play one per turn every turn. If you can play > multiples per turn, it's okay to skip a turn in favor of pool gain. > Trifling keeps it viable and also balances well with the cancel cost. > I don't feel so bad about it going away each turn if it only costs me > a trifle action rather than a full MPA. I'm rather opposed to making a 'heavy impact' card like anarch revolt a trifle, If it wasnt for the reason of a trifle being, well, trifle :) it would be extremely easy to include up to eight in, say, a malk S&B, or some kind of powervote, or whatever deck with ousting power of itself. A trifle that costs your prey at least one pool is too powerful IMO. -Bram Vink

Timlagor <Timlagor...@yahoo.com> wrote in message: > SOMETIMES. AR decks always mangle the table. Hmm. I'm not quite sure who you are responding to with this statement. > I've never been tempted to play one but: > Surely the trick here is to play your dramatic upheaval or Kindred > Restructure BEFORE you run out of Life Boons so that when "the guy > across the table dies anyway" he's your prey. Ah, yes, 'cause the deck throwing out all the Anarch Revolts can: -Play enough Anarch Revolts to justfy the deck strategy, -Protect these Anarch Revolts, -Generate enough pool to avoid dying to these Anarch Revolts, -Protect itself from its predator so it doesn't get ousted by these Anarch revolts, -Bleed forward with enough momentum to oust its prey before faster decks around the table take advantage of all the Anarch Revolts, -Protect all the other players at the table from the Anarch Revolts so that only its prey dies at a given moment, -Have the necessary stealth and vote power to successfully call and pass Dramatic Upheaval (or, ya know, Kindred Restructure, 'cause this magical and wonderful Anarch Revolt deck also has Princes in it...) Yes. This clearly is why Anarch Revolt decks are good to play. And don't simply destroy a given game... > The obvious answer is that you aren't playing your DUs and KRs well > enough though I don't know how much control you can get with those. Very little. 'Cause you can't pass them. Or call them, for that matter. 'Cause you don't have stealth. Or if you do have stealth, you don't have bleed momentum. Or if you have either, you can't pass votes if there is any vote presence at the table. And you need to protect the Anarchs with either intercept or Delaying Tactics. All while your crypt is small enough so that you don't instantly oust yourself by playing the deck, and so you can take actions in the shortened game. And keep yourself alive at the same time. > Either way I don't think that the posited existence of "good AR decks" > (very rare) is sufficient compensation for the number of bad ones. I think this is a reasonable statement. I suspect that the number of consistiently winning Anarch Revolt decks is *vastly* smaller than the number of consistiently bad Anarch Revolt decks. To the point that it would benefit everyone if Anarch Revolt were downpowerd such that you really only used them if it was a very good idea. -Peter

Peter D Bakija expounded: > Timlagor <Timlagor...@yahoo.com> wrote in message: > > SOMETIMES. AR decks always mangle the table. > Hmm. I'm not quite sure who you are responding to with this statement. Sorry. SOMETIMES irresponsible bleed will wreck a table. ARs pretty much always do so. Besides which AR could be fixed and irresponsible bleeding couldn't ..well ok you could ban all bounce cards: I don't think anyone wants that. > > Surely the trick here is to play your dramatic upheaval or Kindred > > Restructure BEFORE you run out of Life Boons so that when "the guy > > across the table dies anyway" he's your prey. > Ah, yes, 'cause the deck throwing out all the Anarch Revolts can: > -Play enough Anarch Revolts to justfy the deck strategy, > -Protect these Anarch Revolts, > -Generate enough pool to avoid dying to these Anarch Revolts, > -Protect itself from its predator so it doesn't get ousted by these > Anarch revolts, > -Bleed forward with enough momentum to oust its prey before faster > decks around the table take advantage of all the Anarch Revolts, Scratch this one. You don't need to go forward AT ALL (aside from the ARs) because you are planning to swap to sit behind the person with the least pool at the right moment. if you can pass a KR you might only need to do it once. > -Protect all the other players at the table from the Anarch Revolts so > that only its prey dies at a given moment, Again you are planning to be sitting behind the first to go. > -Have the necessary stealth and vote power to successfully call and > pass Dramatic Upheaval (or, ya know, Kindred Restructure, 'cause this > magical and wonderful Anarch Revolt deck also has Princes in it...) That could be tough. I've never tried. How the hell did I end up trying to defend AR anyway? > Yes. This clearly is why Anarch Revolt decks are good to play. And > don't simply destroy a given game... I certainly never said that! > if there is any vote presence at the table. And you need to protect > the Anarchs with either intercept or Delaying Tactics. All while your > crypt is small enough so that you don't instantly oust yourself by > playing the deck, and so you can take actions in the shortened game. > And keep yourself alive at the same time. Maybe it's not possible. Eric says it is and this is how I reckon it could be done. Certainly Rob Treasure managed to pass his Dramatic Upheaval (no Prince required) in the final of the UK Champtionship. Perhaps Eric could post a "really good" AR deck to compare with Rob's (in the WEEKENDA thread)?

I learned about weenie Potence from you, Peter, so here's the skinny on Anarch Revolts. pd...@lightlink.com (Peter D Bakija) wrote in message news:<aadbb36b.03090...@posting.google.com>... > Ah, yes, 'cause the deck throwing out all the Anarch Revolts can: > -Play enough Anarch Revolts to justfy the deck strategy, Crypt: Mono Anson, or Anson & 3 weenies. Obviously multiple Parthenons should be in the library. > -Protect these Anarch Revolts, Nah. Never protect your Anarch Revolts. Other people voting them down guarantees that your prey loses far more pool to them than you do. > -Generate enough pool to avoid dying to these Anarch Revolts, You don't spend much pool, 'cause you only bring out one vampire and a few locations, and you lose less pool to the revolts than every one else if others are voting them out. On top of that, you can bloat with Minion Tap/Golconda every other turn. That's old school; I've been experimenting with a LitC/Blood Doll version. > -Protect itself from its predator so it doesn't get ousted by these > Anarch revolts, For bleeds, Anson can Deflect, 2nd Tradition, Majesty. For rush, Sense Dep, etc., you should include some Secure Havens...you only have one vampire out, so that's total coverage. Votes can be the toughest offense to deal with. Either plan to weather them or include a few Dread Gaze/DTs, depending on your metagame. > -Bleed forward with enough momentum to oust its prey before faster > decks around the table take advantage of all the Anarch Revolts, Bleeding is unnecessary. Let AR and other players do the damage for you, then clean up with votes. > -Protect all the other players at the table from the Anarch Revolts so > that only its prey dies at a given moment, Your grandprey is really the only other player you're very worried about. > -Have the necessary stealth and vote power to successfully call and > pass Dramatic Upheaval (or, ya know, Kindred Restructure, 'cause this > magical and wonderful Anarch Revolt deck also has Princes in it...) Yes, Anson is a prince. I recommend a few Obfuscate masters in the deck so you can Forgotten Labrynth with him. Awe and/or BO will pass your votes when you need to. One final note: your library should be 60 cards, or even fewer if local rules allow. You'll never see its bottom.

On Fri, 5 Sep 2003 15:25:13 +0200, "Reyda" <true_...@hotmail.com> scrawled: [ quoted text not captured ] Happy Tree Friends might be ok in the WoD, though. :) www.happytreefriends.com [ quoted text not captured ]

On Sun, 7 Sep 2003 18:44:03 +0100, Timlagor <Timlagor...@yahoo.com> scrawled: [snip] >Does anyone advocate moving the timing to Discard Phase over adding a >pool cost to playing AR? under the assumption that it needs fixing, i advocate dicard phase over cost. with the caveat that i am not convinced either way as to whether it _needs_ fixing or not. [ quoted text not captured ]

"salem" <salem_ch...@yahoo.com> wrote > >> Hell no the Carebears are FAR to scary for WoD! > > > >especially the pink one :) > > Happy Tree Friends might be ok in the WoD, though. :) > > www.happytreefriends.com yeah. I feel like those creatures may be Garous of some sort :)

salem expounded: > On Sun, 7 Sep 2003 18:44:03 +0100, Timlagor > <Timlagor...@yahoo.com> scrawled: > > [snip] > >Does anyone advocate moving the timing to Discard Phase over adding a > >pool cost to playing AR? > > under the assumption that it needs fixing, i advocate dicard phase > over cost. There's always one isn't there. <sigh> Could you share your reasons? (if you already have I can't find them easily) > with the caveat that i am not convinced either way as to whether it > _needs_ fixing or not. Yeah ok.

I think you are missing the point. Its not that making a good AR deck is completely impossible. Clearly some people have won tournaments with them. Its just that its so much easier for the deck to lose, and in ANY game that a AR deck is at the table, whether or not its a good deck, it completely destroys the game dynamic. On top of that, I think most would agree that even a top quality AR deck would be relatively easy to stop if anyone on the table was runnign vote defense against the seat moves or Sudden reversals for the Boons. Yet even in those cases where the good AR deck is stopped by countermeasures, it would still "win" in a way, by destroying the game even as it dies. That is the problem.

omgm...@aol.com (MarkandJosie) wrote in message news:<8de27bad.03090...@posting.google.com>... > ...in ANY game that a AR deck is at the table, whether or > not its a good deck, it completely destroys the game dynamic. Really? Players stop trying to oust their prey? They stop trying to bleed, vote, rush or bloat? They stop trying to protect their pool? They stop trying to act, or stop trying to block? "Completely destroys" is pure hyperbole, and we've heard it too much on this thread. Let's say it "radically accelerates" the game dynamic. > ... even in those cases where the good AR deck is stopped > by countermeasures, it would still "win" in a way, by destroying the > game even as it dies. That is the problem. "Destroying the game as it dies?" You mean the game ends? No one can earn victory points? The game times out? Everyone withdraws? More hyperbole. After a AR deck is ousted, people are generally lower on pool and have used less transfers, but the game doesn't fall apart.

emmits...@hotmail.com (Emmit Svenson) wrote in message > Crypt: Mono Anson, or Anson & 3 weenies. Obviously multiple Parthenons > should be in the library. That is cetainly a viable possibility, but then you suffer from the "all eggs in one basket" syndrome. If something embarrasing does happen to Anson (like he is beat up, Sensory Deprivated, contested, Pentex Subverted, or just blocked alot), you are SOL. And unless you have a lot of Bewitchings to push those votes through, you'll have a lot of trouble passing votes, as simply by virtue of you being an Anarch revolt deck, the whole table is going to want your votes to fail. I realize that, in theory, there are ways to make Anarch Revolt decks that should be able to win consistiently. In practice, however, this isn't really the case, and mostly they just piss people off and make them hate the game. And if Anarch Revolt were powered down some, there would still, in theory, be ways to make Anarch Revolt decks that win consistiently. -Peter

Timlagor wrote: > > salem expounded: > > On Sun, 7 Sep 2003 18:44:03 +0100, Timlagor > > <Timlagor...@yahoo.com> scrawled: > > > > [snip] > > >Does anyone advocate moving the timing to Discard Phase over adding a > > >pool cost to playing AR? > > > > under the assumption that it needs fixing, i advocate dicard phase > > over cost. > > There's always one isn't there. <sigh> > Could you share your reasons? (if you already have I can't find them > easily) One what? One guy who doesn't agree Anarch Revolt is a problem? Oh, there's lots of people who feel that way. If you want to know why, it's because of the same reasons people usually give: if it were a play-balance problem, you'd see lots of Anarch Revolt decks and many tournaments would be constantly getting won by guys with Anarch Revolt decks. These are the only real tell-tale signs of a problem. I think people can make a pretty credible argument that Anarch Revolt decks are really annoying and interfere with the fun most people have with the game - whether the deck wins or not. I'm not sure it's bad enough to convince me on that basis, though. I get a lot more annoyed by weeny presence decks that take one V.P. and normally should never have a shot at a game win. Or even just rush combat decks or intercept walls. All can be really unfair to one opposing player who's biggest sin was to have the bad luck of sitting in the wrong seat at the table. At least Anarch Revolt decks aren't quite so predicable in their tendency to ruin the game for certain other players. Fred

Timlagor <Timlagor...@yahoo.com> wrote: > Sorry. > SOMETIMES irresponsible bleed will wreck a table. ARs pretty much always > do so. Besides which AR could be fixed and irresponsible bleeding > couldn't ..well ok you could ban all bounce cards: I don't think anyone > wants that. Yeah, that is what I figured. I think you were responding to something that someone else wrote, yet you thought it was me. Not a problem. > Scratch this one. You don't need to go forward AT ALL (aside from the > ARs) because you are planning to swap to sit behind the person with the > least pool at the right moment. if you can pass a KR you might only need > to do it once. That is a *highly* sketchy plan for an Anarch Revolt deck--it is very easy for something to go wrong with the vote you need to call at exactly the right moment--Intercept; table votes; Delaying Tactics. Sure, if everything works perfectly, and then your difficult to pull off gambit gets pulled off, you might do well. But then, that doesn't happen that often. Which is why Anarch Revolt decks simply hose the whole table rather than win. But then we both agree on that point :-) > Maybe it's not possible. Eric says it is and this is how I reckon it > could be done. Certainly Rob Treasure managed to pass his Dramatic > Upheaval (no Prince required) in the final of the UK Champtionship. I think it is *possible*. But very difficult. And unlike most other decks that are possible, yet difficult to win with, the AR deck tends to destroy the game when it doesn't win (which is the most likely outcome of such a deck). Other bad decks just get plowed under, and don't do much colatteral damage. -Peter

Frederick Scott expounded: > Timlagor wrote: > > > > salem expounded: > > > On Sun, 7 Sep 2003 18:44:03 +0100, Timlagor > > > <Timlagor...@yahoo.com> scrawled: > > > > > > [snip] > > > >Does anyone advocate moving the timing to Discard Phase over adding a > > > >pool cost to playing AR? > > > > > > under the assumption that it needs fixing, i advocate dicard phase > > > over cost. > > > > There's always one isn't there. <sigh> > > Could you share your reasons? (if you already have I can't find them > > easily) should have had a smiley with that "<sigh>". <sigh> > One what? One guy who doesn't agree Anarch Revolt is a problem? Oh, Nope. One guy who thinks moving the timing to Discard phase is better than adding a pool cost (assuming as we already are that it needs fixing). You did read the post didn't you? :-P > there's lots of people who feel that way. If you want to know why, it's > because of the same reasons people usually give: if it were a play-balance > problem, you'd see lots of Anarch Revolt decks and many tournaments would > be constantly getting won by guys with Anarch Revolt decks. These are the > only real tell-tale signs of a problem. That wasn't the question.

Peter D Bakija expounded: > Timlagor <Timlagor...@yahoo.com> wrote: > > Sorry. > > SOMETIMES irresponsible bleed will wreck a table. ARs pretty much always > > do so. Besides which AR could be fixed and irresponsible bleeding > > couldn't ..well ok you could ban all bounce cards: I don't think anyone > > wants that. > > Yeah, that is what I figured. I think you were responding to something > that someone else wrote, yet you thought it was me. Not a problem. I was. I didn't. It isn't. ;) I did quote the bit I was responding to which was written by someone else but since you had already quoted it and it was (I think) the only thing in their post I wanted to respond to, I didn't bother to put in a totally seperate post; there were other parts where i wanted to respond to both of you together too. I agree that it wasn't completely clear. > That is a *highly* sketchy plan for an Anarch Revolt deck--it is very Sure it is. I haven't thought about the actual proportions or anything. I dno't think I've even sat down with a serious AR deck yet. > easy for something to go wrong with the vote you need to call at > exactly the right moment--Intercept; table votes; Delaying Tactics. As I see it DT is the big threat here. Anything else, you can prepare for. I suppose you could pack both DU and KR as defence against DT and try it a turn earlier than you think you actually need to.

Peter D Bakija expounded: > "all eggs in one basket" syndrome. If something embarrasing does > happen to Anson (like he is beat up, Sensory Deprivated, contested, > Pentex Subverted, or just blocked alot), you are SOL. And unless you SOL?

Timlagor wrote: > > Frederick Scott expounded: > > Timlagor wrote: > > > <Timlagor...@yahoo.com> scrawled: > > > > > > [snip] > > > >Does anyone advocate moving the timing to Discard Phase over adding a > > > >pool cost to playing AR? > > > > > > There's always one isn't there. <sigh> > > > Could you share your reasons? (if you already have I can't find them > > > easily) ... > > One what? One guy who doesn't agree Anarch Revolt is a problem? Oh, > > Nope. One guy who thinks moving the timing to Discard phase is better > than adding a pool cost (assuming as we already are that it needs > fixing). You did read the post didn't you? :-P Wasn't following the thread. I missed exact the turn of words in the sentence, "OVER adding a pool cost". I was thinking you were implying that changing the timing would have the effect of adding a pool cost to the person who plays it - which it does. Adding a pool cost to the card is probably more straightforward. Changing the timing, I suppose, is probably an even worse penalty. Though it allows the guy who plays it his minion phase to pay for it and still survive (if he should be on his last pool) it also allows his prey to as well. Probably doesn't matter. Either one would almost certainly eviscerate the card. Who cares how a card works if no one's ever gonna use it? Fred

Peter D Bakija wrote: > How, really, would it be bad if Anarch Revolt was powered down some? It becomes a waste of cardboard, which this game has too much of as it is. (OK, I know, many other games are far worse. Still...) Better to just ban it than bother to "tone down" a card you don't like for non-play-balance reasons. Overpowered cards can be fixed this way. Cards that simply do unpopular things simply become dreck. Fred

> > ...in ANY game that a AR deck is at the table, whether or > > not its a good deck, it completely destroys the game dynamic. > > Really? Players stop trying to oust their prey? They stop trying to > bleed, vote, rush or bloat? They stop trying to protect their pool? > They stop trying to act, or stop trying to block? > > "Completely destroys" is pure hyperbole, and we've heard it too much > on this thread. Let's say it "radically accelerates" the game dynamic. Saying that something doesnt "destroy" the game but simply "radically accelerates" the game dynamic is a distinction without a difference. When everyone at a game is losing 3 pool or more a turn to ARs, its clearly a radically different game then any other situation given almost any other decks. It adds a huge random element to the game, also so large that you might as well be flipping a coin to see who ousts who. Yes, I consider that destroying the game. You think it "radically accelerates it". As I said earlier, a distinction without a difference. > > > ... even in those cases where the good AR deck is stopped > > by countermeasures, it would still "win" in a way, by destroying the > > game even as it dies. That is the problem. > > "Destroying the game as it dies?" You mean the game ends? No one can > earn victory points? The game times out? Everyone withdraws? > > More hyperbole. After a AR deck is ousted, people are generally lower > on pool and have used less transfers, but the game doesn't fall apart. Actually it does fall apart. If a game that normally lasts 2 hours is done in 15 minutes because every player at the table lost a large proportion of their pool to AR, how is that not destroying the game? As Peter pointed out already, all it takes to radically throw a game out the window is for one player to decide to slap down 3 AR a turn. At that point, the most dominant factor in the game is no longer your own deck, or even your predators or preys, its dealing or figuring out a way to survive around the ARs. Yes, thats destroying the game. The other things that people consider equivalent, and that are used to defend ARs are hardly even in the same ballpark. Irresponsible bleed might oust one or two people, but doesnt turn a 2 hour game into a 15 minute crapshoot. Wall decks might be annoying for some people, but they hardly utterly change a games dynamics. The only card I can think of that is as bad as AR as far as randomizing a game, was Return to Innocence. A few deflections later, random people were dying around the table. That card clearly needed to be fixed, and it was. AR is almost worse in some ways, since at least with AR it was only killing one person, and not dropping everyones pool.

Timlagor <Timlagor...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<MPG.19c6fab3...@news.freeserve.com>... [ quoted text not captured ] Shit Outta Luck. Fairly common phrase that apparently isn't as common as I thought. -Peter

Frederick Scott <freds64_at_...@removethis.com> wrote in message news:<3F5CED03...@removethis.com>... [ quoted text not captured ] But many of the proposed fixes leave it useful, but not a waste of cardboard. The "costs X, where X is the number of other Anarch Revolts in play" solution, for instance, has *zero* effect on playing 1 of them. Many decks can benefit from playing 1 Anarch Revolt, and these decks aren't affected at all. If you need a few more, but not, like, 5, you play Anarch and Antedeluvian Awakening. Changing the timing of the card (say, lose the pool at the end of turn) leaves the card still useful for most purposes (like the "breaking a wall" use mentioned elsewhere) but gives the card a cost worth worrying about, such that it won't be played willy-nilly. -Peter

On Mon, 8 Sep 2003 12:16:41 +0100, Timlagor <Timlagor...@yahoo.com> scrawled: >salem expounded: >> On Sun, 7 Sep 2003 18:44:03 +0100, Timlagor >> <Timlagor...@yahoo.com> scrawled: >> >> [snip] >> >Does anyone advocate moving the timing to Discard Phase over adding a >> >pool cost to playing AR? >> >> under the assumption that it needs fixing, i advocate dicard phase >> over cost. > >There's always one isn't there. <sigh> >Could you share your reasons? (if you already have I can't find them >easily) Ok. The worst thing about AR, that i see, is that it does it's pool damage to the prey in the Untap Phase. the prey will always take 1 damage. no ifs. no buts. just, takes it. done. sure, they might be lucky enough to have untap phase pool gain to offset it, but there is still nothing the prey can do. It's part of the table destabilising effect that each person that is getting hurt by it can't do anything about it. they have to rely on other people earlier in the turn order to get rid of it. if you move it to the discard phase, at least they get a chance to get rid of it before they're spanked. Although maybe it should also get an exemption clause for the meth who played it on the turn they played it. otherwise it'd probably end up too weak. but then, i'm still not convinced it's too good now, which is probably why i think weakening it might make it...too weak. or something. [ quoted text not captured ]

On Mon, 8 Sep 2003 21:44:05 +0100, Timlagor <Timlagor...@yahoo.com> scrawled: >Peter D Bakija expounded: [snip] >> easy for something to go wrong with the vote you need to call at >> exactly the right moment--Intercept; table votes; Delaying Tactics. > >As I see it DT is the big threat here. Anything else, you can prepare >for. I suppose you could pack both DU and KR as defence against DT and >try it a turn earlier than you think you actually need to. i think the biggest problem with the 'table jump' to snatch vps is: the person who is about to die will probably die to what their predator does, plus the ARs, in one go. If you jump in before the predator does it's thing, you don't have the forward movement that their old predator does, so the ARs won't finish them off. If you wait until after the predator has done it's thing, the ARs kick in and finish the guy off before you get a chance to jump in. Your only recourse then is Life Boon, followed by your table jumping. Which just adds yet another layer of fragility to the whole thing. Plus, you have to hope the guy who you life booned doesn't just oust himself out of spite during his own turn (if he is reasonably sure he can't get any further vps anyway..). [ quoted text not captured ]

On Mon, 08 Sep 2003 20:58:39 GMT, Frederick Scott <freds64_at_...@removethis.com> scrawled: [ quoted text not captured ] ummm...how is powering it down to levels that _you_ think are too low worse than banning it? in the former case, _other_ people might still like to try it and play it, thus making it not a waste of cardboard for them. in the latter case, if you ban it, NO ONE is even allowed to play it, thus making it a waste of cardboard for everyone. [ quoted text not captured ]

salem expounded: > Ok. The worst thing about AR, that i see, is that it does it's pool > damage to the prey in the Untap Phase. the prey will always take 1 > damage. no ifs. no buts. just, takes it. done. sure, they might be > lucky enough to have untap phase pool gain to offset it, but there is > still nothing the prey can do. > > It's part of the table destabilising effect that each person that is > getting hurt by it can't do anything about it. they have to rely on > other people earlier in the turn order to get rid of it. I see what you mean and I agree that that is a nasty feature. Personally I think that that nasty feature is just about the only redeeming feature of ARS as it is INTERESTING: Nasty but in an interesting way. That isn't really the feature that makes tables go crunch either though it does contribute. Moving it to the discard phase would make it unplayable: "Every time you play an AR, I will take actions to remove them rather than going forward so you will give the game to my prey -your grandprey." I hadn't really thought of that before. Moving to discard would probably be the most complete 'nerf' for AR.

[ quoted text not captured ] Sadly out of luck. (Or something similar :-). -- LSJ (vte...@white-wolf.com) V:TES Net.Rep for White Wolf, Inc. Links to V:TES news, rules, cards, utilities, and tournament calendar: http://www.white-wolf.com/vtes/

"Eric Simon" <vol...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:6f81fa2c.03090...@posting.google.com... > Timlagor <Timlagor...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<MPG.19c518ed4...@news.freeserve.com>... > > Adding a cost to AR is MUCH better than changing the timing IMOSHO. Hits > > the player just the same but without removing the "it's already hit me" > > effect on everyone else. > > Changing the timing to the Master phase might work though.. > > Agreed. If you want to hit the owner first turn, either make it a > cost or a master phase effect. As I mentioned, I don't like the idea > of creating one card whose effects happen during discard, since > nothing else does so. I do think, however, that if the card affects > its owner, the cancel cost should be increased. If I'm paying a pool > and a master phase action to cost my prey one pool and a minion > action, I'm losing. There are other cards whose effects take place during the discard phase. A bunch of vampires' effects, a number of untap effects, plus: Camarilla Threat's damage-on-discard. Chiram's Hold's way-to-burn. Elder Michaelis's Hold's way to burn. Millicent Smith's pass-to-the-right. Temptation of Greater Power's debt-payment. Waste Management Operation's library-replishment. I may have missed some other non-untap, non-vampire effects, too. On the topic of what Anarch Revolt's cost should be: I think you're right that paying 1 pool and a MPA to make your prey lose 1 pool and a vampire action isn't an inherently winning plan. But if we're assuming that Anarch Revolt shouldn't make you win all by itself, that may not be a problem... Josh turns my stomach...

omgm...@aol.com (MarkandJosie) wrote in message news:<8de27bad.0309...@posting.google.com>... > It adds a huge random > element to the game, also so large that you might as well be flipping > a coin to see who ousts who. No, it doesn't. There is nothing random about Anarch Revolt. It is absolutely and utterly predictable. One pool a turn during untap clockwise round the table until it's gone. Why do you call this random? Is it because you are often surprised by who is ousted first in a game with ARs in it? That's not because AR adds a random element to the game, it's because AR amplifies the effect of good decisions and bad decisions by eliminating any comfortable pool buffer people have > > More hyperbole. After a AR deck is ousted, people are generally lower > > on pool and have used less transfers, but the game doesn't fall apart. > > Actually it does fall apart. If a game that normally lasts 2 > hours is done in 15 minutes because every player at the table lost a > large proportion of their pool to AR, how is that not destroying the > game? The game has a winner, who wins because of superior deckbuilding and strategy. If this were not true, I would concede that the game was harmed. In any case, AR games do not take 15 minutes...that's ridiculous. > ...all it takes to radically throw > a game out the window is for one player to decide to slap down 3 AR a > turn. At that point, the most dominant factor in the game is no > longer your own deck, or even your predators or preys, its dealing or > figuring out a way to survive around the ARs. Tell me, how does figuring out a way to survive around the ARs not involve your own deck, or your predator's or prey's? You must still use your deck to your best advantage. You don't have the luxury to dawdle, true...decks with a lot of setup time suffer the most. But then, that's a choice you made, to bring a slow deck to the table. People are accusing AR of everything short of shooting the Kennedys. Take a rational look at the card and you see that it isn't the antichrist. It makes games faster. If you absolutely cannot stand this card, hey, at least you know you won't have to suffer long.

Peter D Bakija wrote: > > Frederick Scott <freds64_at_...@removethis.com> wrote in message > news:<3F5CED03...@removethis.com>... > > Peter D Bakija wrote: > > > How, really, would it be bad if Anarch Revolt was powered down some? > > > > It becomes a waste of cardboard, which this game has too much of as > > it is. (OK, I know, many other games are far worse. Still...) > > Better to just ban it than bother to "tone down" a card you don't like > > for non-play-balance reasons. Overpowered cards can be fixed this way. > > Cards that simply do unpopular things simply become dreck. > > But many of the proposed fixes leave it useful, but not a waste of > cardboard. I haven't heard one. The problem is, the way to win with Anarch Revolt is *exactly* the thing you don't like about it. Tone that down and you've remove any incentive people have to play it. Tone it down moderately and you'll wind up somewhere between "a card you sort of hate" and and a "sort of useless" card. (Both of your suggestions seem to fall into this category, by the way.) I don't think that's much improvement. I have seen people use small numbers of them in decks which would tend to belie my opinion of them. But in almost all cases I wasn't very impressed with the whole deck or else I wasn't impressed with the value of the Anarch Revolts to the deck. Fred

salem wrote: > > On Mon, 08 Sep 2003 20:58:39 GMT, Frederick Scott > <freds64_at_...@removethis.com> scrawled: > > >Peter D Bakija wrote: > >> How, really, would it be bad if Anarch Revolt was powered down some? > > > >It becomes a waste of cardboard, which this game has too much of as > >it is. (OK, I know, many other games are far worse. Still...) > >Better to just ban it than bother to "tone down" a card you don't like > >for non-play-balance reasons. Overpowered cards can be fixed this way. > >Cards that simply do unpopular things simply become dreck. > > ummm...how is powering it down to levels that _you_ think are too low > worse than banning it? White Wolf would print them and people would have to get them in packs, in place of a useful, interesting card. And you can infer a variation of opinion on its power all you like. The fact is, its not out of balance right now (or it would inevitably win tournaments) and a balanced card powered down significantly always becomes a nearly useless card. Fred

(Emmit Svenson) wrote: > No, it doesn't. There is nothing random about Anarch Revolt. It is > absolutely and utterly predictable. One pool a turn during untap > clockwise round the table until it's gone. Why do you call this > random? Is it because you are often surprised by who is ousted first > in a game with ARs in it? That's not because AR adds a random element > to the game, it's because AR amplifies the effect of good decisions > and bad decisions by eliminating any comfortable pool buffer people > have Emmit is spot on here. Take note of my Malkavian "Vertigo" deck that I posted yesterday. After using Madness Network, Dramatic Upheaval & Reversal of Fortune to throw peoples' games off by completely disrupting the flow of the game, dropping Anarch Revolts increases their discomfort by putting a steady pressure on the entire table. > > > More hyperbole. After a AR deck is ousted, people are generally lower > > > on pool and have used less transfers, but the game doesn't fall apart. > > > > Actually it does fall apart. If a game that normally lasts 2 > > hours is done in 15 minutes because every player at the table lost a > > large proportion of their pool to AR, how is that not destroying the > > game? > > The game has a winner, who wins because of superior deckbuilding and > strategy. If this were not true, I would concede that the game was > harmed. I, too, fail to understand how speeding up a game has necessarily destroyed it. I find that stealth bleed decks are much more disruptive and are generally more prone to manipulation by their prey. Besides which, the game has to "fall apart" at some point. Otherwise, all games would go to the time limit with everyone having a tie. > In any case, AR games do not take 15 minutes...that's ridiculous. Actually, it's not. I've personally seen games involving Anarch decks go less than 15 minutes. I believe the Anarch deck in question was also a weenie presence bleed deck. (Yes, that's a whole helluva lot of cheese in one deck.) > You must still use your deck to your best advantage. You don't have > the luxury to dawdle, true...decks with a lot of setup time suffer the > most. But then, that's a choice you made, to bring a slow deck to the > table. This, I believe, is the crux of the argument. People upset by AR tend to believe they have a right to a setup time and try to "fix" anything that deprives them of it. As long as the effect is balanced, I see no problem with any card that speeds up the game. After all, VTES is a war of attrition and AR only speeds that attrition up. Regards, Noal

On Tue, 9 Sep 2003 11:33:42 +0100, Timlagor <Timlagor...@yahoo.com> scrawled: >salem expounded: [ quoted text not captured ] It might 'nerf' AR decks as we currently know them, but it might be the right choice anyway. Those intercept decks, who fear time running out. they slip in one or two ARs. now, if your prey is doing what you hypothesise above, he's doing actions you can block without eagles sight. yay. if he does just push forward, great, he's softening up the next guy for you. and you don't eagles sight when your grand prey tries to burn the things. as for the making your prey clam up...Form of Corruption already does that, and in a much worse way, i think. (as it _can't_ be removed by the guy who's going to hurt from it, other than helping his predator get ousted). [ quoted text not captured ]

pd...@lightlink.com (Peter D Bakija) wrote: > > The obvious answer is that you aren't playing your DUs and KRs well > > enough though I don't know how much control you can get with those. > > Very little. 'Cause you can't pass them. Or call them, for that > matter. 'Cause you don't have stealth. Or if you do have stealth, you > don't have bleed momentum. Or if you have either, you can't pass votes > if there is any vote presence at the table. And you need to protect > the Anarchs with either intercept or Delaying Tactics. All while your > crypt is small enough so that you don't instantly oust yourself by > playing the deck, and so you can take actions in the shortened game. > And keep yourself alive at the same time. You don't need a small crypt if you use Ventrue. And a large crypt can do most of these things. The only AR deck that I've ever built relied upon large ventrue princes and Lucinde Alastor. It had reasonable amounts of intercept (Second Tradition), combat defence (Fortitude and Obedience), and good vote presence. I won a few games with a combination of AR pool damage and Dread Gaze+Elder Kindred Network. Kindred Restructure was in the deck, but only called when necessary (I hate the hassle of moving everybody around the table). I'm sure that there are better decks out there (and there are certainly more interesting ones; this was a bit dull to play, so I dismantled it) but it was certainly -viable-. The games I played with it were a good bit shorter, but there wasn't much in the way of "chaos". If only the deck had used Necromancy or something interesting, I might have kept it. -- james o'rance http://www.geocities.com/dragon-dreamer/vampire

emmits...@hotmail.com (Emmit Svenson) wrote in message news:<75bdf7ed.03090...@posting.google.com>... <snip> > In any case, AR games do not take 15 minutes...that's ridiculous. I've been on a 4 player table with an AR deck in a tournament, that game took 25 minutes. Of course, I made sure my predator (the AR player) didn't win anything for his trouble. > People are accusing AR of everything short of shooting the Kennedys. > Take a rational look at the card and you see that it isn't the > antichrist. It makes games faster. If you absolutely cannot stand this > card, hey, at least you know you won't have to suffer long. I think the problem's not so much the card itself, but the way it's been played by some people. I don't get all upset when wouter brings out his anson-Anarch deck, because I know he will play the tactical game, and definately not upset the table in a way he's not able to (try to) control. On the other hand, I've been in that 25-minute game. I didn't mind then - if it only happens once it's kind of funny, and I was on holidays then anyways, so had plenty of time to socialise then. However, if I was in an area where tables were getting hit with AR a lot, by players who don't care who takes the table if it's not them, and who wind up losing lots of times with their AR deck anyways... I would be upset as well. Of course, sometimes you can solve this by talking to the players. Sometimes you can't. Tobias Deventer

"Frederick Scott" <freds64_at_...@removethis.com> wrote in message news:3F5CDD54...@removethis.com... <snip> > One what? One guy who doesn't agree Anarch Revolt is a problem? Oh, > there's lots of people who feel that way. If you want to know why, it's > because of the same reasons people usually give: if it were a play-balance > problem, you'd see lots of Anarch Revolt decks and many tournaments would > be constantly getting won by guys with Anarch Revolt decks. These are the > only real tell-tale signs of a problem. Well over here in the UK it seems like Anarch Revolt is starting to be a problem, which is why we've raised the issue on the group again just recently. ARs have featured heavily in the last 3 or 4 tournaments I've been to, and consensus in each case was that the card (when stacked) destabilised the table and ruined most people's enjoyment of the game. The likelyhood is that (due to good sportsmanship) we'll probably now see a deliberate shift in the metagame away from the card in the short term, but that won't really address the issues at hand. Everyone over here could *in theory* keep playing the same AR based decks until everyone is sick of the game and gives up altogether (and TBH if that's what it takes to change the card then that could easily happen). Perhaps most importantly, because facing stacked AR is so unenjoyable, it's going to completely put off any new players that make an effort to come along to an event for the first time. Even if nothing changes officially, I'm almost tempted to enforce a restriction of the card for all future local events in any case. This is a situation that I am sure White Wolf does not want, and it's a much larger argument than just a few people whining about losing because their decks don't make the grade. Regards, Mike Nudd VEKN Prince of London [ quoted text not captured ]

"Emmit Svenson" <emmits...@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:75bdf7ed.03090...@posting.google.com... > omgm...@aol.com (MarkandJosie) wrote in message news:<8de27bad.0309...@posting.google.com>... > > Actually it does fall apart. If a game that normally lasts 2 > > hours is done in 15 minutes because every player at the table lost a > > large proportion of their pool to AR, how is that not destroying the > > game? > > The game has a winner, who wins because of superior deckbuilding and > strategy. If this were not true, I would concede that the game was > harmed. > > In any case, AR games do not take 15 minutes...that's ridiculous. They do if they're three-player Rapid Thought games. :-) (I played three or four Rapid Thought games in the side-event thing at the Atlanta qualifier back in May. I was playing weenie-Dominate-Anarch-Revolt + bleed. None of my games took over 20 minutes, I'm pretty sure, and some of them more like 10. Of course, being three players speeds that up quite a bit. I won at least half of them, maybe more.) Josh anarchs are revolting, annoying, and their cost is not balanced against their effect.

"Frederick Scott" <freds64_at_...@removethis.com> wrote in message news:3F5E9AE7...@removethis.com... > salem wrote: > > ummm...how is powering it down to levels that _you_ think are too low > > worse than banning it? > > White Wolf would print them and people would have to get them in packs, > in place of a useful, interesting card. And you can infer a variation of > opinion on its power all you like. The fact is, its not out of balance > right now (or it would inevitably win tournaments) and a balanced card > powered down significantly always becomes a nearly useless card. The "or it would always win" argument is simply not correct. Not everyone chooses decks based solely on what deck they think is the strongest. A lot of people seem to get bored with playing the same deck all the time, or playing the "obvious" decks all the time, and play various less-strong concepts just for the sake of variety and their own (or others') entertainment. Even in tournaments. Besides that, an overpowered card doesn't have to result in its deck always winning. It just increases the chances of its deck winning. Beyond this, an unbalanced card isn't *necessarily* one that makes its player win a lot. It can have too large an effect for its cost, even if the effect isn't always going to be useful in making its player win. This is where I think Anarch Revolt fits: it causes (in a 5-player game) 5 pool loss per time around the table, for the cost of 0 pool and 1 master phase action. Conservative Agitation, by comparison, requires an unblocked action, passing a vote, and using a card each time you want to get the effect (and is still a strong card). Slave Auction can gain you 4 pool, but costs 6 master phase actions to do so (and takes 6 times around the table too). Josh crush revolting anarch poopiness!

dhar...@my-deja.com (Noal McDonald) wrote in message news:<bb705c59.03090...@posting.google.com>... > (Emmit Svenson) wrote: > > No, it doesn't. There is nothing random about Anarch Revolt. It is > > absolutely and utterly predictable. One pool a turn during untap > > clockwise round the table until it's gone. Why do you call this > > random? Is it because you are often surprised by who is ousted first > > in a game with ARs in it? That's not because AR adds a random element > > to the game, it's because AR amplifies the effect of good decisions > > and bad decisions by eliminating any comfortable pool buffer people > > have > > Emmit is spot on here. Take note of my Malkavian "Vertigo" deck that I > posted yesterday. After using Madness Network, Dramatic Upheaval & > Reversal of Fortune to throw peoples' games off by completely > disrupting the flow of the game, dropping Anarch Revolts increases > their discomfort by putting a steady pressure on the entire table. You didn't make an Anarch Revolt deck. "Vertigo" is an excellent example of a deck that splashes Anarch Revolt to good effect. You're essentially trying to create order through chaos the Malkavian way. I see nothing wrong with this. It's the decks which pack 20+ Anarch Revolts and expect them to do ALL the work that I personally have problems with. > > > > More hyperbole. After a AR deck is ousted, people are generally lower > > > > on pool and have used less transfers, but the game doesn't fall apart. > > > > > > Actually it does fall apart. If a game that normally lasts 2 > > > hours is done in 15 minutes because every player at the table lost a > > > large proportion of their pool to AR, how is that not destroying the > > > game? > > > > The game has a winner, who wins because of superior deckbuilding and > > strategy. If this were not true, I would concede that the game was > > harmed. > > I, too, fail to understand how speeding up a game has necessarily > destroyed it. I find that stealth bleed decks are much more disruptive > and are generally more prone to manipulation by their prey. Well I think that's the point. Anarch Revolt as a primary strategy is very hard to disrupt if you're its prey. You eat pool every upkeep and you'd better have a way to deal with it because you're likely the first to go. The game degenerates to a point where it really is unplayable except as a reaction to the Anarch Revolt player, except in a few very narrow circumstance. > > You must still use your deck to your best advantage. You don't have > > the luxury to dawdle, true...decks with a lot of setup time suffer the > > most. But then, that's a choice you made, to bring a slow deck to the > > table. > > This, I believe, is the crux of the argument. People upset by AR tend > to believe they have a right to a setup time and try to "fix" anything > that deprives them of it. As long as the effect is balanced, I see no > problem with any card that speeds up the game. After all, VTES is a > war of attrition and AR only speeds that attrition up. Anarch Revolt not only speeds attrition up, it makes many types of decks completely unplayable due to its speed and inevitability of the outcome. Unless you have immediate ways to bloat and bloat heavily, you will be destroyed in short order. The only other option is to eliminate the AR players means of bloating. In the JOL tournament, I took my Assamites upstream against Wouter's Anarch Revolt deck to deprive him of any chance to bloat. It was my only way to survive. Due to some freaky table mechanics, I was able to get 1 VP, but that wouldn't have happened otherwise. The main reason I think we don't see more Anarch Revolt decks making the rounds is peer pressure. I think the sentiment that Anarch Revolt is "cheese" is nearly universal. It's "cheese" because none of the three major strategies (bleed, politics or combat) are being utilized. There are players who don't consider the cheese factor a taboo against playing it, and that's just fine. But most others don't want to have a local stigma attached to them for playing decks that "require no skill" to play, even though decision-making for the AR player is paramount. If this peer pressure weren't in place, I think we'd see many more Anarch Revolt decks played because they can win and win big. Most VTES players want to have *FUN* when playing and AR really isn't fun for most people. In casual play, there is almost no chance to set up some funky combo deck or bizarre Anarch or Ally strategy. In tournaments, Anarch Revolt often rears its ugly head and that can contribute to the casual player's disgust with the tournament environment. If White Wolf is promoting tournaments as a marketing tool, they'd better hope players are enjoying themselves while they participate. The VTES player base isn't nearly as cutthroat as that of other CCGs, and I think that to keep things growing we shouldn't fall into the trap of going for hyper-competitiveness.

Joshua Duffin wrote: > Beyond this, an unbalanced card isn't *necessarily* one > that makes its player win a lot. It can have too large an > effect for its cost, even if the effect isn't always going > to be useful in making its player win. This is where I > think Anarch Revolt fits: it causes (in a 5-player game) 5 > pool loss per time around the table, for the cost of 0 > pool and 1 master phase action. It _might_ cause that much pool loss. There is that political action to remove it, after all. > Conservative Agitation, by comparison, requires an unblocked > action, passing a vote, and using a card each time you want > to get the effect (and is still a strong card). And, by comparison, up to 4 of the damage can be concentrated upon a single player. - Ben Peal, Prince of Boston fu...@mindstorm.com

>The "or it would always win" argument is simply not correct. > >Not everyone chooses decks based solely on what deck they >think is the strongest. A lot of people seem to get bored >with playing the same deck all the time, or playing the >"obvious" decks all the time, and play various less-strong >concepts just for the sake of variety and their own (or >others') entertainment. Even in tournaments. > >Besides that, an overpowered card doesn't have to result >in its deck always winning. It just increases the chances >of its deck winning. Expand on this in a way. It's much harder to determine problem cards in multiplayer CCGs. Sure, someone can make the "if everyone has to gang up to stop it, then it's broken" argument except that this argument rarely has results to support it since good players do gang up to stop it whereas with two-player CCGs (accurate) results (from competent players) are an excellent source for supporting arguments. Even in tournament play, social factors affect the strength of decks. Peer pressure not to play distasteful decks often works on a local basis which is unfortunate. Unfortunate in that problem cards/strategies are often not sufficiently examined as too many regions peer pressure out decks they find distasteful without necessarily realizing it. This, in turn, means less rigorous analysis of the game and less complaint about what's truly wrong with it when played on the most competitive level and more complaint about what's wrong in regional metagames. Certainly, it's the point of individual card text to provide variety to a CCG. However, if only a single card (unlikely) or a tiny fraction of the cards (probable) cause a game to play completely differently such that one is playing a "different" game even if the game isn't a stronger one, then it's the case that those cards are badly designed. Anarch Revolt has some positive features. It produces viable and distinctive archetypes. The problem is that it can also eliminate the viability of a greater number of archetypes. This goes to the issue of fun in CCGing (taking a cue from Mike Nudd's post). Not every deck has to be competitive; there are always going to be stronger and weaker decks; but, it's more fun to have more options of viable decks. It's also more fun to have quality interaction and AR's strength comes from how hard it is to interact with. AR is not the only antifun culprit. Weenie decks all but guarantee killing one player only being balanced by burning out too fast too often to guarantee victory. The ease of bleeding heavily forces a major metagame presence of bleed bounce. And, so on*. Maybe it's not possible to rein all of the problem areas in a CCG in to produce a balanced environment, but it's worth constantly considering what's problematic in a CCG in case a little pain - errata, banning, rules change - can result in a greater benefit. * Decks running at different speeds is often at the heart of complaints how something isn't fun. Some variation of speed is likely necessary. Wide variations means something isn't going to be fun to play.

"Joshua Duffin" wrote: > This is where I > think Anarch Revolt fits: it causes (in a 5-player game) 5 > pool loss per time around the table, for the cost of 0 > pool and 1 master phase action. This is incorrect. If it causes 5 pool loss in a 5 player table than it has caused 4 pool of damage at a cost of 1 pool and a master pahse action. That makes it more expensive than a KRC vote; 4 pool loss at a cost of o pool and 1 minion action. The fact that the player of Anarch Revolt pays the same as everyone else unless someone else calls a vote to get rid of it or it's part of a Vertigo style deck, is what makes it balanced. Everyone suffers evenly. As a point of note, most poorly designed AR decks often die from their own ARs. For these reasons, I would argue that Anarch Revolt is the most balanced card in the game. > crush revolting anarch poopiness! Perhaps if you were less biased, you could discuss the topic more logically. Regards, Noal

Mike Nudd wrote: > > "Frederick Scott" <freds64_at_...@removethis.com> wrote in message > news:3F5CDD54...@removethis.com... > > <snip> > > > One what? One guy who doesn't agree Anarch Revolt is a problem? Oh, > > there's lots of people who feel that way. If you want to know why, it's > > because of the same reasons people usually give: if it were a play-balance > > problem, you'd see lots of Anarch Revolt decks and many tournaments would > > be constantly getting won by guys with Anarch Revolt decks. These are the > > only real tell-tale signs of a problem. > > Well over here in the UK it seems like Anarch Revolt is starting to be a > problem, which is why we've raised the issue on the group again just > recently. ARs have featured heavily in the last 3 or 4 tournaments I've been > to, and consensus in each case was that the card (when stacked) destabilised > the table and ruined most people's enjoyment of the game. That right. That is the "real" problem with it. (Though I disagree even with *that* conclusion. Personally, rush combat ruins *my* enjoyment of the game far worse than Anarch Revolt is ever likely to.) And it's important to separate out which kind of a problem you're addressing when ask that a card be fixed. I do think "making the game suck" (in general, if not in the case of Anarch Revolt) is a legitimate problem that should be addressed if a large enough chunk of the player based hates it enough. Just that it needs to be solved a different way. > The likelyhood is that (due to good sportsmanship) we'll probably now see > a deliberate shift in the metagame away from the card in the short term, > but that won't really address the issues at hand. Everyone over here > could *in theory* keep playing the same AR based decks until everyone is > sick of the game and gives up altogether (and TBH if that's what it takes > to change the card then that could easily happen). Are you saying that you think perhaps the card *does* have a play-balance problem but it's not showing up because people are being "nice" and not playing it? (You're not being very specific about this.) If so, I'm pretty skeptical play-balance problems work that way. It sure didn't seem to keep people from playing the original Return to Innocence. And as far as it quote-ruining-unquote people's enjoyment of the game, the exact same thing happens to me when a potence rush combat deck sits down next to me. In my book, potence rush combat is far worse. In most metagames both potence rush combat and heavy Anarch Revolt decks are impossible to prepare for without seriously weakening yourself against too many of the more common decks you'll face. So typically you just don't bother. But potence rush combat just totally takes out a guy who happened to sit in the wrong place. The results of Anarch Revolt tend to be quite a bit more random and the damage is spread around the board a lot more evenly. Thus, I find claims that it "ruins" the game pretty hard to sympathize with. It *affects* the game greatly and often those effects tend to cause a game to come out a lot differently than it might have. But I can see why it bothers people as much as it seems to. > Perhaps most importantly, because facing stacked AR is > so unenjoyable, it's going to completely put off any new players that make > an effort to come along to an event for the first time. It really shouldn't. I think you just have to explain the situation to them. Is it possible that you're projecting your own lack of enjoyment with such games (for whatever reason it bothers you) on other players? > Even if nothing > changes officially, I'm almost tempted to enforce a restriction of the card > for all future local events in any case. This is a situation that I am sure > White Wolf does not want, and it's a much larger argument than just a few > people whining about losing because their decks don't make the grade. You're free to what you want, as long as you don't call them "Official VEKN tournaments" or report them to VEKN as such. My opinion on this is like all house rules games and tournaments: less fun because you're not playing the "official" game. So it affects deck construction and skews the outcome. In Phoenix, AZ, USA, I could care less what you're doing over there. But if I lived around there, I'd be annoyed at having less chance to play the real game. Evaluating my decks in a standard environment is one of the benefits of playing under standard rules. Fred

Tobias wrote: > (Re: Anarch Revolt decks causing games to be incredibly short:) > On the other hand, I've been in that 25-minute game. I didn't mind > then - if it only happens once it's kind of funny, and I was on > holidays then anyways, so had plenty of time to socialise then. > > However, if I was in an area where tables were getting hit with AR a > lot, by players who don't care who takes the table if it's not them, > and who wind up losing lots of times with their AR deck anyways... I > would be upset as well. If it's happening *that* often, then it would seem to make sense to start alter your deckbuilding in view of the metagame. Fred

Joshua Duffin wrote: > > "Frederick Scott" <freds64_at_...@removethis.com> wrote in message > news:3F5E9AE7...@removethis.com... > > salem wrote: > > > > ummm...how is powering it down to levels that _you_ think are too low > > > worse than banning it? > > > > White Wolf would print them and people would have to get them in packs, > > in place of a useful, interesting card. And you can infer a variation of > > opinion on its power all you like. The fact is, its not out of balance > > right now (or it would inevitably win tournaments) and a balanced card > > powered down significantly always becomes a nearly useless card. > > The "or it would always win" argument is simply not correct. > > Not everyone chooses decks based solely on what deck they > think is the strongest. A lot of people seem to get bored > with playing the same deck all the time, or playing the > "obvious" decks all the time, and play various less-strong > concepts just for the sake of variety and their own (or > others') entertainment. Even in tournaments. I'll give you all of those factors but I will never concede the overall point. Please bear in mind that when I say it would "invariably win tournaments", I don't mean absolutely every tournament - unless the play-balance problem is really bad. But it would win more than it's share of tournaments. Otherwise, what you're telling me is that people basically don't play to win. If *that's* the case, I don't care. Sorry, Josh - there's just no room to drive between these arguments. Folks are either going to have to show me a preponderance of tournament wins or not claim a play-balance problem with a given card. > Beyond this, an unbalanced card isn't *necessarily* one > that makes its player win a lot. It can have too large an > effect for its cost, even if the effect isn't always going > to be useful in making its player win. That could be a problem, I'd agree. But that falls in the category of "making the game suck", not a play-balance problem. I don't find that to be true of AR myself, but everyone has their opinion. In any event, action taken should be appropriate to the type of problem perceived. > This is where I > think Anarch Revolt fits: it causes (in a 5-player game) 5 > pool loss per time around the table, for the cost of 0 > pool and 1 master phase action. Conservative Agitation, > by comparison, The trouble with your comparison is that you have no idea how much pool loss an AR will inevitably cause. It won't necessarily cause more than one. And often it does not. Fred

Everyone suffers evenly. As a point of note, most poorly designed AR decks often die > from their own ARs. He he!! they sure do! gotta love those JYHAD cards! why didn't i think of AR decks in 1994? it's almost been 10 years... MY LIFE! (mr. show scene) anyway, may the funk be with you jds

jeff...@hotmail.com (Jeff Kuta) wrote: > You didn't make an Anarch Revolt deck. "Vertigo" is an excellent > example of a deck that splashes Anarch Revolt to good effect. Well, it certainly started out as one. As the deck evolved, it dropped the number of ARs and increased the number of KRCs to a balance that worked best. On a side note, the Malkavian Pranks are best used as a means to get 4 pool to someone that you don't want ousted yet. > It's the decks which pack 20+ Anarch > Revolts and expect them to do ALL the work that I personally have > problems with. Sure. Anarch Revolt is a thinking man's card. If you use it surgically, it is a very effective card. If you carpet bomb the whole table, than you're correct. It pisses off the table and you're fairly likely to go under from the weight of your own ARs or get ganged up on by the table. Anarch Revolts, like stealth bleed, is a method that requires careful thought to be effective. The problem is that you really can't punish the AR carpet bombers any more than the punishment they get from the results of playing them in that manner. > Well I think that's the point. Anarch Revolt as a primary strategy is > very hard to disrupt if you're its prey. You eat pool every upkeep and > you'd better have a way to deal with it because you're likely the > first to go. The game degenerates to a point where it really is > unplayable except as a reaction to the Anarch Revolt player, except in > a few very narrow circumstance. How is any of this different than stealth/bleed? > The main reason I think we don't see more Anarch Revolt decks making > the rounds is peer pressure. I think the sentiment that Anarch Revolt > is "cheese" is nearly universal. I don't think that's it at all. Return to the days of RtI. Nobody had any compunctions of bringing gouda to tournaments back then. I think that it's too arbitrary to be a primary focus and people prefer a strategy they can control. > Most VTES players want to have *FUN* when playing and AR really isn't > fun for most people. In casual play, there is almost no chance to set > up some funky combo deck or bizarre Anarch or Ally strategy. Here's the thing. VTES is a strategy game. The pure object of the game is to win by the most effective means possible. (Yes, it's supposed to be fun, but that's supposed to derive from people's love of competition, strategy & tactics.) If a strategy is more bizarre than effective, then it will lose more often than not. Sometimes, the simplest strategies and tactics are the best. That's not to say that bizarre strategies cannot win. It's just that they have to eventually boil down to removing the prey's pool faster than their own pool is being removed. Regards, Noal

On 10 Sep 2003 11:35:16 -0700, dhar...@my-deja.com (Noal McDonald) wrote: >"Joshua Duffin" wrote: >> This is where I >> think Anarch Revolt fits: it causes (in a 5-player game) 5 >> pool loss per time around the table, for the cost of 0 >> pool and 1 master phase action. > >This is incorrect. If it causes 5 pool loss in a 5 player table than >it has caused 4 pool of damage at a cost of 1 pool and a master pahse >action. That makes it more expensive than a KRC vote; 4 pool loss at >a cost of o pool and 1 minion action. > >The fact that the player of Anarch Revolt pays the same as everyone >else unless someone else calls a vote to get rid of it or it's part of >a Vertigo style deck, is what makes it balanced. Everyone suffers >evenly. As a point of note, most poorly designed AR decks often die >from their own ARs. > >For these reasons, I would argue that Anarch Revolt is the most >balanced card in the game. Noal must be on Crack today. And he didn't even offer to share :-P I have to zip out the door, and will post a more proper reply later.. >> crush revolting anarch poopiness! > >Perhaps if you were less biased, you could discuss the topic more >logically. > >Regards, >Noal BernieTime Lansing, Michigan

In message <3F5F8C64...@removethis.com>, Frederick Scott <freds64_at_...@removethis.com> mumbled something about: >Sorry, Josh - there's just no room to drive between these arguments. >Folks are either going to have to show me a preponderance of tournament >wins or not claim a play-balance problem with a given card. I never want to hear you complain about Potence Rush again, then. It does not have a preponderance of tournament wins, but you claim it is one of the most unbalancing deck types: "And as far as it quote-ruining-unquote people's enjoyment of the game, the exact same thing happens to me when a potence rush combat deck sits down next to me. In my book, potence rush combat is far worse." What you REALLY claim is that it always makes you lose when you sit next to it, which isn't surprising considering the decks you play. That's fine; it's your choice to play those decks, but POT Rush is going to happen to crunch them. Not all decks are going to be so easily crunched, however. Now, would you like to revisit your flawed conclusion that Anarch Revolt must have a preponderance of tournament wins to be an unbalanced card? Or would you like to revisit your opinion on Potence Rush? -- Derek "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge." - C. Darwin, 1871

Frederick Scott <freds64_at_...@removethis.com> wrote in message news:<3F5F8A36...@removethis.com>... > Tobias wrote: > > > (Re: Anarch Revolt decks causing games to be incredibly short:) > > On the other hand, I've been in that 25-minute game. I didn't mind > > then - if it only happens once it's kind of funny, and I was on > > holidays then anyways, so had plenty of time to socialise then. > > > > However, if I was in an area where tables were getting hit with AR a > > lot, by players who don't care who takes the table if it's not them, > > and who wind up losing lots of times with their AR deck anyways... I > > would be upset as well. > > If it's happening *that* often, then it would seem to make sense to > start alter your deckbuilding in view of the metagame. > > Fred Yup. Potence weenies (kill anson) with rampage/zoning board (kill parthenon) and bleeding the vine (sudden an AR every turn) and tribute to the master (recoup blood to ARs that do get through). Heck, pack a couple of DT against the Rumours of Gehenna. Although somewhere else in this thread, danger lurks 'cause someone dislikes potence weenies as well... ;) Tobias Deventer

"Frederick Scott" <freds64_at_...@removethis.com> wrote in message news:3F5F892A...@removethis.com... > > Well over here in the UK it seems like Anarch Revolt is starting to be a > > problem, which is why we've raised the issue on the group again just > > recently. ARs have featured heavily in the last 3 or 4 tournaments I've been > > to, and consensus in each case was that the card (when stacked) destabilised > > the table and ruined most people's enjoyment of the game. > > That right. That is the "real" problem with it. (Though I disagree even > with *that* conclusion. Personally, rush combat ruins *my* enjoyment of > the game far worse than Anarch Revolt is ever likely to.) And it's important > to separate out which kind of a problem you're addressing when ask that a > card be fixed. I do think "making the game suck" (in general, if not in the > case of Anarch Revolt) is a legitimate problem that should be addressed if > a large enough chunk of the player based hates it enough. Just that it > needs to be solved a different way. Sure. It seems to me we're left with two choices - a warping of the metagame towards anti-AR decks - i.e. vote & bloat - which are likely to lead to very protracted, frustrating (i.e. not much fun) games in any case or we do something that either neuters the power of stacked ARs, or makes them easier to get rid of. I play V:TES because it fun, social *and* challenging. Stacked ARs detract from this entirely, which I why I don't like it. > Are you saying that you think perhaps the card *does* have a play-balance > problem but it's not showing up because people are being "nice" and not > playing it? (You're not being very specific about this.) If so, I'm > pretty skeptical play-balance problems work that way. It sure didn't seem > to keep people from playing the original Return to Innocence. There are really several elements to this. Firstly, the V:TES scene here is very social, and players know better than to keep playing the same deck repetitively if it's going to cause a lot of grief amongst their friends. Secondly, most of our players are extremely inventive, and can pull new and competitive decks out which are likely to do well (not considering of course the likely impact of stacked AR). Thirdly, many of our players rely on the element of surprise, and they know damn well that if they keep playing the same deck then people will build decks not to win, but to specifically outlive it or kill it off, and so they pre-empt this from happening by switching decks. > And as far as it quote-ruining-unquote people's enjoyment of the game, the > exact same thing happens to me when a potence rush combat deck sits down next > to me. In my book, potence rush combat is far worse. I would have to disagree. A potence rush deck is really only going to affect it's prey and it's predator (although it has the potential to cross-table if necessary). If you're sitting next to a *good* potence rush deck, then you may have your work cut out for you, but it's not an insurmoutnable problem. If you're playing a competitive combat deck of your own, then you should be able to hold your ground, or at least take them with you as Potence combat usually lacks a lot of prevention. If you want to stay out of combat then just packing a few S:CEs isn't going to cut it, so pack Obedience, prevention, or cards that end combat like Purchase Pact or Elysium: the Arboretum. Or at least pack maneuvers to avoid the IGs. If you're voting then Banish the rushing vampires, and if you're bloating, then just keep bringing out new vampires. Don't do stupid things like blocking the Potence vampires when you don't need to. If the Potence deck is getting the upper hand, then work with the other players on the table to shut it down. If he's blocking you, then just stealth past or play crazy stuff like Kiss of Ra. There are a myriad of ways of dealing with this kind of problem, and that's not even considering hand jam on the part of the Potence player, who may not be able to draw the rush cards or IG cards he needs in any case. If you can't do *anything* except take it like a bitch then I'm afraid you should really build yourself a better deck... :) With a good stacked AR deck it's a completely different problem. You've got two options: a) bloat like a bastard to outlive every other deck on the table b) use all your actions to kill the ARs, which *only* works if there enough allied votes on the table This means that playing any other deck or strategy is pretty much a waste of time, and if you come to the table without being able to do a) or b) you're dead in the water, regardless of where you sit on the table. This strikes me as being a very unfair, unenjoyable situation. > > Perhaps most importantly, because facing stacked AR is > > so unenjoyable, it's going to completely put off any new players that make > > an effort to come along to an event for the first time. > > It really shouldn't. I think you just have to explain the situation > to them. Is it possible that you're projecting your own lack of enjoyment > with such games (for whatever reason it bothers you) on other players? "Huh this is my first time and someone cross-table killed me at random before I had a chance to do anything because of some cards he played. This game sucks." I'm not saying the *all* new players would give up after the first time, but this kind of situation just makes our lives harder, not easier... > You're free to what you want, as long as you don't call them "Official > VEKN tournaments" or report them to VEKN as such. Heh I know the drill! :) I'm just toying with the idea for now, but I'm hoping that I won't need to take it much further... <shrugs> Regards, Mike

> > With a good stacked AR deck it's a completely different problem. You've got > two options: > > a) bloat like a bastard to outlive every other deck on the table > b) use all your actions to kill the ARs, which *only* works if there enough > allied votes on the table > You forgot: c) take advantage of the AR as your prey also has to deal with the pool loss and oust her. Carl

"Carl Pilhatsch" <carl.pi...@chello.at> wrote in message news:rnX7b.64793$ef4.5...@news.chello.at... > You forgot: > c) take advantage of the AR as your prey also has to deal with the pool > loss and oust her. Which by coincidence just so happens to be my favourite :o) Rob

Derek Ray wrote: > > In message <3F5F8C64...@removethis.com>, > Frederick Scott <freds64_at_...@removethis.com> mumbled > something about: > > >Sorry, Josh - there's just no room to drive between these arguments. > >Folks are either going to have to show me a preponderance of tournament > >wins or not claim a play-balance problem with a given card. > > I never want to hear you complain about Potence Rush again, then. > > It does not have a preponderance of tournament wins, but you claim it is > one of the most unbalancing deck types: No, I do not. You are not reading my posts very well. I have consistently distinguished between cards - or in this case a deck archetype - that is unbalancing and one that "makes the game suck". In the latter case, we're talking about a type of deck which does something to prevent the game from being fun, in general. A lot of the people who are complaining about Anarch Revolt are asserting that it falls under the latter category - which is good, because it's pretty clear to me it's not unbalanced. Trouble is, Josh is one of the few who claimed it might be. Or at least, he's suggesting that my standards for insisting that Anarch Revolt can't be unbalanced are flawed. This was what I was responding to when you jumped in and mixed quotes in from another part of the thread with other people (e.g. Peter Bakija) who didn't seem to take issue with the card's balance, only it's effect on game play. To those people, I was just pointing out that I can make a better argument about potence rush "ruining the game" than they can make about Anarch Revolt and I was giving the reasons why I felt that way. Notice that I was not "complaining" about anything. There's really no specific cards you could modify to make much difference to the effect potence rush has on the game. Maybe Immortal Grapple, but IG is too important in balancing out S:CE and other things. I wouldn't touch it and never proposed to. I'm sorry you're confused about what I was trying to say about this. But it would help if you would not mix two different posts together and assume the points I'm making in each are related to one another. > "And as far as it quote-ruining-unquote people's enjoyment of the game, > the exact same thing happens to me when a potence rush combat deck sits > down next to me. In my book, potence rush combat is far worse." > > What you REALLY claim is that it always makes you lose when you sit next > to it, which isn't surprising considering the decks you play. That's > fine; it's your choice to play those decks, but POT Rush is going to > happen to crunch them. Not all decks are going to be so easily > crunched, however. It depends. I'd point out to you that the decks I play are not completely due to personal playing style. They're also a response to local metagame, as everyone's should be. If you play where there's a lot of combat decks, especially potence combat decks, then it's fairly reasonable to rely on cards that neutralize it. However, I've noticed that potence rush combat is extremely hard to prepare for in places that have a lot more sneaky, stealthy decks that are geared towards screwing with opponents by getting actions past blockers somehow. As I said in another post, you weaken yourself far too much against the rest of the field by trying to cover this one single type of deck. That's what irritates me about it. There's nothing else in the game I can think of that doesn't get covered by fairly standard "good cards" that you'd be well-advised to use anyway if you can spare the deckspace for them. Most gadget decks are covered by sufficient intercept. Anything that packs too much stealth to be regularly stopped by a fair amount of intercept is too simple to be very powerful. The exception is bleed - which you bounce or at least try to make them choke on their stealth. Only trying to cover potence rush combat with IG and maneuvers (basically Brujah rush) makes you pack things you wouldn't need against anything else. It's not that rush combat is unbalanced. If you play where combat abounds, it's certainly going to run into combat decks that will take it out. It's just where combat *isn't* that common that it seems to have this effect that leaves people having to decide whether to prepare for it or for everything else. And if such rush combat decks actually usually won in places like that because they had a metagame advantage, I wouldn't mind so much. Then it would just be a sign that everyone else needed to adjust what they were doing. But usually, it seems like they just crush their neighbors a lot more than they actually win games. Fred

Mike Nudd wrote: > > "Frederick Scott" <freds64_at_...@removethis.com> wrote in message > news:3F5F892A...@removethis.com... > > > And as far as it quote-ruining-unquote people's enjoyment of the game, > > the exact same thing happens to me when a potence rush combat deck sits > > down next to me. In my book, potence rush combat is far worse. > > I would have to disagree. A potence rush deck is really only going to affect > it's prey and it's predator (although it has the potential to cross-table if > necessary). If you're sitting next to a *good* potence rush deck, then you > may have your work cut out for you, but it's not an insurmoutnable problem. All right, I'll bite. Just understand for Derek Ray's sake that I'm *not* suggesting potence rush is unbalanced. I'm just saying I mind it a lot more than Anarch Revolts and I think I have good reasons for that. I agree with Emmitt Svenson's view that ARs most just speed up games. I'd also concede that they introduce some annoying randomness in the outcome, where the guy playing them doesn't win himself. But to me, you have a lot more control and the AR deck is a lot less focused against any one particular player at the table than against a rush combat deck. > If you're playing a competitive combat deck of your own, then you should be > able to hold your ground, or at least take them with you as Potence combat > usually lacks a lot of prevention. I'll concede that. But decks that are primarily focused on combat are a fairly small portion of the game - which is as it should be or there's a lot of action cards and politics and other stuff that would wind up getting stuffed into a minor corner of the metagame environment. Saying you have to play combat to answer this is kind of a poor answer - like saying you have to be playing intercept to counter Return to Innocence. > If you want to stay out of combat then just packing a few S:CEs isn't > going to cut it, so pack Obedience, prevention, or cards that end combat > like Purchase Pact or Elysium: the Arboretum. Obedience and prevention are extremely narrow cards. Obedience requires you to use large enough vampires to win the cap comparison. Thus, it's really not worth doing with even mid-caps, since they become dead weight against large combat vampires. Fortitude is better but to be useful, you have usually have to take up more deckspace with it than, say, S:CE. > Or at least pack maneuvers to avoid the IGs. You're not going to pack more maneuvers than a Brujah rush deck has. He just uses the Flashes that are there to press for maneuvers. (Or maneuvers AND presses...) And maneuver-away combat defense is vulnerable against so many other common decks that I've given up bothering with it myself. > If you're voting then Banish the rushing vampires, Just delays the problem, doesn't fix it at all. And who is supposed to call the vote if you're vampires all in torpor? You have to survive combats to make votes do anything. > and if you're bloating, then just keep bringing out new vampires. With what are you supposed to bloat if your vampires are in torpor or burnt?!? Sorry, these seems like a bunch of Pollyanna solutions that never work in practice. I mean, if you want to suggest dreamland solutions, you could propose to slap Brainwashes down on all his vampires but it wouldn't win much as a deck. There's a certain level of frustration I get to when someone's "answer" to a problem don't seem very realistic. Even I can come up with better answers myself than Banish and bloat. > If you can't do *anything* except take it like a bitch then I'm afraid > you should really build yourself a better deck... :) It's not that there's nothing you can do at all. There always is. But whether the solutions are realistic in terms of building a deck that's likely to win after you've solved the rush combat deck problem is another question. > With a good stacked AR deck it's a completely different problem. You've got > two options: > > a) bloat like a bastard to outlive every other deck on the table > b) use all your actions to kill the ARs, which *only* works if there enough > allied votes on the table Well, what's wrong with B? I'm not sure why you're so despondent about it. You only need more votes than the *one* deck that's playing the ARs. And if he's got the only votes and no one at the table has the ability to take those vampires out, then he's got vote lock. Frankly, there are decks that are *much* better geared to take advantage of vote lock than any AR deck I've ever seen. What it usually takes is just simple cooperation between the other players. Given that, I've never noticed that it's hard at all to stop an AR deck. The issue is really about who took what collateral damage as it's being stopped. That's a legitimate complaint about the deck. But I'd rather see an AR deck than potence rush any day. > > > Perhaps most importantly, because facing stacked AR is so unenjoyable, > > > it's going to completely put off any new players that make > > > an effort to come along to an event for the first time. > > > > It really shouldn't. I think you just have to explain the situation > > to them. Is it possible that you're projecting your own lack of enjoyment > > with such games (for whatever reason it bothers you) on other players? > > "Huh this is my first time and someone cross-table killed me at random > before I had a chance to do anything because of some cards he played. This > game sucks." If that's happening a lot, then you guys aren't doing a good job of stopping the ARs. And YES! Once in a while you get cross-table killed at random in this game. AR decks are hardly the only thing guilty of that in this game. Just more guilty than most. Fred

On Thu, 11 Sep 2003, Frederick Scott wrote: > I'll concede that. But decks that are primarily focused on combat are a > fairly small portion of the game - which is as it should be or there's a > lot of action cards and politics and other stuff that would wind up getting > stuffed into a minor corner of the metagame environment. Saying you have > to play combat to answer this is kind of a poor answer - like saying you > have to be playing intercept to counter Return to Innocence. If you can hold the weenie rush deck off for just a few turns, I've found they inevitably need to turn their attention back upstream. Suddens and DI's are general utility cards that can help out a lot. Sudden the Havens and DI the grapples (remember, they can only play one). Alternatively, you can configure you deck to hit back for three without throwing *too* many card slots at it, and often that's enough to dunk the nerds. Your guy may go down under repeated onslaught, but the steady stream of weenies going to torpor will facilitate their player needing to play more defensively. I'm not suggesting it's an easy deck to play against, but I'm personally more comfortable with it than AR. Also, if you are still playing the same style of decks as the last time I got to play with you, I think you are often the perfect target for weenie pot rush i.e. playing a weenie deck yourself devoted towards stealth, or maybe vote. > You're not going to pack more maneuvers than a Brujah rush deck has. > He just uses the Flashes that are there to press for maneuvers. (Or > maneuvers AND presses...) And maneuver-away combat defense is vulnerable > against so many other common decks that I've given up bothering with it > myself. Agreed, unless you are yourself a combat deck (hey, you know some us play that stuff regularly, even in tournaments). That's why I'd recommend hit back. Crows + Hands, POT and Torn, Blur, etc et al. Three isn't hard to come by. > Sorry, these seems like a bunch of Pollyanna solutions that never work > in practice. I mean, if you want to suggest dreamland solutions, you > could propose to slap Brainwashes down on all his vampires but it wouldn't > win much as a deck. There's a certain level of frustration I get to when > someone's "answer" to a problem don't seem very realistic. Even I can > come up with better answers myself than Banish and bloat. I hope my suggestions aren't also "dreamland solutions"! > It's not that there's nothing you can do at all. There always is. But > whether the solutions are realistic in terms of building a deck that's > likely to win after you've solved the rush combat deck problem is another > question. A counter I've often used in Weenie Debates. David Cherryholmes Duke Radiology P.E.T. Facility (919) 684-7714 david.che...@duke.edu

On 11 Sep 2003 00:39:48 -0700, tobiasop...@hotmail.com (Tobias) scrawled: [snip] >parthenon) and bleeding the vine (sudden an AR every turn) so you pay a pool every turn to be able to 'sudden' an AR every turn, AND give him a new MPA (from the bleeding the vine), which he can use to play another AR. Good work. this way only YOU lose that extra 1 pool that the first AR would have been. ;) salem domain:canberra http://www.geocities.com/salem_christ.geo/vtes.htm

salem <salem_ch...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<pug2mvoeb64fuuo1c...@4ax.com>... > On 11 Sep 2003 00:39:48 -0700, tobiasop...@hotmail.com (Tobias) > scrawled: > > [snip] > >parthenon) and bleeding the vine (sudden an AR every turn) > > so you pay a pool every turn to be able to 'sudden' an AR every turn, > AND give him a new MPA (from the bleeding the vine), which he can use > to play another AR. Good work. this way only YOU lose that extra 1 > pool that the first AR would have been. ;) Yup. Lovely idea, right? Tobias Deventer

> All right, I'll bite. Just understand for Derek Ray's sake that I'm *not* > suggesting potence rush is unbalanced. I'm just saying I mind it a lot more > than Anarch Revolts and I think I have good reasons for that. I agree with > Emmitt Svenson's view that ARs most just speed up games. I'd also concede > that they introduce some annoying randomness in the outcome, where the guy > playing them doesn't win himself. But to me, you have a lot more control > and the AR deck is a lot less focused against any one particular player at > the table than against a rush combat deck. I suppose it's a question of degrees. There's a difference between speeding up the game a bit, and arbitrarily ending it in only a handful of turns. I don't have a problem with 1 or 2 ARs in play, but 5? 8? There really isn't enough time to react... > > If you're playing a competitive combat deck of your own, then you should be > > able to hold your ground, or at least take them with you as Potence combat > > usually lacks a lot of prevention. > > I'll concede that. But decks that are primarily focused on combat are a > fairly small portion of the game Pfft. I guess your local metagame is quite different from ours then. I don't think it's possible to play a game these days without seeing serious combat. I personally see combat as a perfectly viable strategy in any case. Even if you're not playing combat, you should expect to see it, and should hence build your deck to cater for it. Or am I mad? :) > - which is as it should be or there's a > lot of action cards and politics and other stuff that would wind up getting > stuffed into a minor corner of the metagame environment. Saying you have > to play combat to answer this is kind of a poor answer - like saying you > have to be playing intercept to counter Return to Innocence. Err if you're playing a *good* combat deck then you should be able to wipe the floor with the Pot rush, and everyone else on the table to boot, no? Why is this poor? And BTW yes, I am also of the opinion that you should *always* play some intercept too. Letting your prey and predator do what they like is a pretty crazy strategy to me. But again I could be mad? :) > > If you want to stay out of combat then just packing a few S:CEs isn't > > going to cut it, so pack Obedience, prevention, or cards that end combat > > like Purchase Pact or Elysium: the Arboretum. > > Obedience and prevention are extremely narrow cards. Obedience requires > you to use large enough vampires to win the cap comparison. Sure. I don't see that as a problem though. One fatty and a handful of Obedience will stop a combat deck completely dead in its tracks. Sounds pretty efficient and a viable option to me. > > Or at least pack maneuvers to avoid the IGs. > > You're not going to pack more maneuvers than a Brujah rush deck has. > He just uses the Flashes that are there to press for maneuvers. (Or > maneuvers AND presses...) And maneuver-away combat defense is vulnerable > against so many other common decks that I've given up bothering with it > myself. You'd be suprised how many Pot decks don't have that many maneuvers though. In any case, one option is to draw out all the maneuver cards out by packing Deer Rifles. Even a deck with loads of maneuver cards will dry up pretty quick if you put your mind to it. <snip> > Sorry, these seems like a bunch of Pollyanna solutions that never work > in practice Sorry, it sounds like you're playing very fragile decks with small vampires that simply can't defend themselves. :) > It's not that there's nothing you can do at all. There always is. But > whether the solutions are realistic in terms of building a deck that's > likely to win after you've solved the rush combat deck problem is another > question. Well, as Mr Cherryholmes noticed on his response, most rush decks will get bored pretty quickly if you can prove that you can survive them for a few turns. Besides, if they can't unload their hand on you, then they're gonna get jammed pretty well so they can't cycle for better cards. And, in context, just surviving and staying on the table is a step towards winning the game. You may have to sacrifice some forward motion to keep your deck alive for longer for in the long run I'm sure it would pay off. > > a) bloat like a bastard to outlive every other deck on the table > > b) use all your actions to kill the ARs, which *only* works if there enough > > allied votes on the table > > Well, what's wrong with B? I'm not sure why you're so despondent about it. > You only need more votes than the *one* deck that's playing the ARs. Unless they're playing vote reaction cards or can cancel or change your votes. Which happens (for good AR decks anyway). In any case, if I'm forced to play with titled vampires in every deck just so I can compete, that kinda defeats the object of having a wider collection of cards that cater for more types of strategy. I can't help feeling you've missed the point a little here :) > And if he's got the only votes and no one at the table has the ability to take > those vampires out, then he's got vote lock. Yup. And with (for example) 5 or more ARs in play you simply don't have time to get out the cards you need to do anything useful. Game over. Great :( > Frankly, there are decks that > are *much* better geared to take advantage of vote lock than any AR deck I've > ever seen. Yup, but those decks don't systematically destroy the whole table randomly in a matter of only a few turns, and they preserve for the most part the predator-prey relationship. Regards, Mike

Frederick Scott expounded: > It's not that rush combat is unbalanced. If you play where combat abounds, > it's certainly going to run into combat decks that will take it out. It's > just where combat *isn't* that common that it seems to have this effect > that leaves people having to decide whether to prepare for it or for > everything else. And if such rush combat decks actually usually won in > places like that because they had a metagame advantage, I wouldn't mind so > much. Then it would just be a sign that everyone else needed to adjust > what they were doing. But usually, it seems like they just crush their > neighbors a lot more than they actually win games. Looks like a bad case of the Metagame with a lack of anyone able (/willing) to take advantage of it. If potence rush so completely smashes everyone it would win. Perhaps it's just you after all.

On Fri, 12 Sep 2003, Mike Nudd wrote: > Sure. I don't see that as a problem though. One fatty and a handful of > Obedience will stop a combat deck completely dead in its tracks. Sounds > pretty efficient and a viable option to me. It tends to fail against weenie combat + Haven Uncovered, though. By spreading your ten pool into five seperate rush actions, the odds of the opponent having his "counter" in sufficient numbers is small. This is another reason why hit-back is to be preferred; combat defense provides no deterrence. Against non-weenie/multi-rush decks (i.e. tepid and slow), your suggestion is a valid solution. Man, I want to fight me some Brits! And Australians! [ quoted text not captured ]

"Reyda" <true_...@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:<3f584d13$0$9294$79c1...@nan-newsreader-01.noos.net>... > "salem" <salem_ch...@yahoo.com> wrote in message > news:23tflv8191jfg8u25...@4ax.com... > > On Thu, 4 Sep 2003 21:39:06 +0200, "Reyda" <true_...@hotmail.com> > > scrawled: > > > > > > >we condemned to play with harmless, gentle cards with your policy ? I'm > > >asking that because i'm a fucking millenary methuselah who really wants > to > > > > You make hats for the undead? :) > > hehe :) > english is not my first language I just read this entire thread and these quotes seem to bother me the most. Mistakes and typos happen regularly, though some stick out as amusing or terribly incorrect, so they are pointed out. In this case the person who seemed to have made the mistake made the excuse that English is not his first language. Well, I hope the same is true for the person who pointed out the "mistake" since Reyda seemed to be using an adjective to describe that he was a thousand year old methuselah and not a 'hat maker' as that would be a millinery methuselah. Robert Scythe

On 12 Sep 2003 14:12:43 -0700, robert...@hotmail.com (Robert Scythe) scrawled: [ quoted text not captured ] I was actually neither pointing out bad english nor a typo, but merely trying to make a pun. For a pun it just has to sound roughly like what i'm punning about, right? :D [ quoted text not captured ]

Mike Nudd wrote: > (Re: coping with potence rush combat) > > > If you're playing a competitive combat deck of your own, then you should > > > be able to hold your ground, or at least take them with you as Potence > > > combat usually lacks a lot of prevention. > > > > I'll concede that. But decks that are primarily focused on combat are a > > fairly small portion of the game > > Pfft. I guess your local metagame is quite different from ours then. I don't > think it's possible to play a game these days without seeing serious combat. > I personally see combat as a perfectly viable strategy in any case. Even if > you're not playing combat, you should expect to see it, and should hence > build your deck to cater for it. Or am I mad? :) *Seeing it*, OK. But it should not be necessary to *play* it yourself to have a shot at winning a tournament, any more than it should be necessary to play a heavy intercept to counter people's stealth bleed. I'm not claiming it is, mind you. I'm just responding to the suggestion that I'd need to play combat to survive potence rush. That, to me, is beside the point. Again, getting back to the original problem, as I see it, anyway: trying to play in a environment that's not combat heavy, how do you prepare yourself for a rush combat deck without seriously weakening my deck vs. most everything else? So that having a rush combat deck sit down as your prey isn't a death sentence for the game? > > Saying you have > > to play combat to answer this is kind of a poor answer - like saying you > > have to be playing intercept to counter Return to Innocence. > > Err if you're playing a *good* combat deck then you should be able to wipe > the floor with the Pot rush, and everyone else on the table to boot, no? Why > is this poor? Because then the whole game is just about who's combat 'nads are bigger. I'll put it this way: if the game is supposed to be all about combat, then quit printing all those other cards that have nothing to do with it. > And BTW yes, I am also of the opinion that you should *always* play some > intercept too. Letting your prey and predator do what they like is a pretty > crazy strategy to me. But again I could be mad? :) You could be. Pity the poor Ventrue. No intercept disciplines at all. Guess they never do anything... > > > If you want to stay out of combat then just packing a few S:CEs isn't > > > going to cut it, so pack Obedience, prevention, or cards that end combat > > > like Purchase Pact or Elysium: the Arboretum. > > > > Obedience and prevention are extremely narrow cards. Obedience requires > > you to use large enough vampires to win the cap comparison. > > Sure. I don't see that as a problem though. One fatty and a handful of > Obedience will stop a combat deck completely dead in its tracks. Sounds > pretty efficient and a viable option to me. It doesn't to me. Crypts don't work like that, for thing. I don't know how you think about crypt-building but I don't know how to order up just exactly one fatty (with superior dominate, by the way). Anyway, I'm not really saying it's a bad idea. I'm just saying it's not a useful idea for most decks. That's what "narrow" means. It may work - but it's not going to be much help to a midcap Toreador Antitribu deck. Or any of the other vast majority of decks for which throwing in large cap vampires with dominate would hurt the deck. And at that, it's all useless if the other guy has his own fatty to rush with. > > Sorry, these seems like a bunch of Pollyanna solutions that never work > > in practice > > Sorry, it sounds like you're playing very fragile decks with small vampires > that simply can't defend themselves. :) Or mid-caps. A *lot* of decks fall into this category. > > It's not that there's nothing you can do at all. There always is. But > > whether the solutions are realistic in terms of building a deck that's > > likely to win after you've solved the rush combat deck problem is another > > question. > > Well, as Mr Cherryholmes noticed on his response, most rush decks will get > bored pretty quickly if you can prove that you can survive them for a few > turns. Bored? What are they gonna do? Dramatic Upheaval themselves to the next table? They got no place else to go. You have to survive them for more than a few turns, I think. (David's response confused me. I tend to think of rushers going upstream *first* to make sure they've got their predator controlled, *then* go after their prey. It all depends on who's sitting where, of course...) > Besides, if they can't unload their hand on you, then they're gonna > get jammed pretty well so they can't cycle for better cards. I agree. But David's suggestion of using a large chunk of your master card space for DIs and SRs, much though I think it would work well enough, would be another thing that qualifies as covering rush by weakening your deck against everything else. In my decks, master card space is extremely precious. Very few of them would work if I diverted more than a couple of cards to stopping rushes. > > > a) bloat like a bastard to outlive every other deck on the table > > > b) use all your actions to kill the ARs, which *only* works if there > > > enough allied votes on the table > > > > Well, what's wrong with B? I'm not sure why you're so despondent about > > it. You only need more votes than the *one* deck that's playing the ARs. > > Unless they're playing vote reaction cards or can cancel or change your > votes. Which happens (for good AR decks anyway). I'm not sure I agree. I've seen AR decks work with vote reaction cards and without them. I've seen both sorts fall flat on their faces. Thing is, if they devote too many cards to stopping votes, they risk other bad things they're not prepared for - for instance, being bled out themselves by their predator due to have little or no bleed defense. I always thought having a good supply of bounce was important. Also, something like Night Moves or something so you don't have to worry about your prey sitting on the edge. Intercept and sudden reversals to prevent naughty pool managing on prey's part. Some AR decks like boons in order to keep the other parts of the table stacked to fall down in a friendly way. And, of course, you need some pool management of your own for the same reason you need bleed defense. That's a lot of stuff to wedge in enough cards for stopping votes. > In any case, if I'm forced to play with titled vampires in every deck just > so I can compete, that kinda defeats the object of having a wider collection > of cards that cater for more types of strategy. I can't help feeling you've > missed the point a little here :) I don't think you should have to play titled vampires to prevent AR decks from working, no. I think that's where we disagree about this issue. Usually *someone* on the table has some kind of votes to push through a vote, especially if the edge is in sympathetic hands. If no one can, someone often has some kind of deck that can go mess with the AR player. Ironically enough, lots of AR decks have gone down in flames to a guy with a good combat rush deck. There are other things, too. What kind of rock you use depends on what kind of rocks are at hand. Fred

Timlagor wrote: > > Frederick Scott expounded: > > And if such rush combat decks actually usually won in > > places like that because they had a metagame advantage, I wouldn't mind so > > much. Then it would just be a sign that everyone else needed to adjust > > what they were doing. But usually, it seems like they just crush their > > neighbors a lot more than they actually win games. > > Looks like a bad case of the Metagame with a lack of anyone able > (/willing) to take advantage of it. If potence rush so completely > smashes everyone it would win. Nope. The trouble is, it's one thing to slap your neighbor around like a red-headed step child. It's quite another thing to bleed people out and earn enough victory points to win a table. I see too many games where these decks unbalance tables but run out of gas too soon to keep someone - their grandpredator if not their predator - from finding a way to oust them. Fred

Frederick Scott expounded: > (Re: coping with potence rush combat) > Again, getting back to the original problem, as I see it, anyway: trying to > play in a environment that's not combat heavy, how do you prepare yourself > for a rush combat deck without seriously weakening my deck vs. most > everything else? So that having a rush combat deck sit down as your prey > isn't a death sentence for the game? Either you just ignore it and suffer the consequences when ou do meet the Pot OR you prepare for it. Obviously preparing will have some opportunity cost. How you do it will naturally determine the cost and some ways will be more efficient than others. It would hardly be fair if you could counter combat without any damage to your own plans. > > And BTW yes, I am also of the opinion that you should *always* play some > > intercept too. Letting your prey and predator do what they like is a pretty > > crazy strategy to me. But again I could be mad? :) > > You could be. Pity the poor Ventrue. No intercept disciplines at all. > Guess they never do anything... Oh absolutely. Because there are absolutely no ways to get any intercept at all without Auspex or Animalism are there? <puts aside the trowel> > It doesn't to me. Crypts don't work like that, for thing. I don't know > how you think about crypt-building but I don't know how to order up just > exactly one fatty (with superior dominate, by the way). 4 copies of one fatty. > Anyway, I'm not really saying it's a bad idea. I'm just saying it's not > a useful idea for most decks. That's what "narrow" means. It may work - > but it's not going to be much help to a midcap Toreador Antitribu deck. Try a few guns. > Bored? What are they gonna do? Dramatic Upheaval themselves to the next > table? They got no place else to go. You have to survive them for more > than a few turns, I think. They might die. They might start rushing someone else. > I agree. But David's suggestion of using a large chunk of your master > card space for DIs and SRs, much though I think it would work well enough, > would be another thing that qualifies as covering rush by weakening your > deck against everything else. In my decks, master card space is extremely What can't SRs and DI's be used to defend against?

On Fri, 12 Sep 2003, Frederick Scott wrote: > *Seeing it*, OK. But it should not be necessary to *play* it yourself to > have a shot at winning a tournament, any more than it should be necessary > to play a heavy intercept to counter people's stealth bleed. I'm not > claiming it is, mind you. I'm just responding to the suggestion that I'd > need to play combat to survive potence rush. That, to me, is beside the Define "play". Do you mean you expect to not need to play any red cards whatsoever? Probably not, because that's dumb. I ask because I thought I demonstrated in my post that you could include elements to stymie -- though of course not shut down entirely - weenie potence. More robust decks require correspondingly more card slots to get your delivery of three damage to a reliable percentage, but you were complaining about a specific deck. > Again, getting back to the original problem, as I see it, anyway: trying to > play in a environment that's not combat heavy, how do you prepare yourself > for a rush combat deck without seriously weakening my deck vs. most > everything else? So that having a rush combat deck sit down as your prey > isn't a death sentence for the game? What is "seriously weakening"? 10 cards? 20? 30? My general take is that you can devote only about half to two-thirds your deck to killing your prey and do fine. That leaves a lot of card slots for defenses, combat being among them. You may be suffering from an over-emphasis on ousting and not enough on living. Tricky balance, of course. > Because then the whole game is just about who's combat 'nads are bigger. > I'll put it this way: if the game is supposed to be all about combat, then > quit printing all those other cards that have nothing to do with it. Interesting combination of logic and hyperbole. What is "all about" supposed to mean? Any element of the game is a legitimate target for singling out and trying to build a deck around. Some may fail, but you can't expect people not to try (and by element, I mean intercept, or combat. Not Werewolf Pack). > You could be. Pity the poor Ventrue. No intercept disciplines at all. > Guess they never do anything... Credibility. Approaching. Ground zero. Fred... Second Tradition? It's *the* benchmark for stealth, and they play it more easily than anyone. Sure sure, maybe your Ventrue deck doesn't have any titles. You should examine your tendancy to think of this game from the weenie end. You've argued they aren't broken, so you should be comfortable with admitting it's at least a tradeoff. > (David's response confused me. I tend to think of rushers going upstream > *first* to make sure they've got their predator controlled, *then* go > after their prey. It all depends on who's sitting where, of course...) I think the rush deck *tries* to be a good boy and go for its prey. It's just that they tend to include nothing but rush and combat (talking the weenies here), so they really have no defense other than upstream rush. Often, that rush has the opposite affect of accelerating your predator's forward momentum, while he's still got vampires left, provoking further rush, and it just spirals downward. Potentially, you just trim them back to a level of pool loss that you can survive and still oust your prey. That would be in Logical World, though. > I agree. But David's suggestion of using a large chunk of your master > card space for DIs and SRs, much though I think it would work well enough, > would be another thing that qualifies as covering rush by weakening your > deck against everything else. In my decks, master card space is extremely > precious. Very few of them would work if I diverted more than a couple of > cards to stopping rushes. Not a large chunk, but perhaps more than I would play otherwise, if I was metagaming aginst this deck in such a way that I don't eat too many card slots. I know eight masters is a lot, but 4 and 4 would be a comfortable number. They aren't going to be playing *that* many Havens -- the card you mainly worry about in weenie rush -- and pool gain is prettty pointless when their strategy is just to smash your vampires as you bring them out (i.e. there might be some cards you could swap out). [ quoted text not captured ]

freds64_at_...@removethis.com writes: >Again, getting back to the original problem, >as I see it, anyway: trying to >play in a environment that's not combat >heavy, how do you prepare yourself >for a rush combat deck without seriously > weakening my deck vs. most >everything else? So that having a rush >combat deck sit down as your prey >isn't a death sentence for the game? Same way you prepare for weenie DOM bleed in an enviroment which isn't bleed heavy without weakining your deck: you don't. A deck which beats its meta-environment is extremely strong precisely because the opportunity costs of its counters are too high. The solution is for the metagame to become more combat heavy so a good stack of combat defense is a reasonable option. >Because then the whole game is just about who's >combat 'nads are bigger. >I'll put it this way: if the game is supposed to >be all about combat, then >quit printing all those other cards that >have nothing to do with it. You're just being melodramatic. Even in very combat- heavy environments it's no problem to make decks with strong non-combat abilities *and* adequate combat defense to handle POT rush. I do it all the time because half the decks in our typical game are combat. Curt Adams (curt...@aol.com) "It is better to be wrong than to be vague" - Freeman Dyson

"Frederick Scott" <freds64_at_...@removethis.com> wrote in message news:3F624609...@removethis.com... > > Pfft. I guess your local metagame is quite different from ours then. I don't > > think it's possible to play a game these days without seeing serious combat. > > I personally see combat as a perfectly viable strategy in any case. Even if > > you're not playing combat, you should expect to see it, and should hence > > build your deck to cater for it. Or am I mad? :) > > *Seeing it*, OK. But it should not be necessary to *play* it yourself to > have a shot at winning a tournament, Well, it depends on what you are trying to achieve. You gave me the impression you were having trouble avoiding heavy combat decks, so maybe you should try a different strategy, like fighting back? From a design point of view, it seems clear to me that combat *should* be a viable way of winning games and tournaments in any case, with fighting sitting alongside voting and bleeding to make the 3 main approaches to the game. Sounds to me like you're implying that fighting *shouldn't* be a way of winning? :) > any more than it should be necessary > to play a heavy intercept to counter people's stealth bleed. Errr if you want to stop people from stealth-bleeding you then you either 1) play heavy intercept 2) pack plenty of reduce/bounce 3) get rid of the stealthy vampires (by rushing them?) I see packing heavy intercept as a perfectly viable counter to these types of decks. If you're seeing heavy stealth in your local metagame and you're *not* packing a way of dealing with that either, then surely your making the wrong decks? :) > claiming it is, mind you. I'm just responding to the suggestion that I'd > need to play combat to survive potence rush. That, to me, is beside the > point. No, I believe I said that combat is *one* way of several to deal with Potence rush. > Again, getting back to the original problem, as I see it, anyway: trying to > play in a environment that's not combat heavy, how do you prepare yourself > for a rush combat deck without seriously weakening my deck vs. most > everything else? So that having a rush combat deck sit down as your prey > isn't a death sentence for the game? Well even in a combat-heavy environment I usually only devote about 20 cards out of 90 to defence, and this is usually enough. In any case, even if you *don't* see heavy rush, cards such as Majesty and Skin Of Steel are still useful, and can still be cycled easily in any case. I don't see including these cards as a weakness, and I'm not sure what your point is? > > Err if you're playing a *good* combat deck then you should be able to wipe > > the floor with the Pot rush, and everyone else on the table to boot, no? Why > > is this poor? > > Because then the whole game is just about who's combat 'nads are bigger. > I'll put it this way: if the game is supposed to be all about combat, then > quit printing all those other cards that have nothing to do with it. Now you're just being silly. Combat should be equally viable as bleeding and voting, and throwing all your toys out of the pram isn't going to change the fact that you have to deal with it in the metagame, or make way for people who can. > You could be. Pity the poor Ventrue. No intercept disciplines at all. > Guess they never do anything... Err, Bueller? 2nd Tradition anyone? Sports bikes? For f***s sake, it's really not that hard... > > Sure. I don't see that as a problem though. One fatty and a handful of > > Obedience will stop a combat deck completely dead in its tracks. Sounds > > pretty efficient and a viable option to me. > > It doesn't to me. Crypts don't work like that, for thing. I don't know > how you think about crypt-building but I don't know how to order up just > exactly one fatty (with superior dominate, by the way). Well in a crypt of 12 vampires, about 4 big ones should gaurantee that you have at least one in your uncontrolled region when you start play. > Anyway, I'm not really saying it's a bad idea. I'm just saying it's not > a useful idea for most decks. That's what "narrow" means. It may work - > but it's not going to be much help to a midcap Toreador Antitribu deck. Ok. !Tor can either go for: - bounce and reduce with Aus to avoid unecessary blocks - maneuver with Cel and then S:CE with Presence - mixing in some guns with Cel to pack a real punch to warn off fiesty vampires - mixing in some Art of Pain for some close-range (although albeit more risky) combat deterrance - using Purchase Pact to screen out Sabbat vampires - using Secure Haven or Secret Passage to deny rush (D) actions - use DI to cancel critical opposing combat cards And that's without mixing in other Disciplines, clans or other quirks. For Christ's sake, where's your imagination? > Or any of the other vast majority of decks for which throwing in large > cap vampires with dominate would hurt the deck. Err, so use something else? > And at that, it's all useless if the other guy has his own fatty to rush > with. True, but rush decks that rely on big vampires are going to be able to act a lot less, so they're going to be much more conservative and considered in their targets, and you'll have more time to muster up your own defences. > > Sorry, it sounds like you're playing very fragile decks with small vampires > > that simply can't defend themselves. :) > > Or mid-caps. A *lot* of decks fall into this category. Mid-cap decks that are still that fragile? I see them, but then only because they're not very well built... :) > > Unless they're playing vote reaction cards or can cancel or change your > > votes. Which happens (for good AR decks anyway). > > I'm not sure I agree. I've seen AR decks work with vote reaction cards and > without them. I've seen both sorts fall flat on their faces. Thing is, > if they devote too many cards to stopping votes, they risk other bad things > they're not prepared for That's true of any deck, AR, Potence rush, or otherwise. That doesn't change the fact that slapping down large multiples of AR is bad for the metagame, and people's enjoyment of it. > I don't think you should have to play titled vampires to prevent AR decks > from working, no. I think that's where we disagree about this issue. > Usually *someone* on the table has some kind of votes to push through > a vote, especially if the edge is in sympathetic hands. That's a big if. Following that reasoning, if everyone comes to the table expecting *someone else* to play votes, that there won't be any at all. Besides, that's a huge metagame flaw if you *have* to rely on player's deck choices just to be able to compete yourself. Regards, Mike

Timlagor wrote: > > Frederick Scott expounded: > > (Re: coping with potence rush combat) > > Again, getting back to the original problem, as I see it, anyway: trying to > > play in a environment that's not combat heavy, how do you prepare yourself > > for a rush combat deck without seriously weakening my deck vs. most > > everything else? So that having a rush combat deck sit down as your prey > > isn't a death sentence for the game? > > Either you just ignore it and suffer the consequences when ou do meet > the Pot OR you prepare for it. Obviously preparing will have some > opportunity cost. How you do it will naturally determine the cost and > some ways will be more efficient than others. All true. But doesn't counter my point. > It would hardly be fair if you could counter combat without any damage > to your own plans. Combat in *general*, yes. The problem is specifically potence combat, because of its IG. Using S:CE or (to a lesser extent) at least Dodges will give you some general defense against combat. But you have to throw in a bunch of maneuver to reliably escape IG. And against potence/celerity decks with lots of Flashes, even that's not likely to help. So you're throwing in lots and lots of combat cards to cover *one* type of deck. That is why potence/celerity rush is kind of the "bump" on the metagame matrix. (Unless, as I said earlier, your whole environment is heavy on combat decks.) > > It doesn't to me. Crypts don't work like that, for thing. I don't know > > how you think about crypt-building but I don't know how to order up just > > exactly one fatty (with superior dominate, by the way). > > 4 copies of one fatty. ...and draw three of them in your opening crypt. Or none of them in your opening crypt, and none in either the first two cards on top of the pile. I never understand people who think in terms of, "just add X of them and you'll draw an average number". I've seen so many games ruined by that expectation. If your deck works well enough despite a strange draw, it's probably OK. But expecting to make use of a large number of Obediences when you didn't draw your fatty isn't realistic. > > Anyway, I'm not really saying it's a bad idea. I'm just saying it's not > > a useful idea for most decks. That's what "narrow" means. It may work - > > but it's not going to be much help to a midcap Toreador Antitribu deck. > > Try a few guns. Guns won't save you Brujah rush. One maneuver (or two in the case of a Deer Rifle) and ... PUNCH, PUNCH, PUNCH, *SPLA-A-A-T*. Mangled Deer Rifle...AMARANTH...*MY* Deer Rifle! > > Bored? What are they gonna do? Dramatic Upheaval themselves to the next > > table? They got no place else to go. You have to survive them for more > > than a few turns, I think. > > They might die. They might start rushing someone else. All right. Fine. Yes, if your neighbors neighbor is the anti-deck, then you always have a chance of living. I've seen more than one guy cope with a rush deck predator by not bringing any minions out. "You can bleed me for one/minion/turn." It's pretty silly but I've actually seen it work. This is always true in Jyhad, no matter what part of the metagame you're looking at. It's not really an answer. > > I agree. But David's suggestion of using a large chunk of your master > > card space for DIs and SRs, much though I think it would work well enough, > > would be another thing that qualifies as covering rush by weakening your > > deck against everything else. In my decks, master card space is extremely > > What can't SRs and DI's be used to defend against? I didn't say SRs and DIs can't be used to defend against lots of things. But *other* masters usually help your deck more. Fred

David Cherryholmes wrote: > > On Fri, 12 Sep 2003, Frederick Scott wrote: > > > *Seeing it*, OK. But it should not be necessary to *play* it yourself to > > have a shot at winning a tournament, any more than it should be necessary > > to play a heavy intercept to counter people's stealth bleed. I'm not > > claiming it is, mind you. I'm just responding to the suggestion that I'd > > need to play combat to survive potence rush. That, to me, is beside the > > Define "play". ... Elided questions that are all answered in quote below: > > Again, getting back to the original problem, as I see it, anyway: trying to > > play in a environment that's not combat heavy, how do you prepare yourself > > for a rush combat deck without seriously weakening my deck vs. most > > everything else? So that having a rush combat deck sit down as your prey > > isn't a death sentence for the game? > > What is "seriously weakening"? 10 cards? 20? 30? It's any serious number of cards that need to be added against ONE SPECIFIC TYPE OF DECK. My deck has to have combat defense, fine. But most types of combat decks are covered to some degree or other by just the S:CE. You run out of them, you splat. Someone runs you out of S:CE using Telepathic Tracking or Psyche or something, you also go splat. But that's fine. At least you have a sporting chance. It's the plentiful IG that ignores all of your combat defense and mows down your minions from the get go that's tough. And to defend against, I have to add a bunch of maneuvers that are useful against NOTHING ELSE! *THAT'S* what I'm complaining about! ...except I'm not really complaining. I understand why IG is necessary. In fact, I wouldn't mind potence rush in general if it just won more when no one defended against it. Like I've said before, the annoying thing about it is how often it JUST takes out its neighbors and then doesn't win itself. > > Because then the whole game is just about who's combat 'nads are bigger. > > I'll put it this way: if the game is supposed to be all about combat, then > > quit printing all those other cards that have nothing to do with it. > > Interesting combination of logic and hyperbole. What is "all > about" supposed to mean? In other words, if you can't survive without some complex combat card arrangement in every deck, then the various action cards cease to have much effect on play because you can't include many of them in your decks. > Any element of the game is a legitimate target > for singling out and trying to build a deck around. I agree. I never questioned that. I think my words are getting twisted around here from being pulled out of context. Go back up the thread and look at the genesis of exchange if you want to see what I was responding to. In general, I'm fine with the idea of building combat decks and winning with them when you catch your metagame by surprise (...and you're just good at playing them). > > You could be. Pity the poor Ventrue. No intercept disciplines at all. > > Guess they never do anything... > > Credibility. Approaching. Ground zero. Fred... Second Tradition? Fine. NON-PRINCE Ventrue then. Not EVERYBODY plays 8-caps when building a clan deck. > > (David's response confused me. I tend to think of rushers going upstream > > *first* to make sure they've got their predator controlled, *then* go > > after their prey. It all depends on who's sitting where, of course...) > > I think the rush deck *tries* to be a good boy and go for its prey. It's > just that they tend to include nothing but rush and combat (talking the > weenies here), so they really have no defense other than upstream > rush. Often, that rush has the opposite affect of accelerating your > predator's forward momentum, while he's still got vampires left, provoking > further rush, and it just spirals downward. Potentially, you just trim > them back to a level of pool loss that you can survive and still oust your > prey. That would be in Logical World, though. I would call it the "ideal world", myself. It has a nasty tendency to run out rushes or some other critical component at the wrong time. Or something unexpected happens, for instance your grandpredator doesn't look like a threat at all so you take that one extra rush at your predator and then all of sudden the grandpredator pulls off a bleed for 8 and finishes your predator off. Or some kinda damn thing. > > I agree. But David's suggestion of using a large chunk of your master > > card space for DIs and SRs, much though I think it would work well enough, > > would be another thing that qualifies as covering rush by weakening your > > deck against everything else. In my decks, master card space is extremely > > precious. Very few of them would work if I diverted more than a couple of > > cards to stopping rushes. > > Not a large chunk, but perhaps more than I would play otherwise, Well, I don't play any at all. (All right, maybe a couple of SRs if it's all forward quick bleed and I have any extra master card space whatsoever. But that's highly unusual.) > if I was > metagaming aginst this deck in such a way that I don't eat too many card > slots. I know eight masters is a lot, but 4 and 4 would be a comfortable > number. They aren't going to be playing *that* many Havens -- the card > you mainly worry about in weenie rush -- and pool gain is prettty > pointless when their strategy is just to smash your vampires as you bring > them out (i.e. there might be some cards you could swap out). Sure. And if you *don't* run up against rush combat, those 8 master cards are a lot weaker than what I would use in their place. This, again, is the whole problem. I'm diverting 8 master slots that weaken me against most all other decks to cover this *one* type of deck. Fred

CurtAdams wrote: > > freds64_at_...@removethis.com writes: > > >Again, getting back to the original problem, > >as I see it, anyway: trying to > >play in a environment that's not combat > >heavy, how do you prepare yourself > >for a rush combat deck without seriously > > weakening my deck vs. most > >everything else? So that having a rush > >combat deck sit down as your prey > >isn't a death sentence for the game? > > Same way you prepare for weenie DOM bleed in > an enviroment which isn't bleed heavy without > weakining your deck: you don't. Sorry, I disagree. You can use bounce, you use intercept, you can use combat yourself to splat the weenies. These are all standard answers and they all work, at least to a degree that depends on exactly what and how much defense you put in. They're also stuff that works to a degree against other types of predators. Sometimes you'll make the wrong choice for exactly the predator you drew, but in most cases you at LEAST have a defense that does something. I think the nature of having a potence rush combat deck as your neighbor is different, as explained elsewhere. > >Because then the whole game is just about who's > >combat 'nads are bigger. > >I'll put it this way: if the game is supposed to > >be all about combat, then > >quit printing all those other cards that > >have nothing to do with it. > > You're just being melodramatic. (blah, blah...) Again, responded to a thing I was not saying because the quote is being interpreted out of context. Fred

Mike Nudd wrote: > > "Frederick Scott" <freds64_at_...@removethis.com> wrote in message > news:3F624609...@removethis.com... > > > > Pfft. I guess your local metagame is quite different from ours then. I > > > don't think it's possible to play a game these days without seeing > > > serious combat. I personally see combat as a perfectly viable strategy > > > in any case. Even if > > > you're not playing combat, you should expect to see it, and should hence > > > build your deck to cater for it. Or am I mad? :) > > > > *Seeing it*, OK. But it should not be necessary to *play* it yourself to > > have a shot at winning a tournament, > > Well, it depends on what you are trying to achieve. You gave me the > impression you were having trouble avoiding heavy combat decks, so maybe you > should try a different strategy, like fighting back? No, that is not the problem. It's not that I'm seeing too much of them. It's that on the rare occasions I *do* see them, what they tend to do is take out their neighbors more than they win games. They do this because their relative rarity means that people don't prepare for them. (I certainly don't.) If they invariably took out tables because people don't prepare for them, that would be fine. And some of the time, they do win games, especially when played by quality players. But a lot of the time they just unbalance the game and get ousted by the grandpredator or something. Or they spend too much time rushing backwards and their prey wreaks havoc on the table. Or they kill the prey's minions but take a long time ousting so the grandprey wreak havoc on the table. To bring the complaint back around full circle, I am pointing out that this table unbalancing nature of these sorts of decks looks awfully similar to Anarch Revolt decks. And I find it more irritating because the victims of the decks tend to be the rush combat decks neighbors SPECIFICALLY. At least with AR decks, the collateral damage tends to be a lot more random. IMO, at least. Fred

"Frederick Scott" <freds64_at_...@removethis.com> wrote in message news:3F672F86...@removethis.com... > To bring the complaint back around full circle, I am pointing out that this > table unbalancing nature of these sorts of decks looks awfully similar to > Anarch Revolt decks. And I find it more irritating because the victims of > the decks tend to be the rush combat decks neighbors SPECIFICALLY. At least > with AR decks, the collateral damage tends to be a lot more random. IMO, > at least. I don't really understand how you can draw a comparison. A Potence rush deck is only potentially unbalancing in that it can destabilise it's own side of the table, and this will only really happen when its opponents play decks that do not cater for combat or combat defence. Since combat is significant portion of the metagame (IMHO approx. 1/3), this strikes me as more of an issue of deck choice and construction rather than the metagame itself. In contrast slapping down large multiples of AR affects *every* player on the table, and to such a degree that the game ends randomly in only a small number of turns so that there is barely enough time to react. In many cases, deck choice is entirely irrelevant. This strikes me as an issue more to do with the card and it's impact on the metagame rather than in people's own deck choices. Regards, Mike

On Tue, 16 Sep 2003, Frederick Scott wrote: > > What is "seriously weakening"? 10 cards? 20? 30? > It's any serious number of cards that need to be added against ONE SPECIFIC > TYPE OF DECK. My deck has to have combat defense, fine. But most types of > combat decks are covered to some degree or other by just the S:CE. You > run out of them, you splat. Someone runs you out of S:CE using Telepathic > Tracking or Psyche or something, you also go splat. But that's fine. At > least you have a sporting chance. It's the plentiful IG that ignores all > of your combat defense and mows down your minions from the get go that's > tough. And to defend against, I have to add a bunch of maneuvers that are > useful against NOTHING ELSE! *THAT'S* what I'm complaining about! You've witnessed the debates over the years about whether S:CE is too good or not. You've seen the recent hit S:CE took in an attempt to bring it down, yet it is still strong as hell. You know this, so this is your anti-combat card of choice. And, yes, IG is *the* hoser for your choice of combat defense. If you are going to put all your eggs in that basket, IG is going to take you apart. You could chose to play hit-back (as I detailed). You could chose to play fortitude. You could forego combat defense altogether as a waste of effort and instead funnel those slots into pure speed death. But you want your "my one card trumps your five" so that you can, I dunno, go straight for the pool. Tough luck. And, incidentally, a maneuver is good for tons of stuff. Maybe not against CEL/pot or pot/CEL, but that's moving the goal posts, isn't it? > ...except I'm not really complaining. I understand why IG is necessary. > In fact, I wouldn't mind potence rush in general if it just won more when > no one defended against it. Like I've said before, the annoying thing > about it is how often it JUST takes out its neighbors and then doesn't > win itself. I can't speak to every game you've ever played, but weenie combat decks do just fine. In fact, I believe they are nearly as brainless to run as the much-maligned Malk 1994's. The key lies in their big, fat pool cushion and the ability to bleed for one, like, six times a turn. Your complaint might have some basis in fact if you were describing rush decks that try to get it done on one or two rushes a turn, as I think they do tend to flail about and churn the table on their way down. Bad decks destabilize tables. I've moved on from the 'weenie curse' to the 'big, sucking vacuum where my grandpredator should be curse', so I've had ample opportunity to watch this dynamic lately. > In other words, if you can't survive without some complex combat card > arrangement in every deck, then the various action cards cease to have > much effect on play because you can't include many of them in your decks. But you can. Against weenie potence, one maneuver sends you home free. They aren't packing that many lids or whatnot, if any at all. Are you complaining about weenie potence, or midcap Brujah, or combat in general? Your arguments are all over the place. And you certainly can survive anyway. So your minion gets dunked. That's what bridge partners are for. And even if that hook-up never happened, presumably while your combat predator has packed his deck full of "I rip your nerd's head off", yours is packed with "prey, take six", and you'll oust and gain and bring guys out fast enough that you're eventually knocking on his door. I'm not saying that happens every time. I'm not even saying it is likely. But it isn't this mono-dimensional problem you're presenting (albeit predicated upon some hazy superset of decks). It really sounds to me like you are pissed that one copy of Majesty doesn't let you pretend combat decks don't exist. > Fine. NON-PRINCE Ventrue then. Not EVERYBODY plays 8-caps when building > a clan deck. When I think Ventrue, I think "Law Firm", but that core group of 3 vamps (two of which are 7 caps) Governs/freaks/scouts/freaks/enchants/freaks the rest of the crypt out, who may then be suitably Justicar'd or Praxis'd at your leasure. It doesn't have to be an eight cap shoved out by brute force. > I would call it the "ideal world", myself. It has a nasty tendency to run > out rushes or some other critical component at the wrong time. If you can keep your combats down to three cards (two are even better), then it has no more likelihood of gagging than any other deck. Long chains of necessary cards are a weakness. Grapple-punch would be the mono-potence way. The rest of the cards are contingencies. > Or something > unexpected happens, for instance your grandpredator doesn't look like a > threat at all so you take that one extra rush at your predator and then > all of sudden the grandpredator pulls off a bleed for 8 and finishes your > predator off. Or some kinda damn thing. Combat decks don't sweep. A VP or two going "elsewhere" should be part of the combat deck's strategy. I'm only saying that because, in essence, your argument seems to be "shit happens". All I'm trying to show is that the weenie rush deck isn't any more vulnerable to shit happening than any other deck. Assuming we are talking about weenie potence, still; I'm not sure we are. > Well, I don't play any at all. (All right, maybe a couple of SRs if it's all > forward quick bleed and I have any extra master card space whatsoever. But > that's highly unusual.) Reactive or not, DI is now in my #1 slot for best mastercard in the game. I play all this convoluted crap that relies on thing like Paths and Contracts and what-not, so I can sympathize with your stance that mastercards get eaten up, but I suspect that the decks that you play really don't need the staples as badly as you think they do. Please feel free to correct me, though, as that's just a hunch. > Sure. And if you *don't* run up against rush combat, those 8 master cards > are a lot weaker than what I would use in their place. This, again, is the > whole problem. I'm diverting 8 master slots that weaken me against most all > other decks to cover this *one* type of deck. I dunno, Fred. Suddens and DI's are pretty generally useful. DI's moreso than Suddens, but I thought you were describing a problem specific to weenie rush, and Haven is one of the power cards for that archetype. How else are you going to stop a Master that lets the horde swarm you? When was the last time you tried, say, dumping the pool gain and the hand cycling for 4 Suddens/ 4 DI's? Maybe you should tweak the numbers, like 3/3 or 4/2, but it's generally useful against lots of decks. [ quoted text not captured ]

fred writes: >> Same way you prepare for weenie DOM bleed in >> an enviroment which isn't bleed heavy without >> weakining your deck: you don't. >Sorry, I disagree. You can use bounce, you use >intercept, you can use combat yourself to splat >the weenies. These are all standard answers and >they all work, at least to a degree that depends >on exactly what and how much defense you put in. C'mon Fred. Surely you've sat prey to a weenie DOM deck? With fatties there's nothing you can do. I just got fried last Saturday: turn 2, 1 boosted bleed; turn 3; 3 more boosted bleeds; turn 4; Pentex Subversion, 4 more boosted bleeds; ousted. I'd seen 10 cards and never got to take an action. What, exactly, could I possibly have done? I got hit once playing a defensive Malkie deck; all 3-7 cap minions, 10+ bleed bounce cards, plenty of intercept; didn't help. The table had to "save" me, defined as when the whole table gang- banged the DOM bleeder I surved with two empty minions and 3 pool as a morsel for my grandpredator. The only way to survive weenie DOM bleed is with 20 or so deflections, weenie intercept, and weenie POT rush, all of which are unplayable if there's a reasonable amount of combat about. [ quoted text not captured ]

Mike Nudd wrote: > > "Frederick Scott" <freds64_at_...@removethis.com> wrote in message > news:3F672F86...@removethis.com... > > > To bring the complaint back around full circle, I am pointing out that > > this table unbalancing nature of these sorts of decks looks awfully > > similar to Anarch Revolt decks. And I find it more irritating because > > the victims of the decks tend to be the rush combat decks neighbors > > SPECIFICALLY. At least with AR decks, the collateral damage tends to > > be a lot more random. IMO, at least. > > I don't really understand how you can draw a comparison. A Potence rush deck > is only potentially unbalancing in that it can destabilise it's own side of > the table, and this will only really happen when its opponents play decks > that do not cater for combat or combat defence. Since combat is significant > portion of the metagame (IMHO approx. 1/3), this strikes me as more of an > issue of deck choice and construction rather than the metagame itself. I guess it depends on what you call "combat" decks. A lot of decks have some element of combat in them, it's true. I certainly don't find that 1/3 of all decks can stand up to a dedicated potence/celerity rush combat deck, so the semantics don't matter. If that many could, there'd be little point to ever playing the rush deck, since they don't have any other advantages outside of destroying minions. Even a deck that has enough combat to merely slow down the process of being wiped out is still not going to have much chance of winning itself. > In contrast slapping down large multiples of AR affects *every* player on > the table, and to such a degree that the game ends randomly in only a small > number of turns so that there is barely enough time to react. But only some of the time. And often enough, I feel that when it happens it's mainly because the opponents of the AR deck played poorly. Fred

David Cherryholmes wrote: > > On Tue, 16 Sep 2003, Frederick Scott wrote: > > > > What is "seriously weakening"? 10 cards? 20? 30? > > > It's any serious number of cards that need to be added against ONE SPECIFIC > > TYPE OF DECK. My deck has to have combat defense, fine. But most types of > > combat decks are covered to some degree or other by just the S:CE. You > > run out of them, you splat. Someone runs you out of S:CE using Telepathic > > Tracking or Psyche or something, you also go splat. But that's fine. At > > least you have a sporting chance. It's the plentiful IG that ignores all > > of your combat defense and mows down your minions from the get go that's > > tough. And to defend against, I have to add a bunch of maneuvers that are > > useful against NOTHING ELSE! *THAT'S* what I'm complaining about! > > You've witnessed the debates over the years about whether S:CE is too good > or not. You've seen the recent hit S:CE took in an attempt to bring it > down, yet it is still strong as hell. You know this, so this is your > anti-combat card of choice. And, yes, IG is *the* hoser for your choice > of combat defense. None of this is anything I've ever disputed nor does it directly address my point. I will point out, just to keep some perspective on this, that IG is the hoser to quite a lot of things: dodge, non-hand ag strikes, scary weapons. It's "Thoughts Betrayed" against everything but hand strikes. > If you are going to put all your eggs in that basket, > IG is going to take you apart. You could chose to play hit-back (as I > detailed). You could chose to play fortitude. You could forego combat > defense altogether as a waste of effort and instead funnel those slots > into pure speed death. But you want your "my one card trumps your > five" so that you can, I dunno, go straight for the pool. Tough luck. I'm not sure I agree with all of this. But, again, it's all beside the point. You seem to keep wanting to turn this into a big, "Fix-Fred's- deck-vs.-Brujah-Rush-Combat" clinic and that shows a misunderstanding of the complaint. The problem with your answers is *NOT* that they fail to fix my deck if I know I'm going to be facing this kind of deck. I know plenty of things I can do in that instance. My preferred answer - due to the relative rarity of a Brujah rush combat deck - is to simply ignore the possibility. The problem is, none of your answers is really a nice drop-in for most of my decks that wouldn't weaken them for what they USUALLY face. Most of your answers are only stuff I'd really need to face the one type of deck and won't do much for me otherwise. I'd concede that Fortitude does, though sometimes it works out the same because I find I can't afford the level of Fortitude I'd need to stand up to being rushed. (And to some extent, I really think you want to use different kinds of Fortitude cards against 2-3 strike, 2-4 damage-per-strike combat decks than just about any other kind.) > And, incidentally, a maneuver is good for tons of stuff. Maybe not > against CEL/pot or pot/CEL, but that's moving the goal posts, isn't it? What, you mean to bring celerity into it as well? That was mostly intended to be there in the first place. I seldom see rush decks that don't involve celerity. Usually, Lasombra and Giovanni combat decks tend to be bruise and bleed or use combat as only part of their strategy, which is sporting enough for its opponents. Blood Brothers I haven't seen enough of to tell, though my first impressions is that it can be awesome - once it gets tooled up and provided it doesn't trip over itself. > > ...except I'm not really complaining. I understand why IG is necessary. > > In fact, I wouldn't mind potence rush in general if it just won more when > > no one defended against it. Like I've said before, the annoying thing > > about it is how often it JUST takes out its neighbors and then doesn't > > win itself. > > I can't speak to every game you've ever played, but weenie combat decks do > just fine. In fact, I believe they are nearly as brainless to run as the > much-maligned Malk 1994's. The key lies in their big, fat pool cushion > and the ability to bleed for one, like, six times a turn. I guess I don't see them. Even the weeniest combat decks I've seen aren't going have more than, say, four minions out until they at least get an oust. It's not safe. We may be talking about different decks. ... > > In other words, if you can't survive without some complex combat card > > arrangement in every deck, then the various action cards cease to have > > much effect on play because you can't include many of them in your decks. > > But you can. Against weenie potence, one maneuver sends you home > free. The more you talk about it, the more I'm doubting that this weeny potence deck you talk about is one that would bother me. If possession of a mere Saturday Night Special would save my minion, then I don't care about it. This is not the deck I fear. Well, it would kill certain of my decks, no question - but that doesn't bother me at all because I just lost the metagame and you'd likely get a VP for your efforts. I'm not complaining about simply losing a metagame. > Are you complaining about weenie potence, or midcap Brujah, or combat in > general? Your arguments are all over the place. My arguments have attempted to be consistent. Part of the problem is that you and Mike Nudd keep drawing me (sometimes successfully) off track by turning this into a combat defense deck clinic. I was not looking for sympathy or deck building help vs. potence rush or anything like that. I was pointing to a problem in the game: that building your deck to resist potence rush can weaken it against the real metagame many of us face - so we just don't. So when potence rush DOES show up, (and yes, "midcap Brujah" probably describes it much better) it often wipes the ground with its neighbors but doesn't win nearly as many games as a deck should when it wins metagames like that. The rest elided because it seems to be based on a misunderstanding of which kind of deck bothers me. I'll save the debate about the value of SRs and DIs for another juicy day... Fred

CurtAdams wrote: > > fred writes: > > >> Same way you prepare for weenie DOM bleed in > >> an enviroment which isn't bleed heavy without > >> weakining your deck: you don't. > > >Sorry, I disagree. You can use bounce, you use > >intercept, you can use combat yourself to splat > >the weenies. These are all standard answers and > >they all work, at least to a degree that depends > >on exactly what and how much defense you put in. > > C'mon Fred. Surely you've sat prey to a weenie > DOM deck? With fatties there's nothing you can > do. I just got fried last Saturday: turn 2, 1 boosted > bleed; turn 3; 3 more boosted bleeds; turn 4; > Pentex Subversion, 4 more boosted bleeds; ousted. > I'd seen 10 cards and never got to take an action. > What, exactly, could I possibly have done? If you're talking about the kind deck I think you're talking about (like Darby's weeny presence deck at Gateway), then my answer is different. Those kind of decks are likewise hard to prepare for, yes. But they almost never get more than one VP before the table closes ranks against them. That, by itself, is counterincentive to play them. But, yes, if so then your point is well-taken. But I find those decks so rare that I don't bother to bitch about them. YMMV, I suppose. I didn't expect to see any experienced players in LA using one, frankly. Fred

"Frederick Scott" <freds64_at_...@removethis.com> wrote in message news:3F67FE2E...@removethis.com... > > I don't really understand how you can draw a comparison. A Potence rush deck > > is only potentially unbalancing in that it can destabilise it's own side of > > the table, and this will only really happen when its opponents play decks > > that do not cater for combat or combat defence. Since combat is significant > > portion of the metagame (IMHO approx. 1/3), this strikes me as more of an > > issue of deck choice and construction rather than the metagame itself. > > I guess it depends on what you call "combat" decks. A lot of decks have > some element of combat in them, it's true. I certainly don't find that > 1/3 of all decks can stand up to a dedicated potence/celerity rush combat > deck, so the semantics don't matter. If that many could, there'd be little > point to ever playing the rush deck, since they don't have any other > advantages outside of destroying minions. Even a deck that has enough combat > to merely slow down the process of being wiped out is still not going to > have much chance of winning itself. It sounds very much like you're chasing your own tail - the same argument applies to any type of strategy. A very focused bleed deck is going to get past most opponents, except for those that pack serious amounts of intercept and/or bounce, or alternative ways of shutting the opposing vampires down. A very focused voting deck is going to get past most opponents, except for those that pack serious amounts of intercept and/or votes of their own, or alternative ways of shutting the opposing vampires down. A very focused combat deck is going to get past most opponents, except for those that pack anti-combat and/or combat of their own, or alternative ways of shutting the opposing vampires down. That's the way the game works. In any case, no-one's going to disagree that Potence is just one of many options in regards to the wider combat strategy, but I think most people would also agree that it's much more easily dealt with that you keep trying to make out. Do you actually have a point, because it sounds like you just keep whinging about the fact that you can't build decks to stand up to heavy combat...? > > In contrast slapping down large multiples of AR affects *every* player on > > the table, and to such a degree that the game ends randomly in only a small > > number of turns so that there is barely enough time to react. > > But only some of the time. And often enough, I feel that when it happens > it's mainly because the opponents of the AR deck played poorly. But that 'some of the time' is enough. I'm not worried about seeing 1 or 2 ARs on the table as there is obviously plenty of opportunity to get rid of them, and yes, tough s*** for those players who don't make an effort to get rid of them, get rid of the controller's vampires, or bloat up to counter the pool loss (which isn't that bad, and no different really from taking a bleed each turn). What I'm talking about is when you get say 5 or more on the table mid- to end-game from nowhere (using multiple master actions). *Most* decks simply won't have enough time to turn against the AR controller before they are ousted, and the offending deck only needs to fend the table off for 2 or 3 turns before it's all over. In fact, IMHO the best use of Anarch Revolt does seem to be to play it late to take people by surprise. This is unequivocally bad. It has nothing really to do with how good the players are, or what decks they play. Large amounts of ARs end the game far too quickly, and to me this runs contrary to what the metagame is supposed to be all about. Nothing you have said so far addresses this. And I'll reiterate that I don't think AR would need to be changed that much to address this problem. Even just stating that 'only 1 AR may be played by a methuselah each turn' would probably be enough to give the rest of the table a chance. Regards, Mike

Frederick Scott expounded: > To bring the complaint back around full circle, I am pointing out that this > table unbalancing nature of these sorts of decks looks awfully similar to > Anarch Revolt decks. And I find it more irritating because the victims of > the decks tend to be the rush combat decks neighbors SPECIFICALLY. At least > with AR decks, the collateral damage tends to be a lot more random. IMO, > at least. YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO MESS UP YOUR PREDATOR AND PREY. It sounds like the problem there is that the rest of the table isn't messing up their pred and prey enough. Your main complaint now seems to be that the people playing combat don't do it well enough to win.

Frederick Scott expounded: > hard to prepare for, yes. But they almost never get more than > one VP before the table closes ranks against them. That, by > itself, is counterincentive to play them. Which apparently applies perfectly to exactly the decks you ARE complaining about.

On Wed, 17 Sep 2003, Frederick Scott wrote: > None of this is anything I've ever disputed nor does it directly address > my point. I will point out, just to keep some perspective on this, that > IG is the hoser to quite a lot of things: dodge, non-hand ag strikes, > scary weapons. It's "Thoughts Betrayed" against everything but hand > strikes. Your point seemed to be predicated upon the effects of IG. Examining the effects of IG seems relevant. I mean, I *think* I get what you claim your point is, that there's this type of deck out there that you ignore, because planning for it would take too much away from what you're trying to do with your own deck. Since that deck seems to be "mid cap Brujah running manevers, IG, and big strikes", I don't really see the problem... there's always going to be a paper to your rock, nor does that deck seem sufficiently common or strong to expect it often. What I *don't* get is how this one deck, which squishes you, is relevant to the AR discussion. That bit about "just makes someone else lose" is difficult to support, and might apply equally to many other decks (some of which you noted). > I'm not sure I agree with all of this. But, again, it's all beside the > point. You seem to keep wanting to turn this into a big, "Fix-Fred's- > deck-vs.-Brujah-Rush-Combat" clinic and that shows a misunderstanding > of the complaint. The problem with your answers is *NOT* that they > fail to fix my deck if I know I'm going to be facing this kind of deck. > I know plenty of things I can do in that instance. My preferred answer - > due to the relative rarity of a Brujah rush combat deck - is to simply > ignore the possibility. That's nice. It doesn't shed any light on why this deck -- that you know about and choose to take your chances with not seeing -- creates a game-altering effect comperable to stacks of AR's. > The problem is, none of your answers is really a nice drop-in for most > of my decks that wouldn't weaken them for what they USUALLY face. Most > of your answers are only stuff I'd really need to face the one type of > deck and won't do much for me otherwise. So you don't get blocked, ever? A maneuver away, or preventing one point and saving a blood, isn't worth including in your deck? These aren't effects that only come into play against a grapple. For example, denying the other guy the ability to flow his cards, because you've chosen to be at the wrong range, is good all by itself. It just sounds like you've got a wierd "iajitsu" metagame, Fred. I'm imagining all these +1 stealth actions sailing through or, if not, pansy-slaps for one. If that's your game, so be it; don't project that onto the rest of us, who assume we have to plan for combat, just like votes, bleed, and stealth. > I'd concede that Fortitude > does, though sometimes it works out the same because I find I can't > afford the level of Fortitude I'd need to stand up to being rushed. > (And to some extent, I really think you want to use different kinds of > Fortitude cards against 2-3 strike, 2-4 damage-per-strike combat decks than > just about any other kind.) Something I came to accept during the long, dark, weenie years is that there are just going to be certain decks that take yours apart. If the deck isn't that common (and pure rush decks aren't), consider yourself lucky. I'm still not even convinced that it's as bad as you say it is when it does appear, but we're also talking around your decks, which makes any real analysis of your experiences difficult. > What, you mean to bring celerity into it as well? That was mostly intended > to be there in the first place. I seldom see rush decks that don't > involve celerity. I'm pretty sure you said something to frame the conversation in terms of weenie potence. If that wasn't your intent, fine, but then the deck you're complaining about gets even more cornercase. > I guess I don't see them. Even the weeniest combat decks I've seen > aren't going have more than, say, four minions out until they at least > get an oust. It's not safe. We may be talking about different decks. Then this is a big impediment to our discussion. The decks I'm talking about can be pretty succinctly described as: weenie mono-potence, weenie celerity with guns, and weenie fortitude Trap/UP. They all get way more than four minions out, as I see them played. Effective Managements, Dreams, Blood Dolls, Info Highway. The fact that they can usually nuke whatever threat to their remaining pool (which is substantial) exists makes it even more likely you'll see a horde. When I said six minions, I was really being generous to your arguments. Against these decks, you really can't include enough combat defense. The number of times they'll iterate the attack, combined with relative cardflows, means you'll die anyway. The weenie-ness is the real culprit, though, not a deck built around combat. All this fed into my initial suggestion to just play hit-back, because that drops the overhead imposed on your deck way, way down from where it'd be just to defend. > So when potence rush DOES show up, > (and yes, "midcap Brujah" probably describes it much better) it often > wipes the ground with its neighbors but doesn't win nearly as many games > as a deck should when it wins metagames like that. Speaking as someone who thinks about rush a lot, the problem here isn't with the disciplines, or even the library. Rush decks built around one or two rushes a turn just don't do well. And if they are playing midcaps, combined with the weaknesses inherent in the archtype (i.e. no intercept, no bounce, etc etc), two is probably all they'll get. With so few actions, light combat defenses *can* slow you down enough that you just get nuked or pulled upstream while hanging on for dear life. If that's the crypt, then there needs to be untap, 2nds, bounce, bleed.... *something*, all of which pulls it away from being a rush deck and into something else. > The rest elided because it seems to be based on a misunderstanding > of which kind of deck bothers me. I'll save the debate about the value > of SRs and DIs for another juicy day... Okee-doke. Let me just say, though, that I'm a fairly recent convert to the DI camp. I'd recommend just giving it a try. I've never had one in hand that I didn't get a huge effect from. [ quoted text not captured ]

[ quoted text not captured ] Not to intrude too much in this discussion, especially as it seems to have gotten far away from AR though I don't feel like changing the subject line, but there is a difference between voting, bleeding, and fighting. The defenses for each of the first two are narrower, thus easier to implement. General ways to stop voting - intercept, more votes, DT. Bleed decks have a bit more variation, but bounce, reduction, intercept wall will have an effect on all of them. With combat, once you get past the defense of never entering combat which you often don't have control over, the defenses against particular brands of combat will vary tremendously. I think this goes to the heart of Fred's complaint. If not, it goes to the heart of my complaint about combat fairness. Combat lends itself to producing more unfair matchups than voting and bleeding because reasonable defenses against an open metagame either require restricting viable deck archetypes or require devoting too much space to defense. Put another way, in a tournament situation, I don't play games where I think "my predator's a bleed deck, I'm screwed". (Though, the problem of weenie decks is the first prey *is* screwed in almost every game, but the problem of weenie decks is worthy of its own complaints.) But, it's quite possible to think "my predator's combat trumps my combat, I'm screwed". Could be IG, could be Protean, could be Entombment, anti-dodge, steal blood, unpreventable damage, etc., and there's even the possibility that an opponent's lack of combat can screw you by making bunches of cards in your deck dead draws. There's an element of turning games into crap shoots. I got tired of craps before I got out of high school.

freds64_at_...@removethis.com writes: >If you're talking about the kind deck I think you're talking >about (like Darby's weeny presence deck at Gateway), then >my answer is different. Those kind of decks are likewise >hard to prepare for, yes. Which is my point - a weenie monothematic deck is not really practical to plan against unless the theme is ubiquitous in your metagame. It's not specific to weenie rush. WW is trying to edit out weenie vote by making the newer titles require larger vamps but at present weenie Praxis Seizure is still a go. >But they almost never get more than >one VP before the table closes ranks against them. However, unless there's a rush deck on the table, the table is often unable to do much to them. >But, yes, if so then your point is well-taken. But I find >those decks so rare that I don't bother to bitch about them. >YMMV, I suppose. I didn't expect to see any experienced >players in LA using one, frankly. I see one in most tourneys in LA, actually, and they not infrequently make finals. (See as in "in the tourney" not as in "interact with"). I see them about as often as the ultra-brutal weenie rush decks. I do see more rush decks in general, but often ones where reasonable defense *does* have a chance - ie. not weenie or no/few IG. [ quoted text not captured ]

curt...@aol.com (CurtAdams) wrote in message news:<20030918185237...@mb-m11.aol.com>... > freds64_at_...@removethis.com writes: > > >If you're talking about the kind deck I think you're talking > >about (like Darby's weeny presence deck at Gateway), then > >my answer is different. Those kind of decks are likewise > >hard to prepare for, yes. > > Which is my point - a weenie monothematic deck is not > really practical to plan against unless the theme is ubiquitous > in your metagame. It's not specific to weenie rush. WW > is trying to edit out weenie vote by making the newer titles > require larger vamps but at present weenie Praxis Seizure is > still a go. And it always will be, unless more specific anti-weenie (vote) cards are made. Which we don't need, I think. > >But they almost never get more than > >one VP before the table closes ranks against them. > > However, unless there's a rush deck on the table, the table > is often unable to do much to them. I went into the finals of the last 2 tournaments I played in ... with weenie presence vote. Of course, I ain't in LA. Tobias Deventer

[ quoted text not captured ] Agreed, in principle. In my experience, people _do_ play the kind of combat decks I'm complaining about a lot more often than the sort of weeny bleed deck Curt is talking about. For one thing, it's a lot more possible to pull off a game win with the former than the latter, especially when played by a good player. But, in general, they still destroy their neighbors more than they win. Fred

CurtAdams wrote: > > freds64_at_...@removethis.com writes: (concerning weeny bleed decks that have the same quality as what I'm complaining about rush potence/celerity decks doing to a table) > >But, yes, if so then your point is well-taken. But I find > >those decks so rare that I don't bother to bitch about them. > >YMMV, I suppose. I didn't expect to see any experienced > >players in LA using one, frankly. > > I see one in most tourneys in LA, actually, and they not > infrequently make finals. If you're talking about at Orccon/Gamex/Gateway tournaments, the last one that made the finals that I recall was Robyn's, over a year ago. Prior to the game win rule, in face. (Though granted, I haven't been diligently cataloguing what makes every final. And I didn't attend Gamex last year, so there's four finals I know nothing about.) In fact, Darby's was the first weeny bleed deck like that I've even seen at all since before the game win rule. Fred

CurtAdams wrote: > > freds64_at_...@removethis.com writes: (also about weeny balls-out bleed decks) > >But they almost never get more than > >one VP before the table closes ranks against them. > > However, unless there's a rush deck on the table, the table > is often unable to do much to them. By the way, this I strongly disagree with. You don't need a rush combat deck to take out the weeny bleed deck. Like the Anarch Revolt deck, you just need to do some common sense cooperating. It's usually not hard at all. If there's any a bleed or vote damage deck behind the weeny bleed deck, it's predator (the weeny bleed's grand predator) just has to cooperate with it to allow to go about it's work unmolested. Even failing that, any kind of directed bleed deck (Malkavian with Kindred Spirits), cross table vote damage, any vote deck on the table can help bloat the weeny bleed deck's prey with Consanguineous Boon. There's about a million ways you can deal with it apart from rushing. But people have to cooperate, at least to some extent. The only reason Darby made the finals at Gateway 4, by the way, was because a) I never dreamed he was playing a deck like that so I did the worst thing possible as his prey; and b) Paul Johnson, who was his predator, was playing this weird Parity Shift deck that apparently had no way of ousting when Darby deliberately put his own pool down to one and left one or two blockers. That shouldn't happen. Fred

Mike Nudd wrote: > > "Frederick Scott" <freds64_at_...@removethis.com> wrote in message > news:3F67FE2E...@removethis.com... > > > > I don't really understand how you can draw a comparison. A Potence rush > > > deck is only potentially unbalancing in that it can destabilise it's > > > own side of the table, and this will only really happen when its > > > opponents play decks that do not cater for combat or combat defence. > > > Since combat is significant portion of the metagame (IMHO approx. 1/3), > > > this strikes me as more of an issue of deck choice and construction > > > rather than the metagame itself. > > > > I guess it depends on what you call "combat" decks. A lot of decks have > > some element of combat in them, it's true. I certainly don't find that > > 1/3 of all decks can stand up to a dedicated potence/celerity rush combat > > deck, so the semantics don't matter. If that many could, there'd be > > little point to ever playing the rush deck, since they don't have any > > other advantages outside of destroying minions. Even a deck that has > > enough combat to merely slow down the process of being wiped out is > > still not going to have much chance of winning itself. > > It sounds very much like you're chasing your own tail - the same argument > applies to any type of strategy. Hardly. I've had this argument with others, so I don't really intend to spend time with it again. But what it boils down to is that rush combat decks that torporize or burn vampires basically work differently than other decks, bleed decks, votes decks, or whatever that try to work on someone's pool directly. The rush decks that put out two or three combat monsters destroy pool by preventing you from ever keeping a vampire on the board. If you can't keep a vampire on the board, you can't do anything at all. But, ironically, the fastest way to oust yourself with a combat neighbor is to put vampires out for them to destroy. If you just let them bleed you, they take forever. I've seen people successfully resist being ousted by a rush predator when the predator tipped off what his deck was (by rushing his predator). Then, they influence everyone to within four transfers of bringing them all up - but not quite. Then, they sit there and watch the predator rush everyone else at the table trying to keep it stable and eventually burning himself out doing that. That's a totally stupid way to have to defend yourself, but in a metagame where it's not worth packing a lot of combat defense, that's what you have to do. > A very focused > combat deck is going to get past most opponents, except for those that pack > anti-combat and/or combat of their own, or alternative ways of shutting the > opposing vampires down. Unfortunately, that's a generalized statement that's not very accurate when you get to looking at the details. "Packing anti-combat" is one thing. Packing enough anti-combat cards to save you against a rush deck is so different that it's usually not worth doing. You can kind of do it if you happen to be playing a fortitude clan or (as you suggested), large dominate vampires that can obedience. But there's a lot of different decks archetypes for which trying to throw in enough to stop a rush/potence/ celerity deck is far more card intensive than what you have to do against 95% of the combat you're usually going to see. It's not worth it. > Do you > actually have a point, because it sounds like you just keep whinging about > the fact that you can't build decks to stand up to heavy combat...? I have a point. You just keep ignoring it and proceed to respond to to a different point I've never tried to make. It's not about being unable to cope with these kinds of decks. It's about it not being worthwhile to do so - and then when you do play against them, they unbalance tables a lot more than they win games. > > > In contrast slapping down large multiples of AR affects *every* player > > > on the table, and to such a degree that the game ends randomly in only > > > a small number of turns so that there is barely enough time to react. > > > > But only some of the time. And often enough, I feel that when it happens > > it's mainly because the opponents of the AR deck played poorly. > > But that 'some of the time' is enough. I'm not worried about seeing 1 or 2 > ARs on the table as there is obviously plenty of opportunity to get rid of > them, and yes, tough s*** for those players who don't make an effort to get > rid of them, get rid of the controller's vampires, or bloat up to counter > the pool loss (which isn't that bad, and no different really from taking a > bleed each turn). What I'm talking about is when you get say 5 or more on > the table mid- to end-game from nowhere (using multiple master actions). So, I ask you, how do get "five or more on the table" without there only being one or two on the table at some point. Most you can ever put out on a turn is three. That's a whole turn to get rid of the ones that are out there. > *Most* decks simply won't have enough time to turn against the AR controller > before they are ousted, and the offending deck only needs to fend the table > off for 2 or 3 turns before it's all over. Bleh. If it gets to that point, people haven't cooperated to do what they have to do. Or the AR players has been tremendously lucky. How do you get Anson (or alternately pass a Rumors of Gehenna) AND the Parthenon out AND start drawing and dumping three ARs a turn AND draw enough of the right cards to effectively frustrate votes before ALL of your opponents get enough stuff out to vote the ARs off the table? It normally can't be done unless people pass up a significant number of chances to get rid of an AR. And almost any game I've seen where ARs have gotten out of hand, that's exactly what happened. I understand the temptation to let one or two go and to act in self- interest. Sometimes, it turns out to the right thing to do. But if you wind back the sort of game you're talking about, I guarantee you almost all of them will involve a fair number of times someone chose to bleed (not just to get the Edge in friendly hands) or act to build up his position or something that wasn't necessary to stopping the ARs. > In fact, IMHO the best use of > Anarch Revolt does seem to be to play it late to take people by surprise. > This is unequivocally bad. Sorry, I still disagree. Again, you can't "suddenly" plop down five ARs. If you play them late, what were you doing up until then? You can't expect to be an AR deck if you don't have a lot of AR cards and support for them. And you're not going to be good at anything else if you've got a bunch of AR cards in your deck and clogging up your hand. So you're not going to be able to do much about putting your prey in position to be ousted (let alone line the table up to fall right) such that suddenly dumping five ARs makes for easy win. If this is how people in your area are winning with Anarch Revolts, the rest of you are doing something wrong. Anyway, I'd say it's kind of self-contradictory to say ARs make the game end too fast...but they're not played until the mid-game or end game. It sounds like people are half ousting themselves and then bitching because an AR deck suddenly pushes them over the top. > Large amounts of ARs end the game far > too quickly, and to me this runs contrary to what the metagame is supposed > to be all about. Nothing you have said so far addresses this. I have. I'm don't see how you can conclude that the metagame is "supposed" to be about anything. In that sense, all AR decks do is change the nature of a game to be much faster than a lot of people plan for - which means essentially that they LOST the metagame by creating a slow-moving deck. That's certainly fair enough, in my humble opinion. The only actual *problem* here is when AR decks destabilize the table and create ousts which do not help the AR player and randomly help someone else - which, as it said, is already a far worse property of a rush combat deck. Fred

Timlagor wrote: > > Frederick Scott expounded: > > To bring the complaint back around full circle, I am pointing out that this > > table unbalancing nature of these sorts of decks looks awfully similar to > > Anarch Revolt decks. And I find it more irritating because the victims of > > the decks tend to be the rush combat decks neighbors SPECIFICALLY. At least > > with AR decks, the collateral damage tends to be a lot more random. IMO, > > at least. > > YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO MESS UP YOUR PREDATOR AND PREY. YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO WIN VICTORY POINTS. > Your main complaint now seems to be that the people playing combat don't > do it well enough to win. What do you mean, *NOW*?!? EXACTLY!!! NOW YOU'VE GOT IT. Fred